Herr von Zehren was an enthusiastic defender of the right of primogeniture, and found it highly unreasonable that younger brothers should bear and transmit the nobility that they were not permitted to represent. "I have nothing to say against a councillor of excise, nothing against a prison superintendent," he said, "only they ought to be called Müller or Schultze, and not Zehren." For the nobility of the court, the public offices, or the army, he cherished the profoundest contempt. They were only servants, in or out of livery, he maintained; and he drew a sharp distinction between the genuine old and the "new-baked" nobility, to the former class of which, for example, the Trantows belonged, who could trace back an unbroken pedigree to the middle of the fourteenth century; while Herr von Granow had had a shepherd for great-grandfather, small tenant-farmer for grandfather, and a land-owner, who had purchased a patent of nobility, for his father. "And the man often behaves as if he was of the same caste with myself! The honor of being permitted to lose his contemptible money to me, seems to have mounted into his foolish brain. I think before long he will ask me if I am not willing to be the father-in-law of a shepherd-boy. Thank heaven, in that point at least I can rely upon Constance; she had rather fling herself into the sea than marry the little puffed-up oaf. But it is foolish in her to treat poor Hans so cavalierly. Trantow is a fellow that can show himself anywhere. He might be put under a glass-case for exhibition, and nobody could find a fault in him. You laugh, you young popinjay! You mean that he was not the man that invented gunpowder, and that if he keeps on as he is going, he will soon have drunk away what little brains he has. Bah! The first fact qualifies him for a good husband; and as for the second, I know of a certainty that it is pure desperation that makes him look into the glass so much with those staring eyes of his. Poor devil: it makes one right heartily sorry for him; but that, you see, is the way with every man that has anything to do with women. Beware of the women, George; beware of the women!" Was it possible that the man who held these views and talked with me in this way, could have the least suspicion of my feelings? It could not be. I was in his eyes a young fellow who had fallen in his way, and whom he had picked up as a resource against ennui, whom he kept with him and talked to, because he did not like to be alone and liked to talk. Could I complain of this? Could I make any higher pretensions? Was I, or did I desire to be, anything else than one of my knight's retinue, even if for the time I happened to be the only one? Could I have any other concern than for the fact that I could not at the same time devote the same reverential service to my knight's lovely daughter? CHAPTER X.