food, but
we do not feed a new-born child on meat instead of milk. Do you
understand what I mean?"

"Yes; you mean that religion is the mother's milk of the spirit."

"Exactly," said the Mother, in triumph. "Your father always said that
no man had ever produced any great work, or accomplished any great
deed, who did not believe in God; God is the highest object of
imaginative thought. So long as philosophy cannot show a moral law
which can be written, concisely and with perfect clearness, upon two
tables of stone, education must make its progress through religion."

"Mother," answered Eric, "we believe in God more truly than those who
would confine him within the limits of a book, of a church, or of a
special form of worship."

"Ah," said his mother, "let us drop the subject. Do you see that
butterfly, flitting in great circles against the window pane? The
butterfly takes the glass, from its transparency, to be the open air,
and thinks that he can pass through it, but dashes his head at last
against the glass wall that seemed to be nothing but air. But enough, I
am not strong enough for you. If your father still lived, he could help
you as no one else can."

The conversation, now turning on the father's death, wandered away from
the previous subject.

CHAPTER XI.

AN EXTRAORDINARY SCHOOL-COMMITTEE.

Frau Ceres was jealous because the Professorin devoted less time to
her, and surprised them by suddenly expressing the desire to be present
at the lessons, saying that she had more need of instruction than the
rest. And Sonnenkamp also betook himself to Roland's room. He could
never be idle, and so, when he did not smoke, he had the habit of
whittling all sorts of figures out of a small piece of wood; and he
was especially fond of cutting into grotesque shapes fragments of
grape-vine roots. This was the only way he could sit and listen.

Eric saw that his instruction was interfered with by this heterogeneous
assemblage. The Mother understood his disquiet, without a word being
said, and staid away from the lessons. Frau Ceres and Herr Sonnenkamp
soon did the same.

While Eric was enabled to banish, by a strict fulfilment of his duties,
every trace of the disturbing element introduced by Bella, the Mother
was full of restlessness. She had attained what had been the object of
her strongest wishes, access to a large garden of plants and unlimited
sway therein