The great manufacturers and merchants who placed their sons in the institute were also not men favourable to revolution, and many of our comrades became officers in the German army.  Others are able scholars, clergymen, and members of Parliament; others again government officials, who fill high positions; and others still are at the head of large industrial or mercantile enterprises.  I have not heard of a single individual who has gone to ruin, and of very many who have accomplished things really worthy of note.  But wherever I have met an old pupil of Keilhau, I have found in him the same love for the institute, have seen his eyes sparkle more brightly when we talked of Langethal, Middendorf, and Barop.  Not one has turned out a sneak or a hypocrite.

The present institution is said to be an admirable one; but the “Realschule” of Keilhau, which has been forced to abandon its former humanistic foundation, can scarcely train to so great a variety of callings the boys now entrusted to its care.

CHAPTER XIV.

The little country of Rudolstadt in which Keilhau lies had had its revolution, though it was but a small and bloodless one.  True, the insurrection had nothing to do with human beings, but involved the destruction of living creatures.  Greater liberty in hunting was demanded.

This might seem a trivial matter, yet it was of the utmost importance to both disputants.  The wide forests of the country had hitherto been the hunting-grounds of the prince, and not a gun could be fired there without his permission.  To give up these “happy hunting-grounds” was a severe demand upon the eager sportsman who occupied the Rudolstadt throne, and the rustic population would gladly have spared him had it been possible.

But the game in Rudolstadt had become a veritable torment, which destroyed the husbandmen’s hopes of harvests.  The peasant, to save his fields from the stags and does which broke into them in herds at sunset, tried to keep them out by means of clappers and bad odours.  I have seen and smelled the so-called “Frenchman’s oil” with which the posts were smeared, that its really diabolical odour—­I don’t know from what horrors it was compounded—­might preserve the crops.  The ornament of the forests had become the object of the keenest hate, and as soon as—­shortly before we entered Keilhau—­hunting was freely permitted, the peasants gave full vent to their rage, set off for the woods with the old muskets they had kept hidden in the garrets, or other still more primitive weapons, and shot or struck down all the game they encountered.  Roast venison was cheap for weeks on Rudolstadt tables, and the pupils had many an unexpected pleasure.

The hunting exploits of the older scholars were only learned by us younger ones as secrets, and did not reach the teachers’ ears until long after.

But the woods furnished other pleasures besides those enjoyed by the sportsman.  Every ramble through the forest enriched our knowledge of plants and animals, and I soon knew the different varieties of stones also; yet we did not suspect that this knowledge was imparted according to a certain system.  We were taught as it were by stealth, and how many pleasant, delicious things attracted us to the class-rooms on the wooded heights!