had to exert great self-control in order not to betray
that he trembled.

At last he said,--

"I don't know what you mean by some expressions you have used, and I
don't want to know. But I am the man to put a bullet through the
forehead of him who attempts----"

"I very readily comprehend your excitement," said Eric, quietly
straightening himself up and looking Sonnenkamp coolly in the face.

"Who are you? Who am I?" asked Sonnenkamp, while his features were
strangely distorted.

"I am your son's tutor, and I know the accountableness of my position;
I am in your service; this is your house, you can turn me out of it at
once."

"I will not do that--not that! Have I said that I would? I must only
explain myself to you, and you must explain yourself to me. Have you
not said to Roland that the time will come, or has already come, when
there would no longer be any private property?"

Eric assured him that he had not the remotest purpose of doing anything
of the kind; he was sorry that he made use of the illustration, and
regretted Roland's misconception.

"Let us sit down," said Sonnenkamp, his knees trembling. "Let us talk
calmly, like reasonable men, like friends, if I may be allowed to say
so."

He whistled to himself, and then said, in a wholly different tone,--

"I must tell you, that irrespective of this mistake, your whole tone of
thought seems to me dangerous to my son. You seem to me, in fact, a
philanthropist, and I honor that; you are one of those persons who
would like to thank every common laborer in the road for his toil, and
pay him also as much as possible. You see I believe your philanthropy
is genuine, and not taken up merely for the sake of popularity. But
this philanthropy--I speak without any disguise--is not the thing for
my son. My son will have, at some time, a princely income; and if a
rich man must go through life in this way, always looking around to see
where there is poverty, where there is not adequate compensation, he
would be condemned to greater wretchedness than the beggar in the
ditch. The worst thing that could be done to my son would be to make
him sentimental, or even pitiful and compassionate. I am not one of
those men, and I would not have my son to be one, who are eternally
longing after the ineffable, and, as I believe, unattainable; I want
for myself and for my son a practical enjoyment of existence. Believe
me, a contraband-trade will be driven in feelings, if one pers