"Ball"—"American"—"Betrothed"—was heard the next morning at the spring in all the different languages, for, inconsistent as it may seem, winter gayeties are brought into a place frequented only by invalids.
Frau Ceres' carriage did not appear at the spring; she had a tumbler of mineral water brought to her room.
Before the altar in the village church lay Manna, long after the mass was over, studying her own heart. She cried out for help, for support against the world; she remembered the advice of the Priest to make free confession, wherever she might be, to a brother or a father, and she longed to confess here; but she did not, for there was one thing she could not tell. For the first time, she left the church with a burden on her heart.
Eric was fighting his fight with himself out upon the hills. Sonnenkamp had spoken with great openness to him, but one thing he had not said, that Pranken was waiting till Manna was titled before announcing the betrothal. He was angry with himself for having allowed the idea to take possession of him, and perhaps increase, though unconsciously, his repugnance to the commission laid upon him.
The sudden calling of his name terrified him, though it was pronounced by a gentle voice. Looking up he perceived Professor Einsiedel coming towards him: What better man could he have to clear up his doubts and restore his peace of mind? For one moment, he entertained the thought of laying all his questions before the pure and childlike, yet clear and brave spirit, of his old friend; but neither could he confess, neither could he tell all, and so he too shut his secret in his own heart.
The good old man could not understand how he was to live for weeks without work, without books, doing nothing but nurse his body. Such a cure as this, he said with a childlike smile, was only a sickness with the ability to take walks, and it would be nothing worse than sickness if he lay in bed.
But he soon turned the conversation from himself, and asked Eric about his studies, and how he was getting on with his great work upon slavery. Before Eric could answer, the Professor told him that he was continually making notes upon the subject for him, and that one of the most striking things he had met with was the decision with which Luther, from a religious point of view, had expressed himself in favor of holding slaves.
"I do not blame Luther," he continued; "he adopted the views of his day, just as others in other generations have believed in the agency of evil spirits. The language of the great Bossuet shows how much the strongest minds were influenced by the general belief of the time; he said that whoever denied the right of holding slaves sinned against the Holy Ghost. Perhaps a future generation will be as little able to understand our prejudices."
Eric found in this morning walk a satisfaction to which he had been long a stranger. Professor Einsiedel had looked cautiously about him as he walked, as if fearing some one might overhear the great secret he was about to reveal. At last he said:—
"Dear Doctor," he always called Eric Doctor, "I have been thinking a great deal about the task of educating a rich youth. The absolutely right I have not found; that can exist only in the imagination. But so to educate a human being, intellectually and morally, that we can be approximately sure—mark you, I say approximately—that we can be approximately sure, or have reason to believe, that, in any given case he will be guided by pure moral laws, that is all that we can hope to do; and I am very much mistaken, if that is not what you have already succeeded in accomplishing with regard to your pupil. As far as I know the world,—and I was tutor myself once, though only for a short time—as far as I know the world, those of high birth, and no doubt it is the same with those of great wealth, are full of wishes and cravings; and the task is to convert these wishes, these cravings, this expectancy, into active will and effort. Your handsome pupil has excellent, dispositions, in this respect; he understands the seriousness of life."