"It is worth while to come up here oftener," said Klingenberg.
"Angela's work," said Richard as he drew near the statue. The doctor paused a moment and examined the flowers.
"Do you observe Angela's fine taste in the arrangement of the colors?" said he. "And the forget-me-nots! What a deep religious meaning they have."
They returned by another way to Frankenhöhe.
"Angela's pious work," began Richard after a long pause, "reminds me of a religious custom against which modern civilization has thus far warred in vain. I mean the veneration of saints. You, as a Protestant, will smile at this custom, and I, as a Catholic, must deplore the tenacity with which my church clings to this obsolete remnant of heathen idolatry."
"Ah! this is the subject you alluded to yesterday," said the doctor. "I must, in fact, smile, my dear Richard! But I by no means smile at 'the tenacity with which your church clings to the obsolete remnants of heathen idolatry.' I smile at your queer idea of the veneration of the saints. I, as a reasonable man, esteem this veneration, and recognize its admirable and beneficial influence on human society."
This declaration increased Frank's surprise to the highest degree. He knew the clear mind of the doctor, and could not understand how it happened that he wished to defend a custom so antagonistic to modern thought.
"You find fault," continued Klingenberg, "with the custom of erecting statues to these holy men in the churches, the forest, the fields, the houses, and in the market?"
"Yes, I do object to that."
"If you had objected to the lazy Schiller at Mayence, or the robber's poet Schiller, as he raves at the theatre in Mannheim, or to the conqueror and destroyer of Germany, Gustavus Adolphus, whose statue is erected as an insult in a German city, then you would be right."