ron! hurra! again hurra!"

Sonnenkamp could not utter a word. Was the world mocking at him?

He could not tell how he got up the steps. In a moment he was sitting
in a large chair; he gazed at the mirror, as if in that room too the
reflection of the negro must confront him there.

He sat there, staring, without speaking a word.

CHAPTER IV.

DISSECTED.

Sonnenkamp leaned back in the arm-chair and stared before him; then he
looked at the chair itself and caught hold of the arms of it, as if he
wanted to ask, Does the chair I am sitting on still hold together?
Then, as he laid his hand upon his breast, he began to quiver like an
aspen; he felt the order, tore it off with vehemence, and cried:--

"So it in, I must struggle with two worlds. I must fight with the old
one as I have with the new. Cheer up! the new hunt is beginning. I will
not suffer myself to be put down. I must either despise myself, or
despise you; we will see who is strongest, who is most worthy."

It breathed new life into him to think that the world so despised him.

"Just so! I can do that too; I despise you all!"

"But the children! the children!" something whispered to him. When he
was waging war in America, the children knew nothing of it. He rang and
asked:--

"Where is Roland?"

"The young master has not got back yet; he was here at twelve o'clock,
and asked for you, but he rode away again with some comrades."

"He should have waited," exclaimed Sonnenkamp. "Well--it is better so,"
he said, calming himself.

Again he was sitting alone; his mind turned inward on itself, and now
the matter was clear to him. So it was that the men outside the
printing-office had been reading; it was through mockery that the poor
devils in front of the hotel had raised a cheer for him.

He stood up and looked through the window. The hack-drivers were
standing together in a group, and the dwarf was reading to them from
the newspaper; they may have felt that Sonnenkamp was looking at them,
for all at once they turned their gaze upwards, and Sonnenkamp as if
struck by a hundred bullets staggered back into the middle of the room;
then he sat down and held his open hands together between his knees. He
had gazed into an abyss; it had dizzied him, but he was composing
himself with courage and decision. He knew how at this moment they were
talking about him all over the city, in carpeted hall