Before they left, each of the boys received a small gift: the scores of two Bach choral preludes for Joseph, a handsome pocket edition of Horace for his friend. The Master, as he was bidding good-by to Joseph, said to him: “In a few days you will learn which school you have been assigned to. I come to the higher schools less frequently than to Eschholz, but I am sure we shall see each other there too, if I keep in good health. If you care to, you might write me a letter once a year, especially about the course of your musical studies. Criticism of your teachers is not prohibited, but I am not so concerned about that. A great many things await you; I hope you will meet the challenges. Our Castalia is not supposed to be merely an elite; it ought above all to be a hierarchy, a structure in which every brick derives its meaning only from its place in the whole. There is no path leading out of this whole, and one who climbs higher and is assigned to greater and greater tasks does not acquire more freedom, only more and more responsibilities. Till we meet again, young friend. It was a pleasure to me to have you here.”
The two boys tramped back, and both were gayer and more talkative than they had been on the way to Monteport. The few days in different air and amid different sights, the contact with a different sphere of life, had relaxed them, made them freer from Eschholz and the mood of parting there. It had also made them doubly eager for change and the future. At many a resting place in the forest, or above one of the precipitous gorges in the vicinity of Monteport, they took their wooden flutes from their pockets and played duets, mostly folksongs. By the time they had once again reached that peak above Eschholz, with its prospect of the institution and its trees, the conversation they had had there seemed to both of them far away in the past. All things had taken on a new aspect. They did not say a word about it; they felt a little ashamed of what they had felt and said so short a while ago, which already had become outmoded and insubstantial.
In Eschholz they had to wait only until the following day to learn their destinations. Knecht had been assigned to Waldzell.
“But WALDZELL BREEDS the skillful Glass Bead Game players,” runs the old saying about this famous school. Among the Castalian schools of the second and third levels, it was the one most devoted to the arts. That is to say, whereas at other schools a particular branch of scholarship was distinctly dominant, such as classical philology in Keuperheim, Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy in Porta, mathematics in Planvaste, Waldzell traditionally cultivated a tendency toward universality and toward an alliance between scholarship and the arts. The highest symbol of these tendencies was the Glass Bead Game. Even here, as at all the other schools, the Game was by no means taught officially and as a compulsory subject. But Waldzell students devoted their private studies almost exclusively to it. Then again, the town of Waldzell was after all the seat of the official Glass Bead Game and its institutions. The famous Game Hall for the ceremonial games was located here, as was the enormous Game Archives, with its officialdom and its libraries. Here, too, was the residence of the Ludi Magister. And although these institutions existed altogether independently and the school was in no way attached to them, the spirit of the institutions permeated the school. Something of the hallowed atmosphere of the great public Games spread over the whole area. The town itself was very proud of being the home not only of a school, but of the Game also. The townspeople called the students “scholars” and referred to those who attended the Game School as “lusers” — a corruption of
The Waldzell school was, incidentally, the smallest of the Castalian schools. The number of students rarely exceeded sixty, and undoubtedly this circumstance also helped to lend it an air of uniqueness and aristocracy, of special distinction, for here was the very elite of the elite. Moreover, during the past several decades this venerable school had produced many Masters and the majority of Glass Bead Game players. Not that Waldzell’s brilliant reputation was entirely uncontested. Some thought that the Waldzellers were priggish aesthetes and pampered princes, useless for anything but the Glass Bead Game. At times there would be a vogue among the schools for making sardonic comments on the Waldzell students; but the very harshness of the jokes and criticisms proves that jealousy and envy underlay them. All in all, the transfer to Waldzell in itself implied a certain distinction. Joseph Knecht, too, realized that, and although he was not ambitious in the vulgar sense of the word, he accepted the distinction with a measure of joyous pride.
