"I was living in quiet retirement when the insane party of the North arose, whose object was to abolish slavery. And when my own countrymen entered into the front ranks as the magnanimous friends of man, I came forward in the newspapers and acknowledged myself a German, in order to say that all were not like these shriekers about humanity. I showed that it was madness to desire to free the slave. Humane men wanted to render benevolent aid; but the wretchedness of the world is not cured by benevolence, nor the poverty, nor the crime. The works of mercy, all seven together, do not help the world, they are all quack-remedies: the only real benevolence to the lower orders of men is slavery. They want to be nothing else than what they are: the best thing is for them to be taken care of by their masters—for the blacks certainly, and no less so, perhaps, for the whites. Herr Weidmann knows that his nephew has been my bitterest enemy. I was in the Southern States, and there I and my compeers were nobles. We are the privileged class. There are privileged races, and privileged persons among those races. The barons of the Southern States seemed to me the only honest men I had become acquainted with; everywhere else there was hypocrisy. I was displeased, indeed, that they wanted to get for their cause the cover of religion; but it was a rich joke that the ministers of religion volunteered their aid in this attempt.
"But I soon learned to have less regard even for this Southern chivalry. They are hypocrites, too; for they hold slaves, and yet despise him who imports the slaves. This is a remnant of the old hypocrisy of setting up a standard of virtue. Why deny the natural, open, pitiless mastership? Why not openly acknowledge that which they acknowledge in secret? Because the English worshippers of rank place slave-traders in the category of pirates? Even the freemen of the South are themselves the slaves of a vulgar notion. Now it came over me. When I had a son, a longing was awakened within me which I could not appease. I know not whether I have already told you, that, in my early days, the thought often occurred to me, had I been a noble, had I with my courage and my ability entered the military service, I should have become a steady man like the rest; I might have been for a time dissipated; but then I should have managed my estate, and been the founder of an honorable line. The fundamental cause of my adventurous, restless life always seemed to me to be the fact that I was a commoner, having every claim to a privileged station, and yet always thrust into the back-ground. I know that it is an inconsistency; I despise the world, and I strive after honor. This proceeds from a youthful impression of what was meant by the nobility. The only guaranty for the world's smile is rank and genius; without one of these you do not escape from mediocrity and sufferance. I pictured to my wife what a grand life was led at some little court in Germany, and it became a fixed idea in her mind. One can tear out the heart more easily than root out from it a thought. I see the struggle coming in the New World: courage and strength are on our side. There will be a slaughter unparalleled; but we shall be victorious. The Southern States want independence, and this is the only, the highest thing. I have labored in Europe for our cause. We lived in England, in Italy, in Switzerland. I thought, for a time, of becoming what is called a free, sober citizen of Switzerland. But I hated Switzerland: it suffers the foreigner to be free, so long as he is a foreigner; if he becomes a citizen of the State, he can no longer be a free man, but must take part in all their petty concerns. He who is not earning money, and who will not be pious—one can do both at the same time without much trouble—he who doesn't want to live frugally, will not do for Switzerland. No court, no nobility, no barracks there!—nothing but church, school, and hospital, things that are of no account to me. I didn't want to remain in Switzerland, with inaccessible heights before my eyes; it's oppressive, and for that reason, here on the Rhine it's cozy and homelike. Germany is and will be the only land for free men. Here one pays his tax, and is let alone. No one has any claim, and in his position the nobleman is liable to no interference. I returned to Germany, because I wished to acquire for myself and for my son a brilliant position in society. The regard of one's neighbors, one's fellow-men, is a fine luxury, perhaps the very finest: this, I wanted to have too. I wanted to give my son what only the German perfectly knows, dutiful service; and with this view there was perpetually ringing in my ears one melody—the only sentimentalism I can reproach myself with—a villa on the Rhine. This was the dream of my childhood, this, of my mature life, and this has been my ruin. When I looked the whole world over, and asked myself where life could be passed most happily, then I had to confess, as I said before, that it is the highest pinnacle of enjoyment to be a rich baron of some small German state. Here one may have a life fraught with enjoyment without any claim of duty, and receive all honor in a limited circle, and enjoyment besides. I have become familiar with all the different strata of existence. I have caroused and scuffled with the red-skins, and more than once have been in danger of adorning some Indian with my scalp, and I wanted now to make trial of the red-collars and their chief. I did not want to leave the world without knowing what court life was. I cherished still one idyllic dream—something of the German romance hangs by me yet—and, not without reason, I called my house Villa Eden. Here it was my purpose to live in enjoyment with my plants, and like my plants; but I have been dragged again into the world, more by the thought of my children than any thing else. Enough; you are well aware that I wanted to be ennobled. Let it be. I have now come to the end. But"—
He paused, and looked at what he had whittled out; it was an African's head, with the tongue lolling from his mouth. With one sharp cut, Sonnenkamp suddenly cut off tongue and mouth, so that they fell down into his lap; then, grinning like the figure in his hand, he went on:—
"I have placed myself and mine under the protection of civilization; I have taken refuge, not in the savage wilderness, but in the bosom of cultivated life, as it is termed. To be honest, I do not repent it. I am no milk-sop; my soul has been tempered in the fire of hell. I made no concealment of my past history, because I considered it bad. What in this world is bad? I concealed myself from folly and weakness. Thousands repent without becoming any better. Had I been a soldier in a successful war, perhaps I should have been a hero. I am a man without superstition: I haven't even the superstition of the so-called humanity. I live and die in the conviction that what is called equal rights is a fable; to free the negro will never do a particle of good, they will be exterminated, when it comes to the pass that a negro may sit in the White House at Washington. The world is full of hypocrisy, and my only pride is, that I am no hypocrite.
"But now, honorable and worthy gentlemen, is there any question you would like to ask? I am ready to answer it."
He made a pause.
No one made any response.
"Well, then," was his close, "gentlemen of honor and of virtue, I demand of you, not for my own sake, but for the sake of my children, to impose upon me some sort of reparation. If you demand that I should kill myself, I will do it; if you enjoin banishment, I will go away; if you require the half of my property, which is far more than I have ever acquired from the negroes, my fellow-men, as they are called, I will resign it. I thank you, and await your verdict on the appointed day."
He retired, and left the men by themselves.
Clodwig whispered to Eric,—