"Yes, yes," said the forester, leaning comfortably back in his chair; "I never thought, when I awoke this morning, that I should lie down at night a Herr von Gnadewitz. I shall gain a step in my profession, of course, instantly; that yellow parchment, with its crooked letters, has done for me in an instant what thirty years of hard service have failed to accomplish. As soon as his Highness arrives in L—— I shall make my best bow, and introduce myself by my new name. Zounds! how those people will stare!"
A peculiar side glance was directed, as these words were spoken, towards Elizabeth, and at the same moment the speaker puffed away at his pipe so vigorously that his face was quite concealed by a thick cloud of smoke.
"Uncle," cried his niece, "say what you will, I know that you can never intend to patch up again the shattered crest of the Gnadewitzes."
"I can't see why not, 'tis a beautiful coat of arms, with chevrons, stars——"
"And a wheel covered with blood," interrupted Elizabeth. "God forbid that we should swell the number of those who revive the sins of their ancestors to prove the antiquity of their race, and thus make nobility ignoble,—nothing in the world seems to me more detestable. I should think that all those who have been tortured and hunted down in life by that pitiless, haughty race, would arise, like accusing ghosts, from their graves, if the name should ever be revived, beneath whose shelter such oppression and tyranny existed for centuries. When I compare the two fathers,—one seeking death like a coward, never considering for an instant that his poor child had the most sacred claims upon him; the other, a poor servant, taking the outcast compassionately to his heart, and bestowing upon it his own honest name,—then I know well which was the noble, which name deserves to be perpetuated. And think what sorrow that haughty race has caused my poor, dear mother."
"True enough, true enough," Frau Ferber declared with a sigh—"in the first place, I owe to it a stormy, unhappy childhood, for my mother was a beautiful, amiable girl, whom my father married against the will of his relatives, who could not forgive her ignoble extraction. This misalliance was a source of endless suffering and annoyance to my poor mother, for my father had not sufficient strength of character to break with the chief of the Gnadewitz family, and live only for his wife. This weakness on his part was the cause of constant strife between my parents, which I could not but be cognizant of. And we"—here she held out her hand across the table to her husband—"we can never forget all we had to contend with before we could belong to each other. I would not for the world return to the class who so often ruthlessly stifle every warm, humane sentiment, that outward rank and show may be preserved."
"And you never shall return, Marie," said her husband, with a smile, as he pressed her hand. He glanced mischievously at his brother, who was still puffing forth immense clouds of smoke, while he was doing his best, most unsuccessfully, to keep up the frown upon his brow.
"Ah! my fine plans," he sighed at last, with a comical look of disappointment. "Elsie, you are a cruel, foolish creature. You forget what a fine life we should lead, if I had a position at court, and you were a fine lady. There, does not that tempt you?"
Elizabeth shook her head, smilingly, but most decidedly
"And who knows," added Miss Mertens, "but that, before we could turn round, some noble knight, of stainless lineage, would bear away from old Gnadeck our high-born Elsie as his wife!"