When the first dress-rehearsal took place, and Roland showed himself to his parents in his becoming costume of close-fitting white silk tights, they were full of admiration; his mother in especial could not restrain her expressions of rapture. Roland glanced at Eric, who for some time had been looking gloomily on the ground. He wanted to ask him why he was so pedantic, for that was what his fellow-actors called him; but he checked himself, and only said:—
"I promise you I will learn again, by and by, all the lessons you give me, only let us be merry now."
Eric smiled; he felt that his pupil was having destroyed in him what could never be repaired; but what could he do? The question indeed passed through his mind whether he should not leave, now that all he had so carefully planted and nurtured was taken and trampled under foot; and only the thought that nothing would then stand between Roland and destruction kept him at his difficult post. Still he considered it his duty to communicate his anxiety to Sonnenkamp, who comforted him by saying that American youths were ripe in years, and masters of their own lives, when Germans would be still sitting on a bench at school, and grieving under a master's criticism.
"I fear," said Eric, "that Roland is losing the best possession that man can win."
"What do you mean by that?"
"He should learn above all things to find his best pleasures in himself."
"So you would like to make a scholar of him, a man who can boil his own coffee?"
"You understand me very well, and I understand your joke. You know that what I mean to say is this, that the man who can find no pleasure within himself will find none in the world. On that point we in a manner agree with the church people, only we understand it somewhat differently. Whoever will be happy must enter into the kingdom of heaven that is open in every human soul; who does not that, is always dependent on voluntary or purchased service and respect."
Sonnenkamp listened to Eric's quiet enthusiasm with a nod of assent. He agreed with his ideas, but thought them strangely mixed with an ecclesiastical asceticism which he merely interpreted into the language of the world.
While Roland was at the rehearsals of the French play, Eric would often spend his time at the teachers' club, and was pained to find here also an aristocracy. The teachers of the higher schools were separated from those of the primary. Eric was received by many as an old acquaintance, and found himself followed by the fame he had won at the musical festival, for the teachers are the chief supporters of vocal music. They had a private singing club here, and Eric sang with his comrades more beautifully than ever.