s strain of
lofty feeling into subjection to actual life. He met laborers who were
going to a limestone quarry. He joined them, and learned that this also
belonged to the count, who had leased all his lands, not retaining for
himself even the management.

Receiving a friendly greeting from the overseer, he was shown a
manufactory of cement near by, and saw paving-tiles from excellent
patterns of the time of the Renaissance, which Clodwig had recommended,
and which found a ready sale.

Eric returned to the Castle, refreshed by the breath of nature as well
as by this glance into actual human life. A servant told him that the
count was expecting him. Clodwig, already fully dressed for the day,
took his guest by the hand, saying, "I shall ask you by and by many
questions, but only one now:--did your father despair at the last,
or--how shall I express it?--did he die in the belief of an orderly and
progressive unfolding of the social and moral world?" Eric then
depicted in vivid language derived from his own recollections, and
under the inspiring influence of his morning's exhilaration, how his
father, on the last night of his life, congratulated his son that he
was born into the new age, which need no longer exhaust itself against
opposing forms of violence. "My son," he said, "my heart thrills with
joy, when I contemplate how in this century a beauty, a freedom, and a
brotherly love unfold themselves which existed to us only in the germ.
As one example, my son, see how the State now educates its children,
and does it in a way that no Solon, no Socrates, ever could imagine.
Thou wilt live in a time when it will hardly be conceived that there
were slaves, serfs, bondmen, monopolies, and the whole trumpery of a
false world."

Eric added how happy it made him, that his father had departed in such
a cheerful mood, and that he, as a son, could so fully enter into his
hopes, and carry them out into life. He spoke in such an excitable
manner, that Clodwig placed his hand on his shoulder and said, "We will
not, in the morning, take such a distant flight." He expressed also his
satisfaction that he could enter so fully into the life of the coming
generation, for he had always been troubled lest he might lose all hold
upon the new time.

"We have had our morning devotions, now let us go to breakfast," he
said, turning round easily as he got up from his seat. "Yet one more
question: did your father never explain to you what occur