"It took me thirty years to reach that point," answered Dernburg coolly. "He who has had to battle for every victory won, and mount upward step by step, is not the one to be intoxicated by success. There is many a heavy burden to bear, too, which you, Herr von Wildenrod would hardly take upon yourself. The management of the property inherited from your father was a load that you shook off."
There was a certain asperity in these last words, that was understood, too, but Wildenrod evinced no sensitiveness, he quietly answered:
"You mean to reproach me for the course I took Herr Dernburg----"
"Not so; what right would I have to do such a thing? Every man's life cannot be shaped after the same model. The one seeks his happiness in work, the other----"
"In idling, do you think?"
"In the enjoyments of life, I wanted to say."
"Nevertheless I expressed your thought, and alas! I must own that you are right. But I never was attracted by activity on any but a large scale, and my inheritance was no vast estate adequate to bring this impulse into play. I could not bear to bury myself in barren monotony of every-day country life, in the wearisome round of a management that any good overseer could conduct as well as myself. I was not made for that sort of thing."
"Why, then, did you not stay in the diplomatic service?" remarked Dernburg. "Certainly there was a field commensurate with the widest ambition."
It was an expression of unspeakable bitterness that curled Wildenrod's lips at this question, to be sure only for a second, when he quietly replied:
"Personal considerations were to blame. I had had disagreements with the chief of the bureau, believed myself slighted and overlooked, hence rashly broke my supposed chains, in a fit of sensitiveness. I was still young at that time, and the wide world with its dreams of a golden future, attracted me irresistibly--how the prospect changes, with the lapse of time! I have long since felt that my life lacked serious purpose and will feel this yet more sensibly after Cecilia leaves me. Deep dissatisfaction results from leading such an existence."