"I have also provided that excellent wine which he loves and enjoys as a healthful medicine. But, Richard, you know Klingenberg's peculiarities. You must not play as you did just now; you would drive the doctor from the house."
"Make yourself easy about that, father; I will play while he is on the mountain."
Richard took a book from the shelf, and glanced over it. Herr Frank left him, and he immediately replaced the book and returned to his own room. There he wrote in his diary:
"12th of May.—Man is too apt to be led by his inclination. And what is inclination? A feeling caused by external impressions, or superinduced by a disposition of the body. Inclination, therefore, is something inimical to intellectual life. A vine that threatens to overgrow and smother clear conviction. Never act from inclination, if you do not wish to be unfaithful to conviction and guilty of a weakness."
He went into the garden, where he talked to the gardener about trees and flowers.
"Are you acquainted in Salingen, John?"
"Certainly, sir. I was born there."
"Do strangers sometimes come there to stop and enjoy the beautiful neighborhood?"
"Oh! no, sir; there is no suitable hotel there—only plain taverns; and people of quality would not stop at them."