Meanwhile the red-haired man with an air of indifference has taken up his tankard. "Count or Conte, as you please," he said, giving the disputed point the go-by, and continuing as he put his beer glass down on an uninviting little brown table, "at all events he must be accustomed to live in fine style, for he declared that it was impossible for a man used to modern conveniences to live in Schneeburg in the condition in which Count Malzin had occupied it. So the house has been entirely newly furnished. Immense! the doings of these money-giants--the world belongs to them!" "Unfortunately, and our poor nobles must go to the wall," sighed the old doctor, whose platonic love for the nobility keeps pace with the red-haired man's equally platonic affection for money. "Except a couple of owners of entailed estates here and there none of them will be able to compete with these great financiers." "The law of entail cannot be allowed to exist much longer, it is a stumbling block in the path of national progress .... My uncle in the ministerial department ...." Eugene Alexander began in a deep bass voice, which suggested a sentimentally guttural rendering of 'The Evening Star' at aesthetic tea-parties. "Spare me the remarks of your uncle in the ministerial department," interrupted Dr. Swoboda angrily. "The law of entail must be abolished," Herr Cibulka said, as another man might say, "that new street must be opened." "Have you got your liberal seven-league boots on again?" Swoboda rejoined. "How you stride off into the future! You evidently suppose that if the law of entail were abolished to-day or to-morrow, this 'stumbling-block in the path of national progress' being removed, various districts of Tornow and Rautschin would find their way into the pockets of yourself and of your hypothetical children? You are mistaken, my dear fellow, hugely mistaken. Heaven forbid! Trade would monopolize the real estate, and that is all you would get by it, nothing more. The supremacy of money would be confirmed." "I should prefer, it is true, the supremacy of mind!" Eugene Alexander said didactically. "Ah! you think you would come in for a share there," growled the old doctor under his breath. Without noticing the irony, Eugene Alexander went on, "The supremacy of money, of individual merit, is certainly more to be desired than the supremacy of fossilized prejudice." "Indeed?... now tell us honestly," said the doctor, "do you really believe that the masses, whose sufferings are real and not imaginary, would gain anything thereby?" "There certainly would be a fresh impetus given to culture,--a freer circulation of capital," began Cibulka.