They went on for some time in silence, till presently the Professor began again,—
"You are still young; you must not waste these morning hours of your life. I warn you as your teacher and your father, yes in the very spirit of your father. It is my right and my duty thus to speak, for your father should serve you as a warning."
"My father serve me as a warning?"
"Yes. I need not remind you of the worth and importance of his labors, but your father often lamented that he had allowed an unworthy regard for his standing in society to interfere with his devotion to pure knowledge; he could not resume the steadiness of his former habits of study. More than that, he found himself thinking of persons while he was writing, instead of thinking only of ideas, which is our religion. If we lose that, we are the worst of idolaters; our idol is even less than a picture in a temple; it is the most worthless of all idols, the fickle voice of society."
Eric still remained silent, and the kindly old man began again,—
"Here is another proof of the wonderful connection of events. Our clinical Professor had to overcome a strong repugnance on my part to undertake this cure; neither of us knew that the real object of my being sent here was, perhaps, to be a healing-spring to you."
"Indeed you are," exclaimed Eric, as he grasped his teacher's delicate hand. Only for a little while longer, he said, till Roland had entered upon whatever work should be next appointed him, he wanted to devote himself entirely to his pupil; then he would return to the service of pure knowledges.
The Professor warned him not to wait for that, for he should never lose his hold of the world of ideas.
"Or if you mean to devote yourself to practical life," he added, "I have nothing to say against that; only you must decide on one or the other."
Eric returned to the hotel as one roused from a dream. He saw the danger which threatened him, of seeking to shine in society by a display of the thoughts and the knowledge he had acquired in the studies which he now no longer pursued. The Professor had touched a very different chord in him from what the Doctor had once stirred. He took pleasure in making his old teacher better acquainted with Clodwig, the Banker, Sonnenkamp, and particularly with Roland, whose lessons he now resumed with an energy which filled the boy with amazement.