Eric heard, on the bank of the river, two women talking with each other, as they carried on shore the garden-earth out of a boat.
"God be praised," said one, "who has sent the man to us; no one in the place who is willing to work need suffer poverty any more."
"Yes," spoke the other, "and yet there are people here who are so bad as to say all sorts of things about the man."
"What do they say?"
"That he has been a tailor."
Eric could hardly restrain himself from laughing aloud. But a third woman, with a rather thick voice, said,—
"A tailor indeed! He has been a pirate, and in Africa stole a gold-ship."
"And supposing he did," said the other, "those man-eaters have heaps of gold, and are heathens beside, and Herr Sonnenkamp does nothing but good with his gold."
Eric could not help smiling at these strange tales and implications; and it was also painful to him that great wealth always stirred up new and calumnious reports.
He went on farther. He saw from a height, with satisfaction, how the main building and all its dependencies, with park and garden, were combined in a beautiful harmony. Near the main building there were only trees of a dark foliage, lindens, elms, and maples, which brought out, by contrast, so much the more brightly the brilliant architecture of the house built in a good Renaissance style. The arbored walks converged gradually, as if conducting to the solidly-built mansion, which seemed not to be built upon the ground, but as if it had sprung up from the soil with the scenery that surrounded it; the stone colonnades, the lawns, the trees, the elevations, all were an introduction to the house; all was in harmony. The verandas appeared to be only bearers of the climbing plants, and the whole was a masterpiece of rural architecture, a work of natural poetry according to the laws of pure art, so that all that was man's handiwork seemed as fresh as if it had just come out of the builder's hand, and in such perfect preservation, that one perceived that each tree, each leaf, each lattice, was owned and carefully cherished by a wealthy man.