The Man of Iron needed this sort of
character as a cover and a buckler to his own duplicities.
Herbeck was an excellent foil. He was as silent and secretive as sand.
He moved, as it were, in circles, thus always eluding dangerous corners.
He was tall, angular, with a thin, immobile countenance, well guarded
by his gray eyes and straight lips. He was a born financier, with almost
limitless ambition, though only he himself knew how far this ambition
reached. He had not brought prosperity to Ehrenstein, but he had
fortified and bastioned it against extravagance, and this was probably
the larger feat of the two. He loved his country, and brooded over it as
a mother broods over her child. Twice had he saved Ehrenstein from the
drag-net of war, and with honor. So he was admired by fathers and
revered by mothers.
The secretary came in and laid a thin packet of papers on the
chancellor's desk. "It was the packet A, your Highness?"--his hand still
resting upon the documents.
"Yes. You may go."
The secretary bowed and withdrew.
The duke stirred the papers angrily, took one of them and spread it out
with a rasp.
"Look at that. Whose writing, I ask?"
Herbeck adjusted his glasses and scrutinized the slanting hieroglyphics.
He ran over it several times.
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