--"

"Learn what? what? I beg of you," Eric was at last able to utter.

"Do you mean to say," answered Weidmann, pressing his head with both
hands, "do you mean to say that you know nothing about it?"

"I know nothing more than this, that Herr Sonnenkamp owned large
plantations with great numbers of slaves, that he grew tired of the
life, and therefore came back to Germany."

"Herr Sonnenkamp--Herr Sonnenkamp!" said Weidmann, "a pretty name! and
it is well for him that his mother bore it. So you have never heard of
a Herr Banfield?"

"Nothing very definite; but the head gardener told me that Herr
Sonnenkamp was very angry on his return from the Baths, when he found
that name registered in the visitors' book. But tell me, what is there
in that?"

"Herr Sonnenkamp, or rather, not Herr Sonnenkamp, but, as his name
really is, Herr Banfield, is in so many words the most notorious
slave-dealer ever known in the Southern States; nay, more. My nephew,
Doctor Fritz, could tell you many a thing he has done; he even went so
far as to defend slavery in the public prints, and he was so shameless
as to set himself up as a proof that all Germans had not degenerated
into sentimental humanity, but that he, a representative of Germany,
supported slavery, maintaining it to be right. He has a ring on his
thumb; if he takes the ring off, you can see the marks of the teeth of
a slave whom he was throttling, and who bit him in that thumb."

A cry of horror was wrung from Eric's heart; he could only gasp out the
words:--

"O Roland! O Mother! O Manna!"

"It grieves me to tell you this, but it is best that you should learn
it through me. You cannot conceive that a man with such antecedents can
at times appear so well, and engage in the discussions of principles.
Yes, this man is a swamp encircled with flowers. The fellow has cost
me many days of my life, for I cannot understand how he can live.
Slave-dealing is murder in cold blood, the annihilation of free
existence for one's own gain; the murderer from passion, and the
murderer from rapacity, stalk over the corpses of their victims to
gratify their desire of establishing their supposed rights. The world
is to them a field of battle and a conflict, an annihilation of their
foes, to find room for themselves. But a slave-dealer--a slave
murderer! And this man is now a fruit-grower, a most excellent, careful
fruit-grower, in mockery of the words: 'By their fruits ye shall know
them.'