"Never! and yet they publish every year--it is a terrible disgrace, and I pity the poor baroness with all my heart--an advertisement in all the papers of the province, inviting the lost one to come forward and claim her rights." "How long has that being going on?" "Some twenty years or more." "Then it is hardly probable that the poor woman is still alive?" "Certainly not; and nobody thinks of it," laughed the minister. "They would make a pretty face at Grenwitz, if all of a sudden a young vagabond should present himself there, claiming to be the most obedient nephew of the baron, and demand the two farms, with the interest for twenty years! It would not suit the baroness, I can tell you; for she has not a farthing of her own, and, as the whole estate is entailed, she and her daughter would, after the baron's death, be as poor as she was before she married." "You seem to be a great advocate of entails?" "Certainly, I am. I consider it fortunate that such large estates cannot be parcelled away by subdivision, and that thus an aristocracy of wealthy landowners is formed, which serves as a kind of ballast for the ship of state in times of peril--which God, I pray, may long avert from our beloved land." "Well," said Oswald, "there are two sides to that question, as to most questions." "Of course, I know," said the obliging minister. "But I, for my part, I have too long enjoyed the honor and the happiness of being intimate with wealthy families, noble in the true sense of the word, not to be a warm adherent of the aristocracy of the land. Besides which, I have had too many sad experiences of the fatal effect which large property often has upon the minds of plebeians, to use the historic expression; I mean the vanity, pride, and worldliness which it begets." "I am sorry to hear such things of my friends." "Of your friends?" asked the minister in astonishment. "Yes, of my friends. For, without any purpose of mine, and often without, exactly knowing why, I have always found myself on the plebeian side, whenever in history the conflict between patricians and plebeians has become marked. I was a sworn adherent of the Gracchi and other Roman demagogues; I fought with the Independents against the Cavaliers, and I confess that even in the terrible peasants' wars I felt more sympathy for the poor oppressed serfs, whom brutal treatment had brutalized, than for the high-mighty, all-powerful barons and counts, who were not a whit less brutal for all their splendor and power." The minister listened to these words with a smile of incredulity, as if he were listening to the rhodomontades of goslings who assume the air of accomplished roués. "Very good! very good!" he said "You clever people are fond of paradoxes. You bring that home with you from the æsthetic teas in the great city, and you wish not to get out of practice, although nobody may listen to you but a poor country parson." "I assure you, sir----"