"Boy, are you mad?" he cried; but Hans, who knew well that his only hope lay in not allowing his father to speak, rattled on very quickly, "I have been very diligent all these two years, extremely diligent. My teacher will tell you so; he thinks I may safely be left to myself now, and when I came away he said to me, 'It will surely delight your father to see the progress you have made; refer any one to me.'"
All this was uttered with extreme volubility; the words fell like honey from his lips, but it did him no good any longer; at last the Professor understood that there was no jest about the 'slight change' of studies, and he burst forth, "And you dare to brave me thus! You dare secretly, behind my back, to play such a farce; to defy my command, to laugh my wishes to scorn; and now you imagine that I shall yield in the matter, and say 'yes,' and 'amen'? You will find yourself vastly mistaken."
Hans hung his head and looked crushed. "Do not be so hard upon me, papa! Art is my ideal, the poesy of my life, and if you knew how my conscience has pricked me for my disobedience!"
"You look as if your conscience pricked you," the Professor stormed, still more furious. "Ideal,--Poesy,--the same cursed old trash! The shibboleth to hide all the folly that men perpetrate. Never imagine that such nonsense will go down with me. Whatever pranks you may have played hitherto, now you are coming home, and I shall take you in hand. You will shortly pass the examination for your degree! Do you hear? I order you to do so."
"But I have not learned anything," Hans declared, with positive exultation. "While the lectures were going on I sketched or caricatured either the professors or the audience, as the case might be, and all that you taught me I forgot long ago; I could not write an essay a page long, and you cannot send me to the university again."
"You are actually boasting of your ignorance," said Wehlau, sternly; "and the inconceivable deception you have practised upon me you perhaps consider another piece of heroism to be proud of."
"No; only as a necessary weapon, when all other means failed. How I formerly implored and entreated you to yield to my desires, and all in vain! You would have had me sacrifice my talent, my entire future, to a profession for which I was not fitted, and in which I never could have excelled. You denied me the means for my artistic education and thought thereby to force my inclination. When I said to you, 'I want to be a painter,' you met me with an inexorable 'no.' Now I say to you, 'I am a painter,' and you will have to say 'yes.'"
"That remains to be seen," Wehlau burst forth afresh. "I will see whether I cannot govern my own son. I am master in my own house, and I'll have no rebellion there; those who oppose me will have to leave it."
The young man's cheek paled at this threat; he stepped up close to his father, and his voice sounded imploring, but gravely in earnest. "Father, do not let matters go too far between you and me. I am not made as you are. I have always had a horror of your cold lofty science that makes life so clear and so--desolate. You do not comprehend that there is another world, and that there is a temperament to which this other world is as necessary as the air to the lungs. You wring from nature her secrets; everything that lives and moves must be adjusted to your rules and theories; you know the origin and end of every created being. But you do not know your own son, whom you cannot fit to your theories. He has clasped close his morsel of poesy and ideality, and has pursued his own path, in which he will never disgrace you."
With this he turned and walked towards the door; but the Professor, who was in no wise disposed to end the interview thus, called angrily after him, "Stay, Hans! Come back this instant!"