ntess had returned
from the baths, and would visit them to-morrow.

Clodwig was brown from his summer-journey, and Bella looked younger
than before, and seemed, as she swept with her long train through the
house and park, somewhat like a peacock. As soon as they arrived,
Roland gave an account of the curiosities found on the mountain, and
his face fairly shone with delight when Clodwig asked him to consider
them the starting-point of a museum for himself; for in making a
collection of this kind, he would experience a pleasure to which
scarcely anything else could be compared. Roland nodded to Eric, and
Clodwig told them he had made many valuable acquisitions in his
journey, which would soon be sent to him. He had met daily at the Baths
a celebrated antiquarian, who had once been a teacher of Eric.

Eric apologized to Clodwig for having slighted his friendly advance, in
not visiting him before he set out on his journey, and now another
pleasant trait was seen in Clodwig,--that he had not one trace of
sensitiveness. Kindness of heart and self-respect combined to cause
this trait; he excused every neglect of himself, and, as a man of
unquestioned position never thought of injury or slight.

"You are exempt from all apologies with me," he said, taking Eric's
hands and holding them as though he were the young man's father. "You
have cured me of selfishness. I had not believed that there was so much
of it left in me, my dear young friend. Yes, you shall mould your own
life, and I will rejoice that I have you for a neighbor. A good
neighborhood, with the ancient Romans, was not merely a political
arrangement."

They touched glasses and drank to the good neighborhood, and as the old
Count drank, his eyes beamed upon Eric.

It was an animated account that Clodwig and his wife alternately,
interrupting each other, gave of their having turned aside from their
direct course, and spent a night in the University-town for the purpose
of visiting Eric's mother and remaining an entire day with her. At last
Clodwig left the field to his wife, who told with great feeling
and earnestness of the life of the noble lady. She described the
piano-forte in its old place, and the beautiful, dignified figure
sitting at work before her window filled with flowers. On the wall
before her hung the portraits of her dead husband and of her son, and
in a frame by itself was a lock of her mother's hair, hanging between
the crayon portraits of her pa