said the young lady; but it was already done."That is our famous old tree. I love it very much. They often laugh atme at home about it, but that does not matter. There is a storyattached to this tree." And now she told him all that we alreadyknow about the tree- the old mansion, the pedlar and the goose-girlwho had met there for the first time, and had become the ancestorsof the noble family to which the young lady belonged.
  "They did not like to be knighted, the good old people," she said;"their motto was 'everything in the right place,' and it would notbe right, they thought, to purchase a title for money. My grandfather,the first baron, was their son. They say he was a very learned man,a great favourite with the princes and princesses, and was invitedto all court festivities. The others at home love him best; but, Ido not know why, there seemed to me to be something about the oldcouple that attracts my heart! How homely, how patriarchal, it musthave been in the old mansion, where the mistress sat at thespinning-wheel with her maids, while her husband read aloud out of theBible!"
  "They must have been excellent, sensible people," said thepastor's son. And with this the conversation turned naturally tonoblemen and commoners; from the manner in which the tutor spoke aboutthe significance of being noble, it seemed almost as if he did notbelong to a commoner's family.
  "It is good fortune to be of a family who have distinguishedthemselves, and to possess as it were a spur in oneself to advanceto all that is good. It is a splendid thing to belong to a noblefamily, whose name serves as a card of admission to the highestcircles. Nobility is a distinction; it is a gold coin that bears thestamp of its own value. It is the fallacy of the time, and manypoets express it, to say that all that is noble is bad and stupid, andthat, on the contrary, the lower one goes among the poor, the morebrilliant virtues one finds. I do not share this opinion, for it iswrong. In the upper classes one sees many touchingly beautiful traits;my own mother has told me of such, and I could mention several. Oneday she was visiting a nobleman's house in town; my grandmother, Ibelieve, had been the lady's nurse when she was a child. My mother andthe nobleman were alone in the room, when he suddenly noticed an oldwoman on crutches come limping into the courtyard; she came everySunday to carry a gift away with her.
  "'There is the poor old woman,' said the nobleman; 'it is sodifficult for her to walk.'
  "My mother had hardly understood what he said before hedisappeared from the room, and went downstairs, in order to save herthe troublesome walk for the gift she came to fetch. Of course this isonly a little incident, but it has its good sound like the poorwidow's two mites in the Bible, the sound which echoes in the depth ofevery human heart; and this is what the poet ought to show and pointout- more especially in our own time he ought to sing of this; it doesgood, it mitigates and reconciles! But when a man, simply because heis of noble birth and possesses a genealogy, stands on his hind legsand neighs in the street like an Arabian horse, and says when acommoner has been in a room: 'Some people from the street have beenhere,' there nobility is decaying; it has become a mask of the kindthat Thespis created, and it is amusing when such a person isexposed in satire."
  Such was the tutor's speech; it was a little long, but while hedelivered it he had finished cutting the flute.
  There was a large party at the mansion; many guests from theneighbourhood and from the capital had arrived. There were ladies withtasteful and with tasteless dresses; the big hall was quite crowdedwith people. The clergymen stood humbly together in a corner, andlooked as if they were preparing for a funeral, but it was a festival-only the amusement had not yet begun. A great concert was to takeplace, and that is why the baron's young son had brought his willowflute with him; but he could not make it sound, nor could hisfather, and therefore the flute was good for nothing.
  There was music and songs of the kind which delight most thosethat perform them; otherwise quite charming!