"True, true!" cried many voices.
"And what follows from that?" asked Clodwig. "Let us return to our original question."
"Just what I am doing. Why should not these historical conditions be constantly reversed?"
"Quite right; that is the proper way to state the question," replied Clodwig. "Is this an age which can concede any special duties, and with them any special privileges, to the nobility? This is the day of equal rights; there are no more members of a privileged class. There are but two classes of men, men of renown and men without renown. The nobility which claims to rest upon hereditary honor is effete; it is incontestably a dying institution. Of what use are coats of arms? Of none but to be embroidered on fire-screens, sofa cushions, and travelling-bags. The equal, universal duty of bearing arms furnishes the reasonable claim to nobility. Science, art, business, are the factors of our time, which the whole people without distinction is equally bound to take part in. We stand in opposition to history. The nobleman was of importance so long as landed property was the foundation of the nation's power. That time is passed, since those high chimneys have reared themselves into the air; since the power of movable property, ideal possessions—for all state securities are but ideal possessions—has surpassed that of landed estates, those days have been no more. One advantage of this personal property is, that it cannot be clutched by the dead hand; the hand of inheritance is a dead hand. I am not opposed to having the nobleman of the present day give his name to business transactions; there are better things than titles and orders by which not only money, but influence, can be gained. I thank the noble Jacob Grimm for exposing, as he does in his essay on Schiller, the folly of supposing that Goethe and Schiller can be ennobled. The nobility of to-day means nothing but a name, a desolation; we go so far as to bestow it even upon the Jews."
"But you, certainly," interrupted the Banker, "would not deny the equal rights of the different religions, the moment this equality of rights knocks at the emblazoned door of nobility?"
"Equal rights!" exclaimed Clodwig. "Quite right, my friend descended from an ancient race. But is it not an absurd perversion to use equal rights for the abolishment of equal rights? If anybody can become a noble, without the necessity of having been born so, of course the Jews can; but they ought not to desire it, they ought to see the disloyalty of it. So far as I see, the Jews—I am speaking now with no reference to their religion—are a living lesson to us not to judge of men by what they believe, but by their progress in virtue and culture. The Jews are, according to our way of regarding them, a race made up of nobles—for who has a longer and purer pedigree?—or they are a people in a certain degree proud of being descended from slaves. I am indebted to an old rabbi, whom I once met at the Baths, for a noble thought."
"What was it?" asked the Banker.
"He said to me—we were in Ostend at the time, walking on the sea-shore and talking of the negro, discussing his capability for freedom and culture, and this rabbi made a very beautiful remark-—-"
Clodwig paused for a time as if trying to recall something, then, laying the finger of his left hand upon the bridge of his nose, he said,—
"The rabbi declared that the looking back to a past time of slavery was a great spur to ambition, and that many things which at first sight appear strange in the Jews, may be accounted for by the important fact of their tracing their history back to a period of slavery. They have had implanted in them, by their bondage in Egypt, a pride and a humility, a steady resistance to oppression, a quick perception of injustice and of every injury inflicted on others, and hence a sympathy, which is unparalleled in history."