"Yes, by all means send them in," he replied, after a moment's reflection, with the same air of friendly composure with which he had been dealing with the salvation of Leo's soul.
The two men were again alone. The clergyman offered Leo cigars, pale yellow cigars, which smouldered slightly, and he himself lit a long pipe.
They discussed the affairs of the neighbourhood and topics of the hour in a calm, matter-of-fact way; the harvest, the increase of pauperism, and the strike in Saxony, which threatened even here to become a social evil. And thus they came to speak of the parish of Wengern.
The superintendent smiled. "Your deceased father," he said, "filled the cure there with a queer sort of fellow. To-day it wouldn't be possible, for the law of sanction is exercised much more rigidly than it used to be. I will confess to you that more than once I have prevented a storm bursting over his head, for the consistory would be glad to have done with him. He is only saved by his orthodoxy and the strict morality he preaches. If half of his goings-on were known, he would long ago have got his dismissal."
"And you, as his superior, tolerate him?" asked Leo.
"Yes, dear Herr von Sellenthin. How shall I express it? It lies in the weakness of the human heart that a man sometimes can't do what he ought. I believe that the pastor has eight children. I have only five. Peter is the rock on which the Church stands, but it also has its John. Why should one not take John for a model, so long as one isn't a member of the consistory?"
Leo pressed the simple man's hand in gratitude.
"And then, you know, Herr von Sellenthin, that in conference, Pastor Brenckenberg is the only man who has what, at the university, we called 'ideas.' It's a funny thing what becomes of those so-called ideas. When we were young we all had them in abundance, but they diminished as we grew older, and now one hardly knows what they are like. When one comes across them in another, they are apt to irritate at first, but finally one feels that they do good. Therefore I suffer Brenckenberg gladly in our midst. And besides that, Herr von Sellenthin, there is a homely saying which I have often found true, and which may apply even to your case. It is, that the majority of things are not so bad as they seem. You will ask, what about the deadly sins? God knows they exist in plenty. Seven of them, the Scripture says. But the main point is this. Why did the Saviour die on the Cross if we were to despair in our sins? Either that death seems to us an act of folly, which God forbid, or we believe in it even as a miracle, which every day of our lives is worked anew, and which to-morrow will be worked especially for you, my dear friend."
Filled with his harmonious views of life, he waved his cup to and fro complacently, to stir up the sugar in the dregs of his milk-coffee.
Leo rose to take his leave. This man, so inoffensive that one couldn't help liking him, was not the priest that his soul needed. So he hurried away, as much without comfort as he had come. He felt as if he could have shaken the dust of that home of peace from his feet, only there was no dust there to shake. He drove through the rainy twilight towards Uhlenfelde. Night had fallen before he drew up at its closed gates. His horse splashed in a pool of water, and a shower-bath of raindrops trickled on him from the leafless branches which flanked the road. He would have got down to pull the bell, but a numbness which had overtaken him made him set still instead, and stare in front of him.