"Pleasant sort of fellow, this Herr Schmidt," said the Count.
"Is not he?" answered the Councillor. "This time your prejudices were at fault."
"It is not a prejudice. I made the acquaintance of a man of that name a few days ago--even had to entertain him at my own table--who was most objectionable to me."
The Councillor had heard from his friend the General an account of the circumstance, which had taken place at Golmberg, before he met the Count, and knew well enough whom the Count honoured with his dislike, and also in what relationship Reinhold stood to Philip. But why tell the Count that, and spoil his good humour? The Count cast a glance of astonishment through the splendid room, whose almost over-crowded pictures and magnificent furniture glittered in the light of chandelier and candelabra.
"But this is princely," said he.
"And still it is only a faint shadow of the splendour that the man has decked his new house in the Wilhelmstrasse with. It is all ready, except a few details; but will not, I think, be open before next spring. He must show it to you; you would delight in it."
"I don't know," answered the Count; "this luxury has something overpowering in the eyes of one of us."
"On the contrary, I should say something encouraging," said the Councillor. "When people with no name, or rather with such a name! without connections, without help from home--Herr Schmidt is by trade only a builder--bring matters to such a result, what is there in the world unattainable to such men as you who have such enormous advantages of birth, connections, and influence, provided that you free yourselves from certain very respectable prejudices and set to work heart and soul as these people do."
"And what has this man got to show that is so remarkable?"
"In the first place his intelligence, inventive genius and energy; in the second, certain lucky speculations in houses and lands, of which the crowning point is certainly the starting of our railway."