When temporary order was established, Eric complied with Roland's request to go with him upon the platform of the tower. They sat down here, and looked about, for a long time, in every direction. Eric could not restrain himself from telling the boy how new and beautiful all life appeared to him. They had formerly built castles upon the heights, for strife, for feuds, and for robbery of travellers upon the highway; but we, we work with the powers of nature, we endeavor to gain wealth, and then we withdraw, and place our dwelling upon an elevated site, in some lovely valley, and desire to take in only the eternal beauty, which no one can take away. The great river becomes a highway, along which industrious and noble men erect their habitations. The generations after us will be obliged to say that, at this time, men began to pay loyal homage to nature, as had never before been paid in the history of humanity; this is a new religion, even if it has no outward form, and shall never acquire any.
"Go on speaking, go on, on further," said Roland, nestling up to Eric; he could not say that he would like to hear just the sound of his voice; he closed his eyes and cried again: "Go on speaking!" Eric understood the imploring call, and went on to relate, how, when he stood for the first time upon the Righi, looking at the setting sun, he had been impressed with the thought whether there might not be some form, some service, by which the devotional feelings of these assembled spectators, in this temple of nature, might find expression. He had learned that this was impossible, and perhaps was not needful: nature imparts to each one a joy of his own, and joy in nature to each a private feeling of devotion, in which no others can share. Then extolling the happiness of being able thus in one's own house, on a tower erected by one's self, to appropriate the world, and the beauty of the earth, he showed how wealth, its pursuit, and its possession might be the basis of a grand moral and social benefit. Riches, he explained, were only a result of freedom, of the unfettered employment of activities, and must have only freedom as their resultant product.
Roland was happy; he did not comprehend the whole, but he felt, for the first time, that wealth was neither to be despised nor to be gloried in. All his teachers, hitherto, had endeavored to impress upon him either the one view or the other.
Joseph came to the tower, and asked whether Eric and Roland wished to dine together in their room; he was answered in the affirmative. They were happy, sitting together, and Roland cried:—
"We two dwell upon an island; and if I ever live in the castle, you must also live with me. Do you know what one thing more I want?"
"How! you want one thing more?"
"Yes; Manna ought to be with us. Don't you think she is now thinking of us?"
"Probably not of me."
"Yes, indeed! I have written to her about you, and this evening I am going to write again, and tell her everything."
Eric was puzzled, for a moment: he did not know what he ought to do. Ought he to restrain the boy from writing about him? There was no reason for doing so, and he would not disturb Roland's impartial candor.