AN OPEN COURT AND AN OPEN INVENTORY.
The fireworks were still crackling and snapping in their ears, the dazzling lights still gleaming in their eyes, and the music of the band still sounding in their recollection, when they were obliged to make ready for appearance at court, as witnesses in the affair of the burglary.
Pranken remained with the guests at the Villa, having undertaken to show them the recently purchased country-house.
Sonnenkamp, Roland, and Eric, and also the porter, the coachman, Bertram, the head-gardener, the little "Squirrel," and two gardeners repaired to the county town to attend the trial. They went by the house of the Wine-count, now styled Baron von Endlich, where the remnants of fireworks were still visible, scattered here and there; the house was yet shut up, the family still sleeping their first sleep as members of the nobility.
Eric spoke of the beautiful and genuinely pious conduct of the priest towards the prisoners. He was a living example of the grand doctrine that religion required one to interest himself in the stumbling and the unfortunate, whether they were guilty or innocent. The Doctor, on the other hand, maintained in a very droll fashion that it was an extremely beneficial thing for the Ranger to pass, once in his life, several weeks within walls and under a roof.
There was little else said; they reached the county town in good season.
Sonnenkamp went to the telegraph office, in order to send some messages, one of which was directed to the University-town for the widow of the Professor.
"At that time—does it not seem to you as if it were ten years ago?—at that time it was very different from to-day. Don't you think that there were villains also among the singers, perhaps worse ones than those in prison yonder?"
It pained Eric grievously that Roland must be initiated so early into the bitterness and the dissensions of life. They went together to the court-house.
The president and the judges occupied a raised platform; on the right sat the jury, and on the left, the accused and their counsel; the room was full of spectators, for there was a general curiosity to hear the mysterious Herr Sonnenkamp speak in public, and no one knew what might be picked up in the way of information.