"I understand perfectly," replied Eric. "American life is an existence without a seventh day of rest; there is a continual working and striving to win money, nothing else. If men have led such a life for half a score of years, they lose the power of turning to anything else; they say to themselves that if they only had enough--ah, those who strive for gold never get enough--they say then they would devote themselves to nobler ends. If it were only still possible! I understand you, and wonder at Herr Sonnenkamp."
"Just so--just so," said the Major, "he must have dragged himself through a good deal of mud, as a gold-hunter, to get such a great property together. Yes, yes, I am easy--you are wiser than I. But now, just for the first time, the main question occurs to me--look at me, tell me honestly, is it true that you have been to see Fräulein Manna at the convent?"
"I have been at the convent, and saw Fräulein Manna, but without knowing her or speaking to her."
"And you didn't come to establish yourself in the house, in order to marry the daughter?"
Eric smiled, as he said in reply, how strangely this question came to him from every direction.
"Look you, comrade, put the maiden out of your thoughts, she is as good as betrothed to Baron Pranken--I would rather you should have her, but it can't be changed."
Eric at last got away, and went back toward the villa with cheerful thoughts. Good powers were working together to keep Roland constantly in a circle of thought and feeling, from which he might not deviate through his whole life.
He stopped before a wide-spreading walnut tree, and looked up smiling into its rich branches.
"Sonnenkamp is right," he said to himself; "the planting of trees and their growth depend upon the surrounding heights and the prevailing winds. There are nervous trees, which are killed by the blasts, and others which only strike root when they are blown this way and that by the wind. Is not the life of man such a plant? the men around it constitute its climatic zone."
Eric thought he was constantly getting a better insight into the influences which were helping, and those which were hindering, the true growth of his pupil.
How rich is the world! Up there at the castle sits the old count by his young wife's side, and creates for himself an ideal realm of thought, after a full and active life;--here sits the old Major with his housekeeper. How Bella would turn up her nose if she were compared with that housekeeper, and yet--