Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/61

 part of his nature, as they had been of his father's. The highbred patriarchal simplicity, so characteristic heretofore of the house, seemed to him antiquated and not a little dull. He found more pleasure in his English racehorses and his smart jockeys than in the fat, heavy bays that had formerly drawn the family coach, with a sleepy gray-headed coachman on the box. He was not bound to the Burghalfen by any memories of the hard French times, and thus their relations gradually became merely those of business interest. He appointed a new rent-master, a young man with brusk manners and entirely unsentimental views of life, and when he explained to the count that the income from the estate could be considerably increased, the information was by no means unwelcome in view of growing expenditures. Under these circumstances the breach between the young count and the Burghalfen rapidly widened, and finally—the precise particulars I no longer remember—the rupture came, the lease of the estate was cancelled and my grandfather, a year or two later, left the Burg. There was a public auction of the house and farm-belongings lasting several days, which I once attended for a few hours. The jokes of the auctioneer sounded harshly offensive to my ears and there was a deep resentment in my young heart as though a great wrong were being done. My grandparents then took a house in the village, but they did not long survive the change from the castle. My grandmother died first and my grandfather twelve days later. Many tears of heart-felt sorrow were shed for them both.

Meanwhile a great change had taken place with me, too. When I was in my ninth year my father thought I had outgrown the village school in Liblar. He therefore sent me to a school of a somewhat higher order in Brühl, which was connected with the teacher's seminary there, and was regarded as