k in and wait a few
moments. He was shown up the staircase; it was a fine large staircase
of the old chapter house. At the top, a young priest who was just
coming out was shutting the door very quietly, even reverently; the
young priest came down the left staircase while Pranken went up the
right.

Pranken had to wait awhile in the large room where an open book lay on
the table. He looked into it; it was a scheme of ecclesiastical
preferments; he smiled. Good, the priests, like the military, have a
printed list, too. This simile gave him new courage.

The Dean entered; he had a book in his hand, between the leaves of
which he had inserted his forefinger. He saluted Pranken, making a
gesture with the book, and begged him to sit down; he offered him a
seat on the sofa, and seated himself opposite him in a chair on
casters.

"What do you bring, Herr Baron?"

With a peculiar smile, Pranken answered that he brought nothing, but on
the other hand came to get something. The priest nodded, looked into
the book once more at the place where he had his finger inserted, and
laying it aside said:--

"I am ready."

Pranken began to explain, that he had chosen the Dean in preference to
any one else, to be his confessor in an affair which only a man of
noble birth could properly appreciate and give advice about. The Dean
grasped his chin with his left hand, and said with great decision, that
after ordination and the new birth there was no longer any nobility; he
had no different power from that of the son of the poorest day-laborer.

Pranken felt that he had made a mistake at the outset, and went on to
say in a very humble way, that above all things he regarded the
priestly dignity as the highest, but that still it was well known that
the very worthy Dean knew something about the circumstances of life
which he wished to lay before him. Then he gave a concise account of
his past life; it was that of a son of a noble family until his
acquaintance with Sonnenkamp. At this point he went somewhat into
detail, and confessed that his thinking of Manna as his wife. Manna the
daughter of the millionaire, was at first nothing more than a jest, a
pastime. He related how Manna had unexpectedly entered the convent; and
with great earnestness he declared that it was Manna that had wakened
in him the knowledge of the higher life. He dwelt particularly on his
momentary determination to become a priest; but he was now of another
way of thinki