For the present he was given a vacation of four weeks and the customary official’s pass to the guest houses of the Province. Although no duties were assigned to him, and he was not even asked to report, it was evident that he was under observation by his superiors. For when he went on a few visits and outings, once to Keuperheim, once to Hirsland, and once to the College of Far Eastern Studies, invitations from the high officials in these places were immediately forthcoming. Within those few weeks he actually became acquainted with the entire Board of the Order and with the majority of the Masters and directors of studies. Had it not been for these highly official invitations and encounters, these outings would have betokened a return to the freedom of his years of study. He began to cut back on the visits, chiefly out of consideration for Tegularius, who was painfully sensitive to these infringements on their time together, but also for the sake of the Glass Bead Game. For he was very eager to participate in the newest exercises and to test himself on the latest problems. For this, Tegularius proved to be of invaluable assistance to him.
His other close friend, Ferromonte, had joined the staff of the new Music Master, and Joseph was able to see him only twice during this period. He found him hard-working and happy in his work, engrossed in a major musicological task involving the persistence of Greek music in the dances and folksongs of the Balkan countries. Enthusiastically, Ferromonte told his friend about his latest discoveries. He had been exploring the era at the end of the eighteenth century, when baroque music was beginning to decline and was taking in new materials from Slavic folk music.
However, Knecht spent the greater part of these holidays in Waldzell occupied with the Glass Bead Game. With Fritz Tegularius he went over the notes Fritz had taken on a private seminar the Magister had given for advanced players during the past two semesters. After his two years of deprivation Knecht again plunged with all his energy into the noble world of the Game, whose magic seemed to him as inseparable from his life and as indispensable to it as music.
The last days of his vacation arrived before the Magister Ludi came around to mentioning Joseph’s mission in Mariafels, and his next task for the immediate future. He chatted casually at first, but soon changed to a more earnest and insistent tone as he told Joseph about a plan conceived by the Board which the majority of the Masters, as well as Monsieur Dubois, considered highly important: the plan to establish a permanent Castalian representative at the Holy See. The historic moment had come, Master Thomas explained in his engaging, urbane manner, or at any rate was drawing near, for bridging the ancient gulf between Rome and the Order. In future dangers, they would undoubtedly have common enemies, would share a common fate, and hence were natural allies. In the long run the present state of affairs was untenable and, properly speaking, undignified. It would not do for the two powers, whose historic task in the world was to preserve and foster the things of the spirit and the cause of peace, to go on existing side by side almost as strangers to each other. The Roman Church had survived the shocks of the last great epoch of wars, had lived through the crises despite severe losses, and had emerged renewed and purified, whereas the secular centers of the arts and sciences had gone under in the general decline of culture. It was out of their ruins that the Order and the Castalian ideal had arisen. For that very reason, and because of its venerable age, it was right and proper to grant the Church precedence. She was the older, more distinguished power, her worth tested in more and greater storms. For the present, the problem was to awaken the Roman Catholics to greater awareness of the kinship between the two powers, and their dependence upon each other in all future crises.
(At this point Knecht thought: “Oh, so they want to send me to Rome, possibly forever.” Mindful of the former Music Master’s warning, he inwardly put himself in a posture of defense.)
