She had never repented leaving her own class to marry her husband, she had been too happy for that; but she saw in Eric's position something like a grievous consequence of her own act. Moved by these thoughts, which she never expressed, she said,—
"I can easily understand how you feel drawn to this American; there is the greatest honor in being a self-made man. Let us unite the two plans then. You can bring it about, since the boy is in your hands, that the American shall entrust him to you, and you can at the same time maintain an independent position."
Eric replied that his objection to the situation did not consist simply in his receiving it as a favor; the task of conducting foreign visitors of princely rank through the art-collections was distasteful to him; he did not think that he could conform himself to it.
Suddenly his mother remembered that a letter had come for him, and she gave it to him. It was from Clodwig. The noble man placed at Eric's disposal twice the sum that he had asked for. Eric was made happy by this news, and his mother nodded with hearty assent when he said that the gift rejoiced him, but still more did the assurance that his confidence in men had met with so glorious a confirmation.
Midnight was past, and mother and son still sat together. Eric begged his mother to go to bed and leave him to wait for Sonnenkamp's reply. He sat long alone in the night, thinking over all which had passed, till sleep overcame him.
In the spirits of men, as well as in the history of nations, thoughts and sentiments are formed which are to be brought into action from their own free will, when suddenly there comes an over-mastering fact, which converts the free choice into an inevitable necessity. Thus Eric's entrance into Sonnenkamp's household seemed to have been made an unavoidable necessity by Roland's rash step.
Eric went again, with scarcely audible steps, into the boy's room. So wholly was his spirit turned toward him that the sleeping child moaned, "Eric," but soon, turning over, slept soundly again.
Eric went back to the sitting-room, and then it first occurred to him that there was no night-watch at the telegraph office in Sonnenkamp's neighborhood; the father could not receive the news till morning. Eric also now went to bed.
Everything was late in the house of the professor's wife the next morning; Eric slept longest. When he entered the sitting-room, he found Roland already with his mother, holding a small wooden coffee-mill in his left hand and turning it with his right. This mill was an heir-loom which had belonged to Eric's grandfather, who had been a distinguished anatomist at the university. The mother had already told Roland this, and had shown him all sorts of ancient household furniture, also relics of the times of the Huguenots.
"Ah, how pleasant it is here with you!" cried Roland to Eric, as he entered.