"Herr Sonnenkamp," replied Eric, "you had the kindness to say a few moments ago that I did right in forbidding Roland to betray a secret. How shall I-—-"
"Ah, my dear Dournay," interrupted Sonnenkamp, "we may reasonably allow ourselves many things that we should forbid a young person to do. I respect, I honor your truthfulness. I acknowledge the great sacrifice you would make in rendering me this service fully, thoroughly, but you will make the sacrifice, will you not?"
Eric tried to decline the task. Sonnenkamp threw his head back, and whistled softly to himself, while Eric maintained with great earnestness that he was not good at sounding others' opinions, and that he should consider it a betrayal of friendship to repeat anything which was said to him confidentially. "Besides," he concluded, "I do not think that Count Wolfsgarten would express his opinion any more fully to me."
Sonnenkamp was inwardly angry, but summoned all his powers of self-control to his aid. He praised Eric's conscientiousness; spoke with enthusiasm of his delicate tact, his moral purity, and the loftiness of his ideal; he went so far as to apologize for having fancied, even for a moment, that Eric was more than a friend to Bella; his unhappy experience among men, he said, must serve as his excuse for the injustice; he considered it as the greatest of privileges to have been once allowed the acquaintance of a thoroughly pure and noble man.
Eric had never supposed that this man knew him so well; this Sonnenkamp must have a nobler mind than he had given him credit for, to be able to read so well the noble struggles of others.
The impression he had made was not lost upon Sonnenkamp. He laid his hand on Eric's shoulder, and said with a trembling, almost a tearful voice,—
"My dear young friend! Yes, my friend—I call you so, for you are such—even if I have not myself the right to claim so close an intimacy with you as I should like, consider what a great, what a necessary influence indeed you may exert—not for me; of what consequence am I?—but for our Roland. For our Roland!" he repeated significantly. The mention of Roland's name suddenly roused Eric as from a dream. He answered by asking why Herr Sonnenkamp desired a title for Roland.
"Oh, my friend!" Sonnenkamp continued with increasing affection, "that is the last, the only object of all my efforts in the Old World and in the New. Oh, my friend! Who is able to tell how soon I may die? You will remain the friend, the support of my son. Give me your hand upon it. Promise me you will so continue. I shall die without a fear, knowing he is under your protection. Alas, no one suspects how ill, how shaken I am. I force myself to appear firm and erect, but I am inwardly broken. The labors and struggles of life have sapped my strength. Any moment may end my life, and I would gladly leave my son in an assured position. You, my friend, love our beautiful, glorious Germany; you will be glad to secure to her a strong and faithful son. Should Roland continue as he is, should he preserve his present name, he will always consider himself a citizen of the world across the ocean, not a true son of our noble Germany, where alone a man of mind and of means can find a sphere for his usefulness. Forgive me if I do not express myself as warmly as I feel, and as I ought, to a friend like you. I only ask you to add to your other benefits to Roland that of making him a son of Germany; if not for our sakes, yet for the sake of our dear country."
Sonnenkamp well knew what a responsive strain he touched in Eric, by those tender words from the anxious heart of a father, and by this broad, reverent outlook, not only beyond his own death, but beyond all thought of self. Eric was touched, and said:
"I would give my life for Roland-—-"