WORLD'S END

The Graf Stubendorf was known in Germany as a poet and aesthete, and also as one of the Kaiser's intimates. He was a large man, stoutish and pasty, with a soft brown beard and gracious smile. His three sons were the orthodox military men with shaven heads and mustaches twisted to sharp points; they marched up the stairs in order of seniority, making grave acknowledgment of the bows of the servants. The mother, an elegant lady dressed in the latest Paris fashion, walked behind her sons, and the daughters walked behind her. Of course that may have been an accident; or it may have been because their Kaiser had prescribed the proper concerns of women - kitchen, children, and church - listed presumably in order of importance.

VI

In the afternoon the boys put on high boots and took repeating shotguns for hunting. Kurt's father had arranged it with the Oberforstmeister, an important personage in a green uniform with silver braid; he furnished them a Jдger, who would carry a rifle for their protection. It was not permitted to shoot roebuck or large game, but there were plenty of hare and pheasants in the forest.

They drove in the sleigh, following a wood road, slowly because of the fresh drifts of snow. They passed racks where the deer came to feed; the great stags lifted their heads and kept watch, but made no move to escape. They behaved like cattle, and it didn't seem much like hunting to go out and take post on a wooden platform, with a high-powered rifle and telescopic sight, and have beaters drive such creatures in front of you. When Lanny's father went after game it was in the Canadian wilderness, where the moose were not stall-fed; or out in the Rockies, where mountain sheep ran like the devil, leaping over boulders high up among the clouds.

Kurt said that would be fun, of course, but in Germany shooting was a privilege of the land owners, and the upper classes made a ceremony of it. The Jдgertold them about the recent visit of the Kaiser. Seine Majestдt had a special uniform, buff in color, and a splendid bird in his hat; he took his post on a high stand, and his entourage watched him shoot buffalo as they ran by, and boars, and stags, picking out the largest with the best heads. Afterward a pile of the game was made and the Kaiser had his picture taken, standing in front of it. A rather expensive sport, because it was estimated that to raise a single stag cost several thousand marks. But Kurt explained that none of it was wasted; the carcasses were distributed among those who had a right to them, and Lanny would eat his fill three times a day.

Lanny had never seen either buffalo or wild boars, and was greatly excited by the idea. The former was not the shaggy American bison, but smooth-skinned creatures that had been domesticated in Egypt and brought to Europe by the ancient Romans; now they ran wild in the forests and were very dangerous if wounded. As for the boars, they did not molest human beings - but still, it was well to have a rifle along.

After hunting through a great stretch of forest, they came upon a clearing with a tiny farm and a cottage that might have been the home of the witch in Grimm's fairy tales. They stopped to rest, and found no witch, but a peasant mother with half a dozen little ones, the boys with bullet heads and the girls with braided hair, all staring with wide blue eyes at die Herrschaften. There was only one room and a shed in back; the beds were shelves against the walls, and a good part of the room was taken up by a large stove, polished like a patent-leather shoe. Everything in the place had been manicured Ъу this lean and toilworn woman, with tendons in her arms showing like whipcords. She was excited by the visit, and ran to get milk for die Herrschaften, as she called them over and over; she stood while they drank it, and apologized because she had nothing better, and because her husband was not at home, and because she had only a hard bench for them to sit on, and so forth. When they left, Lanny looked back and saw a pile of children's faces in the window of the hut, and it stayed with him as one of the sights of Germany.

They returned with a large bag of game, and a still larger appetite. They had a meal to match it, with half a dozen courses of meats and fowl. When they rose from the table they all took hands and danced gaily around it, crying "Mahlzeit!" Afterward they gathered round the piano and sang sentimental songs in melting voices, also Kurt and his guest were asked to show what they had learned at Hellerau. Lanny was echt deutsch that night, and stowed in his memory two lines of poetry which his friend quoted, to the effect that when you hear singing you may lie down in peace, because evil people have no songs.

VII