told him what we already know about the old castle, and the pedler and the little girl with the geese, who had met at this spot for the first time, and were the ancestors of the noble family to which the young baroness belonged. “The good old folks would not be ennobled,” said she; “their motto was ‘Everything in the right place,’ and they thought it would not be right for them to purchase a title with money. My grandfather, the first baron, was their son. He was a very learned man, known and appreciated by princes and princesses, and was present at all the festivals at court. At home, they all love him best; but I scarcely know why. There seems to me something in the first old pair that draws my heart towards them. How sociable, how patriarchal it must have been in the old house, where the mistress sat at the spinning-wheel with her maids, while her husband read aloud to them from the Bible!”
“They must have been charming, sensible people,” said the tutor. And then the conversation turned upon nobles and commoners. It was almost as if the tutor did not belong to an inferior class. He spoke so wisely upon the purpose and intention of nobility. “It is certainly good fortune to belong to a family that has distinguished itself in the world, and to inherit the energy which spurs us on to progress in everything noble and useful. It is pleasant to bear a family name, which is like a card of admission to the highest circles. True nobility is always great and honourable. It is a coin which has received the impression of its own value. It is a mistake of the present day, into which many poets have fallen, to affirm that all who are noble by birth must therefore be wicked or foolish, and that the lower we descend in society, we find more frequently among the poor great and shining characters. This, however, is not my opinion; I feel that it is quite false. In the higher classes can be found men and women possessing kindly and beautiful traits of disposition. My mother told me of one, and I could relate to you many more. She was once on a visit to a nobleman’s house in the town; my grandmother, I believe, had been brought up in the family, as a child. One day, while alone with the nobleman in a room, an old woman came limping into the court on crutches. She was accustomed to come every Sunday, and always carried away a gift with her. “Ah, there is the poor old woman,’ said the nobleman; what pain it is for her to walk!’ and before my mother understood what he said, he had left the room, and ran downstairs to the old woman; and the old nobleman, of seventy years himself, carried her the gift she had come for, to spare her the pain of walking any farther. This is only a trifling circumstance; but, like the two mites given by the widow in the Bible, it awakens responsive echoes in the heart of man, when attured to sympathy and pity. These are subjects of which poets should write and sing, for they soften and unite mankind into one brotherhood. But when a mere sprig of humanity, because it has noble ancestors of good blood, rears up and prances like an Arabian horse in the street, or speaks contemptibly of an apartment in which common people have been received; then it is nobility in danger of decay—a mere pretence, like the mask which Thespis invented; and people are glad to see such persons turned into objects of satire.”
