Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine

"Ah, teacher! Don't you get tired of this whole pack of teachers? Here we have pleasing music, dancing, – come!"

He whirled her swiftly among the circle of dancers, and she felt as if she were no longer upon the ground, but were floating in the air.

"Let us go!" said Roland to Eric in the gallery. They left the hall, and took by moonlight the same beautiful walk through the forest that they had enjoyed in the morning.

"Is there no way in which I may relieve myself of a secret that has been confided to me?" asked Roland. "I should so like to talk it over with you! May I not tell it you?"

"No, you must not under any circumstances break your word. If you did, you would lose all hold upon yourself."

Roland sighed; he sorely wanted to tell Eric that his family was to receive a title.

When they came out upon the clearing, and saw the town and the whole valley lying in the moonlight, and heard a few broken strains of music from the ball-room rising through the night air, Roland returned to the subject: —

"I have an idea that this evening Manna is to be openly acknowledged as Pranken's bride. My mother thinks that that will help forward the accomplishment of the other secret. Can you not guess what it is?"

Eric replied with great self-control, that it was not honorable of Roland to speak of any family matters that had been confided to him.

He spoke with a trembling voice. This thing, which had been so long decided, suddenly came upon him as something new, unheard of, improbable. With rapture and yet with fear, he perceived that he had allowed Manna to become dearer to him than he ought. He buried the point of his cane deep in the ground, and pressed upon it so violently that it broke to pieces in his hand. He told Roland it was time they went home.

The carriage drove up to the door just as they reached the house, and out of it came Sonnenkamp, followed by Frau Ceres and Manna.

"Are you betrothed to Pranken?" asked Roland.

"You silly child!" returned Manna, as she ran quickly up the steps.

Sonnenkamp sent Roland to bed, and asked Eric to go with him into his room.

"Here is a mild brand of cigar," he said, throwing himself back in his arm-chair, "light one. Captain Dournay, I look upon you as one of the family; you are ours, and must ever remain so."

Eric trembled. Had the father's suspicions been roused by Roland's awkward question, and was he about to tell him that he must give up all thought of Manna? Or was he about to offer him his daughter's hand? He had time enough to entertain these opposing thoughts, for Sonnenkamp made a long pause, in the evident expectation of receiving some answer to his friendly address. But as his companion remained silent, he got up, and after taking several turns up and down the room, suddenly stopped before Eric and said: —

"I give you to-day the most indubitable proof that I consider you one of ourselves. Give me your hand."

Eric did so, and shuddered as he touched the iron ring on the man's thumb.

Sonnenkamp continued: —

"I recognize and honor your reserve."

Eric's eyes wandered uneasily. What did all this mean?

After several hasty puffs at his cigar, Sonnenkamp continued: —

"You have never, in any way, alluded to what has been going on among us, though you cannot have failed to be aware of it."

Eric still trembled. Sonnenkamp kept making such unusual pauses.

At last, bringing the words out with an effort, he said: —

"You know that I am about to receive a title?"

"No, I did not know it."

"You did not? Is it possible? Did Roland give you no hint?"

"A hint indeed of some secret, but I strictly forbade him to relate, even by a breath, any confidence that had been reposed in him."

"Good. You're a good teacher. I am grateful to you, sincerely grateful. I will be yet more so. You shall have proof of it. To be open with you, Captain Dournay – you can give me substantial help by furthering this plan of mine."

"I?"

"Yes, you. You are the friend of our noble Count Wolfsgarten. He is already one of our family, but he always declines to discuss this matter, when I, or any of my friends, address him upon the subject. You know me, my dear Captain; you have watched my life, and your eye is keen; I have a right to expect that, with all my faults, of which, unhappily, I have my share, you will judge of me justly and charitably. You are a man who will act as he thinks. You understand me?"

"Not entirely, I confess."

"Plainly, then, in a few days I shall give a rural fête at Heilingthal. I will take the Jew with me, and you can go with your friend Wolfsgarten, and can easily discover what sort of opinion he will give of me, or has already given."

"Would not Herr von Pranken, or the Countess, or the Cabinetsräthin, be better suited for such an office?"

"No; in that case I should not trouble you with it. Count Wolfsgarten has declined expressing any opinion, saying always in his pedantic – I mean in his strictly honorable manner, that a judgment which is to be expressed in confidence, to the Prince should be made known to no one else. In a few days the Prince will depart; he is favorably disposed. You will therefore discover this for me, dear Dournay, will you not? It will be so easy for you!"

"Herr Sonnenkamp," replied Eric, "you had the kindness to say a few moments ago that I did right in forbidding Roland to betray a secret. How shall I-"

"Ah, my dear Dournay," interrupted Sonnenkamp, "we may reasonably allow ourselves many things that we should forbid a young person to do. I respect, I honor your truthfulness. I acknowledge the great sacrifice you would make in rendering me this service fully, thoroughly, but you will make the sacrifice, will you not?"

Eric tried to decline the task. Sonnenkamp threw his head back, and whistled softly to himself, while Eric maintained with great earnestness that he was not good at sounding others' opinions, and that he should consider it a betrayal of friendship to repeat anything which was said to him confidentially. "Besides," he concluded, "I do not think that Count Wolfsgarten would express his opinion any more fully to me."

Sonnenkamp was inwardly angry, but summoned all his powers of self-control to his aid. He praised Eric's conscientiousness; spoke with enthusiasm of his delicate tact, his moral purity, and the loftiness of his ideal; he went so far as to apologize for having fancied, even for a moment, that Eric was more than a friend to Bella; his unhappy experience among men, he said, must serve as his excuse for the injustice; he considered it as the greatest of privileges to have been once allowed the acquaintance of a thoroughly pure and noble man.

Eric had never supposed that this man knew him so well; this Sonnenkamp must have a nobler mind than he had given him credit for, to be able to read so well the noble struggles of others.

The impression he had made was not lost upon Sonnenkamp. He laid his hand on Eric's shoulder, and said with a trembling, almost a tearful voice, —

"My dear young friend! Yes, my friend – I call you so, for you are such – even if I have not myself the right to claim so close an intimacy with you as I should like, consider what a great, what a necessary influence indeed you may exert – not for me; of what consequence am I? – but for our Roland. For our Roland!" he repeated significantly. The mention of Roland's name suddenly roused Eric as from a dream. He answered by asking why Herr Sonnenkamp desired a title for Roland.

"Oh, my friend!" Sonnenkamp continued with increasing affection, "that is the last, the only object of all my efforts in the Old World and in the New. Oh, my friend! Who is able to tell how soon I may die? You will remain the friend, the support of my son. Give me your hand upon it. Promise me you will so continue. I shall die without a fear, knowing he is under your protection. Alas, no one suspects how ill, how shaken I am. I force myself to appear firm and erect, but I am inwardly broken. The labors and struggles of life have sapped my strength. Any moment may end my life, and I would gladly leave my son in an assured position. You, my friend, love our beautiful, glorious Germany; you will be glad to secure to her a strong and faithful son. Should Roland continue as he is, should he preserve his present name, he will always consider himself a citizen of the world across the ocean, not a true son of our noble Germany, where alone a man of mind and of means can find a sphere for his usefulness. Forgive me if I do not express myself as warmly as I feel, and as I ought, to a friend like you. I only ask you to add to your other benefits to Roland that of making him a son of Germany; if not for our sakes, yet for the sake of our dear country."

Sonnenkamp well knew what a responsive strain he touched in Eric, by those tender words from the anxious heart of a father, and by this broad, reverent outlook, not only beyond his own death, but beyond all thought of self. Eric was touched, and said:

"I would give my life for Roland-"

Sonnenkamp would have embraced him, but Eric begged him to listen further.

"My life I can give up, but not my principles. I am willing to adopt your views of the matter in a moment, if you can convince me I am mistaken. Do you really believe that it would add to Roland's happiness to have a title?"

"It would make his happiness; without that he would have no happiness. I am sure you will not misunderstand me, my very dear, noble 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 entitled to be judged by a loftier standard. A genius, a man like yourself, my dear friend, is by nature so entitled; but all are not geniuses. Genius is unattainable, therefore do men seek a title of nobility 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 nobility, have a title, which of itself gives position and dignity to persons of average capacity, who are not able to carve out their own career. A nobleman 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 noble, 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 classes 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 noble. You smile? The idea surprises you? Let me explain. If you survey the whole world you will find that each one of these three classes, 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 noble."

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 nobility? Might not this be the only means of establishing 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 noble, 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 mass 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 titled 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 pronounced 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 accomplishing 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 arcum 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.

"Or if you mean to devote yourself to practical life," he added, "I have nothing to say against that; only you must decide on one or the other."

Eric returned to the hotel as one roused from a dream. He saw the danger which threatened him, of seeking to shine in society by a display of the thoughts and the knowledge he had acquired in the studies which he now no longer pursued. The Professor had touched a very different chord in him from what the Doctor had once stirred. He took pleasure in making his old teacher better acquainted with Clodwig, the Banker, Sonnenkamp, and particularly with Roland, whose lessons he now resumed with an energy which filled the boy with amazement.

The Professor took especial pleasure in the society of Roland, who called him, as he had done at their first meeting, "grand-teacher." There was a deference and a ready submission in his manner, which filled Eric with delight, when he saw them together. Many a saying of the noble old man's sank deep into the boy's mind.

"Who would suppose that the long lieutenant and the Professor belonged to the same race of men?" he once said to Eric.

Eric liked to leave his pupil as much as possible alone with the Professor, and was gratified by having the latter say to him after a few days, —

"You have done a good work; the boy has that sensitive pride in him which we are apt to associate with gentle birth. I should have no fear of his falling into low or criminal habits; his noble pride would be repelled by their vulgarity. There is no denying the fact that self-esteem amounting to pride can become, under proper guidance, a sure moral principle."

Bella had begun by trying to make a butt of the Professor, but the old man looked at her with an expression of such childlike compassion, and at the same time of such mild rebuke, that she soon dropped her tone of banter, and overlooked the good Professor altogether.

This unpretending and apparently inexperienced man formed, however, very decided opinions upon all whom he met. Clodwig he perceived to be a good and noble man. His classical education delighted him particularly. "Classical education," he said, "is the stone foundation, which, firmly planted in the ground, is itself invisible, but bears up the whole building."

The Banker was too uneasy and restless to please him, but he gave him credit for possessing a characteristic very common among the Jews, that of gratitude even for intellectual benefits.