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To all Auerspergs, Napoleon and Shakespeare were mere men of genius, to be patronized. John smiled, too. He did not feel hurt at all. In his turn he felt a superiority, a superiority of perception, and a superiority in the sense of proportion. "Prince Karl of Auersperg is always resolved to maintain his pride of blood, is he not?" he asked. "He considers it his duty.
The Auerspergs are the very essence and spirit of that aristocracy and rule of the very highborn, in which I believe and to which your country and later the French have stood in the exact opposite. Every time that my pulse beats within me it beats with the wish that you and all that you stand for should fail." John did not feel the slightest doubt of Weber's sincerity.
"I can see it, but a lot of pride fell before Paris yesterday, and a lot more is falling among these hills and forests today. There seems to be a lot of difference between princes, the Arnheims and the Auerspergs, for instance." Then a sudden thought struck John. It had the vaguest sort of basis, but it came home to him with all the power of conviction.
The head of a house that has been princely for fifteen centuries could not do less. He could never forget or forgive an insult to his person." "If he were insulted he would hold that all the Auerspergs who were now living and all who had lived in the last fifteen hundred years were insulted also." "Undoubtedly!" replied Kratzek, with great emphasis.
I need scarcely tell you that Herr Scott, my captor," he said, "because he represents so much. Ah, the history and the legends clustering about our house, that goes far back into the dim ages! The Auerspergs were counts and princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and they have been grand dukes.
"But a week, Your Highness." "Walther speaks well of you. The Walthers have served the Auerspergs for centuries and his judgment and loyalty are to be trusted." John's heart, stanch republican that he was, rose in rebellion at the thought that one family should serve another for a thousand years, but of course he was silent.
The sun was sinking in a sea of red light and peaks and ridges were outlined against it, clear and sharp. Old and thickly inhabited Europe melted away, and the young crusader stood alone and solitary among the mountains. The road led around a cliff, and far across a valley on the other side he saw Zillenstein, that nest from which the Auerspergs had first ruled and raided.
Relief and joy had been in that look too. He could read it. John had learned in Munich the location of Auersperg's principal castle. It was Zillenstein in a spur of the Eastern Alps just inside Austria, where for centuries the Auerspergs had held great state, as princes of the Holy Roman Empire.
I'm getting used to princes, but our heavy friend there must be something of a specialist in the princely line. I should judge from his manner that he is not only the oldest man on earth, speaking in terms of blood, but the owner of the earth as well." "The Auerspergs have an immense pride."
Hitherto in his fifty or more years of life he had always got what he wanted. His blood was more ancient than that of either Hohenzollern or Hapsburg. The Auerspergs had been princes of the Holy Roman Empire for a thousand years and now he was a prince of both Teutonic empires and a general of the first rank in the army of Germany.
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