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Was it not possible for a new and mighty race to rise and take the place of the glorious Rothhoefens? A long line of Baron Schmarts? With me as the prospective root of a thriving family tree! At least, that is what Conrad said, and I may be pardoned for quoting him. I am truly sorry the old rascal put it into my head.
About the middle of the nineteenth century the last of the real barons, the powerful, land-owning, despotic barons, I mean, came to the end of his fourscore years and ten, and was laid away with great pomp and glee by the people of the town across the river. He was the last of the Rothhoefens, for he left no male heir.
"Nothing, I suppose," said he resignedly. I hesitated. "Of course it is the work that upsets me. What are you driving at?" He stared for a long time at the portrait of Ludwig the Red. "Isn't it odd that the Countess, an American, should be descended from the old Rothhoefens? What a small world it is, after all!" I became wary. "Nothing odd about it to me. We've all got to descend from somebody."
My wife, too, and my sons. We may not speak until she gives the word. Alas! we shall be turned out to die in our " "We have been faithful servants to the Rothhoefens for sixty years," sobbed his wife. "And still are, I suspect," I cried angrily. "Ach, mein herr, mein herr!" protested Conrad, greatly perturbed. "Where are the keys, you old rascal?"
She confessed to banting, but drew the line at anything more exhausting. I fear I was too palpably relieved when she declined to go higher than the second story. "It isn't necessary, Mr. Smart," she said sweetly, "to go into the history of the wretched Rothhoefens, as a Cook's interpreter might do. You see, I know the castle quite well and I have had all the late news from my daughter."
But the gist of the whole matter was this: There are no more Rothhoefens, and soon, God willing, there would be no more Hohendahls. Long live the Schmarts! Conrad invariably pronounced my name with the extra consonants and an umlaut. All attempts on my part to connect the lady in the east wing with the history of the extinct Rothhoefens were futile. He would not commit himself.
The estate, already in a state of financial as well as physical disintegration, fell into the hands of women, and went from bad to worse so rapidly that long before the last quarter of the century was fairly begun the castle and the reduced holdings slipped away from the Rothhoefens altogether and into the control of the father of the Count from whom I purchased the property.
Across the river and below me stood the walled-in town that paid tribute to the good and bad Rothhoefens in those olden days: a red-tiled, gloomy city that stood as a monument to long-dead ambitions. A peaceful, quiet town that had survived its parlous centuries of lust and greed, and would go on living to the end of time.
Or was I the last of the Rothhoefens and not John Bellamy Smart, of Madison Avenue, New York? The sun shone full upon me as I sat there in my little balcony, but I liked the dry, warm glare of it. To be perfectly frank, the castle was a bit damp. I had had a pain in the back of my neck for two whole days. The sooner I got at my novel and finished it up the better, I reflected.
On the crest of a stupendous crag overhanging the river, almost opposite the town, which isn't far from Krems, stood the venerable but unvenerated castle of that highhanded old robber baron, the first of the Rothhoefens. He has been in his sarcophagus these six centuries, I am advised, but you wouldn't think so to look at the stronghold.
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