These words were in the highest degree satisfactory. Here was a man who knew the worth of a minute. He was the man for Spener. "Come with me," he said, "and I'll show you a building-site or two worth putting money on;" and so they walked together out of the factory, crossed a rustic foot-bridge to the opposite side, ascended a sunny half-cleared slope and passed across a field; and there beneath them, far below, rolled the grand river which had among its notable ports this little Spenersberg.
"What do you think of a house on this site, sir?" asked Spener, looking with no small degree of satisfaction around him and down the rocky steep.
"I think I should like to be commissioned to build a castle with towers and gates of this very granite which you could hew out by the thousand cord from the quarry yonder. What a perfect gray for building!"
"I have always thought I would use the material on the ground—the best compliment I could pay this place which I have raised my fortune out of," said Spener.
"There's no better material on the earth," said Leonhard.
"But I don't want a castle: I want a house with room enough in it—high ceilings, wide halls, and a piazza fifteen or twenty feet wide all around it."
"Must I give up the castle? There isn't a better site on the Rhine than this."
"But I'm not a baron, and I live at peace with my neighbors—at least with outsiders." That last remark was an unfortunate one, for it brought the speaker back consciously to confront the images which were constantly lurking round him—only hid when he commanded them out of sight in the manfulness of a spirit that would not be interfered with in its work. He sat looking at Leonhard opposite to him, who had already taken a note-book and pencil from his pocket, and, planting his left foot firmly against one of the great rocks of the cliff, he said, "Loretz tells me you stayed all night at his house."
"Yes, he invited me in when I inquired my way to the inn."
"Sister Benigna was there?"