AN EXAMINATION THAT ENDS WITH A LAUGH.
For some time, the two walked silently side by side. Eric was dissatisfied with himself; he lived too exclusively in himself, and in the longing to arrange everything according to his own mental laws, and to express each truth in the most comprehensive way, throwing himself into it in the excitement of the moment with perfect freedom and naiveté, yet not unconscious of his intellectual riches.
Hence the hearers felt that, what he said was not only inopportune, but was presented with a sort of zealous importunity. Eric acknowledged this and was conscious of it immediately afterward, when he had divested himself of himself; yet he was continually making the same mistake, which caused him to appear in an ambiguous light, and as if he were out of his appropriate place. Eric had a sort of clairvoyant perception how all this was affecting Sonnenkamp, but he could not discern the peculiar triumph that it afforded him over the visionary, as he smiled to himself at the green youth who served up such freshly-cooked dishes of sophomoric learning. He knows what it is, he has passed through it all. People settle themselves down there in the little university-town, and coming in contact with no one else, they live in a fantastic world of humanity, and appear to themselves to be personages of the greatest consequence, whom an ungrateful lack of appreciation hinders from manifesting their efficiency in actual life. And this captain-doctor now before him had only a small company of ideas under his command.
Sonnenkamp whistled to himself,—whistled so low that nobody but himself could hear the tune; he even knew how to set his lips so that nobody perceived him to be whistling.
He placed himself in a chair on a little eminence, and showed Eric also a seat.
"You must have noticed," he said at last, "that Fräulein Perini is a very strict Catholic, and all our household belong to the Church; may I ask, then, why you rang the changes so loudly upon your Huguenot descent?"
"Because I wish to show my colors, and nail them to the mast; for no one must ever take me for what I am not."
Sonnenkamp was silent for some time, and then he said, leaning back in his seat,—
"I am master in this house, and I tell you that your confession shall be no hindrance. But now"—he bent himself down, putting both hands on his knees and looking straight at Eric—"but now—I came very near falling from my horse to-day, which has never happened to me before, because I was deeply engaged, while riding, in reflection upon what you said to me—in brief—the main point of our conversation. How do you think that a boy who is to engage in no business and who is to come into possession of a million—or rather say, of millions—how do you think that such a boy is to be educated?"
"I can give a precise answer to that question."