"Oh! an excellent habit! a classic habit!" said the minister, laughing at his own wit; "the ancients did not smoke, and Goethe, whom a frivolous but witty author calls 'the great pagan,' was a bitter enemy to pipes and cigars. You permit me to remain faithful to my habit of smoking a light cigar after my sermon?"
"I pray you will do so."
"Don't you find"--puff! puff!--"that smoking"--puff! puff!--"is a thoroughly Germanic, I might almost say, a thoroughly Christo-Germanic element?" said the minister, who was determined to show his cleverness.
"You would certainly furnish a new weapon to the scoffers at our religion, if you really thought so," said Oswald, dryly.
"How so, my dear sir?"
"Said scoffers might reply that to show them only smoke, and no fire, was essentially a Germanic, a Christo-Germanic characteristic."
The minister cast at Oswald a quick, watchful glance over his glasses, as if he would have liked to see how far he might safely trust his guest. But as he considered it unsuitable for a man of classic tastes not to enter at once into a joke, even when it bordered very closely upon a frivolity, he replied with a bitter-sweet smile: "Not so bad! not so bad! But who is safe against scoffers? To be sure we might reply: Ex fumo lucem! ex fumo lucem! light out of smoke! But let us sit down, dear friend, let us sit down! How is our dear good baron, and how is the excellent baroness? Ah! you are a happy man, my dear sir, to live in such a house, with such admirable people, who unite to native nobility the nobility of the soul--especially the baroness, a pious and high-bred lady who wants to know everything ex fundamento. She is now reading Schleiermacher's discourses on religion." ...
"Do you think she really understands them?" observed Oswald.
The minister looked again at Oswald with that peculiar glance over his glasses, as if he must take a close look at the man who had the courage so openly to utter a view which he entertained himself, but only in greatest secrecy. He contented himself, however, with a gesture, he drew down the corners of his mouth, he shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows--a gesture which might mean either "All vanity, dear friend!" or "The capacities of that good lady are beyond all measure!"
"You will, of course, miss Grunwald; especially your intimacy with a man of such vast erudition as Professor Berger. But I am in the same sad condition. I also can say: Barbarus hic ego sum, quia nulli intelligor. I pass here for an original, because no one understands me. Our great landowners are certainly excellent, worthy men, who fear God and serve the king; but, between us be it said, culture they have not; I mean, of course, scientific culture. Ah, if these gentlemen could have enjoyed in their youth the advantages of a genuine rational education, like young Malte ..."