"This narrative in the Old Testament is the correlative to that of the adulteress in the New; and after a thousand years, the harmony is rendered complete. The Old Testament strikes the discordant note; the New Testament brings it to the accordant pitch."
Clodwig was exceedingly delighted with this exposition; there was something of the student-nature in him, and he was always enlivened and made happy by any new view, and any enlargement of his knowledge.
"Herr Priest, and you also, Frau Professorin," cried the Doctor, who was to-day more talkative than ever, "with your great experience of life, you two could render a great service to a friend of mine."
"I?" the priest asked.
"And I?" asked the Professorin.
"Yes, you. Our century has entered upon a wholly new investigation of the laws of the world; and things, circumstances, sentiments, which one would not believe could ever be caught, are now bagged in the statistical net, and must be shown to be conformable to laws. Nothing has been esteemed freer and more incalculable, even incomprehensible, than love and matrimony, and yet there are now exact statistical tables of these; there is an iron law, by which the number of divorces in a year is determined. My friend now goes a step farther, and from facts of his own observation has deduced the conclusion, that marriages in which the man is considerably older than the wife, present a greater average of happy unions than so-called love-matches; now, Herr Priest, and you also, Frau Professorin, think over the list of persons you are acquainted with, and ask yourselves whether you find any confirmation of this law."
The Professorin was silent, but the Priest said that religion alone consecrated marriage; religion alone gave humility, which was the only sure basis of all beautiful intercourse between men themselves, and also between man and God.
The Priest succeeded, continuing the conversation, in diverting it entirely from the subject so flippantly introduced.
Sonnenkamp stated that the Major wished to have a grand masonic celebration in the spacious knight's hall of the castle, when it was completed; he asked in what relation the reigning Prince stood towards Masonry.
Clodwig replied that he himself had formerly belonged to the order, and that the Prince was at present a protector of the brotherhood, without being a member.