'Your nobles are nothing but rich men inflated with empty traditions of
insufferable, because unwarrantable, pride, and drawing, substance from
alliances with the merchant class. Are they your leaders? Do they lead
you in Letters? in the Arts? ay, or in Government? No, not, I am
informed, not even in military service! and there our titled witlings do
manage to hold up their brainless pates. You are all in one mass,
struggling in the stream to get out and lie and wallow and belch on the
banks. You work so hard that you have all but one aim, and that is
fatness and ease!'

'Pardon me, Herr Professor,' I interposed, 'I see your drift.
Still I think we are the only people on earth who have shown mankind a
representation of freedom. And as to our aristocracy, I must, with due
deference to you, maintain that it is widely respected.'

I could not conceive why he went on worrying me in this manner with his
jealous outburst of Continental bile.

'Widely!' he repeated. 'It is widely respected; and you respect it: and
why do you respect it?'

'We have illustrious names in our aristocracy.'

'We beat you in illustrious names and in the age of the lines, my good
young man.'

'But not in a race of nobles who have stood for the country's liberties.'

'So long as it imperilled their own! Any longer?'