"Very likely. I am only pleased at the excellent arrangement of this world. My young friend, I believe that the thing called virtue is taught by means of a system in the Universities: they have a system of morality. We, my young friend, will work out a system of criminality. We will establish a chair in the University: Thousands of auditors will come flocking around us, whom we alone can instruct in the Truth, the real Truth. The world is magnificent! It must nominate me for the professorship of worldly wisdom, which is a science differing widely from the idea hitherto entertained of it. It is time that this moral rouge should be rubbed off. I know, thus far, but one human being whom I shall admit as my colleague into this faculty, and that one, alas! is a woman; but we must overcome this prejudice also. Magnificent!"
"You have not yet told me whether you accede to the plan"—
"Have I not? My young friend, you cannot yet become a professor. You are still a school-boy, learning the elements, the rudiments. I would fain found a new Rome, and, as once the Rome of Antiquity was peopled with a community of mere vagabonds, so I would fill my city from the houses of correction. No nation can equal their inhabitants. They are the really vigorous men."
"I do not understand you."
"You are right," said Sonnenkamp at last in a gentle tone. "We will be very upright and discreet, very moral and delicate. My young friend, I have something very different in view. The mouse-trap of your cathedral dean is too clumsy for me. I shall not snap at this bait cooked in lard."
Pranken was full of wrath. Sonnenkamp's manner of treating him like a boy still in his school-jacket roused his indignation.
He stood up very straight, and looked down at himself from head to foot, to see whether he were indeed a little boy. At last he said, throwing back his head,—
"Respected father, I beg you to desist from this pleasantry."
"Pleasantry?"
"Yes. I have united myself to you—you cannot deny it—with a loyalty that—I have wished to make you my equal in—no, I did not mean to say that at such a time—only I must beseech you not to withhold your concurrence from this project. We have obligations. We, have great obligations; and I demand that you should"—