Up yonder at Wolfsgarten, Eric had met with a fatherly good-will, based
upon congeniality of thought--here with the doctor, as much goodwill as
difference of opinion; but here, too, that personal friendliness which
is so satisfying and home-like.

There was Bella who always wished to make an impression in her own
behalf, and here was the doctor's wife, who wished nothing for herself,
who thanked Eric in her heart, and wished only that her husband might
have the good fortune to be able to talk over learned subjects with
another man. And were these many forms, were all these events, to be
only the passing occurrences of a journey?

CHAPTER XIII.

AGAIN ALONE WITH THYSELF.

"In the morning," the doctor often said, "I am like a washed
chimney-sweeper." He rose, summer and winter, at five o'clock, studied
uninterruptedly several hours, and answered only the most pressing
calls from his patients. Through this practice of study he not only
kept up his scientific knowledge, but as he bathed his body in fresh
water, so was he also mentally invigorated; let come what would of the
day, he had made sure of his portion of science. And that was the
reason--we may congratulate ourselves upon knowing this secret--that
was the reason why the doctor was so wide awake, so ready primed, and
so vivacious. He himself designated these morning hours to an old
fellow-student as his camel-hours, when he drank himself full, so that
he could often refresh himself with a draught in the dry desert. And
life, moreover, did not seem to him a desert, for he had something
which thrived everywhere, and was all-prevailing, and _that_ was an
indestructible cheerfulness, and an equanimity, which he attributed
above all to his sound digestion.

So was he sitting now; and when he heard Eric, whose room was over his
study, getting up, he sent word to him to come soon to breakfast; and
in this hour the freshness of the man was yet wholly unimpaired. His
wife, who had to be busy, or rather, who made herself busy about
household matters, in order not to oblige her husband to enter into any
conversation on less learned matters, had soon gone into the garden, in
which flourished many scions and seeds of various kinds out of
Sonnenkamp's garden. But the doctor conversed with Eric upon no
scientific topics.

In the breakfast-room there hung portraits of the parents and the
grand-parents of the phy