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152 aide-de-camp's room and the dining-room in daily use facing the Albrechtsplatz, which the princes had always over looked and watched from their writing-table. It was an exceptionally unhomely and repellent room, small, with cracked ceiling-paintings, red silk and gold-bordered carpet, and three windows reaching to the ground, through which the draught blew keenly and before which the claret-coloured curtains with their elaborate fringes were drawn. It had a false chimney-piece in French Empire taste, in front of which a semicircle of little modern quilted plush chairs without arms were arranged, and a hideously decorated white stove, which gave out a great heat. Two big quilted sofas stood opposite each other by the walls, and in front of one stood a square book-table with a red plush cover. Between the windows two narrow gold-framed mirrors with marble ledges reached up to the ceiling, the right hand one of which bore a fairly cheerful alabaster group, the other a water bottle and medicine glasses. The writing-desk, an old piece made of rose-wood with a roll-top and metal clasps, stood clear in the middle of the room on the red carpet. An antique stared down with its dead eyes from a pedestal in one corner of the room.

"What I have to suggest to you," said Albrecht—he was standing at the writing-table, unconsciously toying with a paper-knife, a silly thing like a cavalry-sabre with a grotesque handle, "is directly connected with our conversation this afternoon. I may begin by saying that I discussed the matter thoroughly with Knobelsdorff this summer at Hollerbrunn. He agrees, and if you do too, as I don't doubt you will, I can carry out my intention at once."

"Please let's hear it, Albrecht," said Klaus Heinrich, who was standing at attention in a military attitude by the sofa table.

"My health," continued the Grand Duke, "has been getting worse and worse lately."