About five-and-twenty miles from Dresden lived in 1714 a couple of landed proprietors, the one called Volkmar, and the other von Günther, who fumed with fiery hostility against each other, and the cause of disagreement was, that the latter wrote himself von Günther. Now, to get a von before the name makes a great deal of difference: it purifies, nay, it alters the colour of the blood, turning it from red to blue. No one in Germany can prefix von to his name as any one in England can append Esq. to his. He must receive authorisation by diploma of nobility from his sovereign.
George von Günther had been, not long before, plain George Günther, but in 1712 he had obtained from the Emperor Charles VI. a patent of nobility, or gentility, they are the same abroad, and the motive that moved his sacred apostolic majesty to grant the patent was—as set forth therein—that an ancestor of George Günther of the same name "had sat down to table with the elector John George II. of Saxony;" and it was inconceivable that a mere citizen could have been suffered to do this, unless there were some nobility in him. George von Günther possessed an estate which was a manor, a knight's fee, at Jägerhof, and he was moreover upper Forester and Master of the Fisheries to the King-elector of Saxony, and Sheriff of Chemnitz and Frankenberg. He managed to marry his daughters to men blessed with von before their names, one to von Bretschneider, Privy-Councillor of War, the other to a Major von Wöllner.
Now, all this was gall and wormwood to Councillor-of-Agriculture, Daniel Volkmar, who lived on his paternal acres at Hetzdorf, of which he was hereditary chief magistrate by virtue of his lordship of the acres. This man had made vain efforts to be ennobled. He could not find that any ancestor of his had sat at table with an elector; and, perhaps, he could not scrape together sufficient money to induce his sacred apostolic majesty to overlook this defect. As he could not get his diploma, he sought how he might injure his more fortunate neighbour, and this he did by spying out his acts, watching for neglect of his duties to the fishes or the game, and reporting him anonymously to head-quarters. Günther knew well enough who it was that sought to injure him, and, as Volkmar believed, had invited some of the gamekeepers to shoot him; accordingly, Volkmar never rode or walked in the neighbourhood of the royal forests and fish-ponds unarmed, and without servants carrying loaded muskets.
One day a brother magistrate, Pöckel by name, came over to see him about a matter that puzzled him. There had appeared in the district under his jurisdiction a young man, tall, well-built, handsome, but slightly small-pox-pitted, who had been arrested by the police for blowing a hunting-horn. Now ignoble lips might not touch a hunting-horn, and for any other than breath that issued out of noble lungs to sound a note on such a horn was against the laws.
"Oh," said Volkmar, "if he has done this, and is not a gentleman—lock him up. What is his name?"
"He calls himself Karl Marbitz."
"But I, even I, may not blow a blast on a horn—that scoundrel Günther may. Deal with the fellow Marbitz with the utmost severity."
"But—suppose he may have the necessary qualification?"
"How can he without a von before his name?"
"Suppose he be a nobleman, or something even higher, in disguise?"