The ecclesiastic called to them to be quiet, and they became dumb, as if by magic, and only looked inquisitively at Eric.
The priest informed him that he was just following out on the globe the journey of a missionary; and he caused the globe to revolve, while saying this, with his delicate right hand.
"Perhaps you are not friendly to the missionary spirit?" he asked immediately.
"I consider it," Eric replied, "to be the first step in the world's civilization, and it is a grand thing that the missionaries have everywhere spread a knowledge of written language, through translations of a book revered as holy, and in that way have reduced to an organic form, as it were, the inorganic languages of all peoples."
The priest closed the book that lay open before him, folded his hands in a kind of patronising way, that seemed natural to him as the official form of consecration, and then placing the tips of the fingers of one hand upon those of the other, he said that he had heard of Eric many favourable things, and that, from his own experience, he was prepossessed in favor of those who changed their calling out of some internal ground of conviction. To be sure, fickleness and restlessness, never at ease in any regular employment, often led to this, but where this was not the case, one could predicate a deep fundamental trait of sincerity.
Eric thanked him, and added that the dignity of any vocation lay not in the external consideration awarded to it, but in the preservation of the purely human inherent in every calling.
"Very just," replied the ecclesiastic, extending one hand, as if with a benignant blessing. "The ecclesiastical vocation is therefore the highest, because it does not strive after gain, nor enjoyment, nor fame, but after that which you – I know not for what reason – call the universally human, when it ought simply to be called the divine."
A certain degree of humility, and a reluctance to make any opposition, came over Eric, as he listened to the ecclesiastic setting forth in such mildly discordant tones the precise point of difference. It seemed, after every word, as if the sacred peacefulness of the place gained fresh potency; nothing of the world's noise intruded there, and all its busting activity was far away.
The park, and the country-house in the distance over the river, could be seen from the window; the ecclesiastic took special notice of Eric's lively interest in the beautiful, quiet view, and remarked, —
"Yes, Herr Sonnenkamp has arranged all that for himself, but the beauty is also our gain. I really never go out of my house, except for some parochial work."
"And do you never feel yourself solitary here in the country?"
"Oh no! I have myself, and my Lord, and God has me. And the world? I had in the great city, even, nothing different – my parish, my church, my house – what, besides these, is there, is not there for me."
A reminiscence of his early youthful years was awakened in Eric's soul, and he told the priest that the thought had often presented itself to him, in the midst of his jolly garrison life, that he had a fitness for the ecclesiastical vocation, but that he could not devote himself to it without a belief in revelation.
"Yes, indeed, one cannot make himself believe, but one can make himself humble, and every one can and ought to do that, and then the grace of believing is vouchsafed."
The ecclesiastic announced this as if it were a mathematical axiom, and Eric replied in a modest tone, —
"Every man acquires a ground-work of thought and feeling, just as he does his mother tongue, by hearing it spoken; and might it not be said also, that his soul acquires a language which has no outward sound, but which becomes embodied as a religious disposition and habitual tendency, and which, if it is genuine, cannot be interfered with, for, in this primitive stratum, root and soil are one and the same."
"You have studied the Mystics?" asked the ecclesiastic.
"Only partially. I should like to say further, that all fair controversialists are obliged to agree upon something as unassailable, or undemonstrable."
That holy stillness again possessed the place, where two human beings were breathing, who desired each in his own way to serve the highest.
"You are at the age," the priest resumed, "when young gentlemen think of marriage, and as is the prevailing fashion, marriage with a maiden who has money, – a great deal of money. You appear so true-hearted, that I must ask you directly, although I would much rather not, if it is true that you are a suitor of Fräulein Sonnenkamp?"
"I?" Eric asked with vehement astonishment. "I?"
"Yes, you."
"I thank you," Eric said in a clear voice, recovering from his amazement, "I thank you, that you question me so directly. You know I am not of your church."
"And Fräulein Sonnenkamp is of our church, and it would be hard – "
"I was not thinking of that," Eric said, interrupting him. "Wonderful, through what tests I must pass! First a supercilious cavalier, then a nobleman, then a military officer, then a doctor, and now in the priestly sieve."
"I do not understand you."
"Ah, truly," began Eric, "and I tell you, I confess to your noble, mild countenance, and so I acknowledge to you, seeing you before me, that I admire the undisturbed unity of your being from which comes the Catholic law of celibacy as a dogma, and I allow myself to claim that we have reached the same ideal stand-point. Yes, honored sir, I say to myself, he who wishes to live for a great idea, whether he is artist, scholar, priest, he can need no family, he must renounce its joys, apart by himself without any hinderance, that he may fulfil his mission in the perpetual service of thought."
"Divisus est! divisus est!" repeated the ecclesiastic. "The holy apostle says that he who has a wife is divided, and he will be yet more divided, whilst the lot of his children becomes his own. The ecclesiastic has no changes of lot."
A smile passed over the countenance of the priest, as he continued: —
"Only imagine a priest married to a quarrelsome wife – there are also peaceable women, gentle and self-sacrificing, and it is certain that there are quarrelsome ones too – and now the priest is to mount the pulpit in order to proclaim the word of peace and love, when an hour before in dispute and scolding – "
The ecclesiastic suddenly ceased, placed the forefinger of his left hand on his lips, and bethought himself, that he was wandering from the real point. Did not Fräulein Perini inform him that Eric had visited the convent before he came to this place? He looked at Eric, who had led him from the direct inquiry, wondering whether he had done it from prudence, or whether it was really from excitement. He hoped, indeed, to attain his end in some different way; and, apparently in a very natural manner, but yet with a lurking circumspection, he now asked whether Eric really felt confident, from his position, of being able to train a boy like Roland.
When Eric answered in the affirmative, the ecclesiastic further asked: —
"And what do you mean to give him first, and in preference to everything else?"
"To sum it up in few words," replied Eric, "I wish to give Roland joy in the world. If he has this, he will furnish joy to the world; that is to say, he will desire to benefit it; if I teach him to despise the world, to undervalue life, he will come to misuse the world and the powers entrusted to him in it."
"I regret," said the priest in a gentle tone, "that you are not a believer; you are on the way to salvation, but you turn aside into a by-path. Do you know what riches are? I will tell you. Riches are a great temptation, yes, perhaps the greatest of our time; riches are a force in nature, perhaps the most lawless, most untamable, and the hardest to be governed. Riches are a brutal power, for which there is no ruler, except the Almighty Lord; riches are below the brute, for no brute has any more force than it embodies in itself. Man alone can be rich, can have what he is not himself, and what his children cannot consume. Here is the misery of it! Whoever gains so much of the world hurts his own soul. I have tried to bring this family and this boy to this, that they should at least make the acknowledgment, before every meal, that what they enjoy in such luxurious abundance is only a gift. Do you believe that this boy, conscious of his riches, and this whole family, can receive a moral culture except through religion? A prayer