100 THE OPPERMANNS your Leader's book. Same colleagues of mine have placed it in their school-libraries. But I have not. I know of DO other work so disfigured by sins against the spirit of the language as that one. I cannot permit that book to be even quoted within the walls of my establishment. I most emphatically request you, my dear colleague, not to quote that book in this hause, not to me and not to my pupils. I will not have the speech of the boys ruined," Bernd Vogelsang sat with his thin lips compressed. He was painstaking and thorough. He knew his way about the Ger- man language and its grammar. He had made amistake. He ought not to have quoted the Leader's book to this misguided man. It was unfortunately only too true. Rector Franccis was right in a certain sense. The greatest living German, the Leader of the German movement, was not familiar with the rudiments of the German language. He had that in common, to be sure, mutaus mutandis, with Napoleon, with whom he also shared the attribute of not having been born on the soil of the realm that he had come to liberate. Just the same, Vogel- sang suffered because of the linguistic failings of his Leader. In.his spare time he labored at the task of eliminating the most flagrant errors in the book entitled My Battle-t .hat most im- portant document of the German liberation movement-and to transpose it into a German which would be grammatically and stylistically perfect. As usual, he would have to swallow the Reetor's insolence without comment. There was no counter- argument he could advance. The invisible sabre had fallen from his hands. He sat silent, lips compressed. Rector Franccis at first thoroughly enjoyed his own indigna- tion. Life often compelled one to sacrifice the intellect. Little Thundercloud had wrested many a concession from him in that direction. But he had not yet fallen so low as to allow anyone to bespatter hirn with the mud of the book entitled My Bastle and call it perfume. By degrees, however, the sinister

BOOK ONE: YESTERDAY 101 look of anger on the face of his senior master and his ominous silence began to alarm him, Rector Franccis had stoutly de- fended his beloved German and that was enough. He became again the conciliatory gentleman he was by nature. "Please da not misunderstand me, my dear colleague," he said soothingly. "Far be it from me to say anything against youe Leader. You remember how the Emperor Sigismund silenced the bishop who corrected his grammatical mistakes. 'Ego imperator Ro- manus supra grammaticos sto' No one requires your Leader to he an expert on German grammar. But I require it of the pupils of Queen Louise School," It sounded like an apology. But it remained a piece of im- pudence on the part of that fellow Franccis to have spoken so disrespectfully of the Leader's failings. What he, Vogelsang, might think, it was not right that this effeminate creature should blurt it out. Bernd Vogelsang would not permit him- self, in any case, to be diverted from his object. Not by a lang shot I At that moment vengeance for the crime which the boy Oppermann had committed became Senior Master Bernd Vogelsang's life-work. "Let us return to the point, Herr Rector," he squeaked. The invisible sabre was back again now, "The case of Oppermann is not only one of a slander against the German race, a slander that horders upon treason in such times as these, it is also an uncommonly irnpudent hreach of school discipline. I must ask you again: what steps do YOll propose to take to punish the refractory boy Oppermann?" Rector Franccis sat on, tired,courteous, harmless as ever. "1 will cohsider the matter, my dear colleague," said he. Rumour travelled swiftly in Queen Louise School. A year ago, the porter, Mellenthin, had saluted yaung Oppermann, the son of the furniture people, obsequiously. Now he looked the other way when Berthold left the building. However, when