ces, which he was to give to the
needy-looking man in a suitable manner.

"Is this friendly confidence, or is it expected as a service?" Eric
asked himself, as he went after the stranger.

He overtook him near the park-wall, and when Eric represented himself
to be also a teacher, the countenance of the professor changed, and he
exclaimed:--

"Ah! a teacher then, and perhaps my competitor?"

Eric answered in the affirmative.

Crutius looked sour at this; he had been gratified at the friendly
encouragement of the captain, whom he took to be an inmate of the
family, and he was grateful to him for the praise he had given him; but
now he turned out to be a teacher too! He gnashed his teeth a little
over this mistake.

Eric tendered him the present of gold with great delicacy, putting
himself on an equality with the stranger, making known his own poverty,
and declaring how impossible it often was not to accept from those who
had means.

"Ha! ha!" the stranger laughed out. "He knows me; he wishes to put me
under obligation and release himself!"

Eric said that he did not understand such expressions.

"Indeed!" the stranger said, laughing. "So innocence with a captain's
rank allows itself also to be bought? The whole world is nothing but an
old rag-shop. What matter! The den where the tiger devours his prey is
very fine and very tasty! paint and tapestry can cover up a good deal!
I ask your pardon, I have taken wine this morning, and I am not used to
it. Well, hand it over! My most humble compliments to Villa Eden! Ha!
ha! a very nice name!"

Without adding a word more, the stranger, grasping tightly the gold,
touched his hat, and walked off at a rapid pace.

Eric returned to Sonnenkamp in a meditative mood. Sonnenkamp invited
him to be seated, in a very friendly manner, asking.--

"Did he take the money?"

Eric nodded.

"And of course, with hardly a thank you?"

Eric said that the man had acknowledged, of his own accord, that he had
been drinking wine that morning, and was not used to it.

Pointing to a great packet of letters, Sonnenkamp said that they were
all applications for the advertised situation. He expatiated very
merrily upon the great number of persons who depend upon some wind-fall
or other; if one should only open a honey-pot, suddenly bees, wasps,
and golden-flies appear, nothing of which had been seen before. Then he
continued:--

"I can give you a contribution to your knowledge of men."