Eric breathed more freely.
Roland mixed up in his relation an account of Bella's getting out at the water-cure establishment on their return, because a message from Count Clodwig had informed her that he would meet her there. Finally he said,—
"What does all the rest amount to? You are there in the convent, and I have told Manna that you look just like the Saint Anthony in the church of the convent. Yes, laugh, if you please! If he should laugh, he would laugh just like you; he looked just as you look now. Manna told me the story. The saint has been praying to heaven, and the Christ-child has laid himself there in his arms, when he was all alone, and he looks at him so lovingly, so devoutly."
Eric was thrilled; a pure living being has also been given into his hands. Is he worthy to receive it, and can his look rest purely upon it?
They sat together without speaking, and Roland, at last, cried,—
"We will not leave each other again, ever. To-day when I sat there upon the deck, all alone, it seemed to me—I was not asleep, I was wide awake—it seemed that you came, and took me in your arms and held me."
Roland's face glowed; he was feverishly excited, and Eric had great difficulty in calming him down. But what he could not easily do was easy for the dogs; Roland became the self-forgetting child again, when he was with the dogs, who had grown so astonishingly in a few days.
Pranken also came in a very friendly way to Eric, and said that he admired his stimulating power, for Roland had exhibited during their absence a susceptibility of mind and a sensitiveness of feeling, which no one would have supposed him capable of.
Now say what you please, candid reader! Yesterday, an hour ago, you held in little esteem some man's judgment, you saw distinctly his limitations, and now he shows that he recognizes your worth, he praises you, he extols you, and suddenly, without being aware of it, your opinion is changed concerning him whom you before regarded as one-sided and contracted, especially if you are a person struggling with yourself, withdrawn into yourself, and often self-doubting.
This was the case with Eric. Pranken seemed to him a man of very good judgment, very amiable indeed; and he even expressed openly his satisfaction, that the friends of the family stood by him and cheered him in his difficult work of education.