At the same time, during the past year he had become far more conscious of the highly charged atmosphere in which he lived in the Glass Bead Game village. For there he was part of an officially nonexistent but very sharply defined circle, or class, the finest elite among the candidates and tutors of the Glass Bead Game. Now and then one or another of that group would be called upon to serve in an auxiliary capacity under the Magister or Archivist, or to help teach one of the Game courses; but they were never assigned to the lower or middle level of officialdom or the teaching corps. They provided the reserve for filling vacancies in leading posts. They knew one another thoroughly; they had almost no illusions about talents, characters, and achievements. And precisely because among these initiates and aspirants for the highest dignities each one was pre-eminent, each of the very first rank in performance, knowledge, and academic record — precisely for that reason those traits and nuances of character which predestined a candidate for leadership and success inevitably counted for a great deal and were closely observed. A dash more or less of graciousness, of suasion with younger men or with the authorities, of amiability, was of great importance in this group and could give its possessor a definitive edge over his rivals. Fritz Tegularius plainly belonged to this circle merely as an outsider; he was tolerated as a guest but kept at the periphery because he had no gift for rule. Just as plainly Knecht belonged to the innermost circle. What appealed to the young and made them his admirers was his wholesome vigor and still youthful charm which appeared to be resistant to passions, incorruptible and then again boyishly irresponsible — a kind of innocence, that is. And what commended him to his superiors was the reverse side of this innocence: his freedom from ambition and craving for success.
Of late, the effects of his personality had begun to dawn upon the young man. He became aware of his attraction for those below him, and gradually, belatedly, of how he affected those above him. And when he looked back from his new standpoint of awareness to his boyhood, he found both lines running through his life and shaping it. Classmates and younger boys had always courted him; superiors had taken benevolent note of him. There had been exceptions, such as Headmaster Zbinden; but on the other hand he had been recipient of such distinctions as the patronage of the Music Master, and latterly of Dubois and the Magister Ludi. It was all perfectly plain, in spite of which Knecht had never been willing to see it and accept it in its entirety. Obviously his fate was to enter the elite everywhere, to find admiring friends and highly placed patrons. It happened of its own accord, without his trying. Obviously he would not be allowed to settle down in the shadows at the base of the hierarchy; he must move steadily toward its apex, approach the bright light at the top. He would not be a subordinate or an independent scholar; he would be a master. That he grasped this later than others in a similar position gave him that indescribable extra magic, that note of innocence.
But why was it that he realized it so late, and so reluctantly? Because he had not sought it at all, and did not want it. He had no need to dominate, took no pleasure in commanding; he desired the contemplative far more than the active life, and would have been content to spend many years more, if not his whole life, as an obscure student, an inquiring and reverent pilgrim through the sanctuaries of the past, the cathedrals of music, the gardens and forests of mythology, languages and ideas. Now that he saw himself being pushed inexorably into the
