With the birth of Ferdinand a new feeling awoke in Adler's stony heart—a feeling of unbounded and eternal love. He carried the motherless baby about in his arms, and even used to take him to the mill with him, where the frightened child got blue in the face with screaming. When he grew bigger, the father satisfied all his wishes, stuffed him with sweets, surrounded him with servants, and gave him sovereigns to play with.
The more the child developed, the more he loved him. Ferdinand's games reminded him of his own childhood, of his own instincts and dreams. He pictured to himself that it would be his son who would enjoy life and reap the real benefit of the money. Ferdinand would reach the goal of his own desires, not yet extinct, for distant travels, dangerous expeditions and expensive tastes.
"Only let him be grown up," the father thought, "then I will sell the mill and we will go out into the world together; he will enjoy himself, and I shall look on and see that he comes to no harm."
As a human being cannot give to others more than he himself possesses, Adler gave to his son an iron constitution, selfish propensities, money, and an unbounded desire for enjoyment. He developed no higher instincts in him. Neither father nor son had any understanding for the true values of life; they cared nothing for beauty in Nature or in Art, and they both despised their fellow-men.
In the social life of the community, where every unit is consciously or unconsciously tied by a thousand bonds of sympathy and fellow-feeling, these two stood alone. The father loved money above all things, and his son above money; the son liked his father, but loved only himself and the things which satisfied his instincts.
The boy had his tutors, and went to school for a few years. He learnt several languages, was a fair talker and a good dancer, and dressed in good taste. As he got on easily with people when they put no obstacles in his way, was witty and spent money lavishly, he was popular; though Boehme, who looked at things from a different point of view, maintained that the boy knew very little and was on the wrong track. Ferdinand was a Don Juan even in his seventeenth year; in his eighteenth he was expelled from school. A year later he had incurred debts at cards, and at twenty he went abroad. In spite of large sums allowed him by his father, he ran into debt to the tune of sixty thousand roubles. He had thus indirectly brought about the need for "economy" at the factory, and caused himself and his father to be cursed by the workpeople.
During his few years' absence from home, Ferdinand had climbed Alpine glaciers and Vesuvius, had been up in a balloon, and allowed himself to be bored for a few weeks in London, where houses are built of red brick and there are no amusements on Sundays. But the longest and gayest time he had spent in Paris.
He did not often write to his father; only when a stronger impression than usual touched his iron nerves he reported it to him in detail. These letters therefore were great events in Adler's life. The old mill-owner read them again and again, and enjoyed every word of them; they revived in him the ardent dreams of long ago. To go up in a balloon or look down into the crater of a volcano; to join in a cancan or give a woman champagne baths; to lose or win hundreds of roubles at one throw—had these not been the ideals of his life? Did not Ferdinand even surpass them? Under the influence of these letters, sketched in the excitement of first impressions, the habit of dreaming came back to this sternly realistic mind. At times he distinctly visualized what he read, investing it with an almost poetic fancy, but the vision fled before the rhythmic throb of the engines and power-looms. Adler had only one longing, one hope and faith—to amass a million, sell his mill, and go away with his son to see the world.
"He will enjoy himself, and I shall look on all day long."
Pastor Boehme was not at all in favour of this programme, worthy of the corrupt Elders of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the Roman Empire.