BUDDENBROOKS
That is the Burgermeister Steenbock, for Russia.” He added after a pause: “I shouldn’t like to be going with it. It must be worse there than here.”
“Now,” Tony said, “you are going to begin again on the nobility. I see it in your face. And it’s not at all nice of you. Tell me, did you ever know a single one of them?”
“No!” Morten shouted, quite insulted. “Thank God, no.”
“Well, there, then, I have—Armgard von Schilling over there, that I told you about. She was much better-natured than either of us; she hardly knew she was a von—she ate sausage-meat and talked about her cows.”
“Oh, of course. There are naturally exceptions. Listen, Fräulein Tony. You are a woman, you see, so you take everything personally. You happen to know a single member of the nobility, and you say she is a good creature—certainly! But one does not need to know any of them to be able to judge them all. It is a question of the principle, you understand—of—the organization of the state. You can’t answer that, can you? They need only to be born to he the pick of everything, and look down on all the rest of us. While we, however hard we strive, cannot climb to their level.” Morten spoke with a naïve, honest irritation. He tried to fit his speech with gestures, then perceived that they were awkward, and gave it up. But he was in the vein to talk, and he went on, sitting bent forward, with his thumb between the buttons of his jacket, a defiant expression in his usually good-natured eyes. “We, the bourgeoisie—the Third Estate, as we have been called—we recognize only that nobility which consists of merit; we refuse to admit any longer the rights of the indolent aristocracy, we repudiate the class distinctions of the present day, we desire that all men should he free and equal, that no person shall be subject to another, but all subject to the law. There shall be no more privilege and arbitrary rule. All shall be sovereign children of the state; and as no middlemen exist any longer between the people and almighty God, so shall the citizen stand in direct relation to
138
