Fresh evidences of this unaccountable tendency of the boy's thoughts were constantly appearing. One day he asked Eric to go with him to the huntsman's, to see how his wife and children were faring. He said he had met the man's son, a cooper in the service of the Wine-count, a little while ago, and had offered to shake hands with him, telling him the son was not to blame for what the father had done, even if he had done anything wrong, which he certainly had not; but that the cooper had stared at him, and instead of taking his offered hand, had drawn his hammer from his leather apron, swung it back and forth for a while, and finally walked off.
When Eric and Roland approached the huntsman's house, the birds in the cages were singing, busiest among them the blackbird, with his incessant chirp of thanksgiving, and the dogs were bounding merrily. The wife looked ill and slatternly, and was full of complaints. She told how she had wanted to let all the birds out after her husband was taken to prison, but her son, the cooper, insisted on everything being left as it was till his father came back, which was sure to be very soon; Sevenpiper had in the mean while undertaken to do part of her husband's work, and the cooper attended to the night duties, though he had to work so hard through the day. Everything should be done properly, that the place might be kept open for her husband.
Eric offered her a sum of money, which she refused, saying that her son, the cooper, had forbidden her to accept anything from Sonnenkamp's family.
"If this man is innocent, as I believe he is," said Roland, when they were in the villa again, "what can make up to him for all the anxiety and distress he has had to suffer?"
Eric had no satisfactory answer to give; he could only say that this was another proof of the fact that the best things in life could not be supplied by money.
CHAPTER III.
THE NEW ALLIES, AND A SUMMER FETE.
Hardly two weeks had gone by before the lessons were interrupted again. Frau Ceres, who was generally very quiet and took no interest in anything, often referred to a promise she had made to take Roland to see the Cabinetsräthin, (wife of the cabinet-minister), whose acquaintance she had formed at the Baths.
A grand excursion to the capital was decided upon, which Eric alone was not invited to join. The party set out in two carriages. Frau Ceres, Fräulein Perini, and Roland in one, and Sonnenkamp and Pranken in the other.
Pranken began at once to express his satisfaction at the friendly interest Sonnenkamp had shown in the Church; he had on his side already put things in such a train that they could count upon the co-operation of the higher clergy, who were very influential at Court, in carrying out their plan. He felt some compunctions at profiting by his frequent and intimate intercourse with the Prince-cardinal, as a piece of diplomacy; but he was vain enough to wish to pass off upon the world in general and Sonnenkamp in particular, as a stroke of worldly wisdom, the inward illumination which he secretly gloried in. He rejoiced at the relation thus easily established with the Cabinetsräthin, upon whom outside pressure could be brought to bear in a way hardly possible with her husband.