he said; 'persons who speak much and readily are
at bottom nothing but dilettanti.'"

He thought Manna would perceive at once that he was referring to Eric,
but, as she gave no sign of applying the charge of dilettantism to him,
Pranken spoke more openly and said:--

"Do you not perceive something of the dilettante in the very talkative
Herr Eric?"

Manna answered shortly:--

"The man talks much, but----"

Here she made a long pause, and Pranken was in great suspense,
wondering how she would finish her sentence.

"He talks much," she said, "but he thinks much too."

Pranken cast about for some turn he could give the conversation, which,
with a skilful aim, could not fail to hit the mark. He might have
spared himself his great pains, for a man whose activities extended
over so much ground as Eric's offered many points of attack.

Pranken began by declaring Eric to be a kind of Don Quixote, a man who
was always adventuring after great ideas, as in the case of the
exaggerated sentiment of his toast. Disguising the cutting nature of
his remarks under cover of gentle words, he attempted to turn Eric into
ridicule. He thought it presumption in him, in the first place, to lay
claim to any inward consecration as a cloak for his profanities, and
finally went so far as to accuse him of passing off counterfeit coin,
in the hope of deceiving a childlike, confiding mind. He looked keenly
at Manna as he spoke, but she kept silence.

"Be on your guard," he added, "he plays the model man everywhere."

The expression seemed to please Pranken so well, that he ventured to
repeat it.

"This playing the model man is very cunning, but we can see through it.
You have no idea how much trouble this pattern of pedagogues, this Herr
Dournay, has given us. You must be on your guard; his every word is
stamped with the conviction, that he unites in his own person all
possible examples of virtue."

Encouraged by a smile on Manna's face, which she tried in vain to
suppress, Pranken continued:--

"After all, his eloquence is only that of the hairdresser, who talks of
all kinds of things while he is curling your hair, only without setting
up for so much scientific and religious aplomb. Observe how often he
uses the word humanity; I counted it fourteen times, once, in a single
hour. He affects great modesty, but his conceit actually exceeds all
bounds."

Pranken laughed, knowing how easy it is to throw ridicule upon a man in
the full