Sonnenkamp would have embraced him, but Eric begged him to listen further.
"My life I can give up, but not my principles. I am willing to adopt your views of the matter in a moment, if you can convince me I am mistaken. Do you really believe that it would add to Roland's happiness to have a title?"
"It would make his happiness; without that he would have no happiness. I am sure you will not misunderstand me, my very dear, noble friend. I frankly confess to you that I prize money highly; I have worked hard for it, and should like to keep it; I should like to convert my personal property into real estate, at least in a great measure: I want my son freely to enjoy what I have toiled with unremitting industry to obtain. Oh, my friend, you do not know—it is better you should not know what blows my life has borne, because I—but no more of that; it would agitate me too much to-day. I had a tutor—a shrewd man, but unhappily not of such moral purity as yourself—who, I remember, often said to me: He only is free who is not bound to the same level with others, but is entitled to be judged by a loftier standard. A genius, a man like yourself, my dear friend, is by nature so entitled; but all are not geniuses. Genius is unattainable, therefore do men seek a title of nobility that posterity may judge them by that higher standard. I express myself clumsily, do I not?"
"No! the thought is subtilely developed."
"Ah, let us leave all subtleties. But I have after all omitted the chief point; it is well I remember it. It was you who first directed my thoughts and my efforts towards this aim."
"I? How so?"
"Let me remind you. On the first day of your coming among us you told me, and you have often repeated it since, that Roland had no special talent that would lead him to the choice of a profession. The remark offended me at the time, but I see now that it was perfectly true. For the very reason that Roland is not gifted with genius, he must take rank among the nobility, have a title, which of itself gives position and dignity to persons of average capacity, who are not able to carve out their own career. A nobleman is not sensitive; that is his great advantage. A baron or an earl is somebody at the start, and is not obliged to make himself somebody; if, besides that, he has any gifts, they are all clear gain, and the world is grateful for them. We commoners must begin by making ourselves something; we are nothing at the start except sensitive, thin-skinned. Ah, my dear friend, I speak very confusedly."
"By no means."
"I will say but one thing more. Roland will at some time, and it may be soon, enter on the possession of millions; if he is a noble, he will not only stand in the circle of the select, but he will have all the obligations of honor, of benevolence, of usefulness, and will have them in a higher degree, because he will be one newly raised to rank. I open my whole heart to you, my friend—I conceal nothing. Almost the whole inhabited world is known to me, and shall I tell you what I have found in it?"
"I should be glad to know."