Hitherto in his fifty or more years of life he had always got what he wanted.

His blood was more ancient than that of either Hohenzollern or Hapsburg.

The Auerspergs had been princes of the Holy Roman Empire for a thousand years and now he was a prince of both Teutonic empires and a general of the first rank in the army of Germany.

His wealth was so vast that he scarcely knew the extent of his own lands and here in Zillenstein he could maintain the power and state that appertained to a baron of the Middle Ages.
A mind that has only to wish for a thing to get it becomes closed in fifty years.

It mistakes desire for right.