d come for Roland, or wished to have him
brought home.

When Eric returned, he found Roland already asleep on the sofa. He was
tired out, and it was with great difficulty that they could awaken him
to be put to bed. Eric sat a long time with his mother, talking of the
wonderful manner in which fate seemed playing with them.

His mother related how, as she came from the churchyard, the painful
thought had oppressed her that even she, his own mother, could not
quite recall how Hermann had looked. She could bring his face to mind,
because it was preserved in the photograph which hung, in its frame of
immortelles, just over her sewing-machine in the bay-window. But
Hermann's motions, his gait, his way of throwing back his head with its
thick brown hair, of laughing, jesting, and caressing; the sound of his
voice, the low, dove-like laugh,--all these had vanished from her--his
mother. So she had walked on, with downcast eyes, often stopping, as
she tried hard to call up the image of the lost one. So she had come
home, and here came to meet her a form like Hermann, and it had cried
out to her,--"Good-evening, mother!" in his very tone. She could not
tell why she had not fainted, and she spoke now of Roland with the same
delight which Eric had felt when he saw him for the first time.

Eric, on his side, told her of the reasons for and against undertaking
the school, and then of the Minister's offer. He would there enter a
position which his father had not reached, and which would, perhaps,
have saved his life. The idea of receiving an appointment by
inheritance, and through favor, without any merit of his own, oppressed
him somewhat.

His mother soothed both these scruples, which were really one, and
quite uncalled for, as he had the right to collect the debt which was
due to his father, and still more if it was over due.

Very lightly she touched upon the good fortune of the nobility, in
being able to receive what had been stored up by past generations, and
to hand it down to future descendants. With a slightly jesting tone she
said,--

"Our professor of political economy used to say that capital was
accumulated labor; so family standing is nothing but accumulated
honor."

There were times, though they were rare, when the mother, from the
standpoint of her inherited opinions and habits, saw in many of the
sentiments and views of the burgher class an obstinate and perverse
independence which she could not approve. In