"Has he shown any inclination for such study?"
"Most certainly not. His only inclination is for scrawling and daubing; there's no doing anything with him if he scents a painted canvas, but I'll cure him of all that."
"But if he has a talent for----" the pastor interposed.
His brother angrily interrupted him: "That's the worst of it,--a talent! His drawing-masters stuff his head with all sorts of nonsense; and awhile ago a painter fellow, a friend of the family, made a tragic appeal to me,--Could I answer it to myself to deprive the world of such a gift? I was positively rude to him; I couldn't help it."
Valentin shook his head half disapprovingly. "But why do you not allow your son to follow his inclination?"
"Can you ask? Because an intellectual inheritance is his by right. My name stands high in the scientific world, and must open all doors for Hans while he lives. If he follows in my footsteps he is sure of success; he is his father's son. But God have mercy on him if he takes it into his head to be what they call a genius!"
Meanwhile, Michael had put away his books, and now advanced to take his leave. Since there was to be no lesson, there was no excuse for his remaining any longer at the parsonage. His face again showed the same vacant, dreamy expression peculiar to it; and as he left the room Wehlau said in an undertone to his brother, "You are right; he is too ugly, poor devil!"
The Counts of Steinrück belonged to an ancient and formerly very powerful family, dating back centuries. Its two branches owned a common lineage, but were now only distantly connected, and there had been times when there had been no intercourse between them, so widely had they been sundered by diversity of religious belief.
The elder and Protestant branch, belonging to Northern Germany, possessed entailed estates yielding a moderate income; the South-German cousins, on the contrary, were owners of a very large property, consisting chiefly of estates in fee, and were among the wealthiest in the land. This wealth was at present owned by a child eight years of age, the daughter whom the late Count had constituted his sole heiress. Conscious of the hopeless nature of his malady, he had summoned his cousin, and had made him the executor of his will and his daughter's guardian. Thus had been adjusted an estrangement that had existed for years, and that had its rise in an alliance once contracted, only to be suddenly dissolved.