Karl Ludwig Sand | Page 7

the unity of evil or of good.
"Moreover, God only sends the trial to the heart where He has put
strength, and the manner in which you tell me that your master has
borne the misfortune that has befallen him is a fresh proof of this great
and eternal truth. You must form yourself upon him, my dear child, and
if you are obliged to leave Hof for Bamberg you must resign yourself
to it courageously. Man has three educations: that which he receives
from his parents, that which circumstances impose upon him, and lastly
that which he gives himself; if that misfortune should occur, pray to
God that you may yourself worthily complete that last education, the
most important of all.
"I will give you as an example the life and conduct of my father, of
whom you have not heard very much, for he died before you were born,
but whose mind and likeness are reproduced in you only among all
your brothers and sisters. The disastrous fire which reduced his native
town to ashes destroyed his fortune and that of his relatives; grief at
having lost everything--for the fire broke out in the next house to
his--cost his father his life; and while his mother, who for six years had
been stretched an a bed of pain, where horrible convulsions held her

fast, supported her three little girls by the needlework that she did in the
intervals of suffering, he went as a mere clerk into one of the leading
mercantile houses of Augsburg, where his lively and yet even temper
made him welcome; there he learned a calling, for which, however, he
was not naturally adapted, and came back to the home of his birth with
a pure and stainless heart, in order to be the support of his mother and
his sisters.
"A man can do much when he wishes to do much: join your efforts to
my prayers, and leave the rest in the hands of God."
The prediction of this Puritan woman was fulfilled: a little time
afterwards rector Salfranck was appointed professor at Richembourg,
whither Sand followed him; it was there that the events of 1813 found
him. In the month of March he wrote to his mother:--
"I can scarcely, dear mother, express to you how calm and happy I
begin to feel since I am permitted to believe in the enfranchisement of
my country, of which I hear on every side as being so near at hand,--of
that country which, in my faith in God, I see beforehand free and
mighty, that country for whose happiness I would undergo the greatest
sufferings, and even death. Take strength for this crisis. If by chance it
should reach our good province, lift your eyes to the Almighty, then
carry them back to beautiful rich nature. The goodness of God which
preserved and protected so many men during the disastrous Thirty
Years' War can do and will do now what it could and did then. As for
me, I believe and hope."
Leipzig came to justify Sand's presentiments; then the year 1814
arrived, and he thought Germany free.
On the 10th of December in the same year he left Richembourg with
this certificate from his master:--
"Karl Sand belongs to the small number of those elect young men who
are distinguished at once by the gifts of the mind and the faculties of
the soul; in application and work he surpasses all his fellow- students,
and this fact explains his rapid progress in all the philosophical and
philological sciences; in mathematics only there are still some further
studies which he might pursue. The most affectionate wishes of his
teacher follow him on his departure.
"J. A. KEYN, "Rector, and master of the first class. "Richembourg,
Sept. 15, 1814"

But it was really the parents of Sand, and in particular his mother, who
had prepared the fertile soil in which his teachers had sowed the seeds
of learning; Sand knew this well, for at the moment of setting out for
the university of Tubingen, where he was about to complete the
theological studies necessary for becoming a pastor, as he desired to do,
he wrote to them:--
"I confess that, like all my brothers and sisters, I owe to you that
beautiful and great part of my education which I have seen to be
lacking to most of those around me. Heaven alone can reward you by a
conviction of having so nobly and grandly fulfilled your parental duties,
amid many others."
After having paid a visit to his brother at St. Gall, Sand reached
Tubingen, to which he had been principally attracted by the reputation
of Eschenmayer; he spent that winter quietly, and no other incident
befell than his admission into an association of Burschen,