"What would you do?" asked Eric.
"Have you no idea?"
"If I had much money," answered Claus, laughing maliciously, "first of all I'd cudgel the Landrath to a jelly, even if it cost a thousand gulden; it's worth the money."
"But then?"
"Yes, then—that I don't know."
Eric looked at Roland, who looked back at him with dull, troubled eyes, and compressed lips. The unconsciousness of wealth to which Knopf had alluded seemed destroyed, suddenly and unseasonably uprooted. Roland could never be led back to it, and yet was not mature enough to see his way forward.
Eric said to Roland in English, that, he would clear up the matter for him, but that it was impossible to find an answer fit for an ignorant man.
"Would an ignorant man have asked the question?" answered Roland in the same language.
Eric remained silent, for he could not disturb and spoil the clear preception of his pupil, even to relieve and set him at rest.
"Ha, ha!" laughed the huntsman scornfully, "now I'm rid of it, now, you've got it. Wherever you go or rest you will hear what I've been asking myself in all the passages and all the rounds. Very well! if you ever find the answer, let me have the benefit of it."