They started briskly, keeping side by side, but suddenly Eric's horse shied and began to rear. Roland uttered a cry, but Eric reassured him, saying, "I'll conquer him;" he drew his feet from the stirrups, and rode off at such a pace that the horse was soon covered with foam and quite submissive; then he rode back to Roland, who was waiting for him in anxiety.
"Why did you throw off the stirrups?" he asked.
"Because I didn't want to hang by them if the horse fell backwards."
They rode on quietly near each other. Eric asked:--
"Which do you like best, to have some fixed object for your ride, or simply to go over a certain distance, and then turn back?"
"I like to have some object, a visit to pay, at the end of my ride."
"Only think," said Roland, "they say I must have another tutor."
"I want to get away from home and go to a military school! Why should Manna go to the convent? They always say that my mother can't eat unless I am with her, but she'll have to eat when I'm an officer."
"Are you a nobleman?" asked the boy, after a pause.
The boy played with his horse's long mane; glancing back, he saw that the flag had been lowered from the tower. He pointed it out to Eric, saying haughtily that he should hoist it again. His fine, delicately cut, but pale face gained strength and color as it lost its weary look, and assumed a daring expression.
Without noticing his domineering manner, Eric said how much he liked Roland's pride in being an American.
"You are the first person in Germany who has commended it," cried the boy joyfully. "Herr von Pranken and Fräulein Perini are always ridiculing America; you are the only man,--but I beg your pardon, I ought not to be talking so familiarly to you."
"Put away that notion; we want to be good friends."
The boy held out his hand, and Eric pressed it warmly.
"See, our horses are good friends too," said Roland. "Have you many horses at home?"
Roland looked at him in surprise; none of his tutors had said that to him; they had all represented wealth as a temptation and a vanity, or had extolled it for the sake of flattering him.
After some time, in which the boy was evidently thinking about Eric, he said, "Are you French, like your name?"
"No, I am a German, but my ancestors were French emigrants. How old were you when you came to Europe?"