Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine. Auerbach Berthold

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СКАЧАТЬ the sons were at the gymnastic-ground. Sevenpiper immediately made his appearance, and said that his sons should be sent for. The doctor then asked how things were going with him.

      "Ah, Herr doctor," he replied, in a loud tone, "it is always so; my youngest always has the best voice." And turning to Roland, he added, —

      "Yes, dear sir, I make my children rich too; each one receives from one to two hundred songs as an outfit, and if they can't make their way through the world with that, then they are good for nothing."

      The sons came, and now a cheerful song was struck up, so that the doctor and Roland were put into excellent spirits, and Eric, who quickly caught the tune, sang with them.

      The old man nodded to him, and when the song was ended, said, —

      "Herr, you can sing too, that's a fact."

      The doctor always carried a bottle-case in his carriage, and drawing upon it now, every one became exceedingly merry; and Sevenpiper informed them, and more particularly Roland, that the best thing in the world was to be in good health, and make music for one's self.

      The physician took leave, and at evening, Roland and Eric, in a joyous mood, left the house. Sevenpiper's two oldest sons went with them to the bank of the river, where they unfastened the boat, and rowed to the villa.

      The water was now very still and clear, and reflected the red glow of the sunset-sky. Eric sat by himself in silence, during one of those blissful hours when one thinks of nothing, and yet enjoys all. Roland kept time in rowing with the sons of Sevenpiper; then, without stroke of the oar, they let the boat float, and it glided noiselessly along in the middle of the stream.

      The stars were glittering in the sky when they arrived at the villa.

      CHAPTER IV.

      THE GOSPEL OF THE RICH YOUNG MAN

      The architect came in the morning for Roland, who was to make, under his direction, some drawings of the castle-ruins.

      Herr Sonnenkamp reminded Eric that he was to visit the priest, and he set out soon after he had seen Fräulein Perini return from mass. The priest's house had a garden in front, and was in silent seclusion in the village itself silent. If the bell had not rung so loudly, and if the two white Pomeranian dogs had not barked so loudly, one would have believed that there could be no loud noise in such a well-arranged establishment as this appeared to be at the very entrance-hall. The dogs were silenced, and the housekeeper told Eric, who seemed to be expected, to go up stairs.

      Eric found the ecclesiastic in his sunny, unadorned room, sitting at the table, and holding in his left hand a book, while his right lay upon a terrestrial globe supported upon a low pedestal.

      "You catch me in the wide world," said the ecclesiastic, giving Eric a cordial welcome, and biding him take a seat upon the sofa, over which hung a colored print, of St. Borromeo, which was well-meaning enough, but not very beautiful.

      A home-like peacefulness was in this room; everything seemed to express an absence of all pretension and all assumption, and a simple desire to pass the hours and the days in quiet meditation. Two canary birds, here, however, in two cages, appeared to entertain a lively desire, as did the dogs below, to give vent to their feelings. The ecclesiastic called to them to be quiet, and they became dumb, as if by magic, and only looked inquisitively at Eric.

      The priest informed him that he was just following out on the globe the journey of a missionary; and he caused the globe to revolve, while saying this, with his delicate right hand.

      "Perhaps you are not friendly to the missionary spirit?" he asked immediately.

      "I consider it," Eric replied, "to be the first step in the world's civilization, and it is a grand thing that the missionaries have everywhere spread a knowledge of written language, through translations of a book revered as holy, and in that way have reduced to an organic form, as it were, the inorganic languages of all peoples."

      The priest closed the book that lay open before him, folded his hands in a kind of patronising way, that seemed natural to him as the official form of consecration, and then placing the tips of the fingers of one hand upon those of the other, he said that he had heard of Eric many favourable things, and that, from his own experience, he was prepossessed in favor of those who changed their calling out of some internal ground of conviction. To be sure, fickleness and restlessness, never at ease in any regular employment, often led to this, but where this was not the case, one could predicate a deep fundamental trait of sincerity.

      Eric thanked him, and added that the dignity of any vocation lay not in the external consideration awarded to it, but in the preservation of the purely human inherent in every calling.

      "Very just," replied the ecclesiastic, extending one hand, as if with a benignant blessing. "The ecclesiastical vocation is therefore the highest, because it does not strive after gain, nor enjoyment, nor fame, but after that which you – I know not for what reason – call the universally human, when it ought simply to be called the divine."

      A certain degree of humility, and a reluctance to make any opposition, came over Eric, as he listened to the ecclesiastic setting forth in such mildly discordant tones the precise point of difference. It seemed, after every word, as if the sacred peacefulness of the place gained fresh potency; nothing of the world's noise intruded there, and all its busting activity was far away.

      The park, and the country-house in the distance over the river, could be seen from the window; the ecclesiastic took special notice of Eric's lively interest in the beautiful, quiet view, and remarked, —

      "Yes, Herr Sonnenkamp has arranged all that for himself, but the beauty is also our gain. I really never go out of my house, except for some parochial work."

      "And do you never feel yourself solitary here in the country?"

      "Oh no! I have myself, and my Lord, and God has me. And the world? I had in the great city, even, nothing different – my parish, my church, my house – what, besides these, is there, is not there for me."

      A reminiscence of his early youthful years was awakened in Eric's soul, and he told the priest that the thought had often presented itself to him, in the midst of his jolly garrison life, that he had a fitness for the ecclesiastical vocation, but that he could not devote himself to it without a belief in revelation.

      "Yes, indeed, one cannot make himself believe, but one can make himself humble, and every one can and ought to do that, and then the grace of believing is vouchsafed."

      The ecclesiastic announced this as if it were a mathematical axiom, and Eric replied in a modest tone, —

      "Every man acquires a ground-work of thought and feeling, just as he does his mother tongue, by hearing it spoken; and might it not be said also, that his soul acquires a language which has no outward sound, but which becomes embodied as a religious disposition and habitual tendency, and which, if it is genuine, cannot be interfered with, for, in this primitive stratum, root and soil are one and the same."

      "You have studied the Mystics?" asked the ecclesiastic.

      "Only partially. I should like to say further, that all fair controversialists are obliged to agree upon something as unassailable, or undemonstrable."

      That holy stillness again possessed the place, where two human beings were breathing, who desired each in his own way to serve the highest.

      "You are at the age," the priest resumed, "when young gentlemen think of marriage, and as is the prevailing fashion, СКАЧАТЬ