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

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СКАЧАТЬ he. So I advise you to leave the house; every hour that you remain is your ruin."

      "My ruin?" Eric was startled.

      The physician said, smiling, —

      "Yes, my dear friend, this forced exhibition of yourself, which has now lasted almost a week, is injuring you."

      He continued, after a pause, —

      "No man can be on parade for a week without receiving some harm. You must go away, or you will become an actor, or a preacher, or both together. You repeat what you have learned, and repeat it with the conscious purpose of producing a given effect. Therefore away with you! you have been examining, and examined, long enough. Come with me, spend the night at my house; to-morrow return to your mother, and wait quietly for what may come next."

      "But Roland," asked Eric, "how can I leave the boy behind? His heart has turned to me, as mine has to him."

      "That's well, very well. Then let him wait and long for you. Let him learn that the rich cannot have everything. Let him feel obliged to sue for you. All that will give you a power of incalculable influence in the family and over your pupil. Let me act for you now; to-morrow morning you will see with my eyes."

      "There is my hand. I'll go with you!" answered Eric.

      There was great surprise in the house when the announcement of Eric's sudden departure was made; an hour had scarcely elapsed when he entered the physician's carriage.

      Eric was glad that his leave-taking of Roland was hurried. The boy could not understand what had happened; his emotion prevented him from speaking. After Eric had seated himself in the doctor's carriage, Roland came with one of the puppies and laid it in his lap, but the physician gave it back, saying that he could not take it, it was too young to be taken from the mother; but he would see that Eric should have it eventually.

      Roland gazed wonderingly after the departing guests. In the boy's heart there was a confused whirl of all the feelings which he had experienced in the few days since Eric's arrival; but Eric did not look back. In his father's house the boy felt as if abandoned in a strange land. He took the young dog by the nape of the neck, and was about to throw it from him, but the puppy whimpered pitifully, and he pressed it to his breast, saying, – "Be quiet, nothing is hurting you; but I'm not a dog, and I don't whine, now don't you whine any more either. He didn't want either of us." Roland carried the dog to its mother, who was very glad to see her pup again.

      "I'll go to my mother, too," said Roland; but he had first to be announced. She allowed him to enter, and when he lamented that Eric had gone so suddenly, she said, —

      "That's right; I advised him to go."

      "You? Why?"

      "Oh, your stupid why! One can't be always answering your why!"

      Roland was silent, and his mother's kiss almost pained him.

      He wanted to go to his father, but found that he had driven to the castle with the Major.

      Deserted and lonely, he stood in the court; at last he went into the stable, sat down by his dogs and watched their amusing actions; then he went to his horse, and stood quietly leaning on his neck for a long time. Strange thoughts rolled tumultuously through the boy's brain. The horse and dog are yours; only what one can buy and possess is his own.

      Like a flash of lightning, just seen, then gone again, there woke in the boy's soul the idea that nothing but love can give one human being possession of another. He was not used to steady thinking, and this into which he had fallen brought on a real headache. He had his horse saddled, and rode off over the road which Eric and the doctor had taken.

      CHAPTER X.

      THE PRACTICAL NATURE

      Eric sat quiet and thoughtful by the doctor's side, and was disturbed by no word from him, seeming to himself to be driven hither and thither by wind and wave. A few days before, he had ridden to this place on a stranger's horse, and now he sat in a stranger's carriage; he had become intermingled with the life and destiny of so many persons, and this could no longer count for anything in his and their existence. He could not anticipate, however, that an unexpected event was awaiting him.

      "You believe then in education?" asked the doctor at last.

      "I don't understand what you mean."

      "I place no dependence whatever on education; men become what nature fits them to be. They attain, under all relations, what is called their destiny. As the human being lies in his cradle, so he lies in his coffin. Some little help comes from talents and capabilities, but as a whole they are only incidental; the natural bias gives the home blow."

      Eric had no heart to enter upon these discussions; he was weary of this everlasting game of words.

      The doctor continued: —

      "I have a peculiar grudge against these people; it vexes me that these rich people should buy for themselves the fragrant fruits of higher culture; then, again, I am consoled by the word of Him who stood at the very centre of thought, and said, 'A rich man cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' The rich are too heavily ballasted; they have a pampered existence, they are removed far from the actual needs of life, and they withdraw themselves from the natural influences of the seasons; they flit into different climates and out of them again, and everywhere they have comfortably prepared swallow-nests. It would be an intolerable heartlessness of fate, if, without any irksome toil, they, are to have also the higher joys as a possession, which belong alone to us."

      "There is no royal road to geometry, is Euclid's saying," Eric interposed; "science and knowledge are acquired only through labor, and what I want to do with this boy can all be comprehended in one word: I want to give him self-activity."

      "Just so," replied the physician; "yes, that's it! we who live to the spirit have the advantage over the rich in this respect, that we are alone by ourselves; the rich man does not know the silent growth in the dewy stillness of solitude; he always has so much, he never has himself, and never himself alone. This is what I understand by that verse of the Bible, 'What shall it profit thee, if thou shalt gain the whole world, and lose thine own soul? That is to say, Art never alone in thyself, with thyself? He who has nowhere to lay his head, he can yet carry his head high and free. You see it was to some purpose that I studied theology for two years, until I came to see that though much cannot be effected, yet more is to be done by practising quackery on the body, than on the soul."

      The doctor could not speak, he laughed so heartily. At last he said, —

      "The great question always is, how receptivity itself confers upon one all that is desirable. That would be your principal task, to awaken and to perfect in Roland his power of receptivity. He must first of all, be taught in a regular way. In what he knows of the world, he is yet a child, and in what he desires of the world, he is a man, one may say a live man."

      Eric had much to say in reply, but he smiled to himself, for he thought how easy it is to theorize. The doctor had justly found fault with him for enlarging upon so many topics, and now he was to perceive that he could be silent. He said nothing, and the doctor continued: —

      "As to the rest, I can tender you effectual aid, if you conclude to accept the position. Pity that you are not a medical man; as I look at it, no one but a physician should be an educator. Have you taken notice that the young fellow has a poor digestion? a young man in these times ought to be able to digest pebble-stones! I cannot bring it about that only simple kinds of food should be given him. The noble and the rich eat without hunger, and drink without СКАЧАТЬ