The good-natured, soft-hearted Knopf took a real pleasure in knowing consummate rascals like Sonnenkamp and Adams. When he had discovered evil in a man, he carried it to extremes at once, like all idealists: the man must instantly be a consummate villain. The royal descent that Adams boasted of, was, according to him, nothing but a lie: he was usurping the character of some man of princely blood who had been drowned. "For," added Knopf, with great satisfaction, "he could not have taken the stamped sailing papers from him before he was launched on the sea of eternity."
He declared to Fräulein Milch that he had caught Adams in the lie; for the man had made a mistake in the dates: and Knopf was not a teacher of history, with all the dates at his tongue's end, for nothing.
On the Major's return with Adams, his disease fairly broke out, and he was obliged to take to his bed.
The Doctor came, and administered soothing remedies, which relieved the Major; but he had no soothing remedies for Fräulein Milch. She was to receive these from a man who had no knowledge of medicine. When the Professorin could not be with Fräulein Milch to relieve her loneliness, and keep up her courage, she sent Professor Einsiedel; and to him the poor woman confided all her uneasiness with regard to Adams. The man would engage in no occupation; he could drink and smoke all day; but that was all. He had worked only while he was a slave, and driven to it; and as lackey he had had nothing to do but to sit in fantastic livery upon the box of the royal coach. So there he remained in the house with Fräulein Milch, doing nothing but inspire her with an unconquerable terror. The greater her fear became, the more pains she took to preserve a friendly manner towards him.
Only to Professor Einsiedel did she complain of the presence of the negro.
"I must take care," she said, "not to let this one black man give me a prejudice against the whole race."
"What do you mean by that?"
Fräulein Milch blushed as she replied,—
"If we do not know a foreign nation, or a foreign race, and our preconceived notions of it are unfavorable, we are very apt to consider the solitary individual who may come under our observation as a representative of the whole, and to charge upon the whole his peculiar characteristics and faults. This Adams, now, is a man who will neither learn nor labor. As a slave, he was used to being taken care of, and as a lackey the same: it would be very unjust to let him prejudice me against the whole race, and to conclude that all negroes have these peculiarities."
"Very good, very reasonable," was the Professor's verdict. "But I should like to know how you come to be so carefully on your guard against prejudices. I know very little about women, to be sure; but I had supposed this quality was not common among them."