The newspaper brought another piece of intelligence, the return of the Prince's brother from America, where he had been a careful observer; and his bringing with him for the Prince a freed slave, in the person of a handsome African.
While they were still discussing the impression which a sight of the American Republic must make on a German prince, Roland came in from the forest, exclaiming,—"I have him! I have him!"
He was holding the parrot by his claws.
"There you are again, my freed slave!" cried Bella, as the bird tore himself from Roland's grasp, and, perching upon his mistress's shoulder, began a violent scolding at Eric.
Clodwig did not allow himself to be easily interrupted in a discussion he had once entered upon, and proceeded to state the results of his observations in the world. Bella took an active part in the conversation. It sometimes seemed to Eric, that there was nothing beyond a certain superficial cleverness in her ready flow of words; but he rejected the criticism as a pedantic one.
His life among books, he said to himself, had rendered him unsusceptible to this easy, graceful, brilliancy, while his profession as teacher led him to be always on the watch for an elaborate network of thoughts and impressions, where there was meant to be nothing but a simple expression of natural feeling. He now gave himself freely up to the pleasure of enjoying the close companionship of so richly endowed a nature. These butterfly movements of the mind he began to look upon as legitimately feminine characteristics, which were not to be roughly criticized. Hitherto he had been familiar, in his mother and aunt, only with that severe and business-like conscientiousness, in all intellectual and moral matters, which borders on the masculine; here was a nature that craved only to sip the foam of life. Why require anything further of it?
When Bella was one day walking with Eric in the park, Roland and Lina meanwhile sitting with Clodwig, she complained of not being able to repress the religious doubts that often beset her, while, at the same time, existence without a belief in a compensating future life was a terrible enigma. Without wishing to weaken this idea, Eric sought to give her the assured peace which can be found in the realms of pure thought. There was a strange contradiction in the hearts of these two, imagining, as they did, that they were speaking of things far above and beyond all life, while in reality they were talking of life itself, and that in a way whose significance they would not willingly have acknowledged to themselves.
Suddenly Bertram came riding towards them, his horse white with foam, and while at a distance cried out,—
"Herr Captain, you must return instantly."
"What has happened?" asked Eric.