"Ah, indeed! Did I not tell you so? The girls are crazy about him. And how the man shoots! Cloten! I should not like to stand at ten feet distance from him, with the seconds behind us?" "Ah! Thank you! Don't fight with a man of low birth. Too unfair. Don't you think so, baron?" "Perhaps the man owes his life to a visit of the sons of heaven to the daughters of earth?" "What does that mean?" "Don't you know that was the way before Abraham to speak of the children of nobles who had married beneath their rank?" "No, never heard of it before! Sons of heaven? famous! Generally, Holy Writ too severe for me. Just imagine, baron--that idea--all men from a single pair! Nobles and not nobles!--Nonsense, impossible, ridiculous! Always thought Holy Writ must have been translated by men of low birth. Always annoyed when old tutor explained it otherwise." "Cloten," said Oldenburg, standing still and placing his hand on his companion's shoulder. "Cloten! You are a great man. That thought is worthy of the deepest thinker of all ages!" "Ah, pshaw!--are you in earnest, baron, or are you trying to chaff me again?" "My dear Cloten," said Oldenburg, passing his arm again under the arm of his companion and continuing on his way; "let me tell you once for all, I am invariably and terribly in earnest in all I say, and the subject of which we were speaking is really of such immense importance that it won't bear joking. Hear then--but you must not make any improper use of what I am going to say--Cloten." "Certainly not--_parole d'honneur!_" "Hear then, that the same question which your genius has answered in an instant with unfailing tact, has occupied my mind for years. I also said to myself: The distinction between nobles and not nobles is not a mere distinction of name, of caste--it is a distinction of blood, of mind, of soul--_enfin_, of our whole nature. How can men so entirely different from each other, descend from the same original pair? Where would be the difference, if that were so? It overwhelms the mind to think of the consequences!" "Why, baron, at last you talk like----" "Like a baron. I know. Hear again! This question occupied me so persistently that I at last determined to solve it, cost what it might. You all make fun of my solitary life, my studies, and so on. Do you know, Cloten, what I was studying while you were amusing yourselves with hunting and gambling?" "No--'pon honor." "Aramæic, Chaldaic, Syriac, Mesopotamic, Hindoostanee, Gangobramaputric, Sanscrit----" "For Heaven's sake! Why, that is horrible! What for?"