This narrative produced a wholly different impression upon Eric from what it did upon Roland, for the latter considered that the rascality was a matter of course. Eric looked askance at the Doctor, for he could not conceive how he could be on such friendly terms with the burgomaster; and when he further asked whether the man was respected, he received an emphatic response in the affirmative, inasmuch as property secured respect in the country.
They also stopped at the gauger's, the good-humored brother of the whole country around, and were led by him through the wine-vaults, and supplied with many a good drop to drink. The gauger always liked to tell stories that were not always fit for a boy to hear, but the Doctor soon led him to a different subject.
The gauger always carried with him some flour bread, which he called his "little sponge." "With straw," he said, "they tie up the wines, and with this little piece of bread, that has been grown from the straw, I fasten in the wine." They had calculated that the gauger had drunk, during his life-time, seventy butts of wine; but he asserted that they had been very tender to him, for he had drunk a great deal more than that.
It was a merry, exhilarating life into which Eric and Roland were inducted, and when they returned to their strict method of study, there was a deep realization of the fact that they were living in the midst of a merry region, where existence can be easily wasted in play.
It was midsummer, and there came cold, windy, disagreeable days, when it seemed that summer had departed, and yet it could not be, it must become hot again. The nightingale was voiceless; it had not ceased to sing all at once, but seemed to utter occasionally single notes from memory, while there were heard more frequently the thin voices of the linnets, or the full, short call of the blackbirds. The summer shoots on the leafy trees showed that the summer had reached its height, and was declining; the forest-trees had attained their season's growth, and the song of birds had ceased, except that the unwearied black-cap still twittered, and the magpies chattered among the branches.
Eric and Roland often, sailed upon the Rhine, and Eric sang; he was rejoiced to hear Roland say:—
"Yes, it is so. A person can sing at all seasons of the year, if he has a mind to."
Eric nodded, feeling that the consciousness of art and of a free humanity had been awakened in Roland; and he now said that they would absent themselves for a few days from the house, and proposed to Roland two plans: either they would go to Herr Weidmann's, of whom there had been so much said, or to the great musical festival that was to take place at the Fortress. Boats ornamented with parti-colored streamers, having singers on board, went up the river and were greeted at all the landings with the firing of cannon. Roland requested to go to the festival, and he wanted to walk a part of the way, desiring to see again, and this time in company with Eric, the road over which he had wandered by night.
They set out in good spirits, and Roland was very talkative, relating to Eric all his adventures. They came to the wood, and Roland gave an account of his falling asleep, and of his wonderful dream. He blushed while telling it, and Eric did not ask what his dream was. Roland went silently into the wood.
"Here it is; here it is!" he suddenly exclaimed. "Here is my porte-monnaie! God be praised and thanked, I have not been robbed. Come, let us go to the village, where the hostler lives whom I suspected, and I will give him all the money."