“But in truth, my uncle,” replied the countess, “what reason is there that he should not be a baron?”
“The reason is, my niece, that real barons—not the barons of Napoleon, nor the Constitutional barons, but the barons of good stock, neither travel nor write books for money; and they are not either so badly educated, or so curious, or such fastidious questioners.”
“But, uncle, he can be both a baron and a questioner. They lose not their nobility because they question. On his return to his country he is to be married to the daughter of a peer of France.”
“Certainly he will marry her,” replied the general, “as I will marry the Grand Turk.”
“My uncle,” said Arias, “is like St. Thomas; he must see to believe. Let us come back to our baron: we must admit he is a very handsome man, and of noble deportment, although he has, like me, ceased to grow. His character is one of the most amiable; he has it as a man of learning and as a writer; he converses with the same ease on music, statistics, philosophy, agriculture, and the fashions. He is occupied at this moment in writing a serious book, which may serve as a ladder by which to mount to the Chamber of Deputies. This book is to be entitled: ‘Travels, scientific, philosophical, artistic, and geological, in Spain, formerly Iberia; with critical observations on the government, the cooks, the literature, the routes, the agriculture, the dances, and the system of imposts of that country.’ With an affected negligence in his toilet, he is grave, circumspect, economical in the extreme; it is an imperfect fruit of that warm greenhouse of public men, who give precocious products without spring, without vivifying breezes, and without free air—products without savor or perfume. These men precipitate themselves into the future blindly, at the discovery of what they call a position; and it is for that they sacrifice all: sad, tormented existences, for which life has no aurora.”
“Raphael, you talk like a philosopher,” said the duke, smiling; “do you know that if Socrates existed in our time, you would more likely be his disciple than my aid-de-camp?”
“I would not change my place of aid-de-camp for an apostleship, my general,” replied Arias. “But the truth is, that were there not so many ignorant disciples, there would not be so many bad masters.”
“Well said, my good nephew,” cried the old general. “What of new masters! each one of them teaches his dogma, preaches his doctrine more and more new and advanced: the progress! the magnificent and inevitable progress!”
“General,” replied the duke, “to maintain the equilibrium of our globe, it is necessary that there be fluid, that there be solid materials; these two forces ought to regard each other reciprocally as necessary, in lieu of wishing to destroy them with so much fury.”
“What you advance,” replied the general, “savors of the doctrines of the odious half-way, which, more than all others, have ruined us with these shameful opinions, and these discourses, as low as insipid, as the people say, who often have more good sense than the learned sectarians of moderatism, grand hypocrites of beautiful outward show and bad heart, adorers of the Supreme Being, who do not believe in Jesus Christ.”