Crutius accompanied Herr Sonnenkamp with great politeness, through the outer offices as far as the head of the staircase; but the air of the room seemed to oppress him when he returned to it, and he threw open the windows.
"It is he, nevertheless," he said to himself. "Take care. Knight of the Cross of Honor, I have hold of you by another ribbon, and am only granting you a little longer time to flutter about me."
He hunted up the paper that contained the notice, made a broad red mark and three exclamation marks on the margin, and laid the sheet by in a special compartment labelled, "For future use."
CHAPTER XI.
A NEW LIFE IN EVERYTHING.
The Prince must have forgotten that he had meant to send for Sonnenkamp, who now found himself deprived of all opportunity of expressing his thanks in person to him or to his brother, by their departure, in company with many nobles of the court, and Pranken among them, for a royal hunting-seat where the great Spring hunts were to be held. Pranken had left the capital in great ill-humor at Herr Sonnenkamp's having been guilty of the impropriety of entering into any relations with the editor of a newspaper.
All was quiet in the Hotel Victoria. Eric's mother and aunt had already returned to the green cottage, and Roland begged and entreated every day that the whole family might break up their establishment in the Capital. At last his wish was granted, and Sonnenkamp favored his house, his servants, the park and the hot-houses, with a sight of the glory of his button-hole. This decoration he brought back, and could always preserve as a happy memento of that winter of pleasure and of pain. Roland never grew weary of greeting the familiar objects with fresh delight. A feeling and love of home seemed to be roused in him, for the first time, in its full intensity.
"I see now," he said to Eric, "that this living in hotels and anywhere else than in one's own house is like living on a railway. I can go to sleep, but I hear all the time the rattle of wheels in my dreams. That is the way when we are abroad, but now we are at home again, and I have a grandmother near by to visit, and an aunt, and the Major is a kind of uncle, and Claus is like a faithful old tower. The dogs too are glad to have me at home again. Nora looked at me a little strange at first, but soon recognized me, and her pups are splendid. Now we will be busy and merry again. It would be nice to plant a tree to remember this day by, and have you plant one near it, don't you think so? Don't you feel as I do, that you have just come into the world, and that all that has happened before was only a dream? If I could only erect something that should always be saying to me: Remember how happy you once were, and how happy you are, and let nothing further trouble you in the world. Oh, how beautiful it is here! The Rhine is broader than I remembered it, and the mountains look down so upon me! I think I saw them in my fever, but not so beautiful as they are now. It seems as if I could compel the vineyards to grow green at once."
As he was walking with Eric along the river bank, he suddenly stood still and said,—
"Hark, how the waves plash against the shore! Just so have they rippled and plashed day and night when I was not here. Would it not be beautiful to plunge into the waves and swim? Does not the rippling tempt you too? It seems to me we did it centuries ago."