Just now his horse shied and he saw a hare that had been driven out of a strip of meadow land, and was darting right in front of him towards the Jungfern Haide. He watched the creature curiously and only resumed his reflections when the fugitive had disappeared among the trunks of the trees. "And was what I wanted," he went on, "anything so foolish and impossible? No. It isn't in me to challenge the world and declare open war against its judgments; besides, I do not believe in such quixotism. All that I wanted was a still, secluded happiness, a happiness which I expected would sooner or later win the approval of society, because I should have spared it the shock of defiance. Such was my dream, such were my hopes and my thoughts. And now shall I abandon this happiness and exchange it for another that is no happiness to me? I am wholly indifferent to a _salon_, and I feel a repulsion for all that is untrue, high-flown, dressed up or disguised. _Chic_, _tournure_, _savoir faire_--are all just as ugly to me as their foreign names." At this point in Botho's reflections, the horse, whose reins had been lying loose for the past quarter of an hour, turned as if of its own accord into a side path, which led first to a bit of farm land and immediately behind this to a grass plot surrounded by undergrowth and a few oak trees. Here, in the shade of an old tree, stood a low, solid cross, and as he rode up to have a better look at the cross, he read: "Ludwig v. Hinckeldey, died March 10, 1856." What an impression this made upon him! He had known that the cross was somewhere in this region, but had never been exactly here before, and he now regarded it as a sign, that his horse left to his own devices had brought him to this very spot. Hinckeldey! It was now nearly twenty years since the death of this man, whose power was then almost absolute; and everything that had been said in his parents' house when the news came, now came back vividly to Botho's mind. And more clearly than anything else he remembered one story. One of the citizens, who was especially trusted in other ways as an adviser by his chief had warned and admonished him against duels in general, and especially against such a duel under such circumstances, as a folly and a crime. But his chief, suddenly taking his stand as a nobleman on this occasion, had answered brusquely and haughtily: "Noerner, you do not understand anything about such matters." And an hour later he was dead. And why? For the sake of a conception of what was required of a nobleman, for a whim of a class of society, which proved more powerful than reason, even more powerful than the law to uphold and protect, which was especially his duty. "Instructive." And what in particular have I to learn from this story? What does this monument preach to me? In any case, one thing, that our ancestry determines our deeds. He who obeys this principle may go to ruin, but he goes to ruin in a better way than he who disobeys it.