posthumously moved up a grade in the aristocratic hierarchy. The man looks rather like Descartes, I thought. This had never struck me before. He was actually a contemporary of the philosopher, and it was his dress, rather than his face, that accounted for the resemblance. Yet I was suddenly amazed by the resemblance. Why haven’t I noticed it before? I asked myself, looking at the picture with growing curiosity. In this picture my great-great-great-granduncle has the beard and the arched eyebrows that are characteristic of Descartes. The picture is by no means ridiculous, I thought, and I wondered whether this great-great-great-granduncle in oils had also been a philosopher, as his looks suggested. I decided to research the matter in our libraries and find out whether we had any works by him, perhaps some Essays or philosophical writings that had hitherto been unknown to me. I was sure I was not mistaken in seeing a writer and a philosopher depicted on the canvas and surmised that I would be able to locate his works in one of our five libraries. Knowing his name, I had only to initiate a search. I was not in the least surprised that my family had never spoken of the philosopher Ferdinand, for it is typical of them that they never so much as mention intellectuals, or do so only in order to disparage them. I even fancied that I had heard about the philosopher Ferdinand, as I now dubbed him, and might even have read something of his without knowing that the author was identical with the man in the painting at the foot of the stairs. It now occurred to me to scrutinize the other paintings of my ancestors that hung on the staircase. Until now I had inspected them only cursorily, aware that they were my ancestors but not knowing which, as they had never interested me. I had always treated our pictures as the rest of the family did, looking at them from time to time but unable to say what or whom they represented, treating them as little more than darkened patches of color that had for the most part been assigned their present positions on our walls, for whatever reason, centuries earlier. No one ever thought about them, let alone investigated them. Who knows what really hangs on these walls? I thought. It may turn out that we have several philosophers among our ancestors, maybe a whole series of scholars and thinkers. It’s possible that the pictures on our walls really are as priceless as has always been rumored in the family. But what really interested me was not so much the value as the subjects of these pictures, which run into the hundreds. To say nothing of the many paintings lying around in our attics, I thought, largely forgotten and in lamentable condition, thanks to the shameful neglect that Wolfsegg has suffered for centuries. One day I must bring in a restorer from Vienna, I thought, to identify, classify, and value all these pictures. As this idea took hold of me, I thought of someone I knew who was the principal restorer employed by our biggest museum and had recently restored the most valuable Velázquez it possessed. And it possessed very valuable works by Velázquez, as I know, more valuable than any in the Prado. The names Velázquez and Prado suddenly set me wondering whether we might even have a Velázquez at Wolfsegg without knowing it, since for centuries we have had many Spanish relatives. We have always had Spanish guests here, and they still turn up during the hunting season. Wolfsegg has always had close connections with Spain. And with Italy. And of course with Holland, where after all Rembrandt and Vermeer and other great painters lived and worked. I suddenly had this fantastic idea, and I was still absorbed by it as I stood in the chapel, to which I now repaired in order to avoid going upstairs right away to meet my sisters. I’ll take it slowly, without drawing attention to myself, I thought as I entered the chapel, where the wedding decorations had already been removed and replaced by funeral decorations. How quickly they’ve transformed the scene, I thought. All the objects that were usually highly polished and gleaming — the candelabra and bowls, the glasses and chains — had been covered with black sheets, and black sheets also hung over the two windows. Only the sanctuary lamp burned, so that one was not plunged into total darkness on entering the chapel. I recalled the priest’s lapse of memory that had caused such mirth among the wedding guests and heard again the peals of laughter it had provoked. I remembered my own malicious reaction and again heard my father shout out the name Caecilia, reactivating the nuptial scene after it had come to a halt. How long do we go on hearing the voice of someone who was alive a few days ago and has suddenly died? I wondered. For a moment I felt I must kneel down, as is customary on entering the chapel, but before I could do so I realized how theatrical, how utterly artificial and hypocritical, it would be to take my place in a pew and kneel down when I did not feel the slightest need to but merely thought it would be natural for anyone to kneel down after entering the chapel, especially in my situation. But what is my situation, in fact? I asked myself, walking a few steps forward and then stopping. I recalled that as a child I had never found the chapel the haven of peace and repose that others said it was but considered it an eerie and frightening place. Whenever I entered the chapel, even at the age of fifteen or twenty, it had seemed to me a place of terror and damnation, a hall of judgment, a lofty courtroom where sentence was passed on me. I could see the relentless fingers of the judges pointing down at me, and I always left the chapel with my head bowed, as one who had been humiliated and punished. The Catholic Church would have a lot to answer for, I told myself, if I were to reckon up what its teaching did to me as a child, how it ruined and destroyed me. Cold-blooded though it is, I thought, it would be appalled by my indictment. My mother used to send me to the chapel to agonize helplessly over the hundreds of sins I had committed. I always trembled on entering the chapel and left it in a state of shock. The only pleasant memories I have of it are associated with the May Devotions. Although the whole world has meanwhile changed completely, they still go to chapel here as if nothing had happened, I thought. At Wolfsegg they behave as if the world had not changed in the last hundred years, though in reality it has not only changed but been turned on its head, I might say. My family always regarded Wolfsegg as they regarded the pictures on their walls, which have always hung in the same places and must never be changed or taken down. And they took the same view of themselves: they must not change in any way. Anyone who changed or let himself be changed, like Uncle Georg and myself, was ostracized; he was no longer one of them, no longer had anything to do with them. Yet it would be wrong to say that time has stood still at Wolfsegg, for my family belong to the present: they exist in the present age, they are of this age, they embody the age, as is proved by their present existence. Indeed, they are permeated by the age, I thought, to a far greater extent than others.