ed softly to himself, while Eric maintained with great
earnestness that he was not good at sounding others' opinions, and that
he should consider it a betrayal of friendship to repeat anything which
was said to him confidentially. "Besides," he concluded, "I do not
think that Count Wolfsgarten would express his opinion any more fully
to me."

Sonnenkamp was inwardly angry, but summoned all his powers of
self-control to his aid. He praised Eric's conscientiousness; spoke
with enthusiasm of his delicate tact, his moral purity, and the
loftiness of his ideal; he went so far as to apologize for having
fancied, even for a moment, that Eric was more than a friend to Bella;
his unhappy experience among men, he said, must serve as his excuse for
the injustice; he considered it as the greatest of privileges to have
been once allowed the acquaintance of a thoroughly pure and noble man.

Eric had never supposed that this man knew him so well; this Sonnenkamp
must have a nobler mind than he had given him credit for, to be able to
read so well the noble struggles of others.

The impression he had made was not lost upon Sonnenkamp. He laid his
hand on Eric's shoulder, and said with a trembling, almost a tearful
voice,--

"My dear young friend! Yes, my friend--I call you so, for you are
such--even if I have not myself the right to claim so close an intimacy
with you as I should like, consider what a great, what a necessary
influence indeed you may exert--not for me; of what consequence am
I?--but for our Roland. For our Roland!" he repeated significantly. The
mention of Roland's name suddenly roused Eric as from a dream. He
answered by asking why Herr Sonnenkamp desired a title for Roland.

"Oh, my friend!" Sonnenkamp continued with increasing affection, "that
is the last, the only object of all my efforts in the Old World and in
the New. Oh, my friend! Who is able to tell how soon I may die? You
will remain the friend, the support of my son. Give me your hand upon
it. Promise me you will so continue. I shall die without a fear,
knowing he is under your protection. Alas, no one suspects how ill, how
shaken I am. I force myself to appear firm and erect, but I am inwardly
broken. The labors and struggles of life have sapped my strength. Any
moment may end my life, and I would gladly leave my son in an assured
position. You, my friend, love our beautiful, glorious Germany; you
will be glad to secure to her a strong and faithful son.