He had built a whole village for his laborers, to right and left of the highroad leading to Friesenmoor House.  The cheerful, clean, whitewashed cottages, with their green-painted window-frames, were thatched with rushes and surrounded by gardens in which young fruit trees, not yet sufficiently strong to forego the support of poles, already gave promise of their first harvest of apples and pears.  The village hall and the school-house were distinguished by superior size and green-glazed tile roofs; nor was a church, with a pointed belfry and weathercock, missing.  For Paul was a model landowner, who took ample thought for the welfare of his dependents, and as soon as his means permitted it, had hastened to build a church and appoint a pastor, providing thereby, at the same time, for one of his numerous relatives.  In his ardent loyalty to his king, he had expressed the wish to call his village Kaiser-Wilhelm’s Dorf, and had received the desired permission.

In Kaiser-Wilhelm’s Dorf, it was evident, content and comparative prosperity reigned supreme.  Behind every house was a pigsty, behind nearly every one a cowshed.  The men looked strong and hearty; the women, carrying dinner to their husbands in the fields, or sitting knitting on the benches in front of their doors, all presented bright and cheerful faces, and the school would hardly contain the crowd of flaxen-haired, blue-eyed children, whose rounded cheeks gave evidence of a never-failing and amply spread dinner-table.

In the beginning, all this made a vast impression on Wilhelm.  As the struggle with nature is man’s real and normal task, he instinctively feels an emotion almost amounting to joy wherever he comes upon evidences of victory.  But, as usual with Wilhelm, this first instinctive emotion was followed by the usual fatal speculations, and he said to himself, “Paul has converted swamps into cornfields, has enriched himself thereby, and supports some hundreds of families.  Good! but what further?  This great achievement has as its primary result, that people are fed who otherwise perhaps would not eat so much or so well, or merely would not feed on this spot at all.  But is the filling of one’s own and other people’s stomachs the first and highest aim of life?”

Paul tried hard to interest him in the details of farming.  He took him about, showed and explained everything to him, and finally brought out his pet scheme—­that he should sell the house in Berlin, and buy instead some marshland near by, which was to be had for a moderate sum; he would give him a helping hand at first, and as property of that kind could very well afford a steward, he could easily get him a first-rate one.  They would be neighbors, Wilhelm would have a larger income and fewer wants, and live in peace and comfort.  Wilhelm was profoundly touched by the affection which was manifest in Paul’s every word and thought, but the prospects he opened up before him offered him no attractions.