They fell; they had gone too hard at it and tumbled when they tried to stop revolving, and over them stumbled a second pair, not entirely by themselves, but rather at a push from the tall young man with pince-nez. There was a scrimmage on the floor, and Klaus Heinrich heard above him in the room the chorus which came back to him from the school-playground when he had ventured on a rather daring joke by way of amusing his fellows--a "Ho, ho, ho!" only it sounded more wicked and bolder here....
When shortly after midnight, unfortunately a little behind time, Doctor Ueberbein appeared on the threshold of the buffet-room, this is what he saw: His young pupil was sitting alone on the green plush sofa by the left-hand wall, his clothes all disarranged and himself decorated in an extraordinary way. A quantity of flowers, which had previously adorned the buffet in two Chinese vases, were stuck in the opening of his waistcoat, between the studs of his shirtfront, even in his collar; round his neck lay the gold chain which belonged to the maiden with the collar-bones, and on his head the flat metal cover of a punch-bowl was balanced like a hat. He kept saying, "What are you doing? What are you doing ...?" while the dancers, hand-in-hand in a semicircle, danced a round dance backwards and forwards in front of him with half-suppressed giggles, whispers, smirks, and ho, ho, ho's.
An unusual and unnatural flush mantled in Doctor Ueberbein's face. "Stop it! Stop it!" he cried in his resonant voice, and, in the silence, consternation, and dismay which at once ensued, he walked with long strides up to the Prince, tore away the flowers in two or three grasps, threw the chain and the cover away, then bowed and said with a stern look, "May I beg your Grand Ducal Highness ...
"I've been an ass, an ass!" he repeated when he got outside.
Klaus Heinrich left the Citizens' Ball in his company.
That was the painful event which happened during Klaus Heinrich's year at school. As I have said, none of the participators talked about it; even to the Prince, Doctor Ueberbein did not mention the subject for years afterwards, and, as nobody crystallized the event in words, it remained incorporeal and promptly faded away, at least apparently, into oblivion.