Grafin discoursed placidly on the political situation.  She was most instructive; calmly imparting knowledge to Helena and me; calmly embroidering a little calm-looking shirt for her married daughter’s baby, with calm, cool white fingers.  She seemed very content with the world, and the way it is behaving.  She looked as unruffled as one of the swans on the Haff.  All the sedition and heretical opinions she must have heard Kloster fling about have slid off her without leaving a mark.  Evidently she pays no attention to anything he thinks, on the ground that he is a genius.  Geniuses are privileged lunatics.  I gather that is rather how she feels.  She was quite interesting about Germany,—­her talk was all of Germany.  She knows a great deal of its history and I think she must have told us all she knew.  By the time the servants came to take away the tea-things I had a distinct vision of Germany as the most lovable of little lambs with a blue ribbon round its neck, standing knee-deep in daisies and looking about the world with kind little eyes.

Good-bye darling mother.  Saturday is nearly over now.  By this time the time limit for Servia has expired.  I wonder what has happened.  I wonder what you in Switzerland are feeling about it.  You know, my dearest one, I’ll interrupt my lessons and come to Switzerland if you have the least shred of a wish that I should; and perhaps if Bernd really had to go away—­supposing the unlikely were to happen after all and there were war—­I’d want to come creeping back close to you till he is safe again.  And yet I don’t know.  Surely the right thing would be to go on, whatever happens, quietly working with Kloster till October as we had planned.  But you’ve only got to lift your little finger, and I’ll come.  I mean, if you get thinking things and feeling worried.

  Your Chris.

  Koseritz, Sunday evening, July 26th.

Beloved mother,

I’ve packed, and I’m ready.  We start early tomorrow.  The newspapers, for some reason, perhaps excitement and disorganization, didn’t come today, but the Graf telephoned from Berlin about the Austro-Hungarian minister having asked the Servian government for his passports and left Belgrade.  You’ll know about this today too.  The Grafin, still placid, says Austria will now very properly punish Servia, both for the murder and for the insolence of refusing her, Austria’s, just demands.  The Graf merely telephoned that Servia had refused.  It did seem incredible.  I did think Servia would deserve her punishing.  Yesterday’s papers said the demands were most reasonable considering what had been done.  I hadn’t read the Austrian note, because of the confusion of Bernd’s sudden going away, and I was full of indignation at Servia’s behaviour, piling insult on injury in this way and risking setting Europe by the ears, but was pulled up short and set thinking by the Grafin’s looking pleased at my expressions of indignation, and her coming over to me to pat my cheek and say, “This child will make an excellent little German.”