"The fellow would be quite to my taste," he went on; "he would have been a good, healthy scoundrel of the old sort, only that rascals nowadays, alas! are all so reflective, so self-conscious. They are not satisfied to act as one of Nature's elementary forces, but they are constantly making outrageous attempts at logical self-justification. If this Herr Sonnenkamp really wished to change himself, it would be despicable cowardice."
"Cowardice?" interrupted Weidmann. "He who has not a good conscience can easily be overthrown, and has no persevering fortitude. He can be bold, he can be foolhardy; but temerity is not courage."
"Ho, ho!" interrupted the Doctor. "Have I not already told you that I have an aversion to all this sentimental fuss on behalf of the negroes? I have a natural repugnance for negroes. I don't see why my reason should brand such an innate physiological antipathy as a prejudice. It shows prejudice, moreover, to say that all prejudices are groundless. I could wish that we had more of such inborn dislikes, and that we did not permit so-called civilization to rob us of those which we have. The slave-trade is not a fine thing, it is true. If I had been a prince, I should, after all, have ennobled the man. I should have said, 'Good friend, take a bath; but then be merry, and the Devil take orthodoxy!' The thing which vexes me most is, that this Professor Crutius has obliged the nobles by firing off his article beforehand. Could he not have waited a day longer? Then Sonnenkamp would have been one of the nobility, and they would have been obliged to swallow it as they could. Would not that have been much better?"
The Doctor seemed determined not to regard the matter in a serious light. When they were leaving, however, and he had insisted on Eric's sitting beside him in the carriage, and tying his horse on behind, he said,—
"As for the rest of it, I acquiesce, and, to tell you the truth, on account of your faith. You believe that the past can be atoned for by an effort of the will; and do you really believe this man will repent? Well, your faith shall remove me, the mountain of unbelief. We will see."
Eric told him that he had been at Wolfsgarten, and was not a little astonished when the Doctor said that the incongruity and want of harmony between Clodwig and Bella had reached a crisis.
"Bella," he said, "seeks a narcotic. She studies Latin, and, while smaller natures intoxicate themselves with brandy, she strives to stun herself with Lord Byron's poetry. I ought not to speak of Byron. I was once too much inspired by him, and now go to the other extreme. I consider this sort of writing to be not wine, but—But then, as I said, I am a heretic, and, indeed, a renegade heretic."
Seeing that Eric shrank back, he added,—
"You are horrified by my heresy; but then, it is only my individual opinion."
The Doctor was going on to abuse Bella again in his old way. Eric said involuntarily, how strange it seemed to him that the Doctor should be so imbittered against her, for whom he had once shown a preference.