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Updated: June 9, 2025
Only Krak and Hammerfeldt had any power over her; Krak's seemed the result of ancient domination, the Prince's was won by a suave and coaxing deference that changed once a year or thereabouts to stern and uncompromising opposition. But with my early upbringing, and with Victoria's, Hammerfeldt had nothing to do; my mother presided, and Krak executed.
The spirit of Styria reigned in the nursery, rather than the softer code of our more Western country; I doubt whether discipline were stricter in any house in Forstadt than in the royal palace. They roused me at eight on my coronation day. My mother herself came to my bedside, and knelt down for a few minutes by it. Krak stood in the background, grim and gloomy.
Before Stepan Arkadyevitch had time to come up, a grouse flew out. Veslovsky missed it and it flew into an unmown meadow. This grouse was left for Veslovsky to follow up. Krak found it again and pointed, and Veslovsky shot it and went back to the carriage. "Now you go and I'll stay with the horses," he said. Levin had begun to feel the pangs of a sportsman's envy.
Anna sent for Krak; in the interval before the governess's arrival I grew uneasy. I half wished I had gone to bed quietly, but now I was in for the battle. Had there been any meaning in what the archbishop said, or had there not? Was it true, or had he misled me? I had believed him, and was minded to try the issue; I sat in my chair attempting to whistle as my groom had taught me.
A strange day, this of my coronation, odd to pass through, to the highest degree illuminating in retrospect. I did not live to bastinado Krak; nor would I now had I the power. What they did was perhaps a little cruel, a little Styrian, as Victoria and I used covertly to say of such harsh measures; but how valuable a lesson on the state and fortune of kings! The King is one, the man another.
She therefore took a good deal of pains to make me understand her point of view, and to convert me to her opinions. Her present argument was that she also ought to be relieved from Krak. "Krak was mother's governess till mother was eighteen," I reminded her. "Awful!" groaned poor Victoria. "In fact, mother's never got rid of Krak at all." "Oh, that's different.
When I was crowned, "everybody" had meant Krak, and I had feared no other eye. I was more self-conscious now. I was particularly alert that my mother should observe nothing. But the Countess and I exchanged a glance; she nodded cautiously; almost immediately afterward I saw her wipe her eyes.
Had Krak been possessed by a real penitence, I would have opened my arms to her, but I was fully aware that her mood was not this; she merely wanted to know that I bore no malice for just discipline, and it went to my heart even apparently to concede this position.
"I must go and have my coffee and then dress. And I must see that Victoria is properly dressed too." "Are you going to be crowned, mother?" I asked. "No," she said. "I shall be only Princess Heinrich still." I looked at her with curiosity. A king is greater than a princess; should I be greater than my mother? And my mother was greater than Krak!
Suddenly a raven and his nestlings, attracted by the sight of a dead body, and not being able to see the fisherman, came by croaking. The parent bird said to his young ones: "Come, children, sharpen claws and beak, krâk, krâk, For here's a feast not far to seek, krâk, krâk, This young girl's corse so white and sleek, krâk, krâk."
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