United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In my day it was indeed a place of cheer, learning, and prosperity, but now it is a city of desolation." "The rumors we hear, Father, may be exaggerated; and even if the city itself be doleful, which I doubt, there is sure to be light and gayety in the precincts of the Court and in the homes of the nobility." "What have I to do with Court or palaces? My duty lies here."
He was about twenty-two years of age, tall, finely formed, with a pale, romantic countenance, and eyes of remarkable brilliancy and wildness. He was of one of the most ancient and highly-esteemed families of European nobility, being of the line of the Princes of Horn and Overique, sovereign Counts of Hautekerke, and hereditary Grand Veneurs of the empire.
A triple vengeance was what he meditated 1, Upon the Russian Cabinet for having undervalued his own pretensions to the throne 2, upon his amiable rival for having supplanted him and 3, upon all those of the nobility who had manifested their sense of his weakness by their neglect, or their sense of his perfidious character by their suspicions.
That the benignant and gentle king had caused the stadholder's father to be assassinated, and that he had rewarded the murderer's family with a patent of nobility, and with an ample revenue taken from the murdered man's property, appeared of no account to the envoy in the full sweep of his rhetoric. Yet the reminiscence caused a shudder of disgust in all who heard him.
And yet he was submitting himself to the terrible poverty which made so small a matter now a matter of joy to him, because there was a something of nobility within him which made him true to the master who had been true to him, when they had both been young together. Even now he resolved, as he sharpened his teeth, that through all the soup and all the sausage he would be true to the Balatkas.
Irrational and brutal as are the ways in which the old-fashioned gentleman of the South shows that his regard for his own honor or that of his household outweighs his love of life, it must be remembered that the same condition existed in the richest ages of our race those which gave proportionally the largest share of ability and nobility to its history.
Before the assembled nobility he gave him the choice whether he would take the governorship of a province, or would enjoy the favor of his master at court as a benefactor of the imperial family, or whether, accompanied by an escort befitting his rank, he would prefer to undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca.
All the relatives that might come to his rescue with a timely legacy had done so many years before, upon making their exit from the world's stage. None that might recall his name was left beyond the mountains. In Spain he had only some distant relatives, personages of the nobility united to him more by historic bonds than by ties of blood.
All I was required to prove was my nobility, and I got at Vienna such a pedigree as would satisfy the most greedy in that way. In fact, what had a man descended from the Barrys and the Bradys to fear before any VON in Germany?
The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him, and to distinguish him, is one of the securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature. It operates as an instinct to secure property, and to preserve communities in a settled state. What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order.
Word Of The Day