niary profit that governs all
such operations? The English excel in swine-raising, their swine being
fat sides of bacon with four feet attached; the French, on the other
hand, having taken to fruit culture, have succeeded in producing
fabulous crops.

"Yes!" he concluded, smiling, "Herr Sonnenkamp is a tree-tutor, and,
moreover, a tyrannical tree-trimmer. To-day I can speak out more
freely. Sonnenkamp has always been, and will always be, a stranger to
me.

"Through all his external polish, and an increasing attention to the
cultivation of good manners, a sort of brutishness appears in him, I
mean brutishness in its original meaning of an uncultivated state of
nature."

"Yes," Bella remarked, "you will have a difficult position, and
especially with Roland."

"With Roland?" asked Eric.

"Yes, that is the boy's name. He would like to know much, and learn
nothing."

Bella looked round pleased with her clever saying. The parrot in his
great cage upon the veranda uttered shrill cries as if scolding. As she
rose, Bella said, "There you see my tyrant; a scholar who tyrannises
over his teacher in a most shocking manner."

She took the parrot out of his cage, placed him on her shoulder,
fondled and caressed him, so that one almost grudged such wasteful
prodigality; and her movements were all beautiful, especially the
curving of the throat and shoulders.

CHAPTER XI.

MEDUSA AND VICTORIA.

Clodwig looked down for some time after Bella had gone. He nodded to
Eric as if he would greet him anew. But Bella soon returned, bearing
the parrot on her hand, and stroking it. She walked up and down the
room, lingering when Eric related how he had to-day, tearing himself by
force away from the view of the river, gone back into the country, and
had conversed with many persons.

Clodwig dwelt at length upon his pet theory, that traces of the Roman
Colonists were still preserved in the physiognomy and character of the
people.

Bella, apparently unwilling to be obliged to hear this again,
interrupted, with good-humored impertinence,--"When one turns himself
away from the Rhine, he has the feeling, or at least I have, that some
one, it may be Father Rhine himself, looks after me and calls out, 'Do
turn round!'"

"We men do not always feel that we are looked at," replied Clodwig, and
requested Eric to give his opinion about the earthen vase, a present
the day before