"What sum would you demand?" asked he, putting into his mouth a fresh cigar that he had held for some time in his hand. Eric replied that it was not for him, but for the father, to determine that.
Sonnenkamp brought his cigar to a glow with a few violent whiffs, and with great unction declared how well he knew that no sum was large enough to compensate adequately the painstaking duties of education and instruction.
Then leaning back in his chair, crossing his legs, and holding on to his left leg with the right hand, manifestly well satisfied with this declaration of his noble sentiments, he said,—
"Would you be willing to give me an exposition in a few words of the principles and method you must employ in the training of my son?"
"The method to be marked out in any particular case, the course I should adopt in actual instruction, I myself do not as yet know."
"What! you yourself not even know that?"
"I must take my method from Roland himself, for it must be adapted to the pupil's natural characteristics. Let me take an illustration from your own surroundings. You see here the river. The boatmen have sounded the bottom, and knowing where the shoal-banks are, keep well clear of them. So must I, first of all, fathom, in the peculiar sense of that word, the depths of Roland's nature."
Eric looking up continued:—
"Or let me take a yet more pertinent illustration. If you see that your servants, in going from the house to the servants' quarters, take by preference a short cut over a grass-plot artistically measured and laid out, you will, if it is possible, give in to this beaten track, and not obstinately adhere to your artificial plan, however correct it may be, and however much in conformity with the principles of landscape-gardening. You will adopt this natural foot-path as a part of your plan. This is the method adapted to circumstances. Such thoroughfares are found also in human beings."
Sonnenkamp smiled; he had, in fact, tried very hard, by means of stringent prohibitions, to keep a bed of shrubbery in the middle of the court-yard free from foot-passengers, and finally had laid out a pathway through it.