c, suddenly standing up, and
walking with long strides up and down the room. "Precisely so; now are
we on the very point. Hear me attentively. Observe well, there is
something new started in the world, a still more homeless condition yet
in the higher moral order, and that is the moneyed aristocracy. You
look at me in amazement."

"Not amazed, but expecting what will come next."

"Very right. This moneyed aristocracy stands between the nobility and
the people, and I ask what it is to do? Must not a rich young man of
the middle-class, like Roland, thrown into the whirlpool of life, be
inevitably ingulfed?"

"Why he," asked Eric, "any more than the noble youth in the civil or in
the military service? Do you suppose that religion saves them from
destruction?"

"No, but something positive of a different kind; the historic
traditions of the nobility save them. The man of the nobility has the
good fortune to complete the preliminary period of youthful training,
with the least amount of detriment. He afterwards retires to his
estates, becomes a worthy husband, and respectably maintains his
position; and, even in the city, in the midst of the mad whirl, his
position in regard to the court, and to the higher class in the
community, keeps him within prescribed limits. But what does the rich
young man of the middle-class have? He has no honorable rank, no social
obligation, at least none of any stringency."

"Then it would be, perhaps, the greatest piece of good fortune to
Roland, if his father could be ennobled?"

"I cannot say," replied the priest. He was vexed that he had allowed
himself to be drawn so near to the subject of a very confidential
conversation with Sonnenkamp a short time previous to this. "I cannot
say," he repeated, adding besides, "If one could be ennobled with
seventeen descents, it might be well; but a new noble--let us say no
more of this. I desired to say, that the nobleman has honor,
traditionary, inherited obligation; the nobleman has established and
has to maintain the maxim, 'noblesse oblige,' 'nobility requires.' What
great maxim have riches established? The most brutal of all maxims, one
utterly bestial. And do you know what it is?"

"I don't know what you refer to."

"The maxim which this pursuit of gain sets up as its highest is, 'Help
thyself.' The beast does that, every one helps himself. Riches thus
stand between nobility and people; they occupy that morally homeless
position, without