"Yes, yes, Fräulein Gerlinda, I remember all about it;" Hans interrupted her in dismay. "Through your kindness I am thoroughly well informed as to the chronicles of your family. I merely meant to remark that a residence in this old mountain stronghold must be very monotonous. You make a great sacrifice to your father in staying here. A young lady longs to be abroad in the world, to enjoy life." Gerlinda shook her head in dissent, and suddenly opened her mouth to say, with all the infallible wisdom of a philosopher of seventy, "The world and life are worth nothing!" "Nothing?" asked the young man, surprised. "Where did you learn to be so sure of that?" "My papa says so," Gerlinda replied, with much solemnity. Evidently her father's utterances were those of an oracle to her. "The world grows worse with each century, and now shows abundant signs of final annihilation, since the nobility no longer receive the homage due them." Her eyes were again stubbornly downcast, and she spoke in a tone that vividly recalled to her hearer his dream. His lips twitched oddly, but he contrived to say, quite seriously, "Yes, the nobility. But there are some other men beside them in the world." Fräulein Gerlinda looked surprised; she seemed to mistrust this fact and apparently reflected profoundly, remarking at last, as the result of her reflections, "Yes, of course,--the peasants." "True. And we cannot utterly dispute the existence of even other classes of human beings. Literary men, for instance, artists, in whose ranks I belong----" Fräulein Gerlinda opened wide her brown eyes and repeated, "Among the artists?" "Absolutely," Hans said to himself, quite forgetting his elevated rank, "she thinks me a mediæval specimen too;" and he added, aloud, "Assuredly, Fräulein Gerlinda, I occupy myself with art, and flatter myself that I have attained a degree of proficiency in it." The young lady seemed to think such an occupation very derogatory. Fortunately, she recalled the fact that a certain Eberstein, in a certain century, had taken up with astrology, and that partly explained Herr Wehlau Wehlenberg's extraordinary tastes, but she nevertheless felt herself called upon to repeat to him a saying of her father's: "My papa says that a man of an ancient, noble line ought to make no concessions to the present; it is beneath his dignity." "That is the Herr Baron's opinion," said Hans, with a shrug. "He seems to have been so entirely secluded from the world that he has lost all sympathy with it; others of his rank, however, feel very differently. Look, for example, at the Counts von Steinrück, whose family is just as old as yours." "Two hundred years younger," Gerlinda interrupted him, indignantly. "Quite right; full two hundred years. I remember their ancestors are first met with in the Crusades, while yours date from the eighth century." "From the tenth."