He was silent. He could not say to her what he would have said could he have laid his heart bare.
'When you go away,' she pursued, 'remember my words. Choose some career; make yourself some aim in life; do not fold your talents in a napkin—in a napkin that lies on the supper table at Bignon's. That idle, aimless life is very attractive, I dare say, in its way, but it must grow wearisome and unsatisfactory as years roll on. The men of my house have never been content with it; they have always been soldiers, statesmen, something or other beside mere nobles.'
'But they have had a great position.'
'Men make their own position; they cannot make a name (at least, not to my thinking). You have that good fortune; you have a great name; you only need, pardon me, to make your manner of life worthy of it.'
He grew pale as she spoke.
'Cannot make a name?' he said, with forced gaiety. 'Surely in these days the beggar rides on horseback in all the ministries and half the nobilities!'
A great contempt passed over her face. 'You mean that Hans, Pierre, or Richard becomes a count, an excellency, or an earl? What does that change? It alters the handle; it does not alter the saucepan. No one can be ennobled. Blood is blood; nobility can only be inherited; it cannot be conferred by all the heralds in the world. The very meaning and essence of nobility are descent, inherited traditions, instincts, habits, and memories—all that is meant by noblesse oblige.'
'Would you allow,' thought her companion, 'would you allow the same nobility to Falcon-bridge as to Plantagenet?'
But he dared not name the bar sinister to this daughter of princes.
Siegfried started and reared: his rider did not reply, being absorbed in calming him.