Bernard been a thoroughfare since the time of the Romans,
and thou wilt find as many races among those who dwell on the way-side as
there are villages between the convent and Vevey. It is not so with you of
the Upper Valais, Herr Chatelain; there the pure race exists as it came
from the other side of the Rhine, and honored and preserved may it
continue for another thousand years!"
There are few people so debased in their own opinion as, not to be proud
of their peculiar origin and character. The habit of always viewing
ourselves, our motives, and even our conduct, on the favorable side, is
the parent of self-esteem; and this weakness, carried into communities,
commonly gets to be the cause of a somewhat fallacious gauge of merit
among the population of entire countries. The chatelain, Melchior de
Willading, and the Prior, all of whom came from the same Teutonic root,
received the remark complacently; for each felt it an honor to be
descended from, such ancestors; while the more polished and artificial
Italian succeeded in concealing the smile that, on such an occasion, would
be apt to play about the mouth of a man whose parentage ran, through a
long line of sophisticated and politic nobles, into the consuls and
patricians of Rome, and most probably, through these again into the wily
and ingenious Greek, a root distinguished for civilization when these
patriarchs of the north lay buried in the depths of barbarism.
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