Villa Eden Part 147

"It would make his happiness; without that he would have no happiness.

I am sure you will not misunderstand me, my very dear, n.o.ble friend. I frankly confess to you that I prize money highly; I have worked hard for it, and should like to keep it; I should like to convert my personal property into real estate, at least in a great measure: I want my son freely to enjoy what I have toiled with unremitting industry to obtain. Oh, my friend, you do not know--it is better you should not know what blows my life has borne, because I--but no more of that; it would agitate me too much to-day. I had a tutor--a shrewd man, but unhappily not of such moral purity as yourself--who, I remember, often said to me: He only is free who is not bound to the same level with others, but is ent.i.tled to be judged by a loftier standard. A genius, a man like yourself, my dear friend, is by nature so ent.i.tled; but all are not geniuses. Genius is unattainable, therefore do men seek a t.i.tle of n.o.bility that posterity may judge them by that higher standard. I express myself clumsily, do I not?"

"No! the thought is subtilely developed."

"Ah, let us leave all subtleties. But I have after all omitted the chief point; it is well I remember it. It was you who first directed my thoughts and my efforts towards this aim."

"I? How so?"

"Let me remind you. On the first day of your coming among us you told me, and you have often repeated it since, that Roland had no special talent that would lead him to the choice of a profession. The remark offended me at the time, but I see now that it was perfectly true. For the very reason that Roland is not gifted with genius, he must take rank among the n.o.bility, have a t.i.tle, which of itself gives position and dignity to persons of average capacity, who are not able to carve out their own career. A n.o.bleman is not sensitive; that is his great advantage. A baron or an earl is somebody at the start, and is not obliged to make himself somebody; if, besides that, he has any gifts, they are all clear gain, and the world is grateful for them. We commoners must begin by making ourselves something; we are nothing at the start except sensitive, thin-skinned. Ah, my dear friend, I speak very confusedly."

"By no means."

"I will say but one thing more. Roland will at some time, and it may be soon, enter on the possession of millions; if he is a n.o.ble, he will not only stand in the circle of the select, but he will have all the obligations of honor, of benevolence, of usefulness, and will have them in a higher degree, because he will be one newly raised to rank. I open my whole heart to you, my friend--I conceal nothing. Almost the whole inhabited world is known to me, and shall I tell you what I have found in it?"

"I should be glad to know."

"Know, then," here Sonnenkamp laid both hands upon Eric's shoulder, "you are a philosopher, a deep thinker--learn something from me."

"Willingly."

"Let me tell you then, my friend, there are three cla.s.ses among mankind, each bound so closely together that no member stands alone. A man must belong to one of these in this degenerate world."

He paused awhile, and then, in answer to Eric's questioning glance, continued:--

"Yes, my friend, in this world a man must be either a Jew, a Jesuit, or a n.o.ble. You smile? The idea surprises you? Let me explain. If you survey the whole world you will find that each one of these three cla.s.ses, and only these, forms a firm, lasting, indissoluble union among its members. My son cannot be a Jew, a Jesuit he shall not be, therefore he must be a n.o.ble."

Eric was fairly bewildered by Sonnenkamp's arguments. He strove to exercise his own freedom of thought, but he saw how immovably Sonnenkamp's mind was made up, and looking over the past, he perceived how everything had been tending towards this one aim. And after all, might it not be an advantage for Roland to enter the ranks of the n.o.bility? Might not this be the only means of establis.h.i.+ng a home for him in Germany?

The interview lasted till far into the night, Sonnenkamp constantly endeavoring to prove the necessity of making Roland a n.o.ble, and Eric at last, almost from sheer weariness, promised to use his influence with Clodwig. He got no rest as he lay in bed; he seemed to himself a traitor, but the voice of the tempter said:--

"After all, it is not you who can bring it about, nor he, but the Prince. Whether you lend your aid or not, the thing is sure to be done.

Why should you be disobliging and ungrateful?"

CHAPTER XIV.

THE TEACHER'S TEACHER.

"Ball"--"American"--"Betrothed"--was heard the next morning at the spring in all the different languages, for, inconsistent as it may seem, winter gayeties are brought into a place frequented only by invalids.

Frau Ceres' carriage did not appear at the spring; she had a tumbler of mineral water brought to her room.

Before the altar in the village church lay Manna, long after the ma.s.s was over, studying her own heart. She cried out for help, for support against the world; she remembered the advice of the Priest to make free confession, wherever she might be, to a brother or a father, and she longed to confess here; but she did not, for there was one thing she could not tell. For the first time, she left the church with a burden on her heart.

Eric was fighting his fight with himself out upon the hills. Sonnenkamp had spoken with great openness to him, but one thing he had not said, that Pranken was waiting till Manna was t.i.tled before announcing the betrothal. He was angry with himself for having allowed the idea to take possession of him, and perhaps increase, though unconsciously, his repugnance to the commission laid upon him.

The sudden calling of his name terrified him, though it was p.r.o.nounced by a gentle voice. Looking up he perceived Professor Einsiedel coming towards him: What better man could he have to clear up his doubts and restore his peace of mind? For one moment, he entertained the thought of laying all his questions before the pure and childlike, yet clear and brave spirit, of his old friend; but neither could he confess, neither could he tell all, and so he too shut his secret in his own heart.

The good old man could not understand how he was to live for weeks without work, without books, doing nothing but nurse his body. Such a cure as this, he said with a childlike smile, was only a sickness with the ability to take walks, and it would be nothing worse than sickness if he lay in bed.

But he soon turned the conversation from himself, and asked Eric about his studies, and how he was getting on with his great work upon slavery. Before Eric could answer, the Professor told him that he was continually making notes upon the subject for him, and that one of the most striking things he had met with was the decision with which Luther, from a religious point of view, had expressed himself in favor of holding slaves.

"I do not blame Luther," he continued; "he adopted the views of his day, just as others in other generations have believed in the agency of evil spirits. The language of the great Bossuet shows how much the strongest minds were influenced by the general belief of the time; he said that whoever denied the right of holding slaves sinned against the Holy Ghost. Perhaps a future generation will be as little able to understand our prejudices."

Eric found in this morning walk a satisfaction to which he had been long a stranger. Professor Einsiedel had looked cautiously about him as he walked, as if fearing some one might overhear the great secret he was about to reveal. At last he said:--

"Dear Doctor," he always called Eric Doctor, "I have been thinking a great deal about the task of educating a rich youth. The absolutely right I have not found; that can exist only in the imagination. But so to educate a human being, intellectually and morally, that we can be approximately sure--mark you, I say approximately--that we can be approximately sure, or have reason to believe, that, in any given case he will be guided by pure moral laws, that is all that we can hope to do; and I am very much mistaken, if that is not what you have already succeeded in accomplis.h.i.+ng with regard to your pupil. As far as I know the world,--and I was tutor myself once, though only for a short time--as far as I know the world, those of high birth, and no doubt it is the same with those of great wealth, are full of wishes and cravings; and the task is to convert these wishes, these cravings, this expectancy, into active will and effort. Your handsome pupil has excellent, dispositions, in this respect; he understands the seriousness of life."

Never had the forest seemed, to Eric so grand, the sunlight so clear, the air so invigorating, the whole world so transfigured, as when he heard this testimony from his teacher's lips. Silently he, walked by his side, and sat with him in the forest; he would gladly have kissed the good man's delicate hand.

At another time, Professor Einsiedel admonished Eric that he was falling into the very error common among rich men of neglecting his own culture.

"Living with others is good," he said; "but living with one's self is better; and I fear you have not lived as you should with yourself."

He asked Eric plainly how far he had finished his book, and like a school-boy who finds himself detected in laziness and neglect of duty, Eric was obliged to confess that it had altogether dropped out of his mind. The face of the Professor suddenly collapsed, as if it were nothing but wrinkles; after a long silence he said,--

"You are inflicting the greatest injury on yourself and your pupil."

"On myself and my pupil?"

"Yes. You have no intellectual work of your own to counteract the daily distractions of your profession, and, therefore, you do not bring to your teaching the necessary freshness and elasticity. I have been a teacher myself, and always made it a rule to preserve inviolate my own intellectual sanctum, and in that way constantly renewed my strength.

It is one of the conditions of a proper education, that the teacher should not be always at the disposal of his pupil. The pupil should understand, that living side by side with him is another human being like himself, who has his own life to nourish, and that no one has a right to command from another the total surrender of himself and all his powers. You must never consider yourself as a finished man; mark, I say finished; you must keep on educating yourself. To be finished is the beginning of death. Look at the leaves upon the trees; as soon as one has reached its perfection, it begins to turn yellow and shrink."

The words made a deep impression upon Eric. What this man here in this silent wood-path was saying aloud, he had often felt, but had never been willing to confess even to himself.

"'Non semper arc.u.m tendit Apollo,' says Virgil," Eric answered, quoting from his teacher's favorite poet.

"Good, good! that agrees with what I say. Apollo, to be sure, is not always bending his bow, but he never lays it aside; it remains his inalienable attribute."

They went on for some time in silence, till presently the Professor began again,--

"You are still young; you must not waste these morning hours of your life. I warn you as your teacher and your father, yes in the very spirit of your father. It is my right and my duty thus to speak, for your father should serve you as a warning."

"My father serve me as a warning?"

"Yes. I need not remind you of the worth and importance of his labors, but your father often lamented that he had allowed an unworthy regard for his standing in society to interfere with his devotion to pure knowledge; he could not resume the steadiness of his former habits of study. More than that, he found himself thinking of persons while he was writing, instead of thinking only of ideas, which is our religion.

If we lose that, we are the worst of idolaters; our idol is even less than a picture in a temple; it is the most worthless of all idols, the fickle voice of society."

Eric still remained silent, and the kindly old man began again,--

"Here is another proof of the wonderful connection of events. Our clinical Professor had to overcome a strong repugnance on my part to undertake this cure; neither of us knew that the real object of my being sent here was, perhaps, to be a healing-spring to you."

"Indeed you are," exclaimed Eric, as he grasped his teacher's delicate hand. Only for a little while longer, he said, till Roland had entered upon whatever work should be next appointed him, he wanted to devote himself entirely to his pupil; then he would return to the service of pure knowledges.

The Professor warned him not to wait for that, for he should never lose his hold of the world of ideas.