'Why do English nobles enter public life? They want nothing, materially, either. Some of them are of rank, also, so high in place that nothing can be added to their position.'
'God knows why they do,' said Othmar, 'except that I think the Englishman is an animal like the beaver, not happy without work. Besides, I think they imagine that they serve their country, a delusion, but an honourable one, which must make them very happy. As I have no country I cannot be attached to it.'
'You could choose one; you are allied to several.'
'That would not be the same thing. To adore the motherland one must have known no arms, no hearts but hers; no country is more than a stepmother to me.'
'You are a very much envied man, Othmar, but you are not a happy man.'
'I have been unhappy, but I have conquered my folly. It is ingratitude to fate to be wretched while one has health and strength and no material cares to contend with.'
'All the same, you are not happy now,' she thought, but she said, with her sweetest smile, 'You admit that you have all you want materially; all the rest is a dream, not worth keeping awake about for one hour. By the way, as you speak of countries--you are French now by law, I think?'
'My grandfather was naturalised for his own interests, as you know; but our people were Croat peasants.'
'I know I have heard you always say so; but I believe it is a fable. _You_ do not come from any peasantry; besides, surely Sclavonia is old enough and dim enough to give you any mystical heroic ancestry you may prefer.'
'They might be robbers,' said Othmar, 'I do not know. There is not much to choose.'
'Everybody who is noble comes from robbers of some sort,' said Princess Napraxine; 'what were the Hohenstauffen, the Hohenzollern, the Habsburg, the Grimaldi, the Montefeltro, the Colonna? Robbers all, sitting on high in their fortresses, and swooping down like hawks on the fords, on the highways, on the moorlands, on the forests, on the little towns below them. You may be quite sure that is what your people did in Croatia.'
'You are very kind to try and console me,' said Othmar. 'Nobility, I think, consists in being able to trace the past of your forefathers and to have your charters; the past of mine is lost in darkness, and my charters are lost with them. Truthfully we can only date from 1767, when Marc Othmar, who dealt in horses, began to lend money in Agram. It is not a lofty beginning; it is not even a creditable one. But I do not think that to pretend that Marc Othmar, the horse dealer or horse stealer, was a hero and saint would mend matters. I accept him as what he was, but I cannot be proud of him; even sometimes I am on the eve of cursing him; at all events, of wishing he had never existed.'