nceive how he could be on such friendly terms with the
burgomaster; and when he further asked whether the man was respected,
he received an emphatic response in the affirmative, inasmuch as
property secured respect in the country.

They also stopped at the gauger's, the good-humored brother of the
whole country around, and were led by him through the wine-vaults, and
supplied with many a good drop to drink. The gauger always liked to
tell stories that were not always fit for a boy to hear, but the Doctor
soon led him to a different subject.

The gauger always carried with him some flour bread, which he called
his "little sponge." "With straw," he said, "they tie up the wines, and
with this little piece of bread, that has been grown from the straw, I
fasten in the wine." They had calculated that the gauger had drunk,
during his life-time, seventy butts of wine; but he asserted that they
had been very tender to him, for he had drunk a great deal more than
that.

It was a merry, exhilarating life into which Eric and Roland were
inducted, and when they returned to their strict method of study, there
was a deep realization of the fact that they were living in the midst
of a merry region, where existence can be easily wasted in play.

It was midsummer, and there came cold, windy, disagreeable days, when
it seemed that summer had departed, and yet it could not be, it must
become hot again. The nightingale was voiceless; it had not ceased to
sing all at once, but seemed to utter occasionally single notes from
memory, while there were heard more frequently the thin voices of the
linnets, or the full, short call of the blackbirds. The summer shoots
on the leafy trees showed that the summer had reached its height, and
was declining; the forest-trees had attained their season's growth, and
the song of birds had ceased, except that the unwearied black-cap still
twittered, and the magpies chattered among the branches.

Eric and Roland often, sailed upon the Rhine, and Eric sang; he was
rejoiced to hear Roland say:--

"Yes, it is so. A person can sing at all seasons of the year, if he has
a mind to."

Eric nodded, feeling that the consciousness of art and of a free
humanity had been awakened in Roland; and he now said that they would
absent themselves for a few days from the house, and proposed to Roland
two plans: either they would go to Herr Weidmann's, of whom there had
been so much said, or to the great musical festival th