When I came the next morning and spoke to her as usual, she turned away from me and burst into tears. Surprised and anxious, I asked what was the matter. In a voice broken with sobs, she told me the whole story and begged me to become a Catholic as soon as I was fourteen years old.
Never in my whole life shall I forget that morning. For a moment, I gazed on her with the deepest emotion, pitying her almost more than myself; then suddenly turned coldly and calmly away without answering a single word. My mind had awakened to the despotism of theology and the church had lost its expected convert. I never went near her again and never exchanged another word with her. This was the only friend I had during eight and a half years of uninterrupted attendance at school.
A visit that I paid to my maternal grandfather when seven or eight years old made a strong impression on my mind.
My grandfather, on his return from the war of 1813-1815 in which he had served, had received from the authorities of Prenzlau (the city in which he lived) a grant of a half-ruined cloister with about a hundred acres of uncultivated land attached, by way of acknowledgment of his services. He removed thither with his family, and, shortly after, invited the widows of some soldiers who lived in the city to occupy the apartments which he did not need. The habitable rooms were soon filled to overflowing with widows and orphans, who went to work with him to cultivate the ground.
It was not long before crippled and invalid soldiers arrived, begging to be allowed to repair the cloister and to find a shelter also within its walls. They were set to work making brick, the material for which my grandfather had discovered on his land: and in about five years an institution was built, the more valuable from the fact that none lived there on charity but all earned what they needed by cultivating the ground; having first built their own dwelling which at this time looked like a palace surrounded by trees, grass and flowers. Here, in the evening, the old soldiers sang martial songs or told stories of the wars to the orphans gathered about them, while resting from the labors of the day.
I tell you of this institution so minutely to prove to you how wrong it is to provide charitable homes for the poor as we provide them, homes in which the charity always humiliates and degrades the individual. Here you have an instance in which poor crippled invalids and destitute women and children established and supported themselves under the guidance of a clear-headed, benevolent man, who said, “Do what you like, but work for what you need.” He succeeded admirably, though he died a very poor man, his younger children becoming inmates of the establishment until they were adopted by their relatives.
When I visited my grandfather, the “convent,” as he insisted on calling it—rejecting any name that would have indicated a charitable institution—contained about a hundred invalid soldiers, a hundred old women and two hundred and fifty orphans. One of the wings of the building was fitted up as a hospital and a few of the rooms were occupied by lunatics.
It was my greatest delight to take my grandfather’s hand at noon as he walked up and down the dining room between the long tables around which were grouped so many cheerful, hearty faces; and I stood before him with an admiration that it is impossible to describe as he prayed, with his black velvet cap in his hand, before and after dinner. Though I could not comprehend why he should thank another person for what had been done, when every one there told me that all that they had they owed to my grandfather.
One afternoon, on returning from the dining room to his study, I spied on his desk a neatly written manuscript. I took it up and began to read. It was a dissertation on immortality, attempting by scientific arguments to prove its impossibility. I became greatly interested, and read on without noticing that my grandfather had left the room or that the large bell had rung to call the family to dinner.
My grandfather, a very punctual man who would never allow lingering, came back to call and to reprimand me; he suddenly started on seeing the paper in my hands and snatching it from me tore it in pieces, exclaiming, “That man is insane, and will make this child so too!” A little frightened, I went to the dinner table, thinking as much about my grandfather’s words as about what I had read, without daring, however, to ask who this man was.