X. HELPING ONE'S SELF, OR BEING HELPED…

X. HELPING ONE'S SELF, OR BEING HELPED

Eric turned homewards, like a man, who, coming out of a saloon illuminated with dazzling brilliancy, to his study where burns a solitary lamp, involuntarily rubs his eyes, which having become accustomed to the greater degree of brightness, require it, and are unable without it to see so clearly and distinctly as before.

The peril of wealth lies in the fact that it may ruin not only the possessor, but the non-possessor. Language has not completely covered the whole case, when it calls this dissatisfaction and unrest of soul, envy, grudging, churlishness; it is not this at all, it is rather the severe torment of the unanswered question, Why art thou not as rich? No, this thou dost not desire; but why art thou not, at least, placed out of the reach of anxious care? The struggles of human life are hard enough, why must thou have, in addition, this wrestling with sordid want?

The most cruel suffering which the perception of riches inflicts upon the non-possessor is, that it produces in him an unwillingness to work, a supineness, a consciousness of servitude, and yet worse, that it makes all effort appear questionable. What avails all thy contriving, thy aspiration, all thy superstructure of great thoughts, so long as there are human beings near thee, inhabiting with thee the same earth, and perishing with starvation!

The ant in the pathway is better taken care of, for there are no ants who are glutted, while others near by are hungry. What is all labor, so long as this monster still stalks in the midst of us! Has that world-wisdom, has that religious doctrine, the victorious power of truth, if it cannot annihilate this monster?

Eric shut his eyes, and dreamed in broad daylight that disturbed dream of our age, which attends the clatter of the locomotive. The locomotive rushed along with rapid piston-beat, making a strange accompaniment to the meditation of the silent passenger. He had his eyes closed, and yet he now perceived that they were passing through a tunnel. And as such a plunge into the darkness of earth suddenly interrupts all conversation, so does it break off the thread of silent thought.

When they emerged into the light again, the current of Eric's thoughts became changed. A smile came over his countenance, which looked as if he were asleep, as the thought occurred to him that a rich vein was opened for a treatise upon the theoretical and practical treatment of poverty, philosophically, religiously, politically, and morally, in ancient times. The bitterness of the feeling of poverty was thereby lessened and removed, for poverty itself came into the realm of science. And his meditation proceeded farther; for to the historical view of poverty there was added a consideration of its essential nature. Man alone can be poor and rich. The whole world of human society is a linked chain of inquiring glances, as if each would say to the other, "Thou hast what I have not."

In external nature, no creature looks to another differently constituted, no created thing troubles itself about another; each bird in the wood has its own range for procuring food for its young, and no other one of the same species builds its nest within that circuit, obliging it to struggle for insects and grubs to feed its brood. The animals of a like species, of like characteristics, of like means of defence and attack, alone live together in one herd, but they have no union. Man alone comes into a union with beings of a like species, those who, endowed by nature with the same faculties, are furnished by destiny with greater force than he himself possesses.

The clattering continued without interruption, the locomotive whistled, and the thought took hold of Eric's soul, that the grandest idea which humanity has ever revealed out of the mouth of an individual has been this: "No one is poor and no one rich, when we direct the thought to the Eternal. The Fatherhood of God bridges over the abyss."

The wheels upon the iron rails went on beating time, and gave a new rhythm to Eric's thought, who now opened his eyes, saying to himself,--

"So it is! The children of God are borne along in the first, second, and third class railway carriages by the same power, the power of steam, whether they sit upon soft or hard benches; it makes no difference."

People got in, people got out; Eric took no notice of them, and they did not disturb his meditation. He quietly smiled upon all, and saw them as in a dream, wholly forgetful of himself, as one looks upon the movement hither and thither in an ant-hill, where each may carry its pine-needle, its little seed-grain.

Eric first waked up when his ticket was called for, as they approached the university-town, and then he roused himself as if he had just come out of a deep, dream-disturbed sleep; he composed himself ready to greet his mother. He got out. No one was awaiting his arrival.

The hills around, which had formerly seemed to Eric so bright and beautiful, and where he had strolled alone or with his father, engaged in the contemplation of vast, world-important thoughts, these hills now appeared so low and so small, and the river so insignificant! His eye had taken in wider and more extensive views, and a larger standard of measurement had unconsciously been made his own.

He saw the old forms at the station, he saw the university-simpleton, which every smaller university has, who grinned at the doctor, and bade him welcome. He saw the students with their caps of various colors, who were amusing themselves with making passes in the air with their canes, and playing with their dogs. All this seemed to him like a forgotten dream. And how was this? Had it not formerly been his highest desire to live and to teach here?

He went through the town,--nowhere anything pleasing to the eye; all was narrow, angular, contracted. He came to the paternal mansion; the narrow, wooden steps seemed to him so steep; he entered the sitting-room. No one was there. Mother and aunt had gone out. He went into his father's library: the books, formerly arranged in such good order, and which, hitherto, no one had ventured to disturb, were lying, for the most part, upon the floor; a tall, lean man, looking over the spectacles on the tip of his nose, stood staring at him with surprise.

Eric introduced himself; the man took the spectacles in his hand, and gave as his name that of a well-known antiquary in the capital, who had come to purchase the library.

So his mother's hope was gone, thought Eric. He remarked to the antiquary how valuable his father's annotations were, which were to be found on almost every page of every book.

The antiquary shrugging his shoulders, replied that these comments were valueless, and that they even detracted from the value of the books. If his father had written a great book, which gave him a great reputation, these notes would then have value; but his father had all his life been intending to write a great work, but had never accomplished it; and so all the notes and comments, even if valuable in themselves, were for the antiquary a depreciation in the worth of the books.

The tears came into Eric's eyes, already excited as he was by what he had gone through.

The whole labor of his father's life was not only to be lost, but to be worse than lost. Here was no leaf on which the eye of the sleeping one had not rested, here were his private thoughts, his feelings and his rich wisdom, and this was to be flung away into the world, despised, and perhaps appropriated by some stranger for his own profit.

Eric blamed himself for not accepting decidedly and immediately the position with Sonnenkamp; he might have effected it, and then have received a considerable sum of money. He blamed himself for letting the old cavalier pride get the better of him.

Eric looked sorrowfully upon a whole pile of manuscript sheets, books, and inserted printed scraps, which his father had been collecting and preparing his whole lifetime.

Eric's father had intended to write a book with the title, "The Real Man in History;" but he had died before accomplishing his purpose. Many valuable notes, even single portions, had been written out, but no use could be made of them, for each separate remark was considered in three different ways, and the leading idea had been contained in the head of the professor alone. All the sciences and the most remote facts of history had been drawn together, but the leading and connecting thought of the whole had vanished with the man himself, now resting in the ground; no entire form could be constructed out of these fragments. Only one thing was often pointed out, that the title should be, "The Real Man."

The first and larger part was to have collected those traits, scattered in the course of ages, out of which the image of God could be constructed as it was manifest in all the actual unfoldings of humanity; the second part was then to give an exact account of the manifestations of the soul's life in the past, to be as definitely determined as past events in external nature; and from there onwards was the point to be designated where genius, that miracle in the intellectual sphere, lays the foundation for new developments. This was what Eric thought, at any rate, when he tried to arrange the papers left by his father; then the leading and fundamental thought vanished, and all this matter collected with such laborious industry seemed utterly useless. As a treasure-digger, who must raise the treasure without speaking, so his father seemed to have closed his lips upon what he had already done, and upon what he intended to do.

Eric went back to the sitting-room, and the deep emotion of his heart, the whole uncertainty of his position, the growing strangeness of his home--all these were gathered into the thought of the lost labor, the useless toil of his father.

He looked around the room; it seemed to him inconveniently crowded with old furniture. He, who generally examined himself so closely and judged himself so severely, did not suspect that the sight of luxurious wealth and the late recognition of his own poverty had thrown a dark veil over all surrounding objects.

He collected himself, for he heard his mother and aunt returning.

His mother was heartily glad to see her son, but Eric was deeply troubled when she told him that she should have thought it quite right if he had accepted the situation with Sonnenkamp without reference to her, because, in their present position, it seemed double good fortune.

Eric saw that his mother, whom nothing had ever been able to bend, was now not only bent, but broken, and while he looked into her sorrowful face, he bitterly felt that his scruples and his sacrifice appeared superfluous.

His mother, repressing her own feelings, had written to the widowed princess, whose maid of honor she had been, giving an account of her situation. She had poured out her whole heart to the noble lady, and spoken of the great good fortune of the princess in being able to render essential help to her, who had never asked any favor; she requested a limited sum of money in order not to be obliged to sell the library of her husband, which was a sacred family possession, and had great value for her son. Tears came into her own eyes, as she read over the letter she had written. And now the mother handed to her son the reply of the dowager princess. She had answered through her secretary in well-expressed, sympathetic, and gracious terms. A small sum of money was enclosed, not half enough for the object in view.

The mother had had the desire to return this small sum, with the shrewd reply that, perhaps, the subordinate employed had not enclosed the full amount determined on by the princess; but she did not do it; one must not offend these high personages; one must even return humble thanks, in order not to forfeit their unsubstantial good-will.

Eric promised to have the library secured within a week.

He went immediately to his chamber, and wrote a letter to Count Wolfsgarten. He stated in plain words his state of mind at reaching his paternal home, in what condition he had found it and his mother, and finally he quoted to Clodwig his declaration,--

"I feel so much a friend to you, that I can allow myself to be placed under obligation by you."

Eric had written that he should feel no change towards Wolfsgarten, even if he refused his request. But feeling that this was not true, he tore up the letter and wrote another, leaving out this assurance. It was no trifling matter for Eric, the first time in his life, to present himself as a petitioner, yes,--he tormented himself with the word,--as a beggar.

Eric now spoke directly of his journey. His mother heard him through quietly, except that when Bella was mentioned, she said,--"Bella Pranken is a woman who cannot be counted on."

The old plans were discussed anew. Eric wanted to establish an educational institution, and his mother and aunt were strongly inclined to this, as they had many connections with the best families of the country; but they were not agreed whether they should have an institution for girls or for boys. Eric was in favor of the latter, as he could have more direct relations with that; but his mother wanted him to make a scientific journey for several years, so as to acquire a reputation at once by means of some great work, and not creep on in the plodding path. She and the aunt would, in the meanwhile, earn so much at the capital that Eric could live free from care.

They came to the conclusion to make no positive decision until Herr Sonnenkamp's letter should be received. The mother said that it would be the fulfilment of one of her ideals of life to take possession of the vine-covered little house; and she entertained a sanguine hope of attaining some influence over the lad surrounded by the dangers of riches; she should be glad to do so, as he was just the age of the son she had lost.

Eric visited his old teacher and friend, Professor Einsiedel, who was his chief instructor. He was a high-priest of science, a man who, engaged continually and exclusively in the region of pure thought, and in investigations for the extension of the sphere of knowledge, lived entirely alone, regular, methodical, systematic, free from all excitement, eating and drinking an incredibly small quantity, but always attracted by new developments of truth, always open-eyed to look into the widespreading realm of thought.

Professor Einsiedel had been a friend of Eric's father, and he always lamented that he, who was continually striving after the best and the perfect, had not accomplished the good, which is necessarily incomplete. His axiom was, that we must be contented with having made some small, individual contribution, and that this extends to become a part of the great whole. We never accomplish anything that gives us perfect satisfaction, and to which we have nothing more to add. Only of the Creator can it be said, that on ending his work. He saw that it was good. The absolute mind can alone effect that the created existence shall correspond to the creative thought, the actual to the ideal; the finite mind must always have over it the idea of what it can do, and what it ought to do.

Whenever Eric came to the professor with any scientific inquiry, he received at once direction as to the best and most direct sources of information; he would even, with the greatest disinterestedness, place at the disposal of every one his own carefully prepared notes. It was the same to him whether it were published under his own name or under that of another person, provided it went forth to the world.

In the professor's study was a picture by Rembrandt, a small copper-plate engraving, which was almost a portrait of the professor himself. It represented Faust in his night-cap, gazing at the magic circle illuminated by its own light. Faust is an old, wizzled-up little man, sorely in need of the rejuvenating draught. Professor Einsiedel had no such magic potion, but he drank new life, every day, from the ancient classics.

When Eric now called upon him, to get help and advice, he found the good old professor--living entirely alone, and troubled not so much by being alone, as by the necessity of taking care of life--in rather an odd plight. He regretted that Eric did not devote himself exclusively to science, but admitted also that Eric's natural tendency was to some practical and personal activity. And with a smile, peculiarly his own, he said,--

"You are a well-formed man, and you ought to make money out of that, for it is worth something. Yes, yes, that will be a help."

Eric, in his restlessness and in his ardent desire not to be waiting, but to do something for himself, went the next day to the capital, for he had heard from the antiquarian, that an elderly man who conducted a very respectable institute was about to retire, and wanted to transfer it to good hands.

He came to the capital where he had lived as an officer many years, respected and without care. Several comrades in their uniform seemed not to know him; others bethought themselves after he had passed, and called out, "Ah, is it you? Good-morning!" and went on. He went through the capital, where he was born, and where he felt at home, making inquiries like a stranger; he hoped it would again seem familiar and homelike to him, when he should go out into the streets from an established place of abode and a daily employment.

He was well received by the school-proprietor, and the conditions were acceptable. The respect in which his parents were held was of great advantage to him here; but the necessity of adopting the old regulations and methods made him hesitate. Without coming to any definite arrangement, he left the school-building.

He met now in one of the streets an old friend of his father, the present minister of education, who, stopping him, and inquiring about his mother and his own welfare, offered him the situation of custodian in the cabinet of antiquities, with the assurance that he should soon be promoted to the directorship. Eric promised to take the matter into consideration.

Just as he left the minister, an oldish man, who had been waiting for him under a house-porch, came up to him and greeted him in a very friendly manner. Eric could not call to mind who he was, and the man said that Eric had once done him a good turn in the house of correction, and thanked him for it; he was now in a very good situation as servant of the chancellor, and with a half-sly, half-pious expression of countenance, he offered to render Eric any service that was in his power.

Eric thanked him; he did not notice that many persons, who went by and recognised him, regarded this companionship as very odd.

Now the comrade who had taken Eric's place, and had become an actual captain, came from parade; he took Eric with him to the military club-house, and Eric was cheerful and lost all thought of the troubles of life. In the club-house there was much talk about Otto von Pranken and his marriage with a Creole worth many millions. Eric did not consider it necessary to say that Manna was no Creole, and that he had some knowledge of how the matter really stood.

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XI. WHERE ART THOU, ROLAND?

"Where is Roland?"

Sonnenkamp asks Joseph, Joseph asks Bertram, Bertram asks Lootz, Lootz asks the head-gardener, the head-gardener asks the Little-squirrel, the Little-squirrel asks the laborers, the laborers ask the children, the children ask the air, Fräulein Perini asks the Chevalier, the Chevalier asks the dogs, and Frau Ceres must find out nothing from any of them.

Sonnenkamp rides at full speed to the Major, the Major asks Fräulein Milch, but she, who knows everything, this time knows nothing. The Major rides to the castle; Roland's name is called out in all the excavations and dungeons, but there is no answer.

Sonnenkamp sends the groom to the huntsman, but he is off to the field, and not to be found.

Sonnenkamp rides to the railroad station, taking with him Puck, Roland's pony, and often looking at the empty saddle. He asks at the station, in an indifferent tone, if Roland had not arrived, as if he were expecting his return from a journey. No one had seen him. Sonnenkamp rides back to the villa, and asks hurriedly if he has not come, and when they say no, he rides to the next station up the river. He asks here also, but less cautiously, and here nothing is known. The servants rush hither and thither as if bewildered.

Sonnenkamp returns to the villa; the Major is there; Fräulein Milch has sent him, as perhaps he can render some assistance. She thinks that Roland has certainly gone to the convent. The Major and Sonnenkamp drive to the telegraph-office, and send a message to the convent; they are extremely impatient, for there is no direct telegraphic communication, and so it will be two hours before an answer can be returned. Sonnenkamp desires to wait here, and sends the Major to the town, where he was to see the doctor, and make inquiries everywhere, but not so as to excite any observation.

Sonnenkamp goes up and down at the station, and places his hot brow against the cool stone pillars; all is quiet and empty. He went into the passengers' room; he found that the seats at the station were not made for comfortable rest; it was horribly inhuman. In America it is different, or it isn't--no matter.

He went out; he saw the men loading a freight-car,--they did it so leisurely; he looked at a stone-cutter who was using a pick and a hammer: he looked fixedly at him as if he himself wanted to learn the trade. People everywhere were working so quietly; they might well do so, they had not lost a son. He observed the telegraph-wires, he had an impulse to cry throughout the whole world, even where it would be of no possible avail,--

"Where is my son?"

Night comes on. The railway-train rolls in, and Sonnenkamp steps back in terror; it seems to him that the locomotive would rush directly upon him. He composes himself, he looks about, he strains his eyes, he sees nothing of Roland. The people disperse, and all is again still.

Sonnenkamp went to the telegraphist, and asked again if the telegram which had been sent had reached its destination. The reply was, "Yes." The clicking of the telegraph-lever thrilled him; he felt the same blows in his throbbing temples. He requested the operator to remain there during the night, as one could not tell but that a message might be sent to him, or he might want to send one.

But the operator refused, although a large sum of money was offered him; he was not allowed to change the arrangements without orders from his superiors. He ordered his assistant to stay there as long as he himself remained; he closed the door with a bang, and went off. He was evidently afraid of Sonnenkamp.

Sonnenkamp was again alone. Then he heard the stroke of oars on the river.

"Is it you, Herr Major?" he cried out into the starlight night.

"Yes."

"Have you found him?"

"No."

The Major got out of the boat; there was no trace of Roland in the town. An answer could not be received from the convent before early the next morning. Now the thought presented itself, that perhaps Roland was with Count Wolfsgarten. A messenger was sent thither, and they returned to the villa.

When Sonnenkamp extended his hand to the Major to help him into the carriage the latter said,--

"Your hand is so cold to-day."

It shot through Sonnenkamp's brain, like an arrow, that he had wanted to punish the boy to-day. If the boy, with this thought in his mind, had drowned himself in the waters of the Rhine!

The ring on his thumb burned into his flesh, as if it were red-hot.

Joseph met them on their way back to the villa.

"Is he there?" cried the Major. Sonnenkamp could not himself ask the question.

"No; but the gracious lady has got hold of it."

In the village through which they drove, people were still standing together in groups, and chatting in the mild spring-night. They met the priest, and Sonnenkamp requested him to accompany them to the villa.

When they arrived at the court of the villa, Sonnenkamp remained sitting in the carriage, as if he had lost himself, and did not get out until he was spoken to. He gained strength and self-possession after his feet touched the ground.

Lights flitted to and fro, and shone through the lofty windows of the house. Now a shriek was heard, and he hurried in. In the great saloon, Frau Ceres, in her night-dress, was kneeling before a chair, her face hidden in the cushion. The priest stood by her side, Fräulein Perini was pouring an effervescent powder into a glass. Sonnenkamp went quickly to his wife, placed his hand upon her shoulder, crying,--

"Ceres, be quiet."

The lady turned round, glared at him with glowing eyes, then sprang up, tore open the garment on his breast, shrieking,--

"My son! give me my son, you--"

Sonnenkamp held his broad hand over her mouth; she tried to bite him, but he kept her mouth closed, and she was still.

Sonnenkamp requested the priest and Fräulein Perini to leave his wife; Fräulein Perini hesitated, but a wave of his hand gave her decided orders to go. She and the Ecclesiastic left the room. Now Sonnenkamp took Frau Ceres up in his arms, as if she were a child; carried her in to her chamber, and laid her upon the bed. Her feet were cold, and he wrapped a cloth around them in such a manner, that they were firmly bound. After a while, Frau Ceres slept, or only pretended to be asleep; it was the same either way. He went out into the balcony-chamber, where the Ecclesiastic, the Major, and Fräulein Perini were sitting together. He urged the priest to betake himself to rest, thanking him very warmly; he said the same to Fräulein Perini, with an odd mingling of courteousness and authoritativeness in his manner; he requested the Major to stay with him.

For an hour he sat with the Major at the open balcony-door, looking up at the starry heaven and listening to the rushing river; then he requested the Major to go to bed; the day would enable them to proceed quietly on sure ground. He himself lay down in the ante-chamber to his wife's room; he went again softly to her bed, shading the light with his hand; she was sleeping quietly, with burning cheeks.

All was still at the villa. Sonnenkamp was waked up when the messenger returned from Wolfsgarten; they knew nothing of Roland there.

"Is Herr von Pranken coming?" asked Sonnenkamp. The messenger did not know.

Sonnenkamp was very weary, and exhausted from want of sleep, but he could not rest; he stood at the balcony and listened to the singing of the birds and the rushing of the river; he saw the sun rise in the heavens, he heard the clocks strike; the whole world, so fresh and beautiful, seemed to him a chaos. His daughter at the convent, and his wife ready, at any moment, to testify the most horrible things against him, and his son disappeared, leaving no trace! Perhaps his corpse is floating yonder in the water! It seemed to Sonnenkamp, for a moment, as if he must throw himself headlong from the balcony, and put an end to his life. Then he stood erect and took a fresh cigar.

He went down into the park; the trees were quivering noiselessly in the early dawn, and their leaves rustled and whispered when the morning sunbeam stirred them into music and motion. The birds were carroling; they had their home and their family, and to them no child was missing----

Sonnenkamp wandered hither and thither. This soil is his, these trees are his, everything is green, blooming, breathing a fresh life. Does he still breathe for whom all this had life, for whom it all was to live, for whom it was planted and set in order?

"Why is it? why is it?" shrieked Sonnenkamp through the park. No reply came from without; perhaps one came from within, for he pressed both hands, doubled up, against his breast.

He came into the orchard. There stood the trees, whose branches he had shaped according to his pleasure; they stood in full blossom, and now, in the first morning beam, the blossoms were falling down like a low rustling rain upon the ground, that looked white as if covered with flakes of snow.

The lighter the morning became, the more confident did Sonnenkamp feel that Roland was floating there a corpse in the river, which was now of a reddish purple, a stream of blood; the far-extending water was nothing but blood! He uttered a deep groan, and stretched out his hand, as if he must grasp and throttle something. He seized hold of a tree and shook it, and shook it again and again, so that there was scarcely a blossom left upon it; he stood there covered all over with the petals. And now he broke out into a scornful laugh.

"Life shall not vanquish me! Nothing! Not even thou! Roland, where art thou?"

At this instant he saw a white form, with a strange head-covering, glide through the orchard, and vanish behind the trees. What is that? He rubbed his eyes. Was that a mere fancy, or was it a reality?

He went after the apparition.

"Stop," he cried, "there are steel-traps there, there's a spring-gun there!" A woman's voice uttered a lamentable, shriek. Sonnenkamp went up to her, and Fräulein Milch stood before him. "What do you want here? What's the matter?"

"I wanted the Herr Major."

"He is still asleep."

"I may also tell you," Fräulein Milch began, composing herself, "it leaves me no rest."

"Out with it,--no preliminaries!"

Fräulein Milch drew herself up haughtily and said,--

"If you are in that humor, I can go away as I came."

"Excuse me, what then do you want?" he asked gently.

"I had a suggestion for you."

Sonnenkamp composed himself to listen patiently, and nodded to her to go on. She now said that she could not rest, she did not know whether the Major had suggested it. Sonnenkamp broke off impatiently a blossoming twig, and Fräulein Milch continued,--she thought that the Herr Captain Dournay might perhaps know where Roland was; they ought to telegraph to him.

Sonnenkamp thanked the old dame with a very obliging smile, and said, exercising great self-command, that he would wake up the Major, and send him into the garden; but Fräulein Milch begged that he might be allowed to take his sleep quietly. She turned back to her house, and Sonnenkamp walked on through the park.

The roses had bloomed out during the night, and from hundreds of stems and bushes sent their fragrance to their owner, but he was not refreshed by it. Here is the park, here are the trees, here is the house, all this can be acquired, can be won. But one thing cannot be won: a life, a child's life, a child's heart, a union of soul with soul, which can never be sundered, and can never come to an end.

And again came to him that cutting sentence,--You have killed the noblest impulses in your fellow-men, the feeling of father, and mother, and child. Now it is you who suffer!

Why does the word of that opponent in the New World hover around him to-day, today, as it did yesterday? Is that terrible man, perchance, on board that boat which is now steaming up the stream in the first morning light?

He could not imagine that, at this very moment, the child of this man was speaking to his own child.

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XII. WHAT IS STIRRING BY NIGHT

The roses in the garden, and in the youth's soul, all opened during the night.

To Eric! Roland's open mouth would have said, but no sound was uttered, he said it only to himself. It was a clear starlight-night, the waning moon, in its third quarter, hung in the heavens, giving a soft light, and Roland was penetrated with such a feeling of gladness, that he often threw out his arms, as if they were wings with which he could easily fly. He went at a quick pace, as if he were pursued; he heard steps behind him, and stopped; it was only the echo of his own footsteps.

At a distance a group of men, standing still, were waiting for him. He came nearer; they were wooden posts, painted black, intended to fence in a vineyard. He moderated his pace, and would have sung, but he feared to betray himself by any sound. He stood still upon an elevation, and heard far below upon the river the wheezy puffing of a tow-boat; he saw the lights upon the masts of the boats in tow, and they moved along so wonderfully! He counted them, and there were seven.

"They are also awake," he said to himself, and it occurred to him, for the first time, that people were obliged to be awake, and to labor at night to earn their living, as the engineers there on the tow-boat, the helmsmen, and the boatmen on the boats in tow.

Why is this? What forces men to this? The boy angrily shook his head. Why did this trouble him? He walked on over the high level plain, and then ascended a hill behind it. He took a childlike pleasure that his shadow accompanied him. He kept always the middle of the road; the ditches by the wayside looked dismal and haunted. He was startled at the shadows which the trees cast in the light of the moon, and was glad when he came where it was clear and bright. When he drew near to a village, he felt secure, for although everybody was asleep, yet he was in the midst of human beings. The boy had been told that, by night, thieves and murderers go about on all the roads to rob and to murder. What did he have about him for them to rob? His watch and chain. He took out his watch, wanting to conceal it.

"For shame!" he suddenly cried. He became conscious how afraid he was in the depth of his soul; he would not be afraid. He boldly summoned up the dangers which he wanted to encounter, rejoiced over them, and cried aloud,--

"Come on! Here am I, and here is Devil too! Isn't it so, Devil? Just let them come on!" he said to the dog caressingly. The dog leaped up to him.

He passed through a village. All were asleep, except that here and there a dog barked, scenting Devil's proximity. Roland ordered him to be quiet, and he obeyed. The boy recognized the village as the one where he had been with the doctor and Eric on Sunday: here was the house where the man had died; here on the opposite side was the gymnastic ground, where he had exercised with Eric. At last he came to the house of Sevenpiper, where the entire orchestra were now asleep. He stood awhile, considering whether he should not wake up some one in the house, either to go with him, or to be sent to his father. He rejected both suggestions and went on.

The night was perfectly still; the only sound was the occasional barking of a dog at a distance, as if disturbed in his sleep. A brook rippled by the wayside, and he was glad to hear its strange sound; it went as if chatting with him for a while, and then disappeared, and all was silent. He passed through a ravine, where it was so dark from the high trees on both sides that he could not see the path; quietly composing himself, he went forward, thinking how beautiful it must be there in the clear daylight. He emerged from the ravine, and was rejoiced to be in the highway again. Over the ridge of a mountain shone a star, so large, so brilliant, always, going up higher, and gleaming so brightly! Does Manna know what star this is?

There was a light in the first house of a village; he stopped. He heard voices. The woman inside was mourning and lamenting, that, on the morrow, her only cow was to be sold. Taking his resolution quickly, Roland placed several gold pieces upon the window-sill of the lower room, and knocked on the window-pane, crying,--

"You people! there is, some money for the cow upon the sill."

He ran breathlessly away, a sort of trouble coming over him, as if he were a thief; he did not stop until he had gone some distance, crouching down in a ditch. He could not tell why he had run from there. As he now lay there and hearkened whether the people followed him, he laughed merrily to himself, to think that it must seem to them to have been some spirit that goes about healing men's sorrows, and making them grateful. No one came. He went on vigorously, happy in the thought of what he had done, and thinking that when he had a great deal of money--as he would have at some time--he would go about secretly in the world, and thus make everybody happy wherever his footsteps went.

When he fixed his gaze again upon the path, he saw a strange-looking man in the field by the wayside, who was aiming a gun directly at him. Roland, trembling, stood still, and asked the man what he wanted; the man did not move. Roland set the dog upon him, and the dog came back, shaking his head. Roland went up to the form, and laughed and trembled at the same time, to find that it was nothing but a scarecrow.

A wagon, groaning under its heavy load, came nearer and nearer. It was a strange creaking and clattering, as the wagon swayed upon its axle, and the wheels grated upon and crushed the stones. Roland came to the conclusion that the wagon had only two wheels, and was drawn by one horse. He kept still, in order to determine this, and then he heard the sound of several hoofs. He awaited the approach of the wagon, and saw that there were two horses harnessed tandem to a wagon with only two wheels. Roland went on one side, and waited for the wagon to go by; the driver walked near it, whistling and cracking his whip. Roland walked on, keeping at a little distance behind the wagon. A fearfulness had taken possession of the youthful wanderer by night, and now he felt himself near a human being who was awake; if any danger threatened he could call upon him. "Yes," he said inwardly to himself, "this is how I would call out,--

"'Help! help!'"

But no danger presented itself. And he said to his dog, as if in derision,--

"Shame that nobody assails us, to give us both a chance to show how courageous we are."

But he was terrified when all at once he heard nothing more of the wagon; it had stopped at the toll-gate. When it again creaked he was in good spirits once more. The wagon halted at the first house of the next village. The hostler, who seemed to have been expecting the driver, was not a little amazed to see, by the light of the lantern which he had with him, a handsome boy with sparkling eyes. "Hi! who may this be?" the servant cried, leaving his mouth wide open with astonishment and terror, for the great dog sniffed about his legs, then placed himself in front of the terrified fellow, showing all his teeth, and blinking back to his master, as if waiting for the watchword, "Seize him!"

Roland ordered the dog to come away. There must have been something in his voice that produced a feeling of respect in the driver and in the servant.

They asked him whether he would not also take a drink. Roland said yes. And he sat now at table, touching glasses with the teamster by the light of a solitary oil lamp. The servant was inquisitive, and said with a smirk, pointing to Roland's delicate hand,--

"That's a splendid finger-ring; how that stone does shine! That is worth ever so much, isn't it? You! make me a present of that."

The landlord, in the sleeping-room adjoining, hearing this, came in, ghostlike, in his shirt and drawers. Roland was now asked who he was, whence he came, and where he was going. He gave an evasive answer.

The teamster left, and Roland, keeping by his side, listened to the narration of his way of life. He learned that the wagon was loaded with new stone bottles, which were carried to a neighboring mineral-spring, and thence were sent into all the world, even as far as Holland. Roland was astonished to find how many kinds of occupation were requisite, before the mineral-water was drunk at his father's table. For the teamster, Holland was the end of the world; he was amazed when Roland told him that there were many countries, even whole divisions of the earth, much farther off than Holland. The teamster was surprised at Roland's extensive knowledge, and inquired if he had ever been so far away.

Roland gave an indirect reply. And now the teamster told him that he himself was an honest fellow, that he had earned by hard work everything which he had upon his back, and he would go hungry and beg, before he would get anything by dishonest means. He advised Roland, if he had done anything which made him afraid of being punished--if perhaps he had stolen the ring--he had better return and give everything up. Roland set the man at rest.

The road led through a small forest of handsome oak-trees. The screeching of an owl was heard, Sounding like a mocking laugh.

"Thank God," said the teamster, "that you are with me; did you hear that laugh?"

"That is no laugh, that was a screech-owl."

"Yes, screech-owl--that's the laughing spirit."

"The laughing-spirit? Tell me what that is."

"Yes; my mother heard it once in broad daylight, when she was just a little girl. The children were at one time out there in the wood, to get acorns. You perhaps know that they shake down the acorns and place a white cloth under the tree, and catch them in that; it makes the best food for hogs. Well, the children are in the woods on a fine afternoon in autumn, the boys get up into the tree and shake down the acorns, and there is such a rattling! Then they hear, all at once, in the thicket a loud laugh. 'What is that?'--'O,' says my mother, 'that is a spirit.' 'What!' says a saucy fellow there, 'if it's a spirit, then I will just for once take a look at him.' He goes into the thicket, and when he once gets into the thicket, there sits a mighty little dwarf upon a tree-stump; his head is almost bigger than his whole body, he is gray all over, and he has a long gray beard. And the boy asks, 'Is't you that laughed so?' 'Nobody else,' says the dwarf, and laughs once more, exactly as before. 'You have shaken down the acorns, but there is one fallen down under the cloth, deep into the moss, that you will not find, and out of that acorn will grow up a tree, and when it is large enough it will be cut down, and out of one part of the boards a cradle wilt be made, and out of the other part a door, and a child will be laid in the cradle, and when that child shall open that door for the first time, I shall be released. Until that time I must wander about, because I have been a forest-trespasser, and lived on dishonest means.' The little dwarf laughs again, and then vanishes into the tree-stump Since then he's been heard many a time, but nobody's seen him again. Everybody knows the oak-tree in the forest, but no one disturbs it."

Roland shuddered. He did not believe in the story, but he gave attention while the teamster continued to relate to him how hard it was to get rid of possessions dishonestly acquired.

Gradually it began to be twilight. Roland extended his hand to the teamster, and bade him good-bye, as he wished to stay here and wait awhile. The teamster seated himself upon the wagon-shafts, and fixed himself comfortably, as it was now day, and he could doze a little.

The boy sat down upon a pile of stones, gazing into vacancy, and listening to the gradual dying away in the distance of the rattling and creaking wagon. For the first time in his life, he represented to himself in imagination the way in which a human being lives. He saw, as in a dream, the teamster arriving at his place of destination, he saw him lying in the shed upon the bundle of hay which he afterwards threw to his horses.

Roland had never yet been so alone, so without attendance, so conscious that no one could call to him; it seemed that he now saw, for the first time, the world and all that is in it. He followed the path of a little beetle, which crept swiftly along the ground and scrambled up a stalk.

Incomprehensible thoughts were stirring in his youthful spirit. What an infinite fulness of existence is the world! In the hedges of wild roses, just opening their buds by the roadside, sat motionless beetles and insects of all kinds, and a great buzzing and humming came from one open flower-cup to another. Here had beetles, butterflies, flies, and spiders spent the night, and the well-roofed snails were quietly housed upon the twigs.

He saw a field-mouse come out of its hole; first it remained resting upon the edge, listening, looking round, moving its chaps, and finally it slipped out, and quickly disappeared into another hole among the grass. A variegated beetle, in the early morning, ran across the field-path, fearing the public road, and feeling perfectly safe only among the thicket of the grain.

A hare ran out, and Devil sprang after him; Roland involuntarily felt at his side to seize hold of his gun.

As if emerging from beneath the surface of an overwhelming flood of impressions, Roland rose up. The sun had risen; he could not endure its splendor, and with eyes fixed upon the ground he went on. But his step lagged, for a voice spoke in him:--

"Turn back to father and mother!" But suddenly he cried aloud,--

"Eric!"

"Eric!" was repeated again in multiple echoes, and Roland walked on now, as if called by the mountains themselves. It seemed to him, not as if he walked, but as if he were lifted up and carried along. The night without sleep, the wine, all that he had experienced, excited his imagination, and it seemed as if he must now meet with something which no one else had ever met with--something inexpressible, incomprehensible, miraculous. He looked round, expecting to see it; something must certainly come to him and say, "For thee have I waited; art thou here at last?" And as he thus looked round, he noticed that the dog had left him. The wood yonder was near, the dog had evidently run after a hare or a wild rabbit. Roland whistled, he wished to call aloud, "Devil! Devil!" but he did not utter the word. He called the old name, "Griffin!" The dog bounded towards him, his tongue lolling from his mouth; he was wet with the dew of the corn-field through which he had run. Roland found it difficult to keep the dog off, for he seemed perfectly happy to have his name again; he looked up intelligently, panting quickly.

"Yes, your name is Griffin!" Roland cried to him. "Now down!" The dog kept close to his feet.

As the road now led through the forest, Roland turned aside, and laid himself down on the moss under a fir-tree; the birds sang over his head, and the cuckoo called. The dog sat near him, and seemed almost jealous that Roland did not vouchsafe him a single glance. Roland parted his jaws, and took delight in the magnificent teeth; then he said,--his own hunger might have made him think of it,--

"The next place we come to where there's a butcher, you shall have a sausage."

The dog licked his chaps, jumped round and round as if he understood the words, chased the crows which were that early looking for their food in the field, and barked at the rising sun.

The tired boy was soon asleep; the dog placed himself by his side, but he knew his duty, and did not lie down; he remained sitting, and resisted sleep. Occasionally he winked, however, as if it were hard work to keep his weary eyes open; then he shook his head, and kept faithful watch by his master. Suddenly Roland awoke. A child's voice awakened him.

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XIII. THE LILY OF THE VALLEY

Roland rubbed his eyes; before him stood a child, a little girl in a snow-while dress and blue sash. Her face was rosy, great blue eyes beamed out from it, and long golden curls hung loose over her neck. In her hand she held a bunch of wild-flowers.

Griffin stood in front of the child, and kept her from coming nearer.

"Back, Griffin!" cried Roland, rising; the dog fell behind his master.

"This is the German forest!" said the child with a foreign accent, and a voice that might belong to a princess in a fairy tale. "This is the German forest! I have only been gathering flowers. Are you the forest prince?"

"No, but who are you?"

"I have come from America. My uncle brought me here this morning, and now I am to stay in Germany."

"Come, Lilian! Where are you staying so long?" cried a man's voice from the road.

Roland saw through the trees an open carriage, and a tall, stately gentleman with snow-white hair.

"I'm coming directly," answered the child; "I have some beautiful flowers."

"Here, take this one from me," said Roland, gathering a full-blown lily of the valley.

The little girl threw down all the flowers which she held, took Roland's, cried, "Good-bye," and ran to the carriage. The man lifted her in as she pointed back to the wood; the carriage rolled away, and Roland stood once more alone.

Whoever could then have looked down from the vault of heaven would have seen a marvel, for at the very moment when the child was talking with Roland, Sonnenkamp stood on the terrace, lost in thoughts which made him shiver in the frosty morning air.

Roland pressed his hand to his brow. Had it really happened, or had he only dreamed? He still heard the roll of the carriage in the distance, and the plucked flowers on the ground bore witness that he was living in the actual world. But had the child really said that she was from America? Why had he not followed her then? Why had he not spoken to the old man? And now no one could tell him who they were, and whither the child had gone.

For a while Roland gazed at the flowers before him, but picked up none of them. Griffin barked at him, as if to say, Yes, and men assert that there are no more miracles! He sniffed round the gathered flowers, then ran off on the track of the child and of the carriage, as if he wished to fulfil his master's desire to detain the people, that he might talk with them. Roland whistled and called him; Griffin came, and Roland reproved him:--

"You don't deserve to have any sausage, you are so unfaithful."

Griffin lay down beseechingly at his feet; he could not explain how good his intention had been.

"Well, now we will go," said Roland. And they took up their march again.

He heard the whistle of a locomotive in the distance, and went in that direction. The wood was soon passed, and the road led again through vineyards. On a side-path Roland saw several women carrying powdered slate, from a great heap, into a newly-planted vineyard. On its border, near a hedge, burned a fire, close to which stood pots, whose contents an old woman was stirring with a dry bough. Roland stopped, and the old woman called out to ask him to join them; he went up to the group, and saw that coffee was boiling. The other women, young and old, came nearer, and there was much jesting and laughter. They turned their baskets up and sat upon them; such a seat was also prepared for Roland, and a sort of cushion placed upon it, as they asked him whether he were not a prince. Roland answered, no; but it flattered him to be taken for a prince in this way; he was very condescending, and knew how to joke with his companions. An old vine-dresser, the director of the work, told Roland, whom he held in some regard as being of the masculine gender, that he drank no coffee: it was a stupid custom, which sent money out of the country to America, never to come back.

Roland was struck by this second mention of America. The whole party listened attentively when he told them that it was not coffee, but sugar, which came from America.

"And our sugar," said the old woman, "has all staid in America, for we haven't any."

The first cup, and the cream off the milk, were given to Roland, with a bit of black bread. He wished to give the people something in payment, but now discovered that he had not his porte-monnaie about him. He knew that he had had it in the inn; the knavish-looking hostler must certainly have stolen it from him. He soon overcame his trouble about the lost money, however, and told the people that, some time or other, he would show kindness to a stranger, in return for what he had received.

He wandered on. He had learned what it was to enjoy the kindness and bounty of poor men, now that he was himself poor and helpless; that was his best experience.

The world is beautiful and men are good, even if a hostler could not resist a well-filled purse. With these cheering thoughts, he went on his way and soon reached the railway-station. Ha had carefully avoided any of the nearer stations, where he was known and might easily be traced; he wished, after making a circuit, to take the cars at a distant point.

Here Roland was accosted, like an old acquaintance, by a man in worn-out clothes, and with one boot and one old slipper on his feet.

"Good-morning, my dear Baron! good-morning!" cried this shabby-looking personage, coming close up to him.

It was doubly disagreeable in this fresh morning, after such a night, to come within the atmosphere of this man so impregnated with brandy, who was excessively confiding in his manner towards Roland. A railway official, in the most polite manner, begged the half-drunken fellow to leave the traveller in peace; he nodded knowingly to Roland from a distance, as if there were some important secret between them. Roland learned that the man belonged to a respected family of the nobility: his relations had wished to help him, and had made him an annual allowance, but it was of no use. Now he was boarding with a baggage-master, and his whole amusement was in the railroad. Every one showed him due respect, because he was a baron, and very much to be pitied.

Roland shrank from the man as if he were a ghost. The excitement of the night, and of all which he had been through, was still affecting him, yet the thought was present to him how strange it was that a half-witted, half-intoxicated man should be so respectfully treated, simply because he was a baron.

Roland succeeded in borrowing money for his journey from the restorator at the station, with whom he left his diamond ring in pawn. He bought a ticket for the university-town, and at last took his seat in the car, where he could not refrain from saying to a fellow-passenger,--

"Ah! it is good that we are off."

His neighbor stared at him; he could not know how happy it made the sorely weary boy, to be carried along towards Eric without any effort of his own.

"Where lies your way, Herr Baron?" asked the neighbor,

Roland named his destination, but looked in surprise at the man who called him Baron; had he become one in the course of the night? At a junction, where a new set of officials took charge of the train, his neighbor, who was leaving it, said to one of them,--

"Attend to the young Baron, who is sitting there."

Roland was pleased to be so called, and a peculiar feeling came over him of the satisfaction one must have in being really a baron; then one would have a lasting title with lasting honors in the world. The thought only passed through his mind, and quickly vanished, as he began directly to imagine Eric's pleasure at seeing him; his face glowed with impatience and longing.

Suddenly a painful thought struck him. Where had he left the dog? He had quite lost or forgotten him. But on rolled the cars through valleys, cuts, and tunnels, and it seemed to Roland a year, since he left his home.

Not far from the university, where the road again divided, some students entered the train. They soon let their fellow-passengers understand that they had performed the great exploit of drinking a May-bowl at their fathers' expense: for anybody could drink native wine. They had also brought some provision into the car, and in their generosity or their ostentation they wanted Roland to drink with them, but he declined with as much modesty as decision.

Twilight had gathered when they reached the university-town.

Roland asked for Doctor Dournay; one of the students, a fine-looking youth who had kept aloof from the noisy party, told him to come with him, as he lived near the widow of the professor. As Roland went with him, a strange fear came upon him: what if he could not find Eric? or if Eric would have nothing more to do with him? How much might have happened since they parted!

With beating heart he ascended the steep, dark, wooden staircase. At the top, the door of a room opened, and at the door stood a woman, who asked,--

"Whom do you wish to see?"

"The Herr Captain Dournay."

"He is away from home."

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XIV. A NEW SON

Roland asked to be allowed to come in and wait, and was led into the sitting-room; the servant maid told him that Eric had gone to the capital, but might possibly return that day. His mother had gone to the grave of a son, of whose death this was the anniversary. The maid went out to light the lamp, and Roland was alone in the room where the twilight shadows gathered; he sat in the corner of a sofa, weary, and his mind full of varied thoughts.

Wonderful! there are so many human dwellings in the world, one can enter them, and all at once one is seated in a strange house.

Outside, in accordance with an old custom, there sounded from the tower a choral, played by trumpets. Roland dreamed of the outer world, no longer conscious where he was, but remembering only that he had once travelled through many countries and towns, and that everywhere in the houses lived men, who led their own lives, of which other people knew nothing.

Eric's mother entered. She stopped at the door, as Roland rose, saying,--

"Good-evening, mother."

Stretching out her arms, the mother cried,--

"In Heaven's name, Hermann--thou?"

"My name is not Hermann. I am Roland."

The mother approached him trembling; just then the aunt came in with a light, and all was explained. Roland said that he had followed Eric, because he wished never to leave him. The mother kissed him, weeping and sobbing.

Steps were heard on the stairs, and Eric entered. Roland had no strength to rise from his seat as Eric exclaimed,--

"You--here!"

Roland could hardly utter the words to explain what he had done. He stared wildly at Eric, who stood before him like a stranger, without even holding out his hand. As soon as Roland had finished speaking, Eric said sternly,--

"If you were my son, I would punish you severely for your self-will, and the anxiety you have caused your family."

"You may punish me, I will not stir. No one in the world could punish me like you; you do not punish like----"

The beating of his heart prevented his finishing what he was about to say, and perhaps also an aversion to complaining of his father restrained him. He had forgotten till now what had last incited him to run away, and only remembered the longing for Eric; now he looked around him, as if he saw his father's upraised hand in the air.

The mother took him again into her arms, saying,--

"Your willingness to bear punishment atones for and washes out everything."

"Stay here with my mother," said Eric, sternly; "I will come back directly." He hurried out, and sent a telegram to Herr Sonnenkamp, with the inquiry whether he would come for Roland, or wished to have him brought home.

When Eric returned, he found Roland already asleep on the sofa. He was tired out, and it was with great difficulty that they could awaken him to be put to bed. Eric sat a long time with his mother, talking of the wonderful manner in which fate seemed playing with them.

His mother related how, as she came from the churchyard, the painful thought had oppressed her that even she, his own mother, could not quite recall how Hermann had looked. She could bring his face to mind, because it was preserved in the photograph which hung, in its frame of immortelles, just over her sewing-machine in the bay-window. But Hermann's motions, his gait, his way of throwing back his head with its thick brown hair, of laughing, jesting, and caressing; the sound of his voice, the low, dove-like laugh,--all these had vanished from her--his mother. So she had walked on, with downcast eyes, often stopping, as she tried hard to call up the image of the lost one. So she had come home, and here came to meet her a form like Hermann, and it had cried out to her,--"Good-evening, mother!" in his very tone. She could not tell why she had not fainted, and she spoke now of Roland with the same delight which Eric had felt when he saw him for the first time.

Eric, on his side, told her of the reasons for and against undertaking the school, and then of the Minister's offer. He would there enter a position which his father had not reached, and which would, perhaps, have saved his life. The idea of receiving an appointment by inheritance, and through favor, without any merit of his own, oppressed him somewhat.

His mother soothed both these scruples, which were really one, and quite uncalled for, as he had the right to collect the debt which was due to his father, and still more if it was over due.

Very lightly she touched upon the good fortune of the nobility, in being able to receive what had been stored up by past generations, and to hand it down to future descendants. With a slightly jesting tone she said,--

"Our professor of political economy used to say that capital was accumulated labor; so family standing is nothing but accumulated honor."

There were times, though they were rare, when the mother, from the standpoint of her inherited opinions and habits, saw in many of the sentiments and views of the burgher class an obstinate and perverse independence which she could not approve. In her husband this had rarely and slightly shown itself, but in Eric it was more active; he had that haughty self-reliance which makes a man unwilling to thank any one but himself for his position and power.

She had never repented leaving her own class to marry her husband, she had been too happy for that; but she saw in Eric's position something like a grievous consequence of her own act. Moved by these thoughts, which she never expressed, she said,--

"I can easily understand how you feel drawn to this American; there is the greatest honor in being a self-made man. Let us unite the two plans then. You can bring it about, since the boy is in your hands, that the American shall entrust him to you, and you can at the same time maintain an independent position."

Eric replied that his objection to the situation did not consist simply in his receiving it as a favor; the task of conducting foreign visitors of princely rank through the art-collections was distasteful to him; he did not think that he could conform himself to it.

Suddenly his mother remembered that a letter had come for him, and she gave it to him. It was from Clodwig. The noble man placed at Eric's disposal twice the sum that he had asked for. Eric was made happy by this news, and his mother nodded with hearty assent when he said that the gift rejoiced him, but still more did the assurance that his confidence in men had met with so glorious a confirmation.

Midnight was past, and mother and son still sat together. Eric begged his mother to go to bed and leave him to wait for Sonnenkamp's reply. He sat long alone in the night, thinking over all which had passed, till sleep overcame him.

In the spirits of men, as well as in the history of nations, thoughts and sentiments are formed which are to be brought into action from their own free will, when suddenly there comes an over-mastering fact, which converts the free choice into an inevitable necessity. Thus Eric's entrance into Sonnenkamp's household seemed to have been made an unavoidable necessity by Roland's rash step.

Eric went again, with scarcely audible steps, into the boy's room. So wholly was his spirit turned toward him that the sleeping child moaned, "Eric," but soon, turning over, slept soundly again.

Eric went back to the sitting-room, and then it first occurred to him that there was no night-watch at the telegraph office in Sonnenkamp's neighborhood; the father could not receive the news till morning. Eric also now went to bed.

Everything was late in the house of the professor's wife the next morning; Eric slept longest. When he entered the sitting-room, he found Roland already with his mother, holding a small wooden coffee-mill in his left hand and turning it with his right. This mill was an heir-loom which had belonged to Eric's grandfather, who had been a distinguished anatomist at the university. The mother had already told Roland this, and had shown him all sorts of ancient household furniture, also relics of the times of the Huguenots.

"Ah, how pleasant it is here with you!" cried Roland to Eric, as he entered.

Something of long-established family existence opened upon the young spirit, and, at this morning hour, with the friendly eyes of three people resting upon him, Roland felt very content in the simple, old-fashioned, domestic life.

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XV. AN EXTRA TRAIN

"I've been through a great deal, but that I should ever be obliged to go through this! If we can only come out of this with a whole skin! This may be called a wanton exposure of one's life--and one has no weapons of defence."

Such were the Major's words, stammered out at intervals, as he held on to a tassel of a first-class railway car, and looked sorrowfully at the dog Laadi lying at his feet, while he was travelling with Herr Sonnenkamp in an extra train. Herr Sonnenkamp appeared to feel a joy in this mad speed.

"In America," he said, "they go three times as fast in an extra train."

He seemed to experience a secret satisfaction in showing the Major that there was a courage wholly different from that of the battle-field, which he possessed and the Major did not. He had accounts to tell of trips made in America on wagers. And when they stopped to take in water, Sonnenkamp took leave of the Major, saying that he was going to ride on the locomotive, for he must try once more how that seemed.

The Major sat with Laadi alone in the only car attached to the locomotive; he stared fixedly out of the window, where trees, mountains, and villages flew by like a whirlwind, and he thanked God that Fräulein Milch knew nothing of his consenting to make such a mad trip with Herr Sonnenkamp on an extra train.

And why is this man in such a hurry? The Major does not understand it. Sometimes he was stingy about a kreuzer, and so very modest that he wished to make no show and to excite no observation, and then again he was very lavish with his money, and did every thing to attract people's attention. The Major did not understand the man. He must certainly have been a locomotive-driver; and what is there that he may not have been!

"Yes, Laadi," exclaimed he, speaking to the dog, "come, lie down by me. Yes, Laadi; neither of us could ever dream of going through this! If we only once do get through it! Yes, Laadi, she will mourn for you too if we are killed."

The dog growled away to himself; he must have been full of wrath also at the fool-hardy Sonnenkamp.

Madder and madder was the speed: down they went over descending grades near the river, and the Major expected every instant that the locomotive would run off the track, and the passenger-car be dashed in pieces and tumbled into the stream. Yes, there came over him such a settled fear, or rather expectation, of immediate death, that he braced his feet against the back of the seat, and thought to himself,--

"Well, death, come! God be praised, I have never harmed anybody in the world, and Fräulein Milch has been cared for, so that she will never suffer need."

Tears wet his closed eyes, and he made a strange face in order to stifle his tears; he was unwilling to die, and then, too, when there was no need of it. He opened his eyes with rage, and doubled up his fists; this extra train is wholly unnecessary; Roland was known to be in good hands. But this man is such a savage!

The Major was very angry with Sonnenkamp, and yet more with himself, for being drawn into any such mad freak. All his heroic mood was gone, he was wholly unreconciled to the position, he had been duped, this was not fit for him. Fräulein Milch is right; he is weak, he cannot say no.

Whenever he looked out he became dizzy. He found a lucky expedient; he placed himself so as to ride backwards. There one sees only what has been gone over, and not what is coming. But neither does this do any good; it is even more terrible than before, for one sees now the bold, short curves which the road makes, and the cars incline on one side as if to plunge over. And now tears actually flow out of the Major's eyes. He thought of the funeral service which the lodge, would perform for him after he was dead; he heard the organ-peal, and the dirges, saying to himself,--

"You eulogize me more than I deserve, but I have been a good brother. The Builder of all the worlds is my witness that I meant to be."

The car rolled on at a more measured speed, and the Major consoled himself with the thought that no accident had ever yet happened on this road. But no, he went on thinking, perhaps one would be safer on a road where some accident has already happened; the people here are too careless, and thou must be the first victim. Which would Fräulein Milch consider the more dangerous, a road which had already experienced mishaps, or one like this, that has now to meet with them for the first time? I must take care to put the question to her. Don't forget it, Laadi, we must ask her. He had now overcome all fear, and he became so free and cheerful that he ridiculed his own apprehensions, thinking that the millionaire on the locomotive had a much greater stake involved, putting his life in peril, and that he would not do it if there were any real danger.

The dog must have scented out the peril of the rapid journey, for she was in a continual tremble, and looked up appealingly to her master.

"Thou art a lady, and thou art afraid," said the Major, addressing her. "Take courage! Thou art not so faint-hearted. Come! so--so--get up into my lap. Clean enough, clean enough," he said, smilingly, as the dog licked his hand.

And from the midst of his anguish, the Major was already pleasing himself with the thought, how, in a few days, in the quiet arbor in his garden, he will tell Fräulein Milch of the imminent peril. He caressed Laadi, and rehearsed to himself the whole story of the impending danger.

They arrived at the station where the road branches off to the university-town. Here they are told that no extra train could be furnished, as there was only one track. They must wait an hour for the next regular train.

Sonnenkamp stormed and scolded over these dawdling Europeans, who did not know how to put a railroad to its proper use; he had arranged, indeed, by telegram for a clear track. But it was of no use. The Major stood at the station, and thanked the Builder of all the worlds that all was so unalterably fixed. He went away from the river, and saluted the cornfields, where the standing corn, in its silent growth, allowed itself to be in no way disturbed out of its orderly repose; he rejoiced to hear, for the first time this season, the whistling of the quail, who has no home in the vineyard region; and he gazed at the larks singing as they flew up to heaven.

A train had come into the station and stopped. The Major heard men's voices singing finely, and he learned that many persons, who were already seated in the cars, were emigrating to America. He saw mothers weeping, fathers beckoning, and while the locomotive was puffing at the station, many village youths stood on the platform together, in a group, and sang farewell songs to their departing comrades. They sang with voices full of emotion, but they kept good time.

"It will rejoice Fräulein Milch when I relate this to her," thought the Major, and he mingled among those who remained behind, giving them words of consolation; he went to the emigrants and exhorted them to continue good Germans in America. In the midst of his weeping, an old man cried:--

"What are you waiting for? make it go ahead!"

The rest scolded the man for his rudeness, but the Major said,--

"Don't take it ill of him, he cannot do differently, he is too miserable." The old man nodded to the Major, and all the rest looked at him in surprise.

In the mean while, the train arrived which was to carry those going on the branch road.

"Herr Major! Herr Major!" shrieked the employés of the road from various quarters. They had great difficulty in bringing the Major over to the other side of the train.

"One might almost envy you, you are such a child; you allow yourself to be distracted by every occurrence on the way, and to be drawn, away from your destination like a child."

"Yes, yes," laughed the Major--he had recovered his broad laugh--"Fräulein Milch often tells me that."

He told Sonnenkamp of the affecting parting of the emigrants and their friends, but Sonnenkamp seemed to have no interest in it. Even when the Major said that the Freemasons had taken all pains to block the game of the kidnappers who cheated the emigrants, even then, Herr Sonnenkamp remained speechless. The Major sat by him in silence.

They reached the university-town. No one was there to receive them, and Sonnenkamp was very indignant.

The family of the professor's wife were at breakfast. Roland drank his coffee out of the cup which had Hermann's name upon it, and Eric said that they must be at the station in an hour, since Herr Sonnenkamp would probably come by the express train: it was not to be supposed that he would come by the accommodation train, which had no connection with the West. Just as Eric was saying this, there was a knock; the Major walked in first, and after him, Sonnenkamp.

"Here is our devil of a boy!" cried the Major. "Here is the deserter himself!"

The awkwardness of the first interview was thus removed. Roland sat immovable upon his chair; Eric went to meet Sonnenkamp: he turned then to the boy, and ordered him to ask his father's forgiveness for what he had done. Roland complied.

The mother prayed Herr Sonnenkamp not to punish the boy for his wilfulness. His father replied, good-humoredly, that, on the contrary, this bold stroke of the boy gave him particular delight; he showed courage, resolution, and self-guidance: he would rather reward him for it. Roland looked at his father in amazement, then grasped his hand and held it fast.

Eric requested his mother and aunt to retire with Roland to the study, and he remained with the Major and Sonnenkamp. Sonnenkamp expressed his satisfaction and gratitude to Eric, who must certainly be familiar with magic, to have so bewitched his son that he could not live apart from him.

"Do you think so?" Eric asked. "I must express to you my astonishment."

"Your astonishment?"

"Yes; I have, I am sorry to say, no talent at all of that sort, but I may be permitted to say that I almost envy those who can accomplish such things."

Sonnenkamp looked inquiringly at Eric, who continued:--

"It is a master-stroke of pedagogical science that you have effected. I see now that you have declined my service in Roland's hearing, in order to induce him to act from his own free-will; this will bring him under my influence as nothing else would be likely to do."

Sonnenkamp looked amazed. Is this man making fun of him? Does he wish to ridicule him, or, by means of this refined policy, to get the better of him still farther? This would be a touch of diplomacy of the highest order. Pranken is probably right, and Eric is a wily trickster under the mask of honest plainness. Well, let it be so. Sonnenkamp whistled to himself in his inaudible way; he would appear not to see through Eric. He let it be understood that he had played a nice game with Roland, and he smiled when the Major cried:--

"Fräulein Milch said so--yes, she understand everybody, and she has said,--Herr Eric, he is the man who sees clear through Herr Sonnenkamp's policy. Yes, yes, that is a whole extra train of smartness."

Sonnenkamp continued smiling deprecatingly and gratefully, but his astonishment was renewed, when Eric now made the declaration,--

"Unfortunately, life itself is so self-willed, that the best-laid logical chain is cut in two; I find myself obliged, on my part, to decline positively your friendly offer."

Sonnenkamp again whistled inaudibly. Another stroke of diplomacy, then! He could not grasp him; the antagonist has enticed his foe out of his stronghold; Sonnenkamp joined battle in the open field. Eric related that he had the offer of acting director in the Cabinet of Antiquities, with the promise of a permanent appointment.

"That's it," nodded the Major to himself, "that's it, screw him, make terms for yourself, as a singer does who is in demand; you can have your own price, they must give you all you ask."

But the Major's look suddenly changed, when Eric continued,--

"From your practical American standpoint you would certainly approve of my refusal, if that were necessary, in order to attain higher conditions, whether internal or external, of my own freedom. But I tell you frankly, that I have no motive for this refusal, except the duty of gratitude towards my patron."

Sonnenkamp answered, assentingly,--

"I am very far from desiring to interfere at all with your plan of life. I regret to be obliged to give it up, but I give it up."

"Yes," interposed the Major, "you give it up, and he declines. That's no go. The youth, what is he going to do? What becomes of him?"

Sonnenkamp and Eric regarded the Major in silence, who uttered the decisive words,--"What becomes of Roland?"

Eric was the first to collect himself, and requested that Sonnenkamp would commit his son to him for a year at the capital; for he himself must acknowledge that he should no longer be happy or at rest, until he could expend his best energies for the boy, in order to establish him in a noble career in life; and that it would be the best plan for Roland also to be brought up in the companionship of others, and he would see to it that he had good companions.

Sonnenkamp pressed his fingers to his lips, and then said,--

"Such a plan cannot be talked of for a moment; my breath is gone, when I know that the child is away from me. I must therefore beseech you, not a word of this."

He now requested the Major to leave him alone with the Captain.

The Major complied at once, and did not take it at all amiss, that Sonnenkamp disposed of him so readily.

And now that they were alone, Sonnenkamp said, rubbing his chin repeatedly,--

"I see clearly the difficulty of consigning Roland to any one but you; I have already dismissed the man who was employed by me. But now, one question. Were you not, voluntarily, employed in the House of Correction?"

"Why do you ask, since the asking tells me that you already know?"

"And do you think that you can now be Roland's preceptor?"

"Why not?"

"Do you think that it will not revolt the boy, or at least deeply wound him, when he shall at some time learn by chance, that he is under a man who has had the management of convicts?"

"Roland will not learn this by chance. I shall tell him myself, and he will have understanding enough to perceive that this is no degradation of my personal worth, but--I say it with all modesty--an exaltation of it. With my own free will, and holding an honorable position, I desired to devote myself to my fallen fellow-men; and I can only regret that I must acknowledge myself to have no talent for this. I am of the conviction that every man, whatever he has done, can become once more pure and noble; I was not able, unfortunately, in that position, to carry out my conviction."

Sonnenkamp listened, with closed eyes; he nodded, and thought that he must say something laudatory to Eric, but he did not seem able to bring it out.

At last he said,--

"I have introduced this matter only to show you that I keep nothing in reserve; we are now, I hope, of one mind. Might I ask you to call the Major, and let me join the ladies?"

The Major came, and when Eric was alone with him, naturally related first of all the terrors of the extra train, and that the clattering was no longer a perceptible beat, but one continued rumble. He knew how to imitate it very exactly, and to give the precise difference of sound when going by the stations, and the mountains, and over the dikes.

Eric could have replied that he was accurately acquainted with the road; he had gone over it a few days before, without speaking a word, engaged in his own meditations, but the Major did not suffer himself to be interrupted; he asserted that no one had ever before so rode, and no one would ever ride so again, so long as Europe had its iron rails, for Sonnenkamp had fired up after the American fashion.

Then he said,--

"I have come to know Herr Sonnenkamp very thoroughly, since his son went away. I have, indeed, no son, and cannot enter completely into his way of expressing himself, but such lamentation, such reproaches against himself, such raving, such cursing,--our hardest corporal is a tender nun in comparison--such words he brought out. It must truly be a fact! In countries where good tobacco grows, and snakes and parrots, Fräulein Milch has said, there the soil of men's hearts is much hotter, and there things grow up, and creatures creep out and fly about, such as we have no sort of idea about. And how Frau Ceres carried on, I'll not speak of.

"But you know who first told where the youth is? Fräulein Milch told it. And do you know what she said? 'If I were a young girl, I would run after Herr Eric too, over mountain and valley.' That is to say, she has said that in all honor; she has never loved any one but me, and we have known each other now for nine and forty years, and that is something. But why do we speak of such things now? we shall have time enough for this by and by. You are right, you are smarter than I thought for; it is shrewd in you not to make terms at once. Now he has come to you, into the house, you can make whatever conditions you want to. In his raving he cried,--A million to him who restores my son to me! You can claim the million, it belongs to you; I am witness of that."

Eric declared that he was irresistibly attracted towards the boy, but that he could not come to terms, for it would be the highest kind of ingratitude if he should decline the position that had been offered to him in such a friendly way, and of which a report had certainly been made, before this time, to the Prince.

In what light would he stand with his patron, and with the Prince, who had, besides, grounds of displeasure with him, if he should now say, "Thank you kindly; I have, in the mean while, made a previous engagement elsewhere"? The Major drummed with the fore and middle fingers of his right hand rapidly upon the table, as if his fingers were drumsticks.

"Bad, very bad," he said. "Yes, yes, fate often takes an extra train too; everything has an extra train now-a-days."

Eric said, in addition, that service to an individual had its difficulty; he might perhaps be able to consent to appear ungrateful, and forfeit forever all favor, but he feared lest, in the dependent servitude to the rich man, he might often be troubled with the thought how much more free he might have been in the service of the State.

The Major continued to drum and drum, repeating the words,--

"Bad--very bad!"

He uttered the words so oddly, that it sounded like a crow, in the freshly-turned furrow, gulping down an earthworm.

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XVI. WE HAVE HIM

While the Major and Eric were sitting together, Sonnenkamp was with the mother in the library; Roland and the aunt, in the recess, had a great book open before them, containing outline drawings of Greek sculpture.

The boy now looked up and cried,--

"Father, only think that Herr Eric must sell this fine library of his father's, and there is not a single leaf here that his father has not written on, and it must go now into the hands of strangers."

"It would be a favor to me," said Sonnenkamp, turning to the aunt, "if you, gracious Fräulein, would take my son out to walk; I have something to say to Frau Dournay."

Roland went away with the aunt.

Sonnenkamp now asked the professor's wife if what Roland had stated were true.

She replied in the affirmative, adding that the danger was over, as Count Wolfsgarten had furnished the required sum of money.

When Sonnenkamp heard the name and the amount, a surprising transformation seemed to take place in him. He said that he allowed no one the privilege of helping Eric in money-matters; he claimed that as exclusively his own. And now, having once begun to be beneficent, a new strength seemed to be unfolded in him; he considered himself very fortunate in being permitted to render assistance to such an excellent family, even if Eric should not remain with him.

The professor's widow could not refrain from confessing that it required great strength of soul to receive favors, and that her family were not accustomed to it. She spoke of her son.

"He is a child in feeling," she said, "without anything false, incapable of any indirection, a strong, steadfast, sincere, manly, and noble character. I ought not, as his mother, to say this, but I can only congratulate you. You can entrust to him that which you value most, as the precious jewel of your life, and I tell you that whoever loves Eric has a heaven in his heart, and whoever does not love him is without a heart."

Sonnenkamp rose, drawing a deep breath; he would have liked to say, How happy was that man who could call this woman mother; but he restrained himself. He stood before the flower-stand, which was artistically arranged, by an invisible contrivance, in a pyramidal shape, and all so well cared for and ordered, that it was a pleasure to behold it. He led the conversation to botany; Eric had informed him that his mother had a knowledge of it, and he was happy to meet in her an associate in his special pursuit--for he considered botany his specialty.

He turned the conversation, aptly and sympathizingly, to the lady's past history. He asked first, whether she would not take pleasure in coming, at some time, to the Rhine.

She replied that she should like much to do so, and that she had a special desire to see once more, before she died, a friend of her youth, the present Superior of the island-convent, and principal of the seminary.

"Are you so intimate with the Superior?" said Sonnenkamp, and something occurred to him which he could not make clear to himself, but he evidently impressed it upon himself to reserve this for further consideration. He smiled in a very friendly manner, when the lady dwelt at length, in a pleasant way, upon the strangeness of life. There sits a lady in her cage, and here another has her nest in a little garden, and they cannot come to each other. The older one becomes, indeed, so much the more enigmatical seem often the interwoven threads of human relations in the world.

She added, gently closing her eyes, that it had seemed so only since the death of her husband, for she had been able to say everything to him, and he had unfolded clearly and harmoniously what seemed to her a confused puzzle.

Sonnenkamp experienced something like a feeling of devotion, as the wife said this.

She made mention now of her life as a lady of the court, and her eyes glistened while speaking of the Princess dowager.

"I had not only the happiness and the honor," she said, "to visit and oversee with her, and yet oftener in her name and by her order, the many various institutions of beneficence of which her highness was the protectress, but I had the yet more important and often more melancholy, though blessed and refreshing duty, to visit those, or to institute inquiries concerning those, who applied to the Princess for assistance, often with heartrending cries for help. The greater part of the letters were entrusted to me, either to bring in a report concerning them, or to answer them. This was a sad, but, as I said before, a blessed and an ennobling service."

While the lady was thus speaking, placing at the same time her delicate, soft hand upon her heart, as if she must repress the overflowing feelings of this recollection, her whole countenance was illuminated by an inexpressible tenderness.

Sonnenkamp rose suddenly, as if some irresistible power had called to him, and there was deep feeling in his voice, as he said,--

"Might I be allowed, noble lady, to offer you a compensation, if you will be induced to live in our neighborhood? I am no prince, but I am, perhaps, as much overrun with begging letters. Our good Major frequently helps me in instituting inquiries. But you, honored lady, could render much more effectual service in this matter; and even if one cannot render assistance in every case, it is always a consolation to the poor to receive at least a friendly answer, and your look is radiant with a mother's blessing."

It was an hour in which Sonnenkamp experienced a blessedness such as he thought himself wholly incapable of receiving, and his fixed purpose was,--

"This must be; here is the starting-point in life which you have so long desired, and all the past is annihilated."

Sonnenkamp had formed an entirely different notion of the professor's widow and her sister-in-law. He saw in Eric's mother a stately lady of fine mind and high-bred manners; she was pale, and this paleness was very much increased by her black cap and her mourning dress.

The aunt seemed to him still handsomer.

It was a peculiar gesture that Sonnenkamp made in the air; it was as if he seized hold of the two ladies: for he mentally transplanted them to his splendid rooms, where they did the honors of the house, adorning his house, and his house adorning them, and when company were present a whist-table was formed, as a matter of course.

Sonnenkamp was obliged to restrain himself from asking the ladies at once whether they played whist, and with the consciousness that he was thinking about it, and with the exertion of self-control necessary to keep it to himself, his countenance assumed a variety of expressions.

During the conversation Roland had left the room, holding the aunt's hand; he now came in with Eric and the Major, holding in his hand a large letter with the seal of the ministry of education.

Roland said,--

"I beseech you, aunt, let me speak."

All were surprised at the appearance of the boy, who now said, holding up the letter,--

"The aunt has confided to me, that here is the decree appointing you to be director for the keeping of the beautiful bronze and marble statues of antiquity. Eric, I am not made of bronze or marble, and when you are there among those figures it will freeze you, and it will also freeze me forever, if you abandon me. Eric, don't do it; don't do it to yourself, or to me. Stay with me, I will stay with thee. I beseech you, Eric, do not leave me; I am not plaster; I am not marble; do not leave me. I beseech thee, Eric, do not forsake me--do not forsake me."

All were thrilled by this scene, and while the boy was speaking thus, the Major said in a low tone,--

"This is no child. What can it be? The lad speaks just as if a holy spirit possessed him!"

Eric went to Roland, raised him in his strong arms, held him high up, and said,--

"Roland, as I hold you now, and you hold me, so hold fast to me with all the strength of your life! We will together grow into something great; here is my hand."

The letter was forgotten. The mother begged to be permitted to open it, and she had hardly run it over, when she cried with a lightened heart,--

"Thank God, Eric, you need not be ungrateful."

The letter contained an expression of regret that the place had been already given to a young man of the nobility, who had shown himself unfitted for a diplomatic post.

Sonnenkamp requested them to let him have the letter; he might perhaps make use of it as a document against Eric's enemies, who charged him with being in ill-favor at court. And now he desired that mother and aunt would remove at once to Villa Eden; but Eric answered positively in the negative. He himself agreed to go, but his mother and aunt could not before the autumn; he must first become initiated, with Roland alone, into the family life.

No one was happier, that everything had turned out so well, than the Major. It was decided to start to-day. The Major promised that he and Fräulein Milch would help the mother and aunt in all the arrangements, when they removed later in the season; nothing else would do, as Fräulein Milch must be consulted in everything. He now requested leave of absence for an hour, to visit friends in the university-town, whom he did not know personally.

After the Major had gone, Sonnenkamp said, in a kindly tone of patronage, that the Major probably had some brother Freemasons to visit. Eric also asked to be excused, as he had yet to take leave of one man.

He went to see Professor Einsiedel. The Professor was always uniformly ready for every friendly call, but as uniformly angry, if, forgetting the hour of his lecture, any one came during the half hour previous; he could be very angry. His anger consisted in saying,--

"But, dear friend! how could you forget this? You must surely know that I have a lecture at two o'clock, and can now see no one. No, I must beg you very earnestly--very--very--very earnestly beg you to note my lecture-hour."

And while saying this, he pressed one's hand with great good-nature.

When Eric said that it would be of no service for him to note this for the future, as he was going to leave town to-day, Einsiedel requested to be informed of the hour when the train left; perhaps he would then meet him, but he would not make a definite promise, for if he did, it would disturb him in the delivery of his lecture.

Eric left him. The Professor went with him to the door, took off his black cap, and excused himself for not accompanying him down the steps, "I beg earnestly--very--I lecture at two," he turned back into his study. Eric was sure that the Professor would see him again.

The whole town lifted up their eyes, as the six persons were going to the station. Sonnenkamp escorted Frau Dournay, the Major the aunt, and Eric held Roland by the hand. They had to wait for the train to come in. Suddenly Professor Einsiedel made his appearance; and it was a great deal for the slender little man to do, as it interrupted the regular order of the day.

Eric introduced the Major and Sonnenkamp. Sonnenkamp had no special word to say to him, and the Major, notwithstanding his kind feelings towards everybody, could not find just the right friendly expressions with which to address this delicate, feeble-looking person, when Eric introduced him as his teacher and master. Roland, on the contrary, with hearty pleasure seized the hand of the little man, soft as a child's, and said,--

"Do you know how you seem to me? You are my grand-teacher; for Herr Eric is my teacher, and you are his teacher, and so you are my grand-teacher; and if you want a dog, I will send a dog to you."

Professor Einsiedel quoted some Greek words out of Plato to Eric, which expressed the joy one feels in a beautiful animated youth; then he patted the boy on the shoulder, thanked him for the offer of the dog, and said that as he did not like to bid goodbye in the rush, he would now bid them farewell before the train arrived. He considered that those who were waiting at the station had already started on their journey, and taking Eric aside, he said in a voice trembling with emotion,--

"You are well enough off, and you must also marry, for the apostle Paul says, 'Whoever careth for the things that are of the world ought to marry.'" He requested him to write more particularly concerning Clodwig's antiquities, then shook him by the hand. Roland also extended his hand to the professor.

Eric looked after the little man going away, who was in his eyes a walking temple of the spirit of wisdom; and the good little man rubbed his tender hand on his coat, for Roland had pressed it a little too hard.

The train came thundering in. The leave-taking was hurried. Roland kissed repeatedly the mother and aunt, and Sonnenkamp kissed the mother's hand.

His mother said in a low tone to Eric on taking leave,--

"You are forsaking me. I am at rest, I know you are not forsaking yourself, and so you are still with me. Go, then; hold thyself within thyself, and me in thee, and it will be well with thee, and well with me."

In the railway-car the Major bent towards Eric and whispered,--

"I have learned something about your father."

"What is it?"

"Something good for you and for me. Your father, who has gone to the eternal home, belonged to our brotherhood. It is your right to claim assistance, and my duty to give it. I only beg that you will never thank me; we are not allowed to thank one another."

At the first station the Major took Eric aside, and asked him whether he had made a positive agreement as to salary, indemnification at dismissal, and pension after the completion of the tutorship. Eric treated the subject with indifference, and the Major gave him to understand that he had full power to grant all his demands. He advised Eric to strike now while the iron was hot. But Eric not seeming at all disposed to take up with the advice, the Major desisted, murmuring to himself,--

"Here now, Fräulein Milch is always saying that I am not practical; and here now is a man who is so learned, and can turn himself round and face about seven times before I can get up on my feet, and he is ever so much less practical than I am." The Major was almost delighted that Eric was so unpractical; he could tell Fräulein Milch all about it.

On the way the diamond ring was redeemed, and Eric said to Roland,--

"Let your father take the ring; I would prefer that you would not wear a ring for the future."

Roland gave the ring to his father, and the Major said, humming to himself,--

"He has him! He has him by bit and curb."

It was evening when they drove by the small vine-covered house. Roland pointed out the house to Eric with glistening eyes, but uttered no word. They drove into the grounds of Villa Eden, where the air was laden with the fragrance of roses, for all the roses in Sonnenkamp's garden were in fresh bloom.

"We have it," cried the architect from the castle to the Major, as he was getting out.

"Have what?"

"We have found the castle-spring."

"And we have him," cried the Major, pointing to Eric.

And from this day, the Major began many of his stories with the words,--

"At the time I rode with Herr Sonnenkamp in the extra train."

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I. HIGH ABOVE

The rosebuds in the garden had opened in the spring night, and rare flowers blossomed out in the soul of the youth.

With transcendent delight, Roland welcomed his recovered teacher to the house. He went in high spirits to his mother's room, but she was so exhausted that he could not see her. He forgot Fräulein Perini's distant reserve towards him, and announced to her jubilantly, that Eric was there, and would now remain; she was just to say so to his mother.

"And have you no inquiries to make about the Chevalier?"

"No: I know that he is gone; he was not with me even when he was here. Ah, forgive me, I don't know what I am saying! O, why does not the whole world rejoice!"

Roland's rejoicing received the first check when Fräulein Perini said, that no one could estimate correctly the inconsolable distress which his mother had suffered from his flight.

The boy stood still, but he felt assured that now all would go well; that everybody must now be well and strong.

He came across Joseph in the court, and joyfully informed him that he now was acquainted with his native city; he nodded to all the servants, he greeted the horses, the trees, the dogs; all must know and rejoice in the fact that Eric was here. The servants looked at Roland in astonishment, and Bertram, the coachman, drew his long beard through the fingers of both hands, and said,--

"The young master has got, during these two days, a man's voice."

Joseph smilingly added:--

"Yes, indeed, a single day at the University has made him a different being. And what a being!"

In fact, Roland was wholly different. He returned to his home as from a voyage; yes, even as from another world: he could not comprehend how everything should appear so changed, illuminated so brightly; he had been alone with himself, and had gained possession of himself in solitude.

Eric had made no definite agreement about his salary, and Sonnenkamp said to the Major, smiling:--

"These enthusiastic Idealists have a concealed policy. The man does as people do when they are invited to dinner; they let themselves be served by the host and hostess with some nice dish, and so receive a larger stare than they would have helped themselves to."

Eric had only made one demand, that he should inhabit with Roland the house-turret, remote from all noise, and furnishing an extensive prospect. This was granted, and Eric felt himself strangely free in these handsome, spacious rooms, with their outlook upon the river and the landscape.

How confined is one's life in those small, close apartments of the University-town, and yet how far the spirit can extend itself beyond that narrow enclosure! And these carpets, this elegant furniture, how soon will it become an ordinary thing, forgotten and unconsidered, like the wide view of the landscape! It seemed to Eric as free, as inspiring, and as commanding, as if--he himself laughed when the comparison came into his mind--as if he were living on horseback. We can go very comfortably over hill and vale with a light walking-staff, but to sit on horseback, and course away, with a double, triple strength united to our own, and elevating us above the ordinary level, this is a rare exhilaration.

Roland came to Eric, and he expressed to the boy his joy at the beautiful and peaceful life they would live here; but Roland begged:--

"Give me something to do, something right hard; try and think of something."

Eric perceived the boy's state of excitement; sitting down near him, he took his hand, and showed him that life seldom furnished a single deed on which one could employ the whole strength of his voluntary powers; they would work quietly and steadily, and make each other wiser and better. The boy was contented, and looked at Eric as if he would, with his eyes, draw him into his soul, and make him his own. Then he lightly touched Eric's shoulder, as if to be newly assured that he was really with him.

Now they put things in order, and Roland was glad to render all kinds of assistance. In spite of his former deliberation, Eric had entered upon the new relation so unexpectedly, and plunged into it so suddenly, that he had hardly settled upon anything. Then there was so much to be discussed with his mother, deciding what he would take with him, and what he would leave behind, that they postponed all to a future arrangement by letter.

When temporary order was established, Eric complied with Roland's request to go with him upon the platform of the tower. They sat down here, and looked about, for a long time, in every direction. Eric could not restrain himself from telling the boy how new and beautiful all life appeared to him. They had formerly built castles upon the heights, for strife, for feuds, and for robbery of travellers upon the highway; but we, we work with the powers of nature, we endeavor to gain wealth, and then we withdraw, and place our dwelling upon an elevated site, in some lovely valley, and desire to take in only the eternal beauty, which no one can take away. The great river becomes a highway, along which industrious and noble men erect their habitations. The generations after us will be obliged to say that, at this time, men began to pay loyal homage to nature, as had never before been paid in the history of humanity; this is a new religion, even if it has no outward form, and shall never acquire any.

"Go on speaking, go on, on further," said Roland, nestling up to Eric; he could not say that he would like to hear just the sound of his voice; he closed his eyes and cried again: "Go on speaking!" Eric understood the imploring call, and went on to relate, how, when he stood for the first time upon the Righi, looking at the setting sun, he had been impressed with the thought whether there might not be some form, some service, by which the devotional feelings of these assembled spectators, in this temple of nature, might find expression. He had learned that this was impossible, and perhaps was not needful: nature imparts to each one a joy of his own, and joy in nature to each a private feeling of devotion, in which no others can share. Then extolling the happiness of being able thus in one's own house, on a tower erected by one's self, to appropriate the world, and the beauty of the earth, he showed how wealth, its pursuit, and its possession might be the basis of a grand moral and social benefit. Riches, he explained, were only a result of freedom, of the unfettered employment of activities, and must have only freedom as their resultant product.

Roland was happy; he did not comprehend the whole, but he felt, for the first time, that wealth was neither to be despised nor to be gloried in. All his teachers, hitherto, had endeavored to impress upon him either the one view or the other.

Joseph came to the tower, and asked whether Eric and Roland wished to dine together in their room; he was answered in the affirmative. They were happy, sitting together, and Roland cried:--

"We two dwell upon an island; and if I ever live in the castle, you must also live with me. Do you know what one thing more I want?"

"How! you want one thing more?"

"Yes; Manna ought to be with us. Don't you think she is now thinking of us?"

"Probably not of me."

"Yes, indeed! I have written to her about you, and this evening I am going to write again, and tell her everything."

Eric was puzzled, for a moment: he did not know what he ought to do. Ought he to restrain the boy from writing about him? There was no reason for doing so, and he would not disturb Roland's impartial candor.

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II. A SPIRIT'S VOICE BY NIGHT

Roland was writing in his room, and, as he wrote, frequently uttering the words aloud to himself. Eric sat silent, looking at the lamp. What was the use now of wishing? He stood in front of the unpacked books; there were but few. During the last fifteen minutes before going to the train, he had gone once more into his father's study, and locked up the papers left by him; glancing his eye around the library, he took down a book, the first volume of Sparks's handsome edition of the works of Benjamin Franklin. This volume contained the autobiography and the continuation of the life. Some leaves were inserted in the handwriting of his father.

And now he read, on this the first night of his new occupation, these words,--

"Look at this! Here is a real man, the genius of sound understanding and of steadfast will. Electricity is always here in the atmosphere, but does not concentrate itself and become visible lightning.

"This is genius. Genius is nothing but electricity collected in the atmosphere of the soul.

"With this book a man would not be alone, if he were alone on an island; he would be in the midst of the world.

"No philosopher, no poet, no statesman, no artisan, no member of the learned professions, and yet all of these combined in one; a pet son, with Nature for his mother and Experience for his nurse; an outcast son, who, without scientific guidance, finds by himself all medicinal herbs in the wild woods.

"If I had a youth to educate, not for any special calling, but that he might become a genuine man and a good citizen, I would place my hands upon his head and say, 'My son, become like Benjamin Franklin--no,--not this; develop thine own being, as Benjamin Franklin developed his.'"

Eric rested his chin upon his hand, and gazed out into the darkness of the night.

What is that? Are there miracles in our life? He looked to the right and to the left, as if he must have heard the voice of his father; as if he had not written, but was speaking the words,--My son, become like Benjamin Franklin!

Eric, with great effort, continued his reading:--

"It is indeed well for us to form ourselves after the first men of the old world, the period of generative, elementary existence; the characters of the Bible and of Homer are not the creations of a single, highly endowed mind, but they are the embodiments of the primitive, national spirit in distinct forms, and embrace a far wider compass than the span of individual existence.

"Understand me well. I say, I know in modern history no other man, according to whose method of living and thinking a man of our day can form himself, except Benjamin Franklin.

"Why not Washington, who was so great and pure?

"Washington was a soldier and a statesman, but he was not an original discoverer of the world within himself, and an unfolder of that world from his own inner being. He exerted influence by ruling and guiding others; Franklin, by ruling and guiding himself.

"When the time shall ever come, and it will come, that battles shall be spoken of as in this day we speak of cannibals; when honorable, industrious, humane labors shall constitute the history of humanity, then Franklin will be acknowledged.

"I would not willingly fall into that sanctimonious tone, the remnant of pulpit oratory, that comes out in us whenever we approach the eternal sanctities; and I hope our tone must be wholly different from that of those who claim to speak in the name of a spirit which they themselves do not possess.

"God manifested himself to Moses, Jesus, Mohammed in the solitude of the desert; to Spinoza in the solitude of the study; to Franklin in the solitude of the sea." (This last clause was stricken out, and then again inserted.) "Franklin is the man of sober understanding, who knows nothing of enthusiasm.

"The world would not have much beauty if all human beings were like Franklin; his nature is wholly destitute of the romantic element, (to be expressed differently," was written in the margin, and attention called to it by a cross,) "but the world would have uprightness, truthfulness, industriousness, and helpfulness. Now they use the word love, and take delight in their beautiful sentiments; but you are permitted to speak about love when you have satisfied those four requirements." (This last sentence was underlined with red ink.)

"In Franklin there is something of Socrates, and there is specially noticeable a happy vein of humor; Franklin enjoys also a good laugh.

"Franklin is, through and through, good prose, intelligible, transparent, compact.

"We do not have to educate geniuses in the world. Every genius trains himself, and can have no other trainer. In the world we have to form substantial, energetic members of the common weal. What thou dost specially, whether thou makest shoe-pegs or marble statues, is not my business but thine.

"We shall never be in a right position in regard to the world, if we do not believe in purity, in the noblest motives; the inmost of humanity is revealed to us only on this condition. There is no better coat-of-mail against assaults, than faith in the good which others do, and which one is to do himself; one hears then, within, the inspiring tones of martial music, and marches with light and free step onward through the contest of life.

"It is the distinguishing and favorable feature in Franklin's life, that he is the self-made man; he is self-taught, and has discovered by himself the forces of nature and the treasures of science; he is the representative of those, who, transplanted from Europe to America and in danger of deterioration and decay, attained a wholly new development.

"If we could have, like antiquity, a mythological embodiment of that world which is called America, which carried with it the gods of Europe,--I mean those historical ideas which the colonists carried over with them, and yet freely adopted into their own organic life,--would you have these ideas embodied in a human form,--here stands Benjamin Franklin. He was wise, and no one taught him; he was religious, and had no church; he was a lover of men, and yet knew very well how bad they were.

"He not only knew how to draw the lightning from the clouds, but also the stormy elements of passion from the tempers of men; he has laid hold of those prudential maxims which are a security against destruction, and which fit one for self-guidance.

"The reason why I should take him for a master and a guide in the education of a human being, is this:--he represents the simple, healthy, human understanding, the firmly established and the safe; not the erratic spirit of genius, but those virtues of head and of heart which steadily and quietly promote man's social happiness and his moral well-being.

"Luther was the conqueror of the middle ages; Franklin is the first in modern times to make himself. The modern man is no longer a martyr; Luther was none, and Franklin still less. No martyrdom.

"Franklin has introduced into the world no new maxim, but he has expressed with simplicity those which an honest man can find in himself.

"In what Franklin is, and in what he imparts, there is nothing peculiar, nothing exciting, nothing surprising, nothing mysterious, nothing brilliant nor dazzling; it is the water of life, the water which all creatures stand in need of." (Here it was written on the margin,--Deep springs are yet to be bored for, and to be found here) "The man of the past eighteenth century had no idea of the people, could have none, for it was wrung and refined out of the free thinking that prevailed even to the very end of the century, even to the revolution.

"He who creates anew stands in a strange and hostile, or, at least, independent attitude towards that which already exists.

"Franklin is the son of this age; he recognizes only the in-born worth of men, not the inherited. (Deeper boring is yet to be done here)."

With paler ink, evidently later, it was written,--

"It is not by chance, that this first not only free-thinking,--for many philosophers were this,--but also free-acting man was a printer.

"In the sphere of books lies not the heroism,--I believe that the period of heroic development is past,--but the manhood of the new age.

"Because our influence is exerted through books, there can be no longer any grand, personal manifestation of power." (Here were two interrogation-points and two exclamation-points in brackets, and there was written in pencil across this last remark,--"This can be better said.")

Then at the conclusion there was written in blue ink,--

"Abstract rules can form no character, no human being, and can create no work of art. The living man, and the concrete work of art contain all rules, as language contains all grammar, and these are the good and the beautiful.

"He who knows the real men who have preceded him, so that they live again in him, enters into their circle; he sets his foot upon the holy ground of existence, he is consecrated through the predecessors who trode it before him."

And again, in a trembling hand, there was written, at a late period, clear across the previous writing:--

"Whoever takes a part in the up-building of the State and the community, whoever fills an office and makes laws, whoever stands in the midst of the science of his time, becomes antiquated in the course of the new civilization that succeeds him; he is not, by virtue of his position, an archetypal pattern of the coming age. He only is so, who discerns, clears up, lays hold of and establishes anew, those eternal laws of the human spirit, which are the same from the beginning and throughout all time; therefore Franklin is not a pattern, but rather a method."

And now, finally, came the words, which were twice underlined:--

"My last maxim is this:--'Organic life, abstract laws!' We can make brandy out of grain, but not grain out of brandy. He who understands that, has all that I have to say."

Eric had read so far, and now he leaned back, and endeavored to form an idea of his father's thought, and to catch the whole meaning of these often half-expressed utterances.

He felt as if he were walking upon a mountain-top in the midst of clouds, and yet seeing the path and the goal.

He placed his hand upon the manuscript leaves, and a happy smile came over his countenance; then he arose, and almost laughed aloud, for the expression of the architect, on his arrival, occurred to him.

"We have it!"

"Yes," he cried, "I have it, I have the spring, from which clear, sparkling water shall flow forth for Roland and for me."

He found no rest; he opened the window, and looked out for a long time on the night. The air was full of the fragrance of roses, the sky full of the glory of stars; occasionally a nightingale sang, and then ceased, while in the distance, where the river was dammed up, the frogs kept up a noisy croaking.

Now Eric heard a man's voice--it is the voice of Pranken below on the balcony--which was saying in a loud tone,--

"We attach much, too much importance to it. Such a family-tutor ought properly to wear a livery; that would be the best."

"You are very merry to-day," replied Sonnenkamp.

"On the contrary, very serious; the sacred order of things, without which neither society nor the state can exist, has a sure support in the differences of rank being maintained, if each one shows his particular class. Service--"

Eric closed the window softly; he deemed it unworthy to listen.

The nightingales sang outside in the thicket, and the frogs croaked in the swamp.

"Each sings in its own way," said Eric to himself, as he thought of the cheering words of his father, and the expression of the young baron.

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III. THE OLD UNDER A NEW FACE

On the morning, Roland wanted to ride before doing any thing else; but Eric, whose maxim was that the day could be consecrated only by taking some good influence into the soul, made him read aloud the first chapter of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. This was the dedicatory act of their new occupation, and when they were called to breakfast, both were very animated. They could take an equal satisfaction with Fräulein Perini, who returned from mass with Herr von Pranken.

Eric had not mistaken, Pranken was there. He greeted Eric with a sort of studied respectfulness, but he fulfilled, after his way, the demands of sincerity; whilst he, as a man who has nothing to conceal, openly acknowledged that he had frequently thought it would be better that Eric should not enter upon the position, with great decision, and in a tone of satisfaction, he added to this, that there were mysterious presentiments in the soul, which we must humbly acknowledge; and so this self-willed act of Roland's was the finger of fate, which laid upon Eric, as upon all the others, the duty of compliance.

Eric looked at Pranken in utter amazement. He had mistaken this man; Pranken brought forward principles of conduct which he should never have supposed, nor would now have attributed to him.

The breakfast passed off cheerfully; the amusement was at the Major's expense, more indeed while absent, than while present. He had naturally narrated to Pranken the terrors of the extra train, and Pranken knew how to tell the story again very much to their entertainment; he could imitate the Major's thick way of talking, and Fräulein Milch was always spoken of as Fräulein Milch with the black eyes and the white cap.

After breakfast, Eric requested Herr Sonnenkamp that he and Roland might, for the future, be excused from this breakfasting in common, and might be left alone together until dinner-time.

Sonnenkamp looked at him with surprise. Eric explained that he asked this on the first day, in order that there might be no precedent of custom established. It was thoroughly needful to keep Roland undisturbed, and in a persistent determination; this could only be done by leaving to them at least half of the day, and the freshness of the morning. Sonnenkamp agreed to it, shrugging his shoulders.

At breakfast it had been casually mentioned that Bella and Clodwig would dine with them to-day.

Eric saw at once the chief difficulty of his calling, which lay in the liability of diversions becoming interruptions. He drew a line of demarkation between himself and all the household, especially Sonnenkamp, which was not expressly defined, but yet could not be overstepped; and this was so much the more difficult, as Eric was not taciturn, and readily entered into the discussion of all matters. But what was this line? There was a something in him which said to each one that he must not ask more than Eric was ready, on his part, to answer. He labored with Roland, and found out where the boy was well-grounded in knowledge, where there was only a partial deficiency, and where there was total ignorance.

A carriage drove into the court. Roland looked towards Eric. He did not appear to have heard the rattling wheels.

"Your friends have arrived," said Roland. He avoided saying that he himself was very impatient to greet Clodwig and Bella, and, under the form of a reprimand, to receive praise for executing the bold deed. But Eric insisted that they had no friends except duty; that there was nothing and nobody there for them until they had performed their duty.

Roland clasped his hands tightly together under the table, and compelled himself to be quiet.

Suddenly, in the midst of a mathematical axiom, he said,--

"Excuse me, they have fastened Griffin by a chain, I know it by his bark; they must not do it: it spoils him."

"Let Griffin and everything else alone; all must wait," Eric said, maintaining his stand.

Roland pranced like a horse who feels the rein and spurs of the rider.

Soon, however, Eric went with Roland down into the court. Roland was right; Griffin was chained. He loosed him, and both boy and dog seemed unchained, madly sporting together.

Bella was with Frau Ceres.

A servant informed Eric that Count Clodwig was expecting him. Clodwig came to meet Eric with great cordiality, greeted him as a neighbor, and rejoiced that the boy had exhibited so much energy.

"If we were living in the ancient times," he added, "the boy would have received a new name from this exploit." What Clodwig said of Roland was, at the same time, noble in sentiment and good in the manner of expression.

When they were at the dinner-table, Eric heard in what way Bella jested with Roland; the boy was beaming with delight, for Bella told him of the hero, Roland.

Eric was greeted in a friendly but measured way, by Bella; she called him repeatedly, "Herr Neighbor," and was extremely unconstrained. It could seem to her now as a laughable piece of prudery and timidity, that she had endeavored at one time to exert an influence to remove Eric from the vicinity. Had then the man made an unusual impression upon her? It appeared to her now like a dream, like a mistake.

Eric had thought of this first meeting with a sort of anxiety; now he chided also his vanity.

"Shall you have the library of your father brought here?" asked Clodwig.

Eric replied affirmatively, and Bella stared at him. He knew now why Bella had been so indifferent and unconcerned; he had received money from her husband, and he now ranked, therefore, very differently in her estimation.

At dinner he saw Frau Ceres again, for the first time; and when he went to her, she said in a very low tone, "I thank you," but nothing further; the words were very significant.

They were in good spirits at table. They thought that the journey would be a benefit to Frau Ceres. It would be a suitable preparation for the journey to the baths. One and another day was named for setting out.

Eric did not know what this meant; Roland saw his inquiring look, and said to her in a low tone,--

"We are all going to see Manna, and bring her back to journey with us to the baths. This will be jolly and fine."

Eric experienced anew that the chief difficulty of a life so abounding in means and so unconfined by regular duties was, that every one in the family, and the boy especially, was living either in the reaction from some dissipating amusement, or in the expectation of engaging in it. He would wait quietly, until the question was asked him, in order then to make his resolute decision of some account.

After dinner it happened, as if by chance, that Bella walked with Eric. She first told him how happy Clodwig was that Eric was to remain now in his neighborhood, and then suddenly standing still, and with a furtively watchful look, she said,--

"You will shortly see Fräulein Sonnenkamp again."

"I?"

"Yes. You journey with us, do you not?"

"No one has so informed me."

Bella smiled.

"But surely you will be glad to see Fräulein Sonnenkamp again?"

"I did not know that it was she when I met her."

Bella smiled again, and said,--

"I have seen enough of the world to have no prejudice. The daughter of the house and my brother Otto--Ah, you know well enough what I wish to say."

"No, gracious lady, you give me credit for too much wisdom."

"It should offend me if you are reserved towards me, and are on such intimate terms with the outside acquaintances of the family. The Major's housekeeper boasts of your being her favorite, and yet do you know nothing of the private betrothal?"

"Not until this moment. I offer my congratulations, and I am proud, gracious lady, that you initiate me with such confidingness into your family affairs."

"Do you know," cried Bella quickly, "do you know that I promise myself a great deal of pleasure from you?"

"From me? What can I do?"

"That is not my meaning, to speak in direct terms. I have thought a great deal about you. You are of an impulsive disposition, but you are still an enigma to me, and I hope that I also am to you."

"I had not allowed myself, indeed--"

"I allow you to allow yourself. Then, Herr Captain, or Herr Doctor, or Herr Dournay, but, at any rate, Herr Neighbor, we will make a contract. I shall try to resolve for myself the contradictions and oddities of your nature, and make such investigations as I am able to; on the other hand, I allow you to do the same with me. Do you not find this attractive?"

"Attractive and dangerous."

Bella straightened herself up, and Eric continued:--

"Dangerous for me, for you know what friend Hamlet says, that if our deserts are known, 'who can escape a whipping?'"

"I am glad that you are not polite, but neither should you be diffident."

"I mean, that it might be dangerous for me, not for you."

"I am too proud to sell, or to throw away politeness, as the Austrian proverb says."

"I am glad that you are too proud for it too."

"And now tell me in what way you saw Manna, and how she appeared to you."

Eric narrated the casual meeting, and how he had first learned her name through the daughter of the Justice.

"Ah, indeed, indeed, Lina," said Bella, and her fingers moved very rapidly, as if she were playing a piano in the air. It was an agreeable recreation to look upon the playing of this sentimental game, for Lina had a decided penchant for Otto. But the naïve Innocence knew very well that Otto had a preference for Manna, and it was not so very bad a plan to introduce to Manna so handsome a suitor as Eric.

While Bella was walking with Eric, Pranken had taken Roland very confidingly by the hand, and visited with him the stables and the young dogs; then he led him into an unfrequented part of the park, very remote from the road. Their talk was very naturally about Eric, and Roland could not find words to tell how all-wise and all-good he was. Pranken rebuked, with a stern countenance, the application of such words to a human being, and he impressed very strenuously upon him, that he could learn much from the worldly man that would be advantageous to him in the world, but there was a highest which he was not to entrust to him, and wherein he was to be in no way obedient.

And now he spoke of Manna. There was an expression of devotion in his words, as well as in his tone. He took the book, which he always carried over his heart, out of his breast-pocket, and showed Roland the exact place which Manna reads to-day; by running away, Roland had let several days slip without reading the same passages, but he could now catch up by diligence. But, more than all, Herr Dournay need know nothing of it, for no one of a different faith should step between Roland and his God.

Pranken seated himself with Roland under a great nut-tree, by the road, and read aloud some expressive passages. The boy looked at him in wonderment. The Wine-chevalier rode by; he called out a greeting to Pranken, but the latter returned it with only a friendly wave of the hand, and continued his reading.

It was like a release to Roland when Bella and Eric came along, engaged in a merry, jesting conversation. He called to them, and shortly after joined Eric; and Bella went by the side of her brother, who twirled his moustaches and surveyed his handsome boots. When Eric and Roland had departed, Pranken straightened himself up, and began to appeal directly to Bella's conscience for coquetting and trifling thus with a young man.

Bella stood still, seemingly at a loss whether to laugh at her brother or sharply reprove him; but she concluded in favor of the former course, and ridiculed the new convert.

"Ah," she cried, "you are very properly afraid that this Herr Dournay will be pleasing to the glorified Manna, and you suppose the same in regard to me. You have just hit it. The man has something bewitching for us women, provided we are shut up in the bonds of wedlock, or in a convent."

Pranken did not fall in with this tone; he repeated, that every jest, every act of trifling, bordered upon a sin, and jesting was liable to remove imperceptibly the boundary line. He was so zealous, that he took the book out of his breast-pocket, and read aloud to Bella a passage having reference to the subject.

Bella looked with astonishment when Otto exhibited so pious a book: she pointed out to her brother, meanwhile, what impregnable virtue was; she made fun of the young man, who had a truly revolting self-confidence. Moreover, Otto could be wholly at rest, if there was the appearance of an understanding between her and Eric; yes, she would willingly make, so far, a sacrifice for him; her virtue would be secure from every misconstruction, and she would assume this appearance, in order to free Otto from a dangerous rival.

"I am, indeed, in earnest," she concluded. "Are the good to deny to themselves a friendly intercourse, because the bad conceal under this appearance all kinds of baseness? That would be a world turned upside down; that would be the subjection of the good to the evil."

Bella was not aware, or she did not think it worth while to take note of it, that she here set forth a remark of her husband. Pranken looked at her with surprise. Was he, in fact, misled by his newly awakened zeal, or was this only a nicely-woven veil, a mere outside show of virtue? He was in perplexity; he was at a loss what to say in reply to this jesting and playful tone, to these insinuous and flexible evasions of his sister.

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IV. A FRUSTRATED PLAN

Eric found great difficulty in keeping his pupil steadily at his lessons, so completely was he taken up with the thought of the journey.

The day came for the journey to the convent; it was a bright day of sunshine.

Eric requested that he might remain behind; Sonnenkamp immediately agreed, adding kindly that it would probably be agreeable to Eric to have a few quiet days alone. This considerateness appeared very friendly to Eric, who returned it by saying that it should be his endeavor not to estrange Roland from his family.

Pranken drove over with his sister, and Bella told Eric that Clodwig sent a message, begging for his company during their absence. Eric became thus aware, for the first time, that he had never been expected to join the party; he immediately stifled the sensitive feelings arising from this, as well as from some other occurrences. Roland alone urged him pressingly to go with them, saying, unreservedly,--

"Manna will be very much vexed if you do not come; she ought to see you too."

Sonnenkamp smiled oddly at this entreaty, and Pranken turned away to conceal his features.

Roland took a most affectionate leave of Eric; it was the first time that he was to be parted from him for hours and through the night: he promised, meanwhile, to tell Manna much about him. Something unusual must have been passing in the boy's mind, for just at the moment of departure, he said to Eric,--

"You and the house, you don't go away from your place."

Eric pressed his hand warmly.

They drove to the steamboat in three carriages. Pranken with Frau Ceres, Sonnenkamp with Fräulein Perini and Bella, and, in the third carriage, Roland and the servants.

They drove a short distance up the river to take the boat, and as they afterwards shot quickly past the Villa, Eric was standing on the beautiful, wooded hill, whence there was a view down the stream, where the mountains seemed to meet to compel the river to spread out into a lake. Roland waved his hat from the boat, and Eric answered the greeting in the same way, saying to himself,--

"Farewell, boy dear to my heart."

Whoever understands the meaning of the fact that Eric could not send a greeting into the distance, where it was inaudible, without speaking an earnest word of love,--whoever understands this, has the key to the depths of Eric's character.

The boat puffed by, the waves in its wake plashed for a while against the shore, and tossed the pretty pleasure-boat up and down, then all was still again. The steamboat shot down the stream, and the party on board was very cheerful. Pranken occupied himself with special attentions to Frau Ceres, who, wrapped in fine shawls, sat on the deck.

Roland had received permission to take Griffin with him. All on board were struck by the handsome boy, and many expressed their admiration aloud.

For a short distance the Wine-count and his son, the Wine-chevalier, travelled with them. The old gentleman, a tall, distinguished-looking man, wore his red ribbon in his button-hole; the young man was very much pleased to meet Pranken there, and especially happy to be able to salute Frau Bella.

Towards Sonnenkamp and his family both these old inhabitants had hitherto borne themselves with some reserve; to-day they seemed to wish to change this reserve for a more friendly manner, but Sonnenkamp held back, not choosing that they should make advances to him now that they saw him in a position of honor; and he was evidently relieved when they left the steamer, at the second stopping-place, where there was a large Water-cure establishment. On the landing stood the steward of the prince's household with his invalid son, waiting for the two gentlemen. Bella received a most respectful bow from his Excellency, and she told Herr Sonnenkamp, as they went on their way, that it was almost a settled matter, that the daughter of the rich wine-merchant was to marry the invalid son of the steward.

The day was bright and clear; hardly a breath of wind blew upon the swiftly-moving boat. Roland frequently overheard: some one whispering half aloud to some passenger, newly come on board, "There is the rich American, who is worth ten millions."

A special table was laid on deck for Sonnenkamp's party, and Joseph had it ornamented with flowers and brightly-polished wine-coolers. Sonnenkamp's servants, in their coffee-colored livery, waited on them.

At table Roland asked,--

"Father, is it true, that you are worth ten millions?"

"People have not yet counted my money," replied Sonnenkamp, smiling; "at all events you will have enough to allow you to order such a dinner as we have to-day."

The boy did not seem satisfied with this answer, and Sonnenkamp added,--

"My son, one is rich only by comparison."

"Mark the words, rich only by comparison," repeated Pranken; "that's a fine expression; it includes a whole balance-sheet."

Sonnenkamp smiled; he was always pleased when any one dwelt on an expression of his with special emphasis.

"Ah, travelling is so pleasant, so jolly, if we only had Eric with us!" cried Roland.

No one answered. The boy seemed unusually talkative, for as the champagne was opened, and Bella proposed Manna's health, he said to Pranken,--

"You ought to marry Manna."

The ladies gave an odd look at the two men; Roland had given utterance to the wish of all. He became more and more the central object of the conversation and the jesting, and more and more talkative and extravagant; he uttered the wildest nonsense, and at last complied with Pranken's request that he would imitate the candidate Knopf. He smoothed his hair back, took snuff from his left hand, which he held like a snuff-box, and constantly tapped; he suddenly assumed a perfectly strange voice and expression, as, in a stiff, wooden manner, he declaimed the fourth conjugation, and the precepts of Pythagoras, with a mixture of all sorts of other things.

"Now can you mimic Herr Dournay?" asked Pranken.

Roland was struck dumb. A stony look came into his face, as if he had seen some monster; then he grew suddenly calm, and looked at Pranken as if he would annihilate him, saying,--

"I will never again imitate Candidate Knopf, that I vow from this day forth."

The boy, who was excited by wine and by talking, became suddenly quiet, and disappeared, so that the servants had to be sent in search of him. He was found on the forward deck with his dog, great tears in his eyes; he allowed himself to be led back to his friends without opposition, but he continued silent.

The steamboat glided on and on; the vineyards glowed in the midday sunshine, and soon it was said,--

"Only two more stops, then comes the convent."

Roland went back to his dog, and said,--

"Griffin, now we are going to Manna; aren't you glad?" It was still high noon when they landed by the weeping-willows on the shore, and entered the refreshing shade of the park which surrounded the convent. The servants were left in a large inn on the other bank of the river.

No one was on the shore awaiting the travellers, although their coming had been announced beforehand.

"Manna not here?" asked Sonnenkamp as he sprang ashore, and the fierce look, which he generally knew how to conceal, came into his face.

Frau Ceres only turned her head towards him, and he became gentle and mild.

"I only hope the good child is not sick," he added, in a tone which would have suited a hermit doing penance.

They went to the convent, whose doors were closed; the church alone was open, and a nun, with veiled face, was prostrate in prayer, while the bright sunshine sparkled out of doors. The visitors, who had crossed the threshold, drew quietly back; they rang at the convent door, and the portress opened it. Herr Sonnenkamp inquired whether Fräulein Hermanna Sonnenkamp were well; the portress answered in the affirmative, and added, that if they were her parents, the Superior begged them to come to her in the parlor. Sonnenkamp asked Bella, Pranken, and Fräulein Perini to wait in the garden; he wished Roland to stay with them, but the boy said,--

"No, I'm going with you."

His mother took his hand and spoke for the first time.

"Very well, you can stay with me."

Griffin remained outside. Roland and his parents were shown into the presence of the Superior, who received them with a very friendly and dignified bearing. She asked a sister who was with her to leave them alone, and then requested the visitors to be seated. It was cool and pleasant in the large room, where hung pictures of saints painted on a gold background.

"What is the matter with our daughter?" asked Sonnenkamp at last, breathing deeply.

"Your child, whom we may call our child also,--for we love her no less than you do,--is quite well; she is generally yielding and patient too, but sometimes she shows an incomprehensible self-will, amounting almost to stubbornness."

A rapid flash from Sonnenkamp's eyes fell upon his wife, who looked at him and moved her upper lip very slightly. The Superior did not notice this, for while she spoke she either closed her eyes or kept them cast down; she quietly continued,--

"Our dear Manna refuses to see her parents, unless they will promise beforehand that she may remain with us at the convent through the winter; she says that she does not yet feel herself strong enough to enter the world."

"And you have granted her this condition?" asked Sonnenkamp, as he ran his hand through his white neck-handkerchief, and loosened it.

"We have nothing to grant to her; you are her parents, and have unconditional power over your child."

"Of course," burst out Sonnenkamp, "of course, if her thoughts are influenced--but I beg your pardon, I interrupted you."

"By no means, I have finished; you have to decide whether you will agree to the condition beforehand; you have full parental power. I will call one of the sisters to conduct you to Manna's cell; it is not locked. I have only performed the child's commission, now act according to your own judgment."

"Yes, that I will do, and she shall not stay here an hour longer!"

"If her mother has any voice in the matter," began Frau Ceres.

Sonnenkamp looked at her as if some speechless piece of furniture had spoken, and Frau Ceres continued, not to him, but to the Superior,--

"I declare as her mother that we will lay no compulsion upon her; I grant her this condition."

Sonnenkamp started up and clutched the back of a chair; there was a violent struggle within him, but suddenly he said, in a most gentle tone,--

"Roland, go now to Herr von Pranken."

Roland was forced to leave the convent, his heart beating fast. There was his sister in a room above; what was to happen to her? Why could he not go to her, embrace and kiss her, and play with her long dark hair as he used to do? He went out of doors, but not to Pranken; he entered the open church, and there he knelt and prayed with deep fervor. He could not have said for what he prayed, but he asked for peace and beauty, and suddenly, as he looked up, he started back; there was the great picture of St. Anthony of Padua, and, wonderful to say, this picture resembled Eric,--the noble, beautiful face was Eric's.

The boy gazed long at it; at last he laid his head on his hands, and--blessed power of youth!--he fell asleep.

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V. SECRET, SILENT LOVE

The parents entered Manna's cell. Manna calmly met them, and said,--

"Welcome, and may God's blessing be with you!" She extended her hand to her father; her hand thrilled as she felt the ring on her father's thumb. Then she threw herself upon her mother's breast and kissed her.

"Forgive me," she cried, "forgive me! Do not think me heartless; I must do so--no, I will to do so. I thank you, that you have granted my request."

"Yes, indeed, we put no constraint upon you," said the mother; and Sonnenkamp, who had not yet assented, was obliged to comply with her wishes.

Manna's countenance became suddenly lighted up; she said that she was glad to see her parents looking so well, and that she prayed for them daily, and that heaven would hearken to her prayer. Manna had a tone of voice in which one seemed to feel the repressed tears; this voice appeared to affect Sonnenkamp, so that he placed his hand upon his heart, and his posture and look were as if he were making a silent vow.

When Manna asked after Roland, he said, with the mien of one speaking to a person who has been ill and is just convalescent, that Roland was in the park, and Manna must go with them, and greet the ladies and Herr von Pranken.

When her father mentioned this name, a slight shudder went over Manna, but she said with immediate composure,--

"I will see no one but you and Roland."

A lay-sister was sent for Roland. Meanwhile, Manna explained, that, according to the regulations, she must return for a year to the world, and then--she hesitated a moment, and ended with the words--if her present resolution continued, she would take the veil.

"And will you never tell me, why and how this thought has sprung up in you?" asked Sonnenkamp in a supplicating tone.

"Indeed I will, father, when it is all over."

"I don't comprehend! I don't comprehend it!" cried Sonnenkamp aloud. Manna hushed the loud tone of her father with her hand, signifying to him that here in the convent no one spoke so loud.

Roland, after whom they had been looking for a long time, was terrified and shrank back, when, awakened suddenly by a form clothed in black, he found himself in the church. He was conducted to Manna. He embraced his sister heartily, crying out,--? "You good, bad sister!"

He could say no more, from the impetuosity of his feelings.

"Not so violent," said the maiden, soothingly. "Indeed! what a strong lad you have got to be!"

"And you so tall! And you look like him, but Eric, is handsomer than you are. Yes, laugh if you will! Isn't it so, mother? Isn't it, father? Ah, how glad he will be when you return home, and how much you will like him too!"

Roland talked sometimes of St. Anthony, sometimes of Eric, mingling them together, and telling what an excellent man he had for a teacher and friend: and when Manna said that she should not go home until spring, Roland ended by saying,--

"You can very well imagine how Herr Eric looks; when you go into the chapel, look at St. Anthony, he looks exactly like him, exactly as good. But he can also be strict; he has been an artillery-officer."

Again the father made the request, and the mother joined in it, that Manna would accompany them in their journey to the baths, after which she would be allowed to come back to the convent.

Manna informed them that she could not interrupt her studies and her retreat.

The strange, thrilling tone of her voice had something saddening in it, and when she now stated how earnestly she hoped to become clear and resolute in her determination to be constant to the religious life, tears came into her mother's eyes. But her father gazed fixedly at her; he hardly saw his child, hardly knew where he was. He heard a voice, which once--it seemed incredible that he was the same person--he had heard many, many years ago; and as he thus gazed, he saw not his child, not the scenes around him, he saw nothing but a neglected little mound of earth in the churchyard of a Polish village. He passed his broad hand over his whole face, and, as if waking up, he looked now at his child, and heard her saying,--

"I shall be constant to the life."

He had heard all that had here transpired, and yet his thought and his internal eye had been fixed upon a far distant scene, scarcely comprehensible. Now he repeated his request that Manna would just go with them into the park, and salute the friends; that she ought not to slight them; but Manna firmly persisted that she could not go.

Manna had requested a sister to send for Heimchen; the child came, and looked wonderingly at the strangers. Manna pointed out to the child her parents and her brother. The child, scarcely glancing at the parents, nestled up to Roland, when Manna said,--

"This is my brother I have told you of."

"I like you," said the child, "I like you."

She was as confiding with Roland as if she had always played with him. "And will you be my brother?" asked the child.

Manna declared how happy it made her, to be able to do so much for the child.

Sonnenkamp hummed to himself,--

"Yes, yes, that's the way. I know what you are, a child who takes to a stranger child. But enough!"

He rose hastily.

The parents and Roland left the cell. Manna remained there with Heimchen.

Upon the steps, Sonnenkamp said to his wife,--

"This is your doing! The child is estranged from me; you have turned her heart from me, you have said to her----"

A strange laugh, a laugh sounding as if it came from some other person, was uttered by Frau Ceres. Roland stared at her; here is something incomprehensible to him.

The parents and the boy rejoined the visitors in the park, and Sonnenkamp informed them very calmly that he had given permission to his daughter, in order not to interrupt and disturb her education by outside impressions, to remain at the convent until Easter. Pranken darted a strange glance at Sonnenkamp, and then expressed his admiration of the imperturbable composure with which Sonnenkamp accomplished everything.

Bella and Fräulein Perini had walked over the island. They did not return for a long time; at last they came from the room of the Superior.

Evening was approaching, and as they embarked on the boat, Roland cried, looking towards the convent,--

"Good-night, Manna."

Manna had heard the good-bye, she had slipped into the park, taken a farewell look at the departing visitors, and then went quietly into the chapel.

As they reached the shore, they heard the choir of girls' voices singing with clear tone at the convent.

"This may sound very fine to him who has no child joining in it," said Sonnenkamp to himself.

In the large inn there was hurrying and commotion, as if a prince had arrived with his suite, for Sonnenkamp was fond of making a display of his wealth. The large garden was festively illuminated, this party of travellers was served with special consideration, and every other arrival, on this evening, hardly received any attention. When all was still, a boat, in which Pranken sat, rowed over to the convent. He landed on the island, and heard the music of a harp from an open window. That came from Manna, he was sure. Soon a light was visible in a cell, here and there, windows were opened, the heads of girls appeared and looked out once more into the night; then the windows were closed, the lights extinguished, and the harp-playing ceased.

Pranken saw the church open, and entering, he knelt down and prayed silently. Then he heard a light step, and a sound, as if some one knelt down before the altar; a thrill passed over him, and yet he did not look up, and if he had, he could not have recognized any thing in the darkness lighted only by the solitary, ever-burning lamp. The form arose, and went towards the open church door. The moon cast a broad beam as far as the middle aisle of the church; now, as the form stood in the doorway, Pranken approached and said,--

"Fräulein Manna, a friend. Fear not, a man, who through you has known salvation, stands before you. I have not come to shake your holy resolve, I have only come to tell you what I have become by your instrumentality. No, I cannot tell you--but you ought to know this,--if you take the veil, then I also will renounce the world; apart from each other, so long as we live on this earth, we will live for heaven. Farewell, a thousand times farewell, thou pure, thou blessed one! farewell!"

The young man and the maiden looked upon each other as if they were no longer living creatures of human passions, as if they were transported above the world. Manna could not utter a single word; she simply dipped her hand into the vessel of holy water, and sprinkled Pranken's face three times.

With hasty step, Pranken went to the shore. Manna stood and laid her hand upon her brow.

Has all this been only a vision of her own fancy?

Then she heard the stroke of oars in the river, and a voice again cried:--

"Thou pure, thou blessed one!"

Then all was still.

On the other side a chain rattled, the boat was drawn up to the shore, and no sound was heard; only the waves of the river, which are not heard by day, rippled and plashed and murmured in the still night. Manna thought that she could hear the blood as it flowed through her heart, so full, so oppressed, and yet so blissful.

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VI. A DAY WITHOUT PEN OR TYPE

Eric stood on the shore gazing after the boat, from which Roland was waving at a distance his white handkerchief. To see a person so attached to us flitting away from us in a vessel, seems as if one should love a bird which soars freely up into the air where it cannot be reached; and yet it is different. Human love connects by invisible ties, and this signalizing from afar is a sign of a thought in common, of communication of feeling and participation of interest, notwithstanding all separation by space.

When the boat had disappeared, and only a light streak of vapor floated along the vine-covered slopes, Eric remained standing upon the hill, and as the faint mists hovered in the air, so hovered in his soul the last words of Roland's farewell,--"You and the house do not move from your place."

What a commotion, what an upheaving and swelling, there is in the soul of youth, until it comes to some expression, like an opening blossom!

But that which is closed and wrapped up in the bud has an equal beauty and depth of sentiment, but it is not manifest to us, and does not breathe upon us with such a fragrant and charming loveliness.

So thought Eric as he looked at an acacia-tree, whose buds were yet unopened, and which had put forth not even a green leaf.

Eric was now alone at the villa. He inhaled the quiet, the peace, and the stillness in full draughts, as if, after long days and nights of travel upon the noisy steam-cars, he should suddenly come into the silent woods; yes, as if he were lying deep down at the bottom of the river, and over him were gently rippling the cooling waves. He did not read, he did not write, he enjoyed only an unfathomable rest.

He did not mean to comply with Clodwig's invitation to visit him, until the next day. Eric was certainly removed from all selfishness, but the freedom of living for a whole day without being called upon to talk, and of being entirely by himself, had a charm for him as if he had now, for the first time, escaped out of the captivity of servitude, and acquired the disposal of himself. The thought came over him at one time, that Clodwig was expecting him but he said almost aloud,--

"I cannot!--I must not!" He wished to pass a single day without speaking or being spoken to, to be by himself, alone, speechless, solitary, referring to no one, and no one referring to him.

He thought, for one moment, of writing to his mother, but he dismissed the idea. No one was to have anything of him, he would have all of himself. This perpetual obligation to think for others, this striving for them and love to them, seemed to him a painful and keen suffering; there was now, in the depths of his soul, a call for solitude. For a single day only would he be an egoist, live in absolute rest, and let no book, no relation of life, no longing, no endeavor, deprive him of aught of this entire loneliness.

This villa was called Eden, and he would, for one day, be the first man alone in Eden. He looked at a tree and nodded to it. Fixed thus, abiding in himself, like this tree, would he live for just a single day.

He lay down in the park under a spreading beech-tree, and dreamed away the day. There is a low, gladsome rippling of being and of feeling, without definite thought or volition, which is the inmost desire of those harassed with restless thought and anxious care. Eric lay thus, happy in himself, contemplating and breathing alone, so that the step of a gardener upon the grating gravel aroused him as from a dream. The gardener began to rake the path; it was a strangely harsh sound. Eric would have liked to bid him keep still, but he forbore, and said to himself, smiling,--

"Thou art just such a raker of the paths."

He looked into the branches of the trees, and as the gentle breeze moved them to and fro, so he allowed his thoughts to be swayed hither and thither, with no desire, no conscious endeavor,--simply living. All was peaceful and silent within him. How long, ever since its first shooting forth, has such a leaf been moved by the wind the whole summer long, until it drops, and then--well, then?

A smile passed over his countenance. We are no longer alone, because there is a second self, and one is conscious of his own unconsciousness. And the thought proceeded farther. Yes, solitude, this is the rest upon the mother-earth, this is the story of Antæus, who is inspired with fresh strength from the ever-present energies of mother-earth, as soon as he touches her. We are raised from the ground by our constant thinking, and so are rendered powerless. And farther yet went his dreaming and meditation. This is one trouble of wealth, this is its curse, that it does not enter into the heavens, cannot again be immersed in the primitive might of earthly being, for wealth possesses everything except this, a deliverance from the world, a being alone with one's self. Ballast! ballast! too much ballast!

The doctor's word came into his mind, and the word ballast again and again recurred to his thoughts, just as the finch in the tree over his head continually repeated the same notes.

In the midst of this dreaming and unlimited contemplation, he fell asleep, and when he waked up, he was invigorated and full of a fresh life; for the first time, since a long period, he felt at home within himself. He smiled, for a new thought occurred to him, and, as it were, shone through him. Adam slept in Paradise, and when he waked, he saw his wife by his side; a world is his, and also another who is to become one with him.

It was one of those days and hours in which all the past and the present, all that humanity has ever dreamed and ever obtained for itself by toil, bright with a reflected glory, and gleaming in its own splendor, stands before the eyes. All riddles seem solved. All is peaceful, harmonious, and divine.

So must it be to the thoughtful man when he awakens from the sleep of death, and the eternal life opens to his view.

But the struggle must be entered upon anew, in order to maintain the battle of life.

Eric went into the park and around the house, and took in all with newly opened eyes; he had forgotten how all looked, it had been put far away, and now he surveyed everything like a man newly awakened and endowed with fresh strength.

It is well that the world abides, and is always ready in its place when we return to it again from the sphere of unconscious forgetfulness.

A whole day passed, in which Eric read nothing and wrote nothing.

The next morning, ordering his horse to be saddled, he mounted and rode towards Clodwig's house.

He had scarcely been riding fifteen minutes, when a boy called to him, and brought him a letter. He read it, nodded, and rode in good spirits to the village.

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VII. OUR FRIEND KNOPF

On the bright summer days people sail joyously up and down the river, everything sparkles and glitters in the sunlight, and is full of gladness. Who there thinks how much sorrow, how much weariness, anguish, and care, dwell within the houses they pass by? Look yonder at the high-perched village, that seems to rise so prettily out of the river, and sends to us now the sound of bells; there goes a poor village schoolmaster, with depressed countenance, from the church to the school-house. But to-day his face is lighted up, for a faithful friend stands in front of the schoolhouse, and extends to him his hand.

"Hey! you here, Herr Knopf?" cried the schoolmaster.

"The free Republic of the United States gives me a day's freedom. You see before you an independent man. Ah, dear Fassbender, I am specially born to be a teacher of girls; I tell you that previous to the deluge of their first ball, girls are the choicest blossoms of our planet."

Knopf related to his fellow-teacher how happy he was to have for a pupil a bright American girl, quick of apprehension; and his homely countenance, as he spoke, assumed a wholly different expression.

Knopf had, in fact, an ugly face, it was so full of seams. His nose, mouth, brow, even his eyebrows, which projected somewhat over his light-blue eyes whenever he wore no spectacles, as was now the case, all seemed kneaded out of dough. But now, as he spoke of his pupil, his countenance, was lighted up.

He made known that he had come hither, in order to give Roland's present instructor some hints concerning the character of his pupil, and the manner in which he could best be advanced. He had already been walking since before sunrise, and it was a refreshing walk. He felt now that it was not needful for him to go to the villa, he would make an appointment with the tutor to meet him here, and requested that a boy might carry a note from him to Captain Dournay.

The children came up one after another, and saluted Herr Knopf, whom they already knew. A curly-headed boy was very happy to be the bearer of the note to Villa Eden, instead of being obliged to sit in school.

Knopf knew a beautiful spot back of the village, under a linden on the crown of the hill, where there was a wide prospect on every side. Strolling thither, he laid himself down under the tree, and surveyed the landscape with a joyful glance.

"In grass and flowers I love to lie, And hear afar the flute's sweet sigh,"

he said almost aloud to himself. And since in our steam-puffing times there is no flute to be heard, Knopf screwed his cane, which was intended also for a flute, into the right shape, and played upon it the tune set by Conrad Kreuzer to Uhland's song. He was more pleased at the thought that others would hear this at a distance, than that he was hearing it himself.

No boat went up or down the stream that he did not signalize it with a white handkerchief. What matter if those on board were strangers? He has given them a sign that he on the height here is happy; they below there are to be happy too. The signal may tell them that.

Yes, Knopf deserves to be known more intimately.

The son of a poor schoolmaster, Knopf had gone through his university course with great difficulty, and had passed his examination; but now he fell into great misfortune. On the very first day of his year of probation, the boys stamped and hissed, and the more he bade them be quiet, so much the more noisy were they; and the more enraged he became, so much the more insolent was their derision. The director came to his assistance, but as soon as he went away from the schoolroom, the noise and stamping began afresh. It was granted to Knopf to pass his year of probation in a distant city; but some invisible sprite must have spread abroad his mishap, for very soon after he began teaching, the same thing happened here. And now he gave up entirely the office of a public school teacher.

Knopf was abundantly liked at the capital as a teacher of girls. Inasmuch as he was so fabulously ugly, mothers could entrust their half-grown daughters to his private instruction, without the least anxiety lest they should fall in love with him. He was conscientious and painstaking, but he did not succeed. He was liked in all the families, but no one wished to employ him exclusively, or for any considerable length of time; he was only a temporary teacher. No other one had so many deceased scholars as he, for many were committed to his instruction only after they became ailing.

Knopf had been much at the watering-places, and when the parents could not go with their children to the baths, he was entrusted with that service; he was both tutor and attendant. He was also teacher for some time in an asylum for idiots, and his conscience often reproved him, then and afterwards, for not remaining in that position; but he asserted that he was too much a devotee of the beautiful.

Yes, he wanted to explore what kind of humane institutions were established among the Greeks and Romans. He found that they had very few children morally and physically diseased. Knopf had a plan, which he held on to for some time, of establishing an institution for the care of sick children at some salt-spring; for iodine is the watch-word of the cultivated, that is, the possessing world, whose humours are acrid: he hoped to find an associate for the sacred iodine. Meanwhile he remained a make-shift teacher for girls.

Greek and Roman mythology was his strong point, and it is extremely important that a maiden in cultivated society should make no mistake in that. His favorite pursuit was, however, the interpretation of the poets, especially the romantic. Of course, he was himself a poet, but modestly, only to himself. There, were probably in the capital few albums, begun by very young girls and afterwards abandoned, which did not contain a sonnet, or oftener a triolet, beautifully written by Emil Knopf for his dear pupil. He had also a musical knowledge sufficient to direct the private practising of pupils, and he was particularly strict, yes, even unmerciful, in keeping time. He could also draw sufficiently well to give assistance in that respect, especially in drawing flowers. He was also handy and popular in wedding-games, whenever one of his pupils was married. He not only knew how to make the maidens speak, in the language of flowers, as "I am the rose," "I am the violet," but he could bring out jokes and sportive allusions; and while the players in their fine dresses were declaiming; and forming charming tableaux, he sat in the prompter's box, and breathed to them the words. How happy he was, too, at some public dinner, and how assentingly he nodded, when this or the other speaker recited by heart, or read from a manuscript, the toast he had himself composed!

Emil Knopf was one of the most serviceable of men; he was proud of never having advertised in the newspapers; he was recommended from mouth to mouth, and for the most part from one fair mouth to another, one mother speaking in his commendation to another, and the fathers smiling and saying, "Yes, Herr Knopf is a very conscientious teacher."

If he were in a house where smoking was disagreeable, he chewed roasted coffee-berries, and he was just as contented with that. Knopf liked to take snuff, but he did it only when he was alone, and very quietly; he carried a colored and a white pocket-handkerchief, so that the gentleman and the lady of the house might not notice that he took snuff. One very peculiar habit he could not break himself of, that of hitching up the trousers on both legs, as if they were going suddenly to drop down from his body.

But this is no sufficient reason for his appearing destined to be only a temporary teacher, nothing but a pedagogical nurse for a few weeks. Knopf is taken into some family until the stress of sickness or need of some kind is over, and then he is dismissed with very courteous, very friendly words; but still always dismissed. Fourteen half-yearly terms--Knopf always reckoned by the semester, and we must do the same by him--Knopf lived at the capital; and, during this period, he always intended to procure a wholesale quantity of a brand of cigars which should taste right, but he never made up his mind. Fourteen semesters he smoked, from week's end to week's end, different kinds of cigars on trial, and was perpetually asking what was the price by the thousand, but he never succeeded in getting the thousand at one time.

Knopf was, naturally, one of the clumsiest of mortals, but he trained himself to be one of the best swimmers and gymnastic performers, so that he was, for a time, assistant teacher of gymnastics. Having been employed twice in the country, where it is so difficult to procure piano-tuners, he had been led to learn how to tune pianos himself; but he would never do it except in the house where he happened to be temporarily living. Several persons asserted that he could also knit and do plain sewing, but this was unmitigated slander. He could darn stockings in a most masterly style, but no one had ever seen him do it, he always did it secretly by himself.

Knopf had come to Herr Sonnenkamp likewise as a temporary candidate and temporary teacher; here a longer tarrying seemed to be allotted to him, and a future free from anxiety. Knopf had an enthusiastic love for Roland, and although the boy learned nothing thoroughly with him, Knopf used to say to his crony, the teacher Fassbender,--

"The Gods never learned anything, they had it all in themselves. Who can tell us the name of Apollo's teacher of music, or with what chief-butler Ganymede served his apprenticeship? Fine natures have all in themselves, and do not require instruction. We are only cripples with all our learning; we are tyrannized over by the four Faculties, but life is no four-sided figure."

This, then, is our friend Knopf; and he was called "our friend Knopf" in the best families of the land.

Knopf had just left off playing the flute, and was now sitting with his writing-tablets upon his knee, looking sometimes, round upon the landscape, sometimes writing rapidly a few words; then he would put his pencil in his mouth, and seemed ruminating for some new turn of expression. One could see the road for a great distance, leading from the village, by the villa, to the neighboring hamlet. Now Knopf saw a man on horseback coming towards him. He transformed speedily his flute into a walking-stick again, concealed his tablets, and then hastened across the vineyard down to the highway.

"Yes, he who sits a horse so well, he is just the right teacher for him," said Knopf. He took off his hat; while still at a distance, the rider nodded to him.

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VIII. A WALK IN THE OPEN AIR

The rider approached, and was soon by the side of Knopf, who, unable to utter a word, looked in surprise at the noble figure. Eric said, however,--

"Have I the honor of seeing my colleague, Herr Knopf?"

"Yes, I am he."

Eric swung himself quickly from the saddle, and held out his hand.

"I thank you," he said; and at every word which he spoke, at every tone of his voice, Knopf's face brightened; more and more knots and seams showed themselves all over it, as Eric continued,--

"It was my intention to visit you very soon; but I did not want to do so, until I had made my own independent observations on all sides."

"Very right," answered Knopf, "every judgment received from others is a prejudice." With constantly increasing admiration, Knopf looked at Eric, saying,--and the words sounded like a confession of love,--

"I am glad that you are really a handsome man. Ah, you may smile and shake your head, but that counts a great deal in this family, and especially with Roland. The Spartans had the wise law,--horrible indeed, but embodying a deep principle--that no deformed child should be allowed to live. All men ought properly to be handsome."

Eric placed his hand on Knopf's shoulder, unable to answer a word; admiration and a desire to laugh contended within him, but admiration conquered. A man of such an appearance must have overcome much in himself to be able to express himself in this way. He went with Knopf to the village, telling him that he ought to have come to see him at the villa, and that he would have found him quite alone, if he wished to avoid the family, for they had gone with Herr von Pranken to the convent, to bring Manna home.

"Ah, poor girl!" said Knopf, pityingly. "I can venture to say, that I have already had more than fifty lovely noble maidens as pupils, and not one-half, no, not one-quarter of them have married as I should have wished. Ah, Herr Colleague, you see I have never in my life repeated in one house what happened in another, and you can understand that it has been a difficult duty. Mothers always want to find out what goes on here and there, but I have refrained, on principle, from telling anything. Whoever gossips to me will gossip about me, my mother always said. I have taken heed of that, and so have got on very well."

Eric was delighted with the true-hearted man, and he quickly drove away the thought that Pranken was going to bring the rich bride for himself from the convent. What was the maiden to him?

He left his horse at the village inn, and Knopf conducted him to a spot under the lindens on the hill-top, and there explained his views about Roland.

"I must, like a child," he began, "tell you of my last observation, and my last trouble. You are not in a hurry? I must honestly confess to you, that nothing in our time vexes me so much, as to find people always in a hurry."

Eric set his mind at rest, by telling him that he had the whole day at his disposal, concluding,--

"Now, go on."

"Then for my last trouble. As I walked hither over the mountain, past the forest-chapel yonder, all was fresh with dew, the birds were singing undisturbed, heedless of the ringing of the matin bell in the chapel above, and of the railroad bell below. What did self-sufficing nature, in this season of early spring love, care for these sounds? But that isn't exactly what I meant to say to you," he interrupted himself, placing his hand upon his tablets, which undoubtedly contained a poem in this strain. "Only this--as I was walking along the wood-path, I heard children's voices, clear and merry, and a mild and gentle one seemed to have control over them. There came up the mountain a beautiful maiden--no, I beg your pardon, I did not see that she was beautiful till afterwards--I was just taking it comfortably, and had removed my spectacles in the green forest; now I put them on again, and saw first some beautiful, plump, white hands. The girl saw me, and I don't know what she may have thought, but she seemed frightened, and took the hand of her oldest brother, a boy of thirteen; two younger boys were following her. I passed them with a greeting; the maiden made only a slight acknowledgment, but the boys said 'good-morning,' aloud. We went our different ways, and I looked long after them.

"I turned back to the chapel. The quiet and order reigning there, where no human beings dwell, everything ready for their devotion, those holy vessels, the pictures, the candles, and the good priest. I don't believe a man who so bows down, kneels, and raises his hands in prayer, can be wholly a hypocrite; the lowest criminal in the jail would be an angel compared with him. The sermon itself was only a milk-and-water affair. But would you believe it? my real reason for going back had been a wish to see the maiden again, but I felt ashamed of having entered the church from such a motive, and I slipped out on tip-toe. And then all personal feeling dropped from me, and the great trouble came over me."

"What do you mean?"

"The trouble caused by our freedom oppressed me. The girl, hardly out of school, walks, in the fresh morning, through the mountain wood with her three young brothers, and they wander to the forest chapel, whence the bell calls to them. Think, if these four young creatures had had no such goal for their morning walk, none so safe and beautiful, what would it have been? a walk in the open air, nothing more! In the open air--what is that? It is nothing and nowhere. But to enter a firmly founded temple, where the organ is sounding, and holy hymns are sung, this must give fresh life to the youthful souls, and they bring home from their morning walk, leading through the open air, to a fixed goal, a wholly different refreshment for their spirits. And up there a divine service goes on, whether men come to it or not; nothing depends on the special character of a congregation, nor on the particular degree of culture of a particular man. It holds its course, uncaring whether it is received or not, like eternal nature; whoever comes may take part in it; no one asks, no one need know, whence he comes. If I could be a believer, I would be a Catholic, or a Jew of the old faith. But what is our life? a walk in the open air, without limit, but also without a destination! You see that I cannot but be sad, for I cannot compel myself to anything different, to anything positive. And as it is with me, so is it with this age, and yet we must regain something different; our life ought not be simply a walk in the open air, but through the open air to a firm, safe, home-like destination about which human spirits may gather. Oh, if I could only define it, seize upon it, and the millions of thirsting, pining human souls with me! And do you know," Knopf concluded, "then I thought of you and Roland? Do you now understand me?"

"Not perfectly."

"Ah, I have been too vague again. Plainly, then, this has been and is now my thought,--whither can you lead Roland? Into the open air. But what is he to do there? What will he find? What will he have? What will restrain or draw him onward? That is the point, there lies the hard riddle. The religion, the moral fortress, whither we have to lead the rich youth, has no walls, no roof; it has no image, no music, no consecrated form of words--there's the trouble! Do I make it clear to you?"

"Yes, yes, I understand you perfectly," said Eric, seizing the hand of his companion. "You express my very deepest thoughts; I hope, though, that it may be granted us to give a human being something that he may hold to within himself, without leaning on any outside support. Have not we two, who now stand here, this inward hold?"

"I believe so, or rather, I am sure of it. I thank you, you make me quite content," cried Knopf, with animation. "Ah, world! here we sit, and look off into the distance, watching for some sign, some word, which may penetrate and renew all our being; it comes not from without, it comes only from within ourselves. And in Roland there lies a complete human being, a genuine, primitive nature, in spite of all that has been done to smother it; he has bold presumption and wonderful tenderness, at the same time. He has many fine feelings, but youth cannot explain its feelings; if it could, it would be no longer youth. All sorts of elements exist in Roland, but we grown people cannot understand a child's heart. Let us ask ourselves whether, in our childhood, our best friends understood us as we really were. You will accomplish this, you are called to it."

"I?"

"Yes, it is so. A great, inscrutable plan guides all existence and binds it together. A wonderful law in the world, which some men call Providence, others fate, decrees that a man like you must be led in far-off paths, through various callings, and armed for his work, till he stands ready in his noble beauty. Ah, do not shake your head, let me go on; it is a holy thought, that a mysterious power, which we must name God, has led you hither to train a beautiful human being, an Apollo-like creature, who is to have nothing to do in the world but to be noble and to feel nobly. I did not rightly manage Roland; I sowed before I knew whether the soil was prepared. Today, as I saw a man raking in the vineyards, I thought, there is Copernicus."

"Copernicus?" asked Eric, in perplexity.

"Understand me aright; the first man who dug up the ground with pointed stick, horn, bone, or stone, in order to plant seeds, he moved the earth, he was the father of our culture, as Copernicus at last discovered that the whole planet is in motion."

"What do you think, then, is now to be made of Roland?" said Eric, bringing him back to the subject.

"What is to be made of him? A noble man. Is it not a mistaken course to drive a human being to goodness, by the sight of all sorts of misery and weakness? That makes him morbid, sentimental, and weak. The Greeks had a different method, that of energy, cheerfulness, self-reliance,--that makes him strong. Our virtue is no longer 'virtus,' but only a feminine hospital-work. Ah," continued Knopf, "the genuinely noble man, or the genuine man, is the unexamined man, a species no longer to be found in Europe. We are all born to be examined. That was the greatness of the Greek, that they had no examination commissions. Plato took no degree, and do you know, that is the greatness which is bringing forward a new Greece in America, that there also, properly speaking, there are no examinations."

"Don't wander so far," interposed Eric.

"Yes," Knopf went on unheeding, "Roland is the unexamined human being; he need learn nothing in order to be questioned about it. Why must every modern man become something special? 'Civis Romanus sum,' that ought to be sufficient."

Again Eric drew him back from his digression, asking,--

"Can you suggest any vocation for Roland?"

"Vocation! vocation! The best that can be learned is not found in any plan of study, and costs no school-fees. The division of callings, on which we so much pride ourselves, is nothing but a Philistine tyranny, a compulsory virtue. Common natures return payment by what they do, noble ones by what they are. Thus it is, if a noble being exists, and freely acts out his nature, he adorns humanity and benefits it. I have tried to guard in Roland a simple unconsciousness of wealth; we are not placed here merely to train ourselves to be brothers of mercy. Not every one need serve; to perfect one's self is a noble calling. I respect Cicero's maxim: 'He who does nothing is the free man.' The free man is the idler."

Eric disputed this, and Knopf was no little surprised, that Eric had the exact passage from Cicero in his memory, and could prove that Cicero only made the assertion that no man was free who was not sometimes idle: non aliquando nihil agit. He said besides that the statement of the German poet, that there could be a noble life without activity, without labor, was still more an error. He tried, however, to put an end to these general considerations. What effect could their thoughts and discussions, as they sat there on the hill-side, bring about concerning the vocation of humanity?

Knopf remarked assentingly that he had wandered too far, and said,--

"You ought to take Roland away from here."

"It would certainly be best, but you must know that it cannot be brought about."

"Yes, yes. I have tormented myself much with the idea whether there is any possibility of making Roland imagine himself poor, but, if a negation is logically susceptible of the comparative degree, that is still more impossible. I have read Jean Jacques Rousseau's Emile, and have found much that is good in it; I have also studied the treatise on Riches which is ascribed to Plato; and in Aristophanes there is to be found deep insight into poverty and wealth. If you will sometime come to Mattenheim, I will show them all to you."

Eric made some slight inquiries as to the causes which had removed Knopf from the family, but Knopf did not tell him; he only gave him to understand that Roland had been led astray by the French valet Armand, who had since been dismissed from the house. With unusual haste, he then left the subject, and said that he had hesitated about coming to Eric, but Herr Weidmann had read the wish in his face, and had encouraged him in it.

Eric promised soon to go to Mattenheim. Knopf was very happy to hear of Roland's industry and obedience, and Eric told him how from the life of Franklin he was giving him not only a personal ideal, but also taking occasion to lead him, as they studied Franklin's course of education, to perceive, acknowledge, and supply his own deficiencies.

"Do you know," exclaimed Knopf, springing up, "what can make one happier than those great words of Archimedes,--I have found it! Still more blessed are the words. Thou hast found it! Yes, you have found it!" he cried, drawing up his trousers; he would have liked to embrace Eric, but he did not venture.

And when Eric told him that he had been drawn to this most simple method by some notes of his father's, Knopf exclaimed, looking up into the free air,--

"Blessings on thy father! Blessings on thee, eternal Spirit! O world, how great and noble thou art! Now we know what one becomes, when one walks in the open air; one grows into a free man, a Benjamin Franklin. Here are two people on a hilltop by the Rhine, and they send a greeting to thee in eternity. Ah, pardon me!" said he, "I am not generally, like this, you may depend upon it. But, Herr Captain, if you ever, desire anything great and difficult of me, remind me of this hour, and you shall see what I can do."

Eric changed the subject by asking Knopf to tell him about his present pupils.

"Yes," said Knopf, "there it is again. Her parents have sent the child to Germany, because there was danger that yonder, in the land of freedom, her spirit would be fettered, for Dr. Fritz and his wife hold liberal opinions in religion, and are patterns of nobility of mind. The child was in an English school, and after the first half year, she began to wish to convert her parents, and constantly declared her determination to become a Presbyterian. She wept and prayed, and said she could find no repose because her parents were so godless. Is not this a most noteworthy phenomenon? Now her parents have sent the child to Germany, and certainly to the best home that could be found."

Knopf took a letter from his pocket; it was from Dr. Fritz, who, as a representative of German manhood and philanthropy, was busily working in the New World for the eradication of that shame which still rests on the human race in the continuance of slavery. Dr. Fritz gave the teacher an exact sketch of his little girl's character, which showed great impartiality in a father. He also pointed out how the child ought to be guided. In the letter there was a photograph of Dr. Fritz, a substantial-looking man, with a full beard, and light, crispy curling hair; something of youthful, even ideal aspiration spoke in the expression of the strong and manly face.

With an air of mystery Knopf then confided to Eric, that the child had lived in the New World within the magic circle of Grimm's tales, and it was strange--he could not find out whether it was pure fancy or fact--but the child had had an adventure on her journey that seemed to belong to a fairy tale.

"Her name is Lilian," said Knopf, "and you know that in English our mayflower is called the lily of the valley, and the child received a mayflower from some being in the wood who did not know her name. A wonderful story she has woven together in her little blond head, for she constantly insists that she has seen the wood-prince."

"You are secretly a poet," said Eric.

Involuntarily Knopf's hand went to his breast-pocket, where his tablets lay hidden, as if he suspected that Eric had stolen them from him.

"I allow myself now and then to string a verse together; but don't be frightened, I've never troubled any one else with them."

Eric felt cordially attracted towards this man, so dry in outward appearance, and yet so deeply enthusiastic; and as the bells rang again in the village, he said,--

"Now come and make me acquainted with the schoolmaster."

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IX. ANTHONY

The schoolmaster of the village was stiff and formal in manner; he received the Captain very humbly. The three were soon seated together at the inn, and the village teacher related the history of his life.

He was sixty-four years old, but seemed still very vigorous. He had the same reason for complaining which all public teachers have, and related with a mingled pride and bitterness that his son, twenty-one years of age, was receiving more than twice the pay in a cement-factory of the young Herr Weidmann, than his father was receiving after a service of two and thirty years. He had four sons, but not one should become a schoolmaster. Another son was a merchant, and the oldest a building-contractor in America.

"Yes," cried he, "we schoolmasters are no better off than any common day-laborer."

"Would you remain a schoolmaster," asked Eric, "if you had a competency?"

"No."

"And you would never have become one?"

"I think not."

"This is the deplorable part of it," cried Knopf, "that riches always say, and say rightly, I ought not to remove all need, for through this the beautiful and noble build themselves up; need calls into being the ideal, the virtuous. See here, Herr Captain Colleague, Herr Sonnenkamp, who is a good deal of a man, of wide observation, says,--

"'I must not trouble myself concerning the people about me, neither must Roland, for if he did, he would lose all comfort of his life; he would never be able to ride out, without thinking of the misery and suffering he witnessed in this place and in that.' See, here is our riddle. How can one at the same time be a person of elevated thought, and be rich? We teachers are the guardians of the ideal. Look at the villages all around; there is in them all a visible and an invisible tower, and the invisible is the ideality of the schoolmaster sitting there with his children. I honor you, because you also have become a schoolmaster."

Eric looked up in a sort of surprise, for his vanity was inwardly wounded at being reckoned a schoolmaster, but he quickly overcame it, and was happy in the thought. He prevailed upon the village schoolmaster to go on with the history of his life. He was a good mathematician, had been employed in the land-registry and in the custom-house; he lost his situation when the Zollverein was established; for two years he looked round for something to do, almost in a starving condition, and then became a schoolmaster. He had married well, that is, into a wealthy family, so that he was able to give his sons a good education.

Evening had come on. Eric promised the village schoolmaster to give him something to do with the instruction of Roland.

Knopf accompanied Eric for some distance, and then requested him to mount his horse.

Knopf stood looking after Eric for a long time, until he was hidden by a bend of the mountain, and his puffed lips addressed words in a low tone to him, after he had disappeared.

On the way home, Eric was surprised that he thought less about Roland, than he did about Manna, who was to arrive this evening.

Laughable old stories, how the tutor fell in love with the daughter of the house, and was expelled by the hard-hearted, rich father, and here he stands before the house all lighted up, he hears music; above, the lovely one celebrates her marriage with a very noble coxcomb, and a pistol-shot--no; it would be more practical to find some better situation.

Eric had humor enough to dismiss every such fancy; he would remain distant, composed, and respectful towards the daughter of the house.

When he rode up to the villa, the carriages had already arrived, and Eric received from Herr Sonnenkamp a reproof for his want of friendliness in not remaining at home, or taking note of the hour of their arrival.

After the conversation that he had had with Knopf, the feeling of being in service seemed to him now very strange; or was this reception intended to give him a hint of how he was to conduct himself towards Manna?

Eric made no reply to the reprimand, for such it was. He came to Roland, who warmly embraced him and cried,--

"Ah! with you only is it well, all the rest are--"

"Say nothing about the rest," interrupted Eric.

But he could not restrain Roland from relating the disappointment of all, that Manna did not return with them.

Eric breathed more freely.

Roland mixed up in his relation an account of Bella's getting out at the water-cure establishment on their return, because a message from Count Clodwig had informed her that he would meet her there. Finally he said,--

"What does all the rest amount to? You are there in the convent, and I have told Manna that you look just like the Saint Anthony in the church of the convent. Yes, laugh, if you please! If he should laugh, he would laugh just like you; he looked just as you look now. Manna told me the story. The saint has been praying to heaven, and the Christ-child has laid himself there in his arms, when he was all alone, and he looks at him so lovingly, so devoutly."

Eric was thrilled; a pure living being has also been given into his hands. Is he worthy to receive it, and can his look rest purely upon it?

They sat together without speaking, and Roland, at last, cried,--

"We will not leave each other again, ever. To-day when I sat there upon the deck, all alone, it seemed to me--I was not asleep, I was wide awake--it seemed that you came, and took me in your arms and held me."

Roland's face glowed; he was feverishly excited, and Eric had great difficulty in calming him down. But what he could not easily do was easy for the dogs; Roland became the self-forgetting child again, when he was with the dogs, who had grown so astonishingly in a few days.

Pranken also came in a very friendly way to Eric, and said that he admired his stimulating power, for Roland had exhibited during their absence a susceptibility of mind and a sensitiveness of feeling, which no one would have supposed him capable of.

Now say what you please, candid reader! Yesterday, an hour ago, you held in little esteem some man's judgment, you saw distinctly his limitations, and now he shows that he recognizes your worth, he praises you, he extols you, and suddenly, without being aware of it, your opinion is changed concerning him whom you before regarded as one-sided and contracted, especially if you are a person struggling with yourself, withdrawn into yourself, and often self-doubting.

This was the case with Eric. Pranken seemed to him a man of very good judgment, very amiable indeed; and he even expressed openly his satisfaction, that the friends of the family stood by him and cheered him in his difficult work of education.

Pranken was content; Eric manifestly acknowledged his position; he showed this by not accompanying them on the journey, and not thrusting himself into the family; perhaps also there was a certain touch of pride in not wanting to appear as a part of the retinue; at any rate, Eric did not seem destitute of tact.

Pranken understood how to make this patronizing protection appear as a sort of friendly confidence.

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