"Capable of what?" asked Eric.
"Man only can fast, can voluntarily renounce food."
From this mythical world of the past, which must necessarily retire before the bright day in the progress of civilization, they passed again to the study of the first founding of the great American Republic. Franklin again appeared here, and seemed to become the central point for Roland, taking precedence even of Jefferson, who not only proclaimed first the eternal and inalienable rights of man, but made them the very foundation of a nation's life. Roland and Eric saw together how this Crusoe-settlement on a large scale, as Frederic Kapp calls it, unfolded into a high state of culture; and that sad weakness and compromise, which did not immediately abolish slavery, also constituted a knotty point of investigation.
"Do you think the Niggers are human beings like us?" asked Roland.
"Undoubtedly; they have language and the power of thought, just as we have."
"I once heard it said, that they could not learn mathematics," interposed Roland.
"I never heard that before, and probably it is a mistake."
Eric did not go any farther in this exposition; he wished to cast no imputation upon the father, who had owned large plantations tilled by slaves. It was sufficient that questions were coming up in the boy's mind.
Nothing better could have been contrived for Eric and Roland; than for them to learn something together. The architect, a man skilled in his business, and happy to have so early in life such an excellent commission entrusted to him, was communicative and full of information. The castle had been destroyed, as so many others were, by the barbarous soldiers of Louis XIV. encamped in Germany, exactly a hundred years before the French Revolution. An old main-tower, the so-called Keep, had still some remains of Roman walls, concrete walls, as the architect called them.
"What is concrete?" asked Roland. The architect explained that the inside and outside layers consisted of quarry stone laid in regular masonry, and between, stones of all sizes were thrown in, and then the whole was evidently cemented together with a sort of heated mortar.