"And do you know, your ladyship," she continued, "the baron and the count have been rivals for a long time, and each has always been trying his hardest to ruin the other--in a friendly way, of course.

The chambermaid told Margari, and Margari told me.

'I will not be content, comrade,' my lord baron used to say to my lord count, 'till one of us is reduced to his last jacket, and as soon as one of us is absolutely beggared, the other will hold himself bound to maintain him, in a way befitting a gentleman till the day of his death.' Strange men these, madame, eh!" Perceiving, however, from Henrietta's looks that there was something depressing to her young mistress in her narration, she tried to soften the effect of her words by intimating that the count had another property besides, although not such a nice castle, and also that it was open to him to buy back the former estate in thirty years' time if he could find the money.
"That will do, Clementina, my head aches badly!" said Henrietta.

She wished to rid herself of this uncalled-for gabble, in order that she might devote herself to her own thoughts.
And what thoughts! She had had no idea that such things could be.

How was it possible that two men who called themselves friends, could ruin one another thus in cold blood?
How was it possible that a man could enter the house of an affectionate host as a welcome guest in the evening, and by next morning leave him not an inch of land on which to put his foot, or a roof to cover his head! "And one has to get accustomed to such things!" thought she.
All the day long their journey lay through that brain-wearying plain whose endless flatness oppressed soul and body with its monotony and soon drove her back to her own thoughts.