"If I were offered a hundred times its value, it would be all the same. I do not bargain for the last of my inheritance. Wolkenstein Court shall not be touched, and there's an end of it!"
"This is your old obstinacy which has so often stood in your way in life," said the president with irritation. "I might have foreseen it; it is far from agreeable to have my own brother-in-law force to extreme measures the company of which I am president."
"That is why you condescended to come up here yourself, for the first time for years," Thurgau said, with a sneer.
"I wanted to try to talk you into a reasonable state of mind, since my letters were of no avail. You surely know how entirely my time is taken up."
"Yes, yes, heaven knows it is! Nothing would induce me to run the perpetual race which you call life. What good do you get out of your millions and your incredible successes? Now here, now there, you are always on the wing, always burdened down with business and responsibility. There's where you get the wrinkles on your forehead and your gray hair. Look at me!" He sat upright and stretched his huge limbs. "I am a full year older than you!"
"Very true; but then it is not given to every man to live up here with the marmots and shoot chamois. You resigned from the army ten years ago, although your ancient name would have insured you a brilliant career."
"Because the service did not suit me. It never did suit the Thurgaus. You think that is what has brought them down in the world? I can see you do by your sneer. Well, there is not, it is true, much of the old splendour left, but I have at least a roof over my head, and the soil beneath my feet is my own; here no one has a right to order me about and control me, least of all your cursed railway. No offence, brother-in-law, we will not quarrel over the matter, and neither has a right to reproach the other, for if I am obstinate you are domineering. You hector your precious company until they are almost blind and deaf, and if one of them dares to contradict you he is simply tossed aside neck and crop."
"What do you know about it?" asked Nordheim, piqued by the last words. "As a rule, you trouble yourself very little about our affairs."
"True, but I was talking awhile ago with a couple of engineers who were up here surveying, and who, of course, had no idea of the relationship between us; they scolded away at a great rate about you and your tyranny, and favouritism. Oh, I heard a deal that was extremely interesting."
The president shrugged his shoulders with an air of indifference: "My appointment of the superintendent for this district was probably distasteful to the gentlemen. They certainly threatened an open revolt because I advanced to be their superior officer a young man of seven-and-twenty who has more in his head than all the rest of them put together."