that Apollonius wanted to unseat him altogether, and had even worse intentions in his mind—­in which, however, he should not succeed with all his cunning, although he had come home on purpose to do so.  And still he thought the dreamer would make a fool of himself if he tried to carry out what he himself, who knew the world, could not succeed in doing;—­he who was keener in action than even old Blue-coat had been in his day.

Fritz Nettenmair thought he was outdoing the old gentleman when he whistled still more shrilly on his fingers, coughed still more wrathfully and spat still more decisively.  The qualities in the old gentleman that had really commanded respect, the consistency which, even where it degenerated into obstinacy, compelled esteem, the calm, self-contained dignity of a capable personality—­these he failed to see.  Not possessing them himself, he lacked also the desire to perceive them in others.  Just as his figure was absolutely at variance with the bearing of the old gentleman which he sought artificially to assume, so too his lack of repose and inward stability constantly contradicted it.  He seemed merely to have borrowed the old gentleman’s diplomatic manner of speaking in order to show his own superficiality and emptiness.  Then at times he would suddenly lapse from the stiff demeanor of the wearer of the blue coat into his own patronizing joviality and onto a plane where joking rubs out with dirty fingers the line between superior and subordinate as if it had never existed.  Then when he forcibly jerked himself back just as suddenly into the person of authority, he did not regain the respect he had lost, he merely offended.  To all this was added the fact that he knew himself to be excelled by some of his workmen, and in difficult cases was obliged to let them do as they liked.

Apollonius, on the contrary, had by nature and by virtue of the training that he had received at his cousin’s what his brother lacked; he possessed dignity of personality, consistency to the point of obstinacy.  His inward sureness made him authoritative; he did not have to exert himself to be so—­he was raised above the necessity of demanding respect by visible effort which so seldom attains its purpose, indeed usually defeats it.  And so he succeeded in doing what he wanted.  Soon the work was being carried on in the most systematic order, and all those concerned seemed to feel contented under the change—­all except Fritz Nettenmair.  The rapid cooeperation that moved as on the track of an invisible necessity made the figure in the blue coat in which he felt himself so big, superfluous.  Another reason for uneasiness was that the new system came from his brother; from him whom he already had so much to forgive and whom he wanted less and less to forgive.  He did not know, or did not want to know, what charm a self-contained personality exercises, although he himself was obliged to acknowledge it against his will, and still less