"What prospects—horrible!" cried Herr Frank, wringing his hands. "Accursed be those books; and I am the cause of this misfortune!"
"The involuntary cause," said Klingenberg consolingly. "You now have a firm conviction of the devastating effects of those bad books. But how many are there who consider every warning in this connection an exhibition of prejudice or narrow-mindedness! How few readers are so modest as to admit that they want the scientific culture to refute a bad book, to separate the poison from the honey of sweet phrases and winning style! How few can see that they cannot read those bad books without detriment! No one would sit on a cask of powder and touch it off for amusement; and yet those hellish books are more dangerous than a cask full of powder. To me this is incomprehensible. Poisonous food is always injurious; yet thousands and millions drink greedily from this poisonous stream of bad reading which deluges all grades of society."
"I will do immediately what must be done," said Herr Frank as he hastily rose.
"What will you do?"
"Take from my son those execrable books."
"By no means," said Klingenberg. "This would be a psychological mistake. Richard would buy the same books again at the book-shop, and read them secretly. A man who has the resolution of your son must be won by honorable combat. Authority would here be badly applied. Therefore I forbid you to interfere. You know nothing of the matter. Treat him kindly, and have forbearance with his sensitiveness. That is what I must require of you."
Greatly afflicted, Herr Frank left the doctor. Overwhelming himself with reproaches, he wandered restlessly about the house and garden. He saw Richard standing at the open window with folded arms, dreamy and pale, his hair in disorder like a storm-beaten wheat-field—truly a painful sight for the father. He went up to his room, where the small library stood in its beautiful binding. A servant stood near him with a basket. The works of Eugene Sue, Gutzkow, and like spirits fell into the basket.
"All to the fire!" commanded Herr Frank.
The doctor had compared bad literature to poisonous food. The comparison was not inapt; at least, it gave Richard the appearance of a man in whose body destructive poison was working. He was listless and exhausted; in walking, his hands hung heavily by his side. His eyes were directed to the ground, as if he were seeking something. If he saw a snail, he stopped to examine the crawling creature. He sought to know why the snail crawls about, and, to his astonishment, found that the snail always followed an object; which is not always the case with man, animal of the moment, who goes about without an object. If a caterpillar accidentally got under his foot, he pushed it carefully aside and examined if it had been hurt. It seemed to him logical that creeping and flying things had the same claims to forbearance and proper treatment as man, since according to Vogt and Büchner's striking proofs, all creeping and flying things are not essentially different from man.
He paid particular attention to the spiders. If he came to a place where their web was stretched, he examined attentively the artistic texture; he saw the firmly fastened knot on the twig which held the web apart, the circular meshes, the cunning arrangement to catch the wandering fly. He was convinced that such a spider would be a thousand times more intelligent than Herr Vogt and Herr Büchner, with half as big a head as those wise naturalists. The enterprising spirit of the ants excited not less his admiration. He always found them busy and in a bustle, to which a market-day could not be compared. Even London and Paris were solitary in comparison to the throng in an ant-hill. They dragged about large pieces of wood, as also leaves and fibres, to construct their house, which was laid out with design and finished with much care. If he pushed his cane into the hill, there forthwith arose a great revolution. The inhabitants rushed out upon him, nipped him with their pincers, and showed the greatest rage against the invader of their kingdom, while others with great celerity placed the eggs in safety. He observed that the ants gave no quarter, and considered every one a mortal enemy who disturbed their state.