Chapter XI…

Chapter XI

Since the important evening above described, the dancing-lessons had gone on regularly, and Anton, having got over the purgatory of the first introduction, began to feel perfectly at home. Indeed, he became a useful member of the association, and was a pattern of assiduity and punctuality, and a striking contrast to Fink, who horrified the dancing-master by declaring that the galop step was fitted for every and all dances alike, and by waltzing in the most eccentric orbits conceivable.

The fact was, Anton was so happy that his transfigured aspect struck both the young and the old ladies, confirming the former in their conviction that he was good and true-hearted, and the latter in theirs, that he was a prince in disguise. He himself best knew the secret of his bliss. Every thought of his loyal heart revolved around its absolute mistress. All dances or conversations with others he looked upon as more flourishes surrounding her name; neither was he without his reward. She soon treated him like an old friend; and, whenever she entered the room, it was not till she had discovered his brown curls among the circle that she felt at home in the brilliant assembly.

It is, however, a melancholy fact, that destiny never long permits a child of earth to feel his whole nature and circumstances strung up to their utmost sweetness and power. It invariably contrives to let down some string while winding up another. Hence arises a discord, such as Anton was now called upon to experience.

It was plain that the gentlemen of the counting-house looked with critical eye upon the change in his way of life. There existed every possible diversity among them, it is true; but all were unanimous in pronouncing that, since he had attended these dancing-lessons, our hero had greatly changed for the worse. They declared that his increased silence was pride, his frequent absences in an evening tokens of unbecoming levity; and he who had once been a universal favorite was now in danger of being universally condemned. He himself considered the colder bearing of his colleagues very unkind; and so it came to pass that, for several weeks, he lived almost exclusively with Fink, and that the two formed, as it were, an aristocratic section in opposition to the rest.

Anton was more depressed by this state of things than he chose to confess: he felt it every where--at his desk, in his room, nay, even at dinner. If Jordan wanted a commission executed, it was no longer to him, but to Baumann, that he turned; when Purzel, the cashier, came into the office, he no longer accepted Anton's seat; and though Specht addressed him oftener than ever, it was no comfort to have questions like these whispered in his ear, "Is it true that Baron von Berg has dapple-gray horses?" or, "Must you wear patent leather boots, or shoes, at Frau von Baldereck's?" But Pix, his former patron, was the severest of all. Excessive toleration had never been one of this gentleman's weaknesses, and he now, for no very definite reasons, looked upon Anton as a traitor to himself and the firm. He was in the habit of keeping his birth-day in a most festal manner, surrounded by all his friends, and, knowing this, Anton had purposely refused an invitation of Herr von Zernitz; yet, when the day came, Fink and he were not included among the birth-day guests.

Anton felt this deeply; and, to make matters worse, Specht confidentially told him that Pix had declared that a young gentleman who associated with lieutenants, and frequented Feroni's, was no companion for a plain man of business. As he sat alone and heard the merry laughter of his colleagues, he fell into a melancholy mood, which none of his ball-room recollections had the power to dispel.

For, truth to tell, he was not satisfied with himself--he was changed. He was not exactly negligent of business, but it gave him no pleasure--his work was a task. Sometimes, in writing letters, he had forgotten the most important clauses; nay, once or twice he had made mistakes as to prices, and Jordan had handed him them back to re-write. He fancied, too, that the principal had not noticed him for some time past, and that Sabine's greeting had grown colder. Even the good-natured Karl had asked him, ironically he thought, whether he, as well as Fink, had a pass-key. It was in this mood that he now sat down to look over his own accounts, which of late he had omitted to keep punctually. He was horrified to find that his debts amounted to more than he could pay without mortgaging his little inheritance. He felt very unhappy and out of tune; but fate willed that the discord should increase.

Two or three evenings later, the merchant, returning early from his club, answered Sabine's greeting dryly, and paced up and down the room.

"What is the matter, Traugott?" asked she.

He threw himself into a chair. "Would you like to know how Fink got his protégé introduced into Frau von Baldereck's circle? You were so ready to admire this proof of his friendship! He has concocted a whole system of lies, and made the inexperienced Wohlfart play the part of a mere adventurer." And he went on to narrate all that we already know.

"But is it certain that Fink has done this?"

"Not a doubt of it. It is exactly like him. It is the same reckless, unscrupulous spirit, that neither heeds the life nor the reputation of a friend."

Sabine fell back in her chair, and again her heart swelled with indignation. "Oh, how sad it is!" cried she; "but Wohlfart is innocent, that I am convinced of. Such falsehoods are not in his nature."

"I shall know to-morrow," said the merchant; "for his own sake, I hope you are right."

The next day the principal summoned Anton to his own apartment, and telling him the rumors that had arisen, asked him what he had done to contradict them.

Anton replied in much amazement, "That he knew nothing of such rumors as these; that sometimes, indeed, he had been joked with as to his means, but that he had always avowed how small they were."

"Have you spoken decidedly?" asked the merchant, severely.

"I believe that I have," was the honest reply.

"These idle tales would not signify," continued the principal, "but that they expose you to the charge of having sought, by unworthy means, to gain a position to which you are not entitled, and also that they tend to degrade your parents' reputation, for it is given out that you are the son of a man of very high rank."

"Oh my mother!" cried Anton, wringing his hands, and the tears rolling down his cheeks. As soon as he could control his emotion, he said,

"The most painful part of all this is, that you should have supposed me capable of circulating these falsehoods. I implore you to believe that I never knew of them till now."

"I am glad to believe it," said the merchant; "but you have done much to substantiate them. You have appeared in a circle and incurred expenses which were alike unsuited to your position and your fortune."

Anton felt that he would greatly prefer the centre of the earth to its surface. At length he cried, "I know it--you are right--nay, I knew it all the time; and especially since I found that I had run into debt"--here the merchant smiled almost imperceptibly--"I have felt that I was on the wrong road altogether, though I did not know how to retrace my steps. But now I will lose no more time."

"Was it not Fink who introduced you to that circle? Perhaps," said the merchant, "he may be able to throw some light on the affair."

"Allow me to call him," said Anton, "and let him be witness as to whether I knew of this."

"Certainly, if it be any satisfaction to you;" and Fink was summoned. On entering, he looked with astonishment at Anton's excited aspect, and cried, without particularly heeding the principal's presence, "The devil! you have been weeping!"

"Over calumnies," said the merchant, gravely, "which affect his own character as a respectable man of business, and the honor of his family." And he proceeded to state the whole affair.

"He is quite innocent," said Fink, good-naturedly: "innocent and harmless as the violet that blows in the shade. He knew nothing of this ridiculous affair; and, if any one be to blame, it is I, and the babbling fools who have spread the story. Don't torment yourself, Anton; since it annoys you, we will soon set it all to rights."

"I shall go once more," declared Anton, "to Frau von Baldereck, and tell her that I can no longer attend the dancing-parties."

"As you like," said Fink. "At all events, you have learned to dance, and to hold your hat like a gentleman."

Before dinner, the merchant said to his sister, "You were right, Wohlfart had nothing to do with it; it was all Fink's invention."

"I knew it," cried Sabine, drawing out her needle vehemently.

Anton worked hard all day, said little, and, when evening came, went up stairs to dress, like a man whose mind is made up.

If Fink could have seen into his heart, he would have been shocked at the sorrow there. It was not alone wounded self-love, mortification, shame, but the anguish of bidding farewell to Lenore. As it was, "I say," cried he, "I have a notion that you take this nonsense a great deal too tragically. Are you angry with me?" holding out his hand.

"Neither with you nor with any one else; but let me for once act for myself."

"What are you going to do?"

"Do not ask me. I have but one thing to do."

"So be it, then," was the good-humored reply; "but do not forget that any thing like a scene would only amuse those people."

"Trust me," said Anton, "I shall make none."

It happened to be a very gay meeting, and there were more gentlemen present than usual. Anton at once went up to Lenore, who came to meet him more lovely than ever, in her first ball-dress, saying, "How late you are! Come, papa is here, and I want to introduce you to him. But what is the matter, you look so grave?"

"Dear lady," returned Anton, "I do indeed feel sad. I can not dance the next dance with you, and am only come to apologize to you, and to the lady of the house, for my abrupt departure."

"Mr. Wohlfart!" cried Lenore, clasping her hands.

"Your good opinion is more to me than that of all others," said he, blushing; and proceeded rapidly to state the whole story, assuring her that he had known nothing of it.

"I believe you," said Lenore, cordially; "and, indeed, papa said that it was all most probably an idle tale. And because of this you will give up our dancing-parties!"

"I will," said Anton; "for, if I do not, I run a risk of being considered an intruder or an impostor."

Lenore tossed her little head. "Go, then, sir!" and she turned away.

Anton stood like one annihilated. Had he been ten years older, he might have interpreted her anger more favorably. As it was, a bitter pang thrilled through him. But the thought of what was still to be done nerved him to overcome it, and he walked steadily, nay, proudly to where Frau von Baldereck was doing the honors. All the most distinguished members of the party were around her. The gaunt old countess sat drinking a cup of tea. The baroness was there; and near her a tall, handsome man, whom Anton knew instinctively to be Lenore's father. As he advanced to make his bow to the lady of the house, his glance took in the whole scene at once. Years have passed since then; but still he knows the color of every dress, could count the flowers in the bouquet of the baroness, ay, and remembers the gilt pattern on the countess's tea-cup. Frau von Baldereck received his obeisance with a gracious smile, and was about to say something flattering, when Anton interrupted her, and in a voice that shook a little, perhaps, but was audible throughout the room, began his address, which was soon listened to in profound silence. "Madam, I have this day heard that a rumor has been spread of my possessing lands in America, and exciting an interest in certain high quarters. I now declare that this is all false. I am the son of a late accountant in Ostrau, and I inherit from my parents hardly any thing beyond an unsullied name. You, madam, have been kind enough to invite me, an insignificant stranger, to take part in your réunions this winter. After what I have just heard, I dare do so no longer, lest I should thus substantiate the idle reports I have mentioned, and be suspected of imposing upon your hospitality. Therefore I have only to thank you sincerely for your past kindness, and to take my leave."

The whole party was struck dumb. Anton bowed, and turned to go.

Just then there flew out from the paralyzed circle a brilliant form, and taking both his hands in hers, Lenore looked at him with tearful eyes, and said, in a broken voice, "Farewell!" The door closed, and all was over.

When life returned in the room he had left, the first words audible were the baroness's whisper to her daughter, "Lenore, you have forgotten yourself."

"Do not blame her," said the baron, aloud, with great presence of mind; "the daughter only did what the father should have done. The young man has behaved admirably, and we can not but esteem him."

A murmur, however, began to arise from different groups. "Quite a dramatic scene," said the lady of the house; "but who then said--"

"Ay, who was it that said," interposed Von Tönnchen. All eyes turned to Fink.

"It was you, Herr von Fink, who--" Frau von Baldereck majestically began.

"I, my dear lady!" said Fink, with the composure of a just man unjustly accused. "What have I to do with the report? I have always contradicted it as much as possible."

"Yes," said several voices; "but then you used to hint--"

"And you certainly did say--" interpolated Frau von Baldereck.

"What?" coldly inquired the imperturbable Fink.

"That this Mr. Wohlfart was mysteriously connected with the Czar."

"Impossible!" cried Fink, earnestly; "that is a complete misunderstanding. In describing the appearance of the gentleman, then unknown to you, I may possibly have mentioned an accidental likeness, but--"

"But the American property," chimed in Herr von Tönnchen; "why, you yourself made it over to him, and requested us to keep the transaction a profound secret."

"As you have kept my secret so well," replied Fink, "as to tell it every where, and now in my presence, before all assembled here, you and Zernitz are evidently answerable for the whole foolish rumor. And now listen, gentlemen; my friend Wohlfart having once expressed a playful wish to have land in America, I amused myself by making him a Christmas-box of a certain possession of mine on Long Island, near New York, which possession consists of a few sand-hills and a tumble-down hut, built for wild-duck shooting. It was natural that I should ask you not to mention this, and I am very sorry that, from such a trifle, you should have spun a web that excludes a delightful man from our circle." And then a cold irony spreading over his features, he went on: "I rejoice to see how strongly you all share my feeling, and despise the low snobbishness of soul which could consider a man more fitted for society because a foreign potentate had evinced an interest in him. And, since we have begun this evening's dance with explanations, let me further explain, that Mr. Anton Wohlfart is the son of a late accountant in Ostrau, and that I shall consider any further allusion to this misunderstanding as an insult to my most intimate friend. And now, my dear lady, I am engaged to your daughter for the first quadrille, and can positively wait no longer."

In the course of the evening Lieutenant von Zernitz came up and said, "Fink, you have made fun of us, and I am sorry to be under the necessity of demanding satisfaction."

"Be rational, and do nothing of the kind," replied Fink. "We have shot together so often, it would be a pity now to take each other for a mark."

Fink being by far the best shot in the room, Herr von Zernitz allowed himself to be convinced.

Anton had vanished from the fashionable circle like a falling star, and he never reappeared therein. True, it did occur to Frau von Baldereck, rather late in the day, that it would be proper occasionally to invite the young man, to prove that he had not been tolerated merely as--what he was not, and some other families thought the same; but as these invitations came, as before said, rather late, and as Anton declined them, his fate was that of many a greater man--society forgot him. For a short time the two chief hatchers of the grand report, Messrs. von Tönnchen and von Zernitz, spoke to him when they met him in the street; for a whole year they bowed, then they too knew him no more.

The following day Anton told the merchant all that had passed, begged him to forgive his late remissness, and promised greater attention in future.

"I have no fault to find," replied the merchant, kindly. "And now let me see the amount of your debts, that we may get your affairs in order." Anton drew a slip of paper from his pocket, the cashier was called, the sum paid, and put down to Anton's account, and that was settled.

In the evening Fink said to Anton, "You went off with flying colors; the oldest man there declared aloud that you had behaved admirably."

"Who said that?" Fink told him it was the Baron Rothsattel, and did not appear to remark his deep blush. "It would have been better," continued he, "if you had not taken such a decided step. Why avoid the whole circle, in which there are some who have a strong personal regard for you?"

"I have done what my own feelings prompted," said Anton; "perhaps one older and more experienced might have managed better; but you can not blame me for not taking your advice in this matter."

"It is singular," thought Fink, as he went down stairs, "what different events teach different men to have and exert wills of their own. This boy has become independent in one night, and whatever Fate may now have in store for him, he is sure to acquit himself well."

It spoke highly, both for Anton and his friend, that their intimacy was by no means decreased by the circumstances just related. On the contrary, it was deepened. Fink behaved with more consideration, and Anton gained more freedom, both of opinion and action. The influence of the younger of the friends weaned the elder from many an evil habit. Anton being more than ever zealous in his office duties, and more obliging to his colleagues, Fink insensibly accustomed himself to greater application and punctuality. There was only one subject that he never touched upon, though he well knew that it was always uppermost in Anton's mind, and that was the lovely young girl who had shown so much heart and spirit on the occasion of his last dancing-lesson.

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Chapter XII

Never had the flowers bloomed so gorgeously, never had the birds sung so gayly, as they did this summer on the baron's estate. The season spent in town had greatly extended the family acquaintance, and the castle was, in consequence, almost always full of guests. Dances, rides, acted charades, amusements of every kind, filled up the laughing hours.

What happy days these were to Lenore! True, she still remained something of an original, and her mother would at times shake her head at some daring freak or over-emphatic speech. It came naturally to her to play the gentleman's part whenever there was a lack of gentlemen. She was the leader in every expedition, delighting to carry off all her young female friends to some distant spot whence there was a fine view, to force them into some little village inn, where they had only milk and black bread for supper, and then to carry them all home dead-tired in a wagon, which she herself would drive standing. She had a way of treating young men with a sort of motherly kindness, as though they were still little bread-and-butter-eating urchins; and on the occasion of a certain dramatic representation, she horrified her mother by appearing in a male character, with a riding-whip and a little beard, which she twisted about in the most fascinating way. But she looked so wondrously lovely, even thus attired, that her mother could not chide in earnest.

If, however, there was any one not entirely satisfied with this way of life, it was the baroness. A certain preoccupation and restlessness had stolen over her husband--the cloudless serenity of former years was gone. It was but a slight change, visible only to the wife's eyes; and even she owned to herself that she was hardly justified in grieving over it.

Just at this time, too, a great joy awaited her. Eugene had passed his examination, and promised them a visit to show them his epaulettes. His mother had his room newly fitted up, and his father placed some first-rate guns and a new hunting-dress in it as a present for him. On the day of his arrival he rode out to meet him, and it was a pleasant sight to see the two noble-looking men embrace, and then ride home together.

"We will surprise the ladies," said the baron, and soon the baroness clasped her son in her arms. This was the climax of happiness at the castle. Both parents' eyes glistened whenever they rested on their son. True, some of his expressions and gestures savored of the riding-school, but the baroness only smiled at them all. From time immemorial, indeed, the stable has been for the young cavalier the ante-chamber of the saloon. Eugene soon became supreme among the band of young ladies; he paid visits all around, invited friends in return; in short, one gayety succeeded another.

To all this there was only one drawback of which the baron was conscious. He could no longer live within his income. What had been possible for twenty years now became manifestly an utter impossibility. The winter residence in town, the epaulettes of his son, Lenore's gauzes and laces--even the additional interest of his promissory notes, all tended to embarrass him. The returns from his property were eagerly expected, and already in part forestalled; nor were they increased. Nay, many a projected improvement of former years remained unaccomplished. He had once meant to plant a sandy waste at the extremity of his estate, but even that small outlay was inconvenient, and the yellow sand still glistened in the sun. Again he was obliged to open the inlaid casket, and take out some of the fair parchments, and again his brow grew clouded and his mind troubled; but it was no longer the same agony of anxiety as before: he had had a little practice, and looked at things with a calmer eye. Something would turn up--there would be some way or other of becoming freed from these embarrassments; at most, he need only spend two more winters in town till Lenore's education should be quite completed, and then he would devote himself energetically to the care of his property. Meanwhile, he resolved to talk matters over a little with Ehrenthal, for, on the whole, he was an honorable man, that is, as far as a tradesman could be so; and, what was more, he knew the baron's circumstances exactly, and it was easier to discuss them with him than with a stranger.

As usual, Ehrenthal appeared just when wanted. His diamond breast-pin shone as usual, his obsequious compliments were as ludicrous as ever, and his admiration of the property as boundless. The baron took him all over the farm, and good-humoredly said, "You must give me some advice, Ehrenthal."

Only two or three years had passed since a similar walk over this farm, and how the times had changed! Then, Ehrenthal had to insinuate his advice to the proud baron, and now the baron himself asked him for it.

In the lightest tone that he could assume, he went on to say, "I have had greater expenses than usual this year. Even the promissory notes do not yield enough, and I must therefore think of increasing my income. What would you consider the best means of doing this?"

The usurer's eyes brightened; but he answered, with all due deference, "The baron must be a better judge of that than I can be."

"None of your bargains, however, Ehrenthal. I shall not enter into partnership with you again."

Ehrenthal replied, shaking his head, "There are not, indeed, many such bargains to be made, which I could conscientiously recommend. The baron has five-and-forty thousand dollars' worth of promissory notes. Why do you keep them when they pay so small an interest? If you were, instead, to buy a good mortgage at five per cent, you would pay four per cent to the Joint-stock Company, and one per cent. would be your own; in other words, a yearly addition of four hundred and fifty dollars. But you might make a better thing of them than that. There are many safe mortgages which are offered to sale for ready money, at a great profit to the purchaser. You might, perhaps, for forty thousand dollars, or even less, get a mortgage that would bring you in five per cent. on forty-five thousand dollars."

"I have thought of that," replied the baron; "but the security for such mortgages as these, which come into the hands of you brokers, is exceedingly poor, and I can not rely on it."

Ehrenthal waived off this reproach, and said, in a tone of virtuous indignation against all dealers in insecure mortgages, "For my own part, I am very shy of mortgages altogether, and such as are in the market are not fit for the baron, of course. You must apply to a trustworthy man; your own lawyer, for instance, may be able to procure you a good mortgage."

"Then you really know of none?" said the baron, secretly hoping that he did.

"I know of none," was the positive reply; "but if you wish, I can inquire; there are always some to be had. Your lawyer can tell you what he would consider good security; only you would have to pay down the sum total in case you procured it from him, whereas, if you could get one from a commercial man, you might make a profit of some thousands."

Now this profit was a most important point to the baron, and his mind was made up to realize it if possible. But he only said, "There is no hurry; should you hear of any thing desirable, you can let me know."

"I will do all I can," was the cautious reply; "but it will be well that the baron should also make inquiries himself, for I am not accustomed to deal in mortgages."

If this assertion were not strictly true, it was, at all events, politic, for the cool indifference of the tradesman increased the baron's confidence in him tenfold. The following day he went to town, and had a consultation with his lawyer, who strongly advised him to give up the idea of making any such profit as he contemplated, because such a mortgage would infallibly prove insecure. But this good advice only confirmed the baron in his intention of taking his own way in the matter.

A few days later, a tall stout man, with a shining red face, called upon the baron--a Mr. Pinkus, from the capital. He had heard, he said, that the baron wished to invest, and he knew of a remarkably safe and desirable mortgage, on a large property in the neighboring province, belonging to the rich Count Zaminsky, who lived abroad. This property had every possible advantage, including two thousand acres of magnificent natural wood. The mortgage was at present in Count Zaminsky's own hands. It was possible, Pinkus mysteriously hinted, to purchase it for ninety per cent.; in other words, for thirty-six thousand dollars. Certainly, it was a pity that the property lay in another province, where agriculturists had many primitive peculiarities. But it was only six miles from the frontier--the neighboring town was on the high road--the estate was princely. In short, the drawbacks were so small, and the advantages so great, that Pinkus never could have made up his mind to let a stranger purchase it, had he not been such an example of human perfection as the baron.

The baron received the compliment in a dignified manner, and before his departure Pinkus laid down a heavy roll of parchment, that the question of the security might be carefully investigated.

Early the next morning the baron took the deeds to his man of business, and himself ascended the dirty staircase that led to the white door of Ehrenthal, who was overjoyed to hear of his visit--dressed himself with the utmost rapidity, and insisted upon the baron doing him the infinite honor of breakfasting with him. The baron was not cruel enough to refuse, and accordingly he was ushered into the state apartment, where the contrast between splendor and shabbiness amused him not a little, as did also that between the gorgeous attire of the beautiful Rosalie, and the sneaking, crouching manner of her father.

During breakfast the baron asked Ehrenthal whether he happened to know a Mr. Pinkus.

At this business-like inquiry Rosalie vanished, and her father sat bolt upright. "Yes, I do know him," said he; "he is in a very small way, but I believe him an upright man. He is in a very small way, and all his business is with Poland."

"Have you mentioned to him my wish to buy a mortgage?"

"How should I have thought of mentioning it to him? If he has offered you a mortgage, he must have heard of it from another dealer, of whom I did make inquiries. But Pinkus is in a small way; how can he procure a mortgage for you?" And Ehrenthal indicated by a gesture how small Pinkus was, and by a look upward how immeasurably great his guest.

The baron then told him all particulars, and asked about the property and circumstances of the count.

Ehrenthal knew nothing; but he bethought himself that there was then in town a respectable tradesman from that very district, and promised to have him sent to the baron, who soon after took his leave, Ehrenthal accompanying him down stairs, and saying, "Be cautious about the mortgage, baron; it is good money, and there are many bad mortgages. To be sure, there are good mortgages too; and, of course, people will say a good deal to recommend their own. As to Löbel Pinkus, he is in but a small way of business; but, so far as I know, a trustworthy man. All you tell me about the mortgage sounds well, I own; but I humbly entreat you, baron, to be cautious--very cautious."

The baron, not much enlightened by this worthy address, went to his town house, and impatiently awaited for the arrival of the stranger, who soon came. His name was Löwenberg, and his appearance was a sort of medley of that of Ehrenthal and Pinkus, only he was thinner. He gave himself out as a wine-merchant, and appeared intimately acquainted with the count and his property. He said that the present possessor was young, and lived abroad; that his father had been rather a bad manager; but that, though the estate was burdened, it was not in the very least endangered. The land was not in high cultivation, therefore was susceptible of improvement, and he hoped the young count was the very man to see to it. On the whole, his report was decidedly favorable; there was no exaggeration about it--all was sensible and straightforward. The baron's mind was very nearly made up, and he went off straightway to one of his acquaintance, who knew the Zaminsky family. He did not hear much from him certainly, but still it was rather favorable than otherwise. On the other hand, Ehrenthal called to inform him that the wool of the sheep of that district was seldom fine, and to beg that he would consult his lawyer before he decided.

Ehrenthal's little office was on the same floor as the rest of the apartments, and opened out upon the hall. It was evening before he returned to it, in a state of great excitement. Itzig, who had been sitting before a blank book, wearily waiting for his master, wondered what could be the matter, when Ehrenthal eagerly said to him, "Itzig, now is the time to show whether you deserve your wages, and the advantage of a Sabbath dinner in good society."

"What am I to do?" replied Veitel, rising.

"First, you are to tell Löbel Pinkus to come here, and then to get me a bottle of wine and two glasses. Next go and bring me word to whom in Rosmin, Councilor Horn, who lives near the market-place, has written to-day, or, if not to-day, to whom he writes to-morrow. In finding this out you may spend five dollars, and if you bring me back word this evening you shall have a ducat for yourself."

Veitel felt a glow of delight, but replied calmly, "I know none of Councilor Horn's clerks, and must have some time to become acquainted with them."

He ordered the bottle of wine, and ran off into the street like a dog in scent of game.

Meanwhile Ehrenthal, his hat still on, his hands behind his back, walked up and down, nodding his head, and looking in the twilight like an ugly ghost who once has had his head cut off and can not now keep it steadily on.

As Veitel went on his way, his mind kept working much as follows: "What can be in the wind? It must be an important affair, and I am to know nothing about it! I am to send Pinkus. Pinkus was with Ehrenthal a few days ago, and the next morning he went to Baron Rothsattel's place in the country; so it must have something to do with the baron. And now, as to these letters. If I could catch the clerk who takes them to the post, and contrive to read the directions, I should save money. But how manage this? Well, I must find out some way or other." And, accordingly, Veitel posted himself at the door, and soon saw a young man rush out with a packet of letters in his hand. He followed him, and, turning sharply round a corner, contrived to meet him. Touching his hat, "You are from Councilor Horn's office?"

"Yes," said the clerk, in a hurry to get on.

"I am from the country, and have been waiting for three days for an important letter from the councilor; perhaps you may have one for me."

"What is your name?" said the clerk, looking at him mistrustfully.

"Bernhard Madgeburg, of Ostrau," said Veitel; "but the letter may be addressed to my uncle."

"There is no letter for you," replied the clerk, hurriedly glancing at the directions.

Do what he would, Veitel's eyes could not follow this rapid shuffling, so he seized the packet, and while the enraged official, catching hold of him, exclaimed, "What are you about, man! how dare you?" he devoured the directions, gave back the letters, and touching his hat, coolly said, "Nothing for me; do not lose the post; I am going to the councilor," turned on his heel and made his escape.

Spite of this bold stroke, he could only remember two or three of the addresses. "Perhaps I have made my money," thought he; "and if not, there's no time lost." So he went back, and, creeping to the office door, stood and listened. The worthy Pinkus was speaking, but very low, and Veitel could make little of it. At last, however, the voices grew louder.

"How can you ask such a large sum!" cried Ehrenthal, angrily; "I have been mistaken in thinking you a trustworthy man."

"I am trustworthy," replied Pinkus; "but I must have four hundred dollars, or this affair will fall through."

"How dare you say it will fall through? What do you know about it?"

"I know this much, that I can get four hundred dollars from the baron by telling him what I know," screamed Pinkus.

"You are a rascal! You are a traitor! Do you know who it is that you use thus? I can ruin your credit, and disgrace you in the eyes of all men of business."

"And I can show the baron what sort of a man you are," cried Pinkus, with equal vehemence.

At this the door opened, and Veitel plunged into the shadow of the staircase.

"I will give you till to-morrow to consider," were Pinkus's parting words.

Veitel coolly stepped into the office, and his patron hardly noticed him. He was pacing up and down the little room, like a wild beast in its cage, and exclaiming, "Just heavens! that this Pinkus should turn out such a traitor! He will blab the whole matter; he will ruin me!"

"Why should he ruin you?" asked Veitel, throwing his hat on the desk.

"What are you doing here? What have you overheard?"

"Every thing," was the cool reply. "You have both screamed so as to be heard all over the hall. Why do you keep the affair a secret from me? I could have compelled Löbel to give you better terms."

Ehrenthal stared in utter amazement at the audacious youth, and could only bring out, "What does this mean?"

"I know Pinkus well," continued Veitel, determined henceforth to take a part in the game. "If you give him a hundred dollars, he will readily sell you a good mortgage for the baron."

"How should you know any thing about the mortgage?"

"I know enough to help in the matter," replied Itzig; "and I will help you, if you trust me."

Ehrenthal continued to stare and stare, till at last it dawned upon him that his assistant had more coolness and decision than himself. Accordingly, he said, "You are a good creature, Veitel; go and bring in Pinkus; he shall have the hundred dollars."

"I have seen the directions of the councilor's letters: there was one to Commissary Walter."

"I thought so," cried Ehrenthal, with delight. "All right, Itzig; now for Löbel."

"I have to pay five dollars to the councilor's clerk," continued the youth, "and I am to have a ducat for myself."

"All right! you shall have the money; but first I must see Pinkus."

Veitel hastened to his lodgings, and found Pinkus still much excited, and revolving all Ehrenthal's injurious speeches.

In a few decided words, he gave him to understand that he was quietly to accept a hundred dollars, and to help Ehrenthal in this matter, else he, Veitel, would give the police a hint of the mysterious chamber in the next house, and of the smuggling guests; and further, that henceforth he must have a comfortable room on reasonable terms, and be treated no longer like a poor devil, but an equal. The result of which address was, that, after a good deal of useless fuming and fretting, Pinkus accompanied Veitel to Ehrenthal's house, where both worthies shook hands and came to terms; soon after which Veitel opened the door for Löwenberg, the wine-merchant, and was politely dismissed. This time he did not care to listen, but returned to enjoy his supper in his new apartment.

Meanwhile Ehrenthal said, over a glass of wine, to Löwenberg, "I have heard that Councilor Horn has written for information respecting this mortgage to Commissary Walter, in your town. Is there any thing to be made of him?"

"Not by money," answered the stranger, thoughtfully, "but possibly by other means. He does not know that I have been authorized by the count's attorney to sell this mortgage. I shall go to him, as if on business of my own, and take some opportunity of praising the property."

"But if he knows it himself, of what use is that?" said Ehrenthal, shaking his head.

"There will still be some use; for, after all, those lawyers must trust to us traders for details. How can they know, as we do, how wool and grain sell on estates? At all events, we must do what we can."

Ehrenthal sighed, "You can believe, Löwenberg, that it makes me anxious."

"Come, come," said the other, "it will be a profitable concern. The buyer you have in view pays ninety per cent., and seventy is sent to the count in Paris; of the twenty per cent. remaining, you pay the count's attorney five, and me five for my trouble, and you keep ten. Four thousand dollars is a pretty profit where no capital has been risked."

"But it makes me anxious," said Ehrenthal. "Believe me, Löwenberg, it excites me so much that I can not sleep at night; and when my wife asks me, 'Are you asleep, Ehrenthal?' I have always to say, 'I can not sleep, Sidonie; I must think of business.'"

An hour later a carriage with four horses rolled away from the door. The following morning Commissary Walter received a business call from Löwenberg, and was convinced, by the cool, shrewd manner of the man, that the circumstances of the Count Zaminsky could not be so desperate as was commonly believed.

Eight days after, the baron received a letter from his legal adviser, containing a copy of one from Commissary Walter. These experienced lawyers both agreed in thinking that the mortgage in question was not positively undesirable; and when Ehrenthal next called, he found the baron's mind made up to the purchase. The irresistible inducement was the making a few thousand dollars. He was resolved to think the mortgage good, and would perhaps have bought it even had his lawyer positively dissuaded him.

Ehrenthal, having a journey to take to that part of the country, most unselfishly offered to complete the purchase for the baron, who was pleased with this arrangement.

In about a fortnight he received the deeds. All were well contented with their share in the business, but Veitel Itzig with most reason, for he had by it got a hold over his master, and was now friend and confidant in the most secret transactions. The baron took out his richly-inlaid casket, and, in place of the fair white parchments, put in a thick, dirty bundle of deeds. Having done this, he joined the ladies, and gave a humorous account of Ehrenthal's bows and compliments.

"I hate that man," said Lenore.

"On this occasion he has behaved with a certain disinterestedness," replied her father. "But there is no denying that people of his class have their absurdities of manner, and it is difficult to help laughing at them."

That evening Ehrenthal was so cheerful in his family circle that his wife asked him whether he had settled the affair with the baron.

"I have," he gayly replied.

"He is a handsome man," remarked the daughter.

"He is a good man," rejoined Ehrenthal, "but he has his weaknesses. He is one of those who require low bows and civil speeches, and pay others to think for them. There must be such people in the world, or what would become of people of our profession?"

About the same time Veitel was relating to his friend, the ex-advocate, the whole particulars of the affair. Hippus had taken off his spectacles, and sat on a corner of the four-cornered chest Mrs. Pinkus was pleased to call a sofa, looking like a sagacious elderly ape who despises the race of men, and bites his keeper when he can. He listened with critical interest to his pupil's narrative, and shook his head or smiled, according as he dissented or approved.

When Veitel had done, Hippus cried, "Ehrenthal is a simpleton. He is up to nothing great; he is always trying half-measures. If he goes on thus, the baron will throw him overboard yet."

"What more can he do?" asked Veitel.

"He must give him anxieties--the anxieties of business, extensive business, ceaseless activity, daily cares--that's what the baron could not stand. That class is accustomed to little work and much enjoyment. Every thing is made easy to them from their childhood. There are few of them who may not be ruined by having some great care always boring at their brains. If Ehrenthal wishes to have the baron in his power, he must entangle him in business."

So said the advocate, and Veitel understood him, and looked with a mixture of respect and aversion at the ugly little imp gesticulating before him. At last Hippus took out the brandy bottle, and cried, "An extra glass to-day. What I have just told you, you young gallows-bird, is worth more than a bottle of brandy."

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Chapter XIII

"I am eighteen years old to-day," said Karl to his father, who was sitting at home one Sunday morning, never weary of contemplating the handsome youth.

"So you are," replied the father; "there are eighteen tapers round the cake."

"Therefore, father," Karl went on, "it is time that I should turn to, something, and make some money. I will be a porter."

"Make some money!" repeated old Sturm, looking at his son in amazement. "Do I not make as much, and more than we want? Why, you are going to turn a miser!"

"I can't always hang to your apron," said Karl; "and if you were to earn a thousand dollars, would that make an active, useful man of me? Or, if I were to lose you, what would become of me?"

"You will lose me, boy," said the giant, nodding, "in a few years, perhaps, and then you may become what you like, so it be not a porter."

"But why should I not be what you are? Do not be unreasonable."

"You know nothing about the matter. Do not be covetous; I can not bear covetous people."

"But, father, if I am not to be a porter, I must learn something," cried Karl.

"Learn!" exclaimed his father; "how much learning have you not had stuffed into your little head already! Two years at the infant school, four at the city school, two at the industrial. Why, you have had eight years' schooling, and you know the different goods as well as a clerk. Why, you are an insatiable youth."

"Yes; but I must have a calling," replied Karl. "I must be a shoemaker, tailor, shopkeeper, or mechanic."

"Don't tease yourself about that," said his father; "I have provided for all that in your education. You are practical and honorable too."

"Yes; but can I make a pair of boots? can I cut out a coat?"

"You can," replied old Sturm; "try, and you'll succeed."

"Very well; to-morrow I'll buy you some leather, and make you a pair of boots: you shall feel how they'll pinch. But, once for all, I can't go on as I am, and I'll set some one at you who will tell you the same."

"Don't be covetous, Karl," said his father, "or spoil this day for me. Give me the can of beer, and be a good boy."

Karl placed the great can before his father, and soon took up his cap and went out. Old Sturm sat still a while, but his comfort was destroyed, and the house seemed dull without his son's cheerful face. At length he went into the next room, and drew out a heavy iron chest from under the bed. He opened it with a little key that he took out of his waistcoat pocket, lifted one bag after another, began a long mental calculation, then pushed the chest under the bed again, and returned to his can of beer with a calmer aspect.

Meanwhile Karl had hurried off to the town, and soon made his appearance in Anton's apartment. After the kindly greeting on both sides, he began:

"I am come, sir, to ask your advice as to what is to become of me? I can make nothing of my father. He won't hear of my being a porter; and if I speak of another calling, he comforts me with saying that he shall not live long. A pretty comfort that! Would you be so good as to speak to him about me? He has a high opinion of you, and knows that you are always kind to me."

"That I will, gladly," replied Anton; "but what do you think of becoming?"

"It's all one to me," said Karl, "so that it's something regular. Here I turn my hands to all sorts of things, but that's different to regular work."

The next Sunday Anton went to old Sturm's. The home of the head porter was a small house near the river, distinguished from those of his neighbors by its red-washed walls. Anton opened the low door, and wondered how the giant could possibly live in so small a space. It must have required constant patience and forbearance; for, had he ever drawn himself up to his full height, he would infallibly have carried off the roof.

"I am delighted to see you in my house, sir," said Sturm, taking Anton's hand in his immense grasp as gently as he could.

"It is rather small for you, Mr. Sturm," answered Anton, laughing. "I never thought you so large as I do now."

"My father was still taller," was the complacent reply; "taller and broader. He was the chief of the porters, and the strongest man in the place; and yet a small barrel, not half so high as you are, was the death of him. Be seated, sir," said he, lifting an oaken chair, so heavy that Anton could hardly move it. "My Karl has told me that he has been to see you, and that you were most kind. He is a good boy, but he is a falling off as to size. His mother was a little woman," added Sturm, mournfully, draining a quart of beer to the last drop. "It is draught beer," he said, apologetically; "may I offer you a glass? It is a custom among us to drink no other, but certainly we drink this the whole day through, for our work is heating."

"Your son wishes to become one of your number, I hear," said Anton.

"A porter!" rejoined the giant. "No, that he never shall." Then laying his hand confidentially on Anton's knee, "It would never do; my dear departed wife besought me against it on her death-bed. And why? Our calling is respectable, as you, sir, best know. There are not many who have the requisite strength, and still fewer who have the requisite--"

"Integrity," said Anton.

"You are right," nodded Sturm. "Always to have wares of every kind in immense quantities under our eyes, and never to touch one of them--this is not in every body's line. And our earnings are very fair too. My dear departed saved a good deal of money, gold as well as silver. But that is not my way. For why? If a man be practical, he need not plague himself about money, and Karl will be a practical man. But he must not be a porter. His mother would not hear of it, and she was right."

"Your work is very laborious," suggested Anton.

"Laborious!" laughed Sturm; "it may be laborious for the weak, but it is not that. It is this," and he filled his glass; "it is the draught beer."

Anton smiled. "I know that you and your colleagues drink a good deal of this thin stuff."

"A good deal," said Sturm, with self-complacency; "it is a custom of ours--it always has been so--porters must be strong men, true men, and beer-drinkers. Water would weaken us, so would brandy; there is nothing for it but draught beer and olive oil. Look here, sir," said he, mixing a small glassful of fine oil and beer, stirring plenty of sugar into it, and drinking off the nauseous compound; "this is a secret of ours, and makes an arm like this;" and he laid his on the table, and vainly endeavored to span it. "But there is a drawback. Have you ever seen an old porter? No; for there are none. Fifty is the greatest age they have ever reached. My father was fifty when he died, and the one we lately buried--Mr. Schröter was at the funeral--was forty-nine. I have still two years before me, however."

Anton looked at him anxiously. "But, Sturm, since you know this, why not be more moderate?"

"Moderate!" asked Sturm; "what is moderate? It never gets into our heads. Twenty quarts a day is not much if you know nothing of it. However, Mr. Wohlfart, it is on this account that my dear departed did not choose that Karl should be a porter. As for that, few men do live to be much more than fifty, and they have all sorts of ailments that we know nothing about. But such were my wife's wishes, and so it must be."

"And have you thought of any other calling? True, Karl is very useful in our house, and we should all miss him much."

"There it is," interrupted the porter; "you would miss him, and so should I. I am alone here; when I see my little lad's red cheeks, and hear his little hammer, I feel my heart glad within me. When he goes away, and I sit here by myself, I know not how I shall bear it." And his features worked with strong emotion.

"But must he leave you at present?" inquired Anton; "perhaps he may remain on for another year."

"Not he; I know him; if he once thinks of a thing at all, he thinks of nothing else. And, besides, I have been considering the matter these last days, and I see I have been wrong. The boy did not come into the world merely to amuse me; he must turn to something or other; so I try to think of what my dear departed would have liked. She had a brother, who is my brother-in-law, you know, and who lives in the country; I should like my boy to go to him. It is far away, but then there's kinship."

"A good thought, Sturm; but, since you are resolved, keep your son no longer in uncertainty."

"He shall know at once; he is only in the garden." And he went and called him in stentorian tones.

Karl hastened in, greeted Anton, and looked expectantly first at him and then at his father, who had seated himself, and now inquired, in his usual voice, "Little mannikin, will you be a farmer?"

"A farmer! that never occurred to me. Why, I should have to leave you, father."

"He thinks of that," said the father, nodding his head to Anton.

"Do you then wish that I should leave you?" asked Karl, in amazement.

"I must, my little man," said Sturm, gravely; "I must wish it, because it is necessary for your dear departed mother's sake."

"I am to go to my uncle!" cried Karl.

"Exactly so," said his father; "it's all settled, provided your uncle will have you. You shall be a farmer, you shall learn something regular, you shall leave your father."

"Father," said Karl, much downcast, "I do not like leaving you. Can't you come with me to the country?"

"I go to the country! Ho, ho, ho!" Sturm laughed till the house shook again. "My mannikin would put me into his pocket, and take me to the country." Then wiping his eyes: "Come here, my Karl," said he, holding the youth's head between his two great hands; "you are my own good lad; but there must be partings on this earth, and if it were not now, it would be in a couple of years."

And thus Karl's departure from the firm was arranged.

As the time drew near, he tried in vain to conceal his emotion by a great deal of cheerful whistling. He stroked Pluto tenderly, executed all his various odd jobs with intense zeal, and kept as close as he could to his father, who often left his barrels to place his hand in silence on his son's head.

"Nothing heavy in farming!" said the paternal Sturm to Anton, looking anxiously into his face.

"Heavy!" replied Anton; "it will be no light matter to learn all connected with it."

"Learn!" cried the other; "the more he has to learn the better, so it be not very heavy."

"No," said Pix, who understood his meaning, "nothing heavy. The heaviest are sacks of corn--hundred and eighty; beans--two hundred pounds. And those he need not lift; the servants do it."

"If that's the case with farming," cried Sturm, contemptuously rearing himself to his full height, "it's all one to me whether he lifts them or not. Even my mannikin can carry two hundred pounds."

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Chapter XIV

Anton was now the most assiduous of all the clerks in the office. Fink was seldom able to persuade him to accompany him out riding or to the shooting gallery, but, on the other hand, he made diligent use of his friend's book-shelves, and having, after arduous study, gained some insight into the mysteries of the English language, he was anxious to exercise his conversational powers upon Fink. But the latter proving a most irregular and careless master, Anton thought it best to put himself in the hands of a well-educated Englishman.

One day, looking up from his desk as the door opened, he saw, to his amazement, Veitel Itzig, his old Ostrau schoolfellow. Hitherto they had but seldom met, and whenever they did so, Anton had taken pains to look another way.

"How are you getting on?" asked he, coldly enough.

"Poorly," was the reply; "there is nothing to be made in our business. I was to give you this letter, and to inquire when Mr. Bernhard Ehrenthal may call upon you."

"Upon me!" said Anton, taking the letter and a card with it.

The letter was from his English master, asking whether he would join young Ehrenthal in a systematic course of some of the older English writers.

"Where does Mr. Bernhard Ehrenthal live?" asked Anton.

"At his father's," said Itzig, making a face. "He sits in his own room all the day long."

"I will call upon him," rejoined Anton; and Itzig took his departure.

Anton was not much inclined to agree to the proposal. The name of Ehrenthal did not stand high, and Itzig's appearance had not conferred any pleasant associations upon it. But the ironical way in which he had mentioned his master's son, and something Anton had heard of him besides, determined him to take the matter at least into consideration.

Accordingly, one of the next days he mounted the dingy staircase, and was at once ushered into Bernhard's room, which was long and narrow, and filled with books great and small.

A young man came toward him with the uncertainty of manner that short-sight gives. He had fine features, a fragile frame, brown curling hair, and deep, expressive gray eyes. Anton mentioned the reason of his visit, and inquired the terms for the course. To his astonishment, young Ehrenthal did not know them, but said that, if Anton insisted upon sharing the expense, he would inquire. Our hero next asked whether Bernhard was in business with his father.

"Oh no," was the reply; "I have been at the University, and as it is not easy for a young man of my creed to get a government appointment, and I can live with my family, I occupy myself with my books." And, casting a loving glance at his book-shelves, he rose as if to introduce his guest to them.

Anton looked at their titles, and said, "They are too learned for me."

Bernhard smiled. "Through the Hebrew I have gone on to the other Asiatic languages. There is much beauty in them, and in their Old-World legends. I am now engaged upon a translation from the Persian, and some day or other, when you have a few idle minutes, I should like to inflict a short specimen upon you."

Anton had the politeness to beg to hear it at once. It was one of those countless poems in which a votary of the grape compares his beloved to all fair things in heaven and earth. Its complicated structure impressed Anton a good deal, but he was somewhat amazed at Bernhard exclaiming, "Beautiful! is it not? I mean the thought, for I am unable to give the beauty of language;" and he looked inspired, like a man who drinks Schiraz wine, and kisses his Zuleika all day long.

"But must one drink in order to love?" said Anton; "with us the one is very possible without the other."

"With us, life is very commonplace."

"I do not think so," Anton replied, with fervor. "We have the sunshine and the roses, the joy in existence, the great passions and strange destinies of which poets sing."

"Our present time is too cold and uniform," rejoined Bernhard.

"So I read in books, but I do not believe it. I think that whoever is discontented with our life would be so still more with life in Teheran or Calcutta, if he remained there long enough. It is only novelty that charms the traveler."

"But how poor in vivid sensations our civilized existence is," rejoined Bernhard. "I am sure you must often feel business very prosaic."

"That I deny," was the eager reply; "I know nothing so interesting as business. We live amid a many-colored web of countless threads, stretching across land and sea, and connecting man with man. When I place a sack of coffee in the scales, I am weaving an invisible link between the colonist's daughter in Brazil, who has plucked the beans, and the young mechanic who drinks it for his breakfast; and if I take up a stick of cinnamon, I seem to see, on the one side, the Malay who has rolled it up, and, on the other, the old woman of our suburb who grates it over her pudding."

"You have a lively imagination, and are happy in the utility of your calling. But if we seek for poetry, we must, like Byron, quit civilized countries to find it on the sea or in the desert."

"Not so," replied Anton, pertinaciously; "the merchant has just as poetical experiences as any pirate or Arab. There was a bankruptcy lately. Could you have witnessed the gloomy lull before the storm broke, the fearful despair of the husband, the high spirit of his wife, who insisted upon throwing in her own fortune to the last dollar to save his honor, you would not say that our calling is poor in passion or emotion."

Bernhard listened with downcast eyes, and Anton remarked that he seemed embarrassed and distressed.

Changing the conversation, he proposed that they should both walk together to the English master, and make the final arrangements. They left the house like two old acquaintances; Anton surprised that Ehrenthal's son should be so little of a trader, Bernhard delighted to find a man with whom he could discuss his favorite subjects.

That evening he joined the family circle in a cheerful mood, and placing himself behind his sister, who was practicing a difficult piece on a costly piano, he kissed her ear. "Do not disturb me, Bernhard," said she; "I must get this piece perfect for the large party on Sunday, when I shall be asked to play."

"Of course you will be asked," said her mother. "There is no company that does not wish to hear Rosalie play. If you could only be persuaded to come with us, Bernhard--you are so clever and so learned. It was but the other day that Professor Starke, of the University, spoke of you to me in the highest terms. It is so pleasant for a mother to feel proud of her children! Why will you not join us? The society will be as good as any in the town."

"You know, mother, that I am not fond of strangers."

"And I desire that my son Bernhard should have his own way," cried Ehrenthal from a neighboring room, having chanced, during a pause in Rosalie's practice, to hear the last sentence, and now joining his family: "our Bernhard is not like other people, and his way is sure to be a good one. You look pale, my son," stroking his brown curls; "you study too much. Think of your health. The doctor recommended exercise. Will you have a horse, my son Bernhard? I will get the most expensive horse in the town for you, if you like."

"Thank you, dear father; but it would give me no pleasure," and he gratefully pressed the hand of his father, who looked sorrowfully at his pale face.

"Do you always give Bernhard what he likes to eat? Get him some peaches, Sidonie; there are hot-house peaches to be had. You shall have any thing you like; you are my good son Bernhard, and my delight is in you."

"He will not have any thing of the kind," interposed his mother. "All his joy is in his books. Many a day he never asks for Rosalie and me. He reads too much, and that's why he looks like a man of sixty. Why will he not go with us on Sunday?"

"I will, if you like," said Bernhard, mournfully; adding soon after, "Do you know a young man of the name of Wohlfart, in Schröter's house?"

"No," said his father, decidedly.

"Perhaps you do, Rosalie. He is handsome and refined-looking; I think you must have met him."

"Hardly, if he is in an office."

"Our Rosalie dances chiefly with officers and artists," explained her mother.

"He is a clever and a delightful man," continued Bernhard; "I am going to study English with him, and rejoice to have made his acquaintance."

"He shall be invited," decreed Ehrenthal; "if he pleases our Bernhard, he shall be welcome to our house. Let us have a good dinner on Sunday, Sidonie, at two o'clock. He shall come to all our parties; Bernhard's friend shall be the friend of us all."

The mother gave her consent, and Rosalie began to ponder what dress she should wear, so as to make the greatest impression.

But whence came it to pass that Bernhard did not communicate to his family the subject of the conversation that had so much interested him? that he soon relapsed into silence and returned to his study? that, when there, he bowed his head over his old manuscripts, while large drops rolled down on them, erasing the much-prized characters unobserved? Whence came it that the young man, of whom his mother was so proud, whom his father so loved and honored, sat alone, shedding the bitterest tears that an honest man can, while in another part of the house Rosalie's white fingers were flying over the keys, practicing the difficult piece that was to astonish the next soiree? From that day dated a friendship between Anton and Bernhard which was a source of pleasure and profit to both. Anton described the studious youth to the free and easy Fink, and expressed his wish to bring about a meeting between the two by a tea-drinking in his rooms.

"If it amuses you, Tony," said Fink, shrugging his shoulders, "I will come; but I warn you that of all living characters I most dislike a book-worm. No one theorizes more presumptuously upon every possible subject, or makes a greater fool of himself when it comes to practice. And, besides, a son of the worthy Ehrenthal! Don't be angry if I soon run away."

On the evening appointed, Bernhard sat on Anton's sofa in anxious expectation of the arrival of this well-known character, many wild anecdotes of whom had found their way even into his study.

At first Anton feared that the two would never suit. Two greater contrasts could hardly be imagined; the thin, transparent hand of Bernhard, and the healthy, muscular development of Fink; the bent form of the one, the elastic strength of the other; here, a deeply-lined face, with dreamy eyes; there, a proud set of features, lighted up by a glance like an eagle's--how could these possibly harmonize? But all turned out better than he had expected. Bernhard listened with much interest to what Fink had to say of foreign countries, and Anton did all he could to turn the conversation to subjects likely to bring out Bernhard.

The result was, that a few days later Bernhard found himself sitting in one of Fink's easy-chairs, and even ventured to invite him, with Anton, to spend an evening with him. Fink consented.

And now arose great excitement in the Ehrenthal circle.

Bernhard dusted his books and set them in order, and for the first time in his life troubled himself about household matters. "We must have tea, supper, wine, and cigars," said he.

"You need not be uneasy," replied his mother; "Herr von Fink shall find every thing well arranged."

"I will buy you some of the very finest cigars, and see to the wine," added his father.

As the hour drew near, Bernhard grew increasingly anxious, nay, irritable. "Where is the tea-kettle? The tea-kettle is not yet in my room! Nothing is ready!" cried he to his mother.

"I will make the tea and send it in--that is the fashionable way," replied his mother, rustling up and down in a new silk.

"No," said Bernhard, decidedly, "I will make the tea myself. Anton makes it, and so does Von Fink."

"Bernhard will make the tea himself!" cried the astonished mother to Rosalie. "Wonderful! he will make his own tea!" exclaimed Ehrenthal, who was in his room drawing on his boots. "He is going to make the tea!" cried the cook in the kitchen, clapping her hands in amazement.

On their way, Anton said to Fink, "It is very kind of you, Fritz, to come; Bernhard will be delighted."

"One must make sacrifices," replied Fink. "I have taken the liberty to eat my supper beforehand, for I have a horror of Jewish cookery. But the handsomest girl in town is worth a little effort. I saw her lately at a concert--a gorgeous figure, and such eyes! The old usurer, her father, has never seen such diamonds pass through his hands."

"We are invited to see Bernhard," replied Anton, somewhat reproachfully.

"And we shall certainly see his sister too," said Fink.

"I hope not," thought Anton.

Bernhard's room was wonderfully adorned for their reception, and he himself was a most pleasant host. The three were soon in full talk. Fink was in one of his most benevolent moods, and Anton mentally prayed that the beautiful sister might be kept out of sight.

But, just as the clock struck nine, the door opened, and Madam Ehrenthal majestically crossed the threshold. "Bathsheba entering in to Solomon," whispered Fink to Anton, who angrily trod upon his foot in return. Bernhard, in some embarrassment, introduced his mother, and she invited them all three to the next room, where Ehrenthal and the fair Rosalie awaited them. Fink soon fell into a lively discussion with her about music, for which, in reality, he little cared; promised her an excellent place at the ensuing races, and told her and her mother satirical anecdotes of the best society, which, as they were excluded from it, they particularly enjoyed. A princess of celebrated beauty came under discussion. Fink, who had been introduced to her once upon a time, declared that the young lady now before him might be taken for her, except, indeed, that the princess was not quite so tall and majestic-looking; and then he went into ecstasies over Mrs. Ehrenthal's mosaic brooch. The paternal Ehrenthal, however, tried in vain to keep up a conversation with him. Fink contrived not to appear aware of his presence, without, however, being in any way rude. Every one felt it to be in the nature of things; and Ehrenthal himself humbly acted the part of nonentity assigned to him, and consoled himself by eating a whole pheasant.

The supper lasted till midnight, and then Rosalie moved to the piano, after which Fink ran his fingers over the keys, and sang a wild Spanish song. When at length the guests took their departure, the family remained perfectly enraptured. Rosalie ran to the piano to try and remember the air Fink had sung; her mother was full of his praises, and her father, spite of his temporary annihilation, was enchanted with the visit of the rich young heir, and kept repeating that he must be worth more than a million. Even Bernhard's ingenuous spirit was captivated by his manner and brilliant rattle. True, he had occasionally felt an uncomfortable misgiving, as though Fink might be making fun of them all; but he was too inexperienced to feel sure of it, and soothed himself by thinking that it was only the way of all men of the world.

Anton alone was dissatisfied with his friend, and he told him so as they walked home.

"Why, you sat there like a stock," replied Fink; "I entertained the good people, and what more would you have? Change yourself into a mouse, creep into the decked-out room, and hear how they are singing my praises. What more can be wanted than that our behavior to people should be what they themselves find pleasant?"

"I think," said Anton, "that our aim should rather be to behave in a manner worthy of ourselves. You went on like a frivolous nobleman who meant to ask a loan from old Ehrenthal on the morrow."

"I choose to be frivolous," cried Fink; "and perhaps I may want a loan from the Ehrenthal house. And now have done with your preachments--it is past one o'clock."

A few days later, Anton remembered, at the close of the office, that he had promised to send on a book to the young student. As Fink, who had gone out an hour before, had carried off his paletot, which indeed often happened, Anton wrapped himself in Fink's burnoose, which chanced to lie in his room, and hurried off to Ehrenthal's house. As he reached the door, he was not a little amazed to see it noiselessly open, and a shawled and veiled figure come out. A soft arm wound itself round his, and a low voice said, "Come quickly; I have waited for you long." Anton recognized Rosalie's voice, and stood petrified. At length he said, "You are mistaken." With a suppressed scream the young lady rushed up stairs, and Anton, little less confused, entered his friend's room, where he had the shock of being at once addressed by the short-sighted Bernhard as Herr von Fink. A dreadful suspicion crossed his mind; and, pretending to be in the utmost haste, he carried the luckless cloak home, over a heart full of grief and anger. If it were, indeed, Fink that Ehrenthal's fair daughter had been expecting! The longer Anton had to wait for his friend, the more angry he grew. At last he heard his step in the court-yard--ran down to meet him--told him the circumstance--and ended by saying, "Look! I wore your cloak; it was dusk; and I have a horrible suspicion that she mistook me for you, and that you have most unjustifiably abused Bernhard's friendship."

"Ah ha!" said Fink, shaking his head, "here we have a proof of how ready these virtuous ones are to throw a stone at others. You are a child. There are other white cloaks in the town; how can you prove that mine was the one waited for? And then allow me to remark, that you showed neither politeness nor presence of mind on the occasion. Why not have led the lady down stairs, and when the mistake became apparent, have said, 'It is true that I am not he you take me for, but I am equally ready to die in your service,' and so forth?"

"You don't deceive me," rejoined Anton; "when I think the matter over, I can not, spite of your lies, shake off the belief that you were the one expected."

"You cunning little fellow," said Fink, good-humoredly, "confess, at least, that when a lady is in the case, I needs must lie. For seest thou, my son, to admit this were to compromise the fair daughter of an honorable house."

"Alas!" said Anton, "I fear that she already feels herself compromised."

"Never mind," said Fink, coolly, "she will bear it."

"But, Fritz," said Anton, wringing his hands, "have you, then, no sense of the wrong you are doing to Bernhard? It is just because his pure heart beats in the midst of a family circle that he only endures because he is so trusting and inexperienced, that this injury pains me so bitterly."

"Therefore you will do wisely to spare your friend's sensitiveness, and keep his sister's secret."

"Not so," replied Anton, indignantly; "my duty to Bernhard leads me to a different course. I must demand from you that you break off your connection with Rosalie, whatever its nature, and strive only to see in her what you always should have seen--the sister of my friend."

"Really," returned Fink, in a mocking tone, "I have no objection to your making this demand; but if I do not comply with it, how then?--always supposing, which, by the way, I deny, that I was the fortunate expected one."

"If you do not," cried Anton, in high excitement, "I can never forgive you. This is more than mere want of feeling--it is something worse."

"And what, pray?" coldly asked Fink.

"It is base," cried Anton. "It is bad enough to take advantage of the young girl's coquetry, but worse to forget her brother as well as me, through whom you made this unfortunate acquaintance."

"Be so good as to hear me say," replied Fink, lighting the lamp of his tea-kettle, "that I never gave you any right to speak to me thus. I have no wish to quarrel with you, but I shall be much obliged to you henceforth to drop this subject."

"Then I must leave you, for I can speak of nothing else while I have the conviction that you are acting unworthily."

Anton moved to the door. "I give you your choice; either you break with Rosalie, or, dreadful as it is to me to think of it, you break with me. If you do not by to-morrow evening give me an assurance that this intrigue is at an end, I go to Rosalie's mother."

"Good-night, thou stupid Tony!" said Fink.

The following day was a gray one for both.

It was Fink's constant custom, on entering the office, to beckon to his friend, whereupon Anton would leave his place, and exchange a few words as to how Fink had spent the previous evening. But this morning Anton doggedly remained where he was, and bent down over his letters when Fink took his seat opposite him. Whenever they looked up, they had to make as though empty space were before them, and not each other's faces. Fink had found it easy to treat the paternal Ehrenthal as a nonentity, but it was not so in this case; and Anton, who had had no practice in the art of overlooking others, felt himself supremely uncomfortable. Then every thing conspired to make it peculiarly difficult to each to play his part. Schmeie Tinkeles, the unfortunate little Jew who spoke such execrable German, and whom Fink always found especial pleasure in badgering and beating down, made his appearance in the office, and, as usual, a laughable scene ensued. All the clerks watched Fink, and chimed in with him, but Anton had to behave as though Tinkeles were a hundred miles away. Then Mr. Schröter gave him a commission, which obliged him to ask Fink a question, and he had to cough hard to get out the words at all. He received a very short answer, which increased his anger. Finally, when the dinner hour struck, Fink, who used regularly to wait till Anton came for him, walked off with Jordan, who wondered what could keep Wohlfart, to which Fink could only reply that he neither knew nor cared.

During the afternoon Anton could not avoid a few furtive glances at the haughty face opposite him. He thought how dreadful it would be to become estranged from one he so dearly loved; but his resolve was firm as ever. And so it happened that Fink, chancing to look up, met his friend's eyes mournfully fixed upon his face, and this touched him more than the anger of the previous night. He saw that Anton's mind was made up, and the side of the scale in which sat the fair Rosalie kicked the beam. After all, if Anton did, in his virtuous simplicity, tell her mother, the adventure was spoiled, and, still worse, their friendship forever at an end. These reflections furrowed his fine brow.

A little before seven o'clock a shadow fell on Anton's paper, and, looking up, he saw Fink silently holding out a small note to him, directed to Rosalie. He sprang up at once.

"I have written to tell her," said Fink, with icy coldness, "that your friendship left me no other choice than that of compromising her or giving her up, and that, therefore, I chose the latter. Here is the letter; I have no objection to your reading it; it is her dismissal."

Anton took the letter out of the culprit's hand, sealed it in all haste with a little office seal, and gave it to one of the porters to post at once.

And so this danger was averted, but from that day there was an estrangement between the friends. Fink grumbled, and Anton could not forget what he called treachery to Bernhard; and so it was, that for some weeks they no longer spent their evenings together.

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Chapter XV

The firm of T. O. Schröter had one day in the year invariably dedicated to enjoyment. It was the anniversary of their principal's first entrance into partnership with his father. Upon this festive occasion there was a dinner given to the whole counting-house assembled, after which they all drove to a neighboring village, where the merchant had a country house, and whither a number of public gardens and summer concerts always attracted the inhabitants of the town. There they drank coffee, enjoyed nature, and returned home before dark.

This year was the five-and-twentieth of these jubilees. Early in the morning came deputations of servants and porters to congratulate, and all the clerks appeared at the early dinner in full state; M. Liebold in a new coat, which, for many years past, he had been in the habit of first wearing upon this auspicious day.

After dinner, the carriages drove up and took them to the great "Restauration" of the village. There they got out, the gentlemen all surrounding their young lady, and loud music sounding a welcome as they entered the beechen avenues of the garden, which was bright to-day with gay toilettes from the town.

Sabine floated on with a perfect nebula of gentlemen around her. Possibly this court would have given more pleasure to most other women, but, at all events, the effect was very striking. The gentle Liebold's face wore a continual smile of delight, which he was obliged to suppress, as well as he could, from the fear of being supposed to laugh at the passers-by: Sabine's shawl hung on his arm. Specht had, by a bold coup de main, possessed himself of her parasol, and walked on, hoping that some falling blossom, some passing butterfly, might afford him a pretext for beginning a conversation with her. But this was no easy matter, for Fink was on the other side. He was in one of his most malevolent moods, and Sabine could not help laughing against her will at his unmerciful comments upon many of the company. And so they walked on among the tripping, rustling crowd of pleasure-seekers. There was a constant bowing, smiling, and greeting; the merchant had each moment to take off his hat, and, whenever he did so, the fourteen clerks took off theirs too, and created quite a draught; and very imposing it was. After having swum thus with the stream for some time, Sabine expressed a wish to rest. Instantly benches were set, the table got ready, and an ubiquitous waiter brought a giant coffee-pot and the number of cups required. Sabine's office was no sinecure. She chose Anton for her adjutant, and it was a pretty sight to see how kindly she gave each one his cup, how watchful she was lest the sugar-bowl and the cream-jug should be interrupted in their rounds, and at the same time how she contrived to bow to her passing acquaintance, and to carry on a conversation with any friends of her brother's who came up to her. She was very lovely thus. Anton and Fink both felt how well her serene activity became her; and Fink said, "If this be for you a day of recreation, I do not envy your other days. No princess has such a reception--so many to bow, smile, and speak to as you; but you get on capitally, and have no doubt studied it. Now comes the mayor himself to pay his compliments. I am really sorry for you; you have to lend me your ear; Liebold's cup is in your hand, and your eyes must be reverentially fixed upon the great civic official. I am curious to know whether you understand my words."

"Take your spoon out of your cup, and I will fill it immediately," said Sabine, laughing, as she rose to greet her old acquaintance. Meanwhile, Anton amused himself by listening to the remarks made on his party by the passers-by. "That is Herr von Fink," whispered a young lady to her companion. "A pretty face; a capital figure," drawled a lieutenant. "What is one among so many?" muttered another idler. "Hush! those are the Schröters," said a clerk to his brother. Then two tall handsome forms came slowly by--Dame Ehrenthal and Rosalie. Rosalie passed next to the table: a deep flush suffused her face. She threw a troubled glance at Fink, who, in spite of the lively conversation he was carrying on with Sabine, had eyes for every thing that was going on. Anton rose to bow; and the imperturbable Fink coolly took off his hat, and looked at the two ladies with as much unconcern as though he had never admired the bracelets on Rosalie's white arm. Anton's bow, Rosalie's striking beauty, and, perhaps, some peculiarity in their dress, had attracted Sabine's attention.

Ehrenthal's daughter did not heed the bow, but fixed her dark eyes on Sabine, whom she took for her fortunate rival, with such a flashing glance of anger and hatred that Sabine shrank as though to avoid the spring of a beast of prey.

Fink's lip curled, and he slightly shrugged his shoulders. When the ladies had passed by, Sabine asked who they were.

"Some acquaintances of Anton's," said he, satirically.

Anton named them as the mother and sister of the young student of whom he had lately told her.

Sabine was silent, and leaned back on the bench; her gay spirits were over. The conversation flagged; and when her brother returned from a visit to the next table, she rose and invited the party to come and see her garden. Again the nebula followed her, but Fink was no longer at her side. That burning glance had withered the green tendrils that had been drawing them together. Sabine turned to Anton, and tried to be cheerful, but he saw the effort it cost her.

This large garden, with its hot-houses and conservatories, was one of Sabine's favorite resorts, both in summer and winter. While the merchant carried off Fink to look at a plot of neighboring ground which he thought of buying, the clerks besieged Sabine with questions as to the names and peculiarities of the different plants. She showed them a great palm-tree that her brother had given her, tropical ferns, gorgeous cactuses, and told them that she often drank coffee under these large leaves on sunny winter days. Just then the gardener came up to her with crumbs of bread and bird-seed on a plate. "Even when I have not so large a party with me as to-day, I am not quite alone," said she.

"Pray let us see your birds," cried Anton.

"You must go out of sight, then, and keep quite still. The little creatures know me, but so many gentlemen would terrify them."

Sabine then went out a few steps, scattered the crumbs on the gravel, and clapped her hands. A loud chirping instantly succeeded, and numbers of birds shot down, hopping boldly about, and picking up the crumbs close to her feet. They were not a very distinguished company--finches, linnets, and a whole nation of sparrows. Sabine gently stepped back to the door, and said, "Can you see any difference among these sparrows? They have, I assure you, individualities of dress and character. Several of them are personal acquaintances of mine." She pointed to a large sparrow with a black head and a bright brown back. "Do you see that stout gentleman?"

"He is the largest of them all," said Anton, with delight.

"He is my oldest acquaintance, and it is my dinners that have made him so fat. He moves about among the others like a rich banker. Only hear him! His very chirp has in it something aristocratic and supercilious. He looks upon this crumb-scattering as a duty society owes him, and determines generously to leave for the others all he can not eat up himself. But I think I see a tuft on his little breast."

"A loose feather?" whispered Specht.

"Yes," continued Sabine; "I much fear his wife has pulled it out; for, important as he seems, he is under petticoat government. That gray little lady yonder, the lightest of them all, is his wife. Now look, they are going to quarrel." And a great contest began for an especially large crumb, in which all the birds manifested a strong dislike to the banker, and the wife came off victorious.

"And now, do look!" cried Sabine, joyfully; "here comes my little one--my pet;" and down plumped a young sparrow, with helpless outspread wings, and fluttered up to the maternal bird, who hacked the large crumb into little bits, and put them into its wide-opened beak, while the father hopped up and down, at a little distance, looking with a certain misgiving at his energetic better half.

"What a pretty sight!" cried Anton.

"Is it not?" said Sabine. "Even these little creatures have characters and a family life."

But the scene was suddenly changed; a quick step came round the hot-house; the birds flew away, and the mother called piteously to her child to follow. But the little thing, heavy and stupefied with all it had eaten, could not so quickly lift its weak wings. A cut from Fink's riding-whip caught him, and sent its little body dead among the flowers. An angry exclamation arose, and all faces looked darkly on the murderer. As for Sabine, she went to the bed, picked up the bird, kissed its little head, and said, in a broken voice, "It is dead." Then she put it down on the bench near the door, and covered it with her handkerchief.

An awkward silence ensued. At length Jordan said reproachfully, "You have killed Miss Sabine's favorite bird."

"I am sorry for it," replied Fink, drawing a chair to the table. Then turning to Sabine, "I did not know that you extended your sympathy to this class of rogues. I really believed that I deserved the thanks of the house for disposing of the young thief."

"The poor little fellow!" said Sabine, mournfully; "his mother is calling for him; do you hear her?"

"She will get over it," rejoined Fink; "I consider it overdone to expend more feeling upon a sparrow than his own relatives do. But I know you like to consider all around you in a tender and pathetic light."

"If you have not this peculiarity yourself, why ridicule it in others?" asked Sabine, with a quivering lip.

"Why," cried Fink, "because this eternal feeling, which here I meet with every where, expended on what does not deserve it, makes people at length weak and trivial. He who is always getting up emotions about trifles will have none to give when a strong attachment demands them."

"And he who ever looks on all around him with cold unconcern, will not he too be wanting in emotion when a strong attachment becomes a duty?" returned Sabine, with a mournful glance.

"It would be impolite to contradict you," said Fink, shrugging his shoulders. "At all events, it is better that a man should be too hard than too effeminate."

"But just look at the people of this country," said he, after another uncomfortable pause. "One loves the copper kettle in which his mother has boiled sausages; another loves his broken pipe, his faded coat, and with these a thousand obsolete customs. Just look at the German emigrants! What a heap of rubbish they take away with them--old birdcages, worm-eaten furniture, and every kind of lumber! I once knew a fellow who took a journey of eight days merely to eat sauer-kraut. And when once a poor devil has squatted in an unhealthy district, and lived there a few years, he has spun such a web of sentimentalism about it that you can not stir him, even though he, his wife and children, should die there of fever. Commend me to what you call the insensibility of the Yankee. He works like two Germans, but he is not in love with his cottage or his gear. What he has is worth its equivalent in dollars, and no more. 'How low! how material!' you will say. Now, I like this. It has created a free and powerful state. If America had been peopled by Germans, they would be still drinking chicory instead of coffee, at whatever rate of duty the paternal governments of Europe liked to impose."

"And you would require a woman to be thus minded?" asked Sabine.

"In the main, yes," rejoined Fink. "Not a German housewife, wrapped up in her table-linen. The larger her stock, the happier she. I believe that they silently rate each other as we do men on 'Change--worth five hundred, worth eight hundred napkins. The American makes as good a wife as the German, but she would laugh at such notions. She has what she wants for present use, and buys more when the old set is worn out. Why should she fix her heart on what is so easily replaced?"

"Oh, how dreary you make life!" rejoined Sabine. "Our possessions lose thus their dearest value. If you kill the imagination which lends its varied hues to lifeless things, what remains? Nothing but an egotism to which every thing is sacrificed! He who can thus coldly think may do great deeds perhaps, but his life will never be beautiful nor happy, nor a blessing to others;" and unconsciously she folded her hands and looked sadly at Fink, whose face wore a hard and disdainful expression.

The silence was broken by Anton's cheerfully observing, "At all events, Fink's own practice is a striking refutation of his theory."

"How so, sir?" asked Fink, looking round.

"I shall soon prove my case; but first a few words in our own praise. We who are sitting and standing around are working members of a business that does not belong to us, and each of us looks upon his occupation from the German point of view which Fink has been denouncing. None of us reasons, 'The firm pays me so many dollars, consequently the firm is worth so many dollars to me.' No; when the house prospers we are all pleased and proud; if it loses, we regret it perhaps more than the principal does. When Liebold enters his figures in the great book, and admires their fair caligraphical procession, he silently smiles with delight. Look at him; he is doing so now."

Liebold, much embarrassed, pulled up his shirt collar.

"Then there is our friend Baumann, who secretly longs for another calling. A short time ago he brought me a report of the horrors of heathenism on the African coast, and said, 'I must go, Wohlfart; the time is come.' 'Who will attend to the calculations?' asked I; 'and what will become of the department which you and Balbus keep so entirely in your own hands?' 'Ay, indeed,' cried Baumann, 'I had not thought of that; I must put it off a little longer.'"

The whole party looked smilingly at Baumann, who said, as if to himself, "It was not right of me."

"As for the tyrant Pix, I will only say that there are many hours in which he is not quite clear as to whether the concern is his or Mr. Schröter's."

All laughed. Mr. Pix thrust his hand into his breast, like Napoleon.

"You are an unfair advocate," said Fink; "you enlist private feelings."

"You did the same," replied Anton. "And now I will soon dispose of you. About half a year ago, this Yankee went to our principal and said, 'I wish no longer to be a volunteer, but a regular member of your house.' Why was this? Of course, only for the sake of a certain number of dollars."

Again all smiled and looked kindly at Fink, for it was well known that he had said on that occasion, "I wish for a regular share of employment, I wish for the responsibility attached to it, and I thoroughly like my work."

"And then," continued Anton, triumphantly, "he shares all the weak sentimentalities he so condemns. He loves his horse, as you all know, not as the sum of five hundred dollars represented by so many hundred weight of flesh, and covered by a glossy skin--he loves it as a friend."

"Because he amuses me," said Fink.

"Of course," said Anton; "and thus table-linen amuses our housewives, so that is even. And then his pair of condor wings, his pistols, riding-whips, red drinking-glasses, are all trifles that he values, just as a German emigrant does his birdcages; and, in short, he is, in point of fact, nothing more than a poor-spirited German, like the rest of us."

Sabine shook her head, but she looked more kindly at the American, and his face too had changed. He looked straight before him, and there was a something playing over his haughty features that, in any one else, would have been called emotion.

"Well," said he, at length, "both the lady and I were perhaps too positive." Then pointing to the dead sparrow, "Before this serious fact I lay down my arms, and confess that I wish the little gentleman were still alive, and likely to reach a good old age among the cherries and other delicacies of the firm. And so," turning to Sabine, "you will not be angry with me any more, will you?"

Sabine smiled, and cordially answered "No."

"As for you, Anton, give me your hand. You have made a brilliant defense, and gained me a verdict of 'Not guilty' from a German jury. Take your pen and scratch out a few weeks from our calendar; you understand?" Anton pressed his hand, and threw his arm around his shoulder.

Once more the party was in a thoroughly genial mood. Mr. Schröter joined them, cigars were lit, and all tried to be as pleasant as possible. Mr. Liebold rose to ask permission from the principal and his sister--that is, if it would not be considered an interruption--to sing a few concerted pieces with some of his colleagues. As he had for several years regularly made the same proposition in the same words, all were prepared for it, and Sabine good-naturedly cried, "Of course, Mr. Liebold; half the pleasure would be gone if we had not our quartette." Accordingly, the four singers began. Mr. Specht was the first tenor, Liebold the second, Birnbaum and Balbus took the base. These formed the musical section of the counting-house, and their voices went really very well together, with the exception of Specht's being rather too loud, and Liebold's rather too low; but their audience was well-disposed, the evening exquisite, and all listened with pleasure.

"It's an absurd thing," began Fink, when the applause was over, "that a certain sequence of tones should touch the heart, and call forth tears from men in whom all other gentle emotions are dead and gone. Every nation has its own simple airs, and fellow-countrymen recognize each other by the impression these make. When those emigrants of whom we spoke just now have lost all love for their fatherland--nay, have forgotten their mother tongue, their home melodies still survive, and many a foolish fellow, who piques himself on being a naturalized Yankee, suddenly feels himself German at heart on chancing to hear a couple of bars familiar to him in youth."

"You are right," said the merchant. "He who leaves his home is seldom aware of all that he relinquishes, and only finds it out when home recollections become the charm of his later years. Such recollections often form a sanctuary, mocked and dishonored indeed, but always revisited in his best hours."

"I confess, with a certain degree of shame," said Fink, "that I am little conscious of this charm. The fact is, I do not exactly know where my home is. Looking back, I find that I have lived most of my years in Germany, but foreign countries have left a livelier impression on my mind. Destiny has always torn me away before I could take deep root any where. And now, at times, I find myself a stranger here. For example, the dialects of the provinces are unintelligible to me. I get more presents than I deserve on Christmas-day, but am not touched by the magic of the Christmas-tree; and few of the popular melodies you are all so proud of, haunt my ear. And, besides these smaller matters, there are other things in which I feel deficient," continued he, more earnestly; "I know that at times I make too heavy demands upon the indulgence of my friends. I shall have to thank your house," said he, in conclusion, turning to the merchant, "if I ever acquire a knowledge of the best side of the German character."

Fink spoke with a degree of feeling he rarely showed. Sabine was happy; the sparrow was forgotten; and she cried, with irrepressible emotion, "That was nobly said, Herr von Fink."

The servants then announced that supper was ready.

The merchant took his place in the middle, and Sabine smiled brightly when Fink sat down, at her side.

"I must have you opposite me, Liebold," cried the principal; "I must see your honest face before me to-day. We have now been connected for five-and-twenty years. Mr. Liebold joined us a few weeks after my father took me into partnership," said he, by way of explanation to the younger clerks; "and while I am indebted to you all, I am most indebted to him." He held up his glass: "I drink your good health, my old friend; and so long as our desks stand side by side, separated only by a thin partition, so long shall there exist between us, as heretofore, a full and firm confidence, without many spoken words."

Liebold had stood at the beginning of this speech, and he remained standing. He wished to propose a health, it was evident, for he looked at the principal, held up his glass, and his lips moved. At last he sat down again, speechless. Straightway, to the amazement of all, Fink rose, and said, with deep earnestness, "Join me in drinking to the prosperity of a German house where work is a pleasure, and honor has its home. Hurrah for our counting-house and our principal!"

Thundering hurrahs followed, in which Sabine could not help joining. The rest of the evening was unbroken hilarity, and it was long past ten when they reached the town.

As they went up stairs, Fink said to Anton, "To-day, my boy, you are not to pass me by. I have found it a great bore to be so long without you;" and the reconciled friends sat together far into the night.

Sabine went to her own room, where her maid gave her a note in an unknown handwriting. The smell of musk and the delicate characters showed that it came from a lady.

"Who brought it?" inquired she.

"A stranger," replied the maid; "he said that there was no answer, and would not give his name."

Sabine read, "Do not triumph too soon, fair lady. You have by your coquetry allured a gentleman who is accustomed to mislead, to forget, and shamefully to use those who trust him. A short time ago he said to another all he now says to you. He will but betray and forsake you also."

The note was not signed: it came from Rosalie.

Sabine knew well who had written it. She held it to the taper, and then flinging it on the hearth, silently watched spark by spark die out. Long did she stand there, her head against the mantel-piece, her eyes fixed upon the little heap of ashes.

Tearless, voiceless, she held her hand pressed firmly on her heart.

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Chapter XVI

Veitel Itzig was in the highest excitement. After many consultations with his adviser Hippus, many nightly calculations as to the state of his purse, he had ventured upon a bold stroke of business, and had succeeded in it. He had wormed himself into a not very creditable secret, and had sold it for eight thousand dollars. The happy day had at length arrived when he was to carry home this large capital. After his long endeavor to appear calm, while his heart was beating with anxious suspense like a smith's hammer, he was now happy as a child; he jumped round the room, laughed with pleasure, and asked Hippus what sort of wine he would like to drink to-day. "Wine alone will not do," replied Hippus, ominously. "However, it is long since I have tasted any Hungarian. Get a bottle of old Upper Hungarian; or, stay, it is dark enough, I will go for it myself."

"How much does it cost?"

"Two dollars."

"That is a good deal, but 'tis all one; here they are;" and he threw them on the table.

"All right," said Hippus, snatching at them. "But this alone will not do, I must have my percentage. However, as we are old acquaintances, I will be satisfied with only five per cent. of what you have made to-day."

Veitel stood petrified.

"Not a word against it," continued Hippus, with a wicked glance at him over his spectacles; "we know each other. I was the means of your getting the money, and I alone. You make use of me, and you see that I can make use of you. Give me four hundred of your eight thousand at once."

Veitel tried to speak.

"Not a word," repeated Hippus, rapping the table with the dollars in his hand; "give me the money."

Veitel looked at him, felt in the pocket of his coat, and laid down two notes.

"Now two more," said Hippus, in the same tone. Veitel added another.

"And now for the last, my son," nodded he, encouragingly.

Veitel delayed a moment and looked hard at the old man's face, on which a malevolent pleasure was visible. There was no comfort there, however; so he laid down the fourth note, saying, in a stifled voice, "I have been mistaken in you, Hippus;" and, turning away, he wiped his eyes.

"Do not take it to heart, you booby," said his instructor; "if I die before you, you shall be my heir. And now I am off to taste the wine, and I will make a point of drinking your health, you sensitive Itzig;" and, so saying, he crept out of the door.

Veitel once more wiped away a bitter tear that rolled down his cheeks. His pleasure in his winnings was gone. It was a complex sort of feeling, this grief of his. True, he mourned the lost notes, but he had lost something more. The only man in the world for whom he felt any degree of attachment had behaved unkindly and selfishly toward him. It was all over henceforth between him and Hippus. He could not, indeed, do without him, but he hated him from this hour. The old man had made him more solitary and unscrupulous than before. Such is the curse of bad men; they are rendered wretched not only by their crimes, but even their best feelings turn to gall.

However, this melancholy mood did not long continue. He took out his remaining treasure, counted it over, felt cheered thereby, and turned his thoughts to the future. His social position had been changed at a stroke. As the possessor of eight thousand dollars--alas! there were but seven thousand six hundred--he was a small Croesus among men of his class: many carried on transactions involving hundreds of thousands without as much capital as he had; in short, the world was his oyster, and he had but to bethink himself with what lever he should open it--how invest his capital--how double it--how increase it tenfold. There were many ways before him: he might continue to lend money on high interest, he might speculate, or carry on some regular business; but each of these involved his beloved capital in some degree of risk; he might win, indeed, but then he might lose all, and the very thought so terrified him that he relinquished one scheme after another.

There was, indeed, one way in which a keen-witted man might possibly make much without great danger of loss.

Veitel had been accustomed, as a dealer in old clothes, to visit the different seats of landed proprietors; at the wool market he was in the habit of offering his services to gentlemen with mustaches and orders of merit; in his master's office he was constantly occupied with the means and affairs of the nobility. How intimately he knew old Ehrenthal's secret desire to become the possessor of a certain estate! And how came it that in the midst of his annoyance with Hippus, the thought of his schoolfellow Anton suddenly flashed across him, and of the day when he had walked with him last? That very morning he had walked about the baron's estate, and lounged by the cow-house, counting the double row of horns within, till the dairy-maid ordered him away. Now the thought passed like lightning through his brain that he might as well become the owner of that estate as Ehrenthal, and drive with a pair of horses into the town. From that moment he had a fixed plan, and began to carry it out.

And he speculated cunningly too. He determined to acquire a claim upon the baron's property by a mortgage; thus he would safely invest his capital, and work on quietly till the day came when he could get hold of the property itself. At all events, if he did not succeed in that, his money would be safe. Meanwhile, he would become an agent and commissioner, buy and sell, and do many clever things besides. Also, he must remain Ehrenthal's factotum as long as it suited him. Rosalie was handsome and rich, for Bernhard would not live to inherit his father's wealth. Perhaps he might desire to become Ehrenthal's son-in-law, perhaps not; at all events, there was no hurry about that. There was one other whom he must get on a secure footing--the little black man now drinking that expensive wine down stairs. Henceforth he would pay him for whatever he did for him, but he would not confide in him.

These were the resolves of Veitel Itzig; and, having concocted his plans, he locked his door, threw himself down exhausted on his hard bed, the imaginary possessor of Baron Rothsattel's fair property.

That evening the baroness and her daughter sat together in the conservatory, and both were silent; the baroness intently watching a bright moth, which was bent upon flying into the lamp, and came knocking its thick little body over and over against the glass which saved its life.

Lenore bent over her book, but often cast an inquiring glance at her mother's thoughtful face.

There came a quick step along the gravel, and the old bailiff, cap in hand, asked for the master.

"What do you want?" said Lenore; "has any thing happened?"

"It's all over with the old black horse," said the bailiff, in great concern; "he has been biting and kicking like mad, and now he is gasping his last."

Lenore sprang up with an exclamation for which her mother chid her.

"I will come and see to him myself," said she, and hurried off with the old man.

The sick horse lay on his straw, with the sweat running down, and his sides heaving violently. The stable-boys stood around, looking at him phlegmatically. When Lenore entered, the horse turned his head toward her as if asking help.

"He knows me yet," cried she. Then turning to the head groom, "Ride off instantly for a veterinary surgeon."

The man did not like the thought of a long ride at night, and replied, "The doctor is never at home, and the horse will be dead before he can come."

"Go at once!" commanded Lenore, pointing to the door.

"What is the matter with the groom?" asked Lenore, as they left the stable.

"He is grown good for nothing, and ought to be sent off, as I have often told my master; but the lout is as obedient to him as possible--he knows the length of his foot--while to every one else he is cross-grained, and gives me daily trouble."

"I will speak to my father," replied Lenore, with a slight frown.

The old servant continued: "Ah! dear young lady, if you would but look after things a little, it would be a good thing for the property. I am not satisfied with the dairy either: the new housekeeper does not know how to manage the maids; she is too smart by half--ribbons before and behind. Things used to go on better; the baron used to come and look at the butter-casks, now he is busy with other things; and when the master grows careless, servants soon snap their fingers at the bailiff. You can be sharp enough with people; it's a thousand pities you are not a gentleman."

"You are right; it is a thousand pities," said Lenore, approvingly; "but there's no help for it. However, I will see to the butter from this very day. How is corn now? You have been buying some lately?"

"Yes," said the old man, dejectedly, "my master would have it so. I don't know what's come to him: he sold the whole granary full to that Ehrenthal in winter."

Lenore listened sympathizingly, with her hands behind her.

"Do not fret about it, my old friend," said she; "whenever papa is not at home, I will go about the fields with you, and you shall smoke your pipe all the same. How do you like the new one I brought you?"

"It has a beautiful color already," said the bailiff, chuckling, and drawing it out of his pocket. "But to return to the black horse; the baron will be very angry when he hears of it, and we could not help it either."

"Well, then," said Lenore, "if it could not be helped, it must be endured. Good-night. Go back now to the horse."

"I will, dear young lady; and good-night to you too," said the bailiff.

The baroness had remained in the conservatory, thinking of her husband, who formerly would have been by her side on an evening like this. Yes, there was a change in him: kind and affectionate toward her as ever, he was often absent and preoccupied, and more easily irritated by trifles; his cheerfulness was of a more boisterous character, and his love for men's society increasing; and she mournfully asked herself whether it were the fading of her youth that accounted for this.

"Is not my father yet returned?" asked Lenore, as she entered.

"No, my child, he has much to do in town; perhaps he will not be back till to-morrow morning."

"I do not like papa being so much away," said Lenore; "it is long since he has read aloud to us in the evening, as he used to do."

"He means you to be my reader," said her mother, with a smile; "so take your book, and sit down quietly by me, you impetuous child."

Lenore pouted, and instead of taking up the book, threw her arms round her mother, and said, "Darling, you too are sad and anxious about my father. Things are no longer as they used to be. I am no child now; tell me what he is doing."

"Nonsense," calmly replied the baroness. "I am keeping nothing back from you. If there really be any reason for your father's frequent absence, it is our duty to wait till he chooses to communicate it; and this is not difficult to those who love and trust him as we do."

"And yet your eyes are tearful, and you do seek to hide your anxiety from me. If you will not, I will ask my father myself."

"No, you shall not," said the baroness, in a tone of decision.

"My father!" cried Lenore; "I hear his step."

The stately form came rapidly toward them. "Good-evening, my home treasures!" he called out. Then clasping wife and daughter at once in his arms, he looked so cheerfully at them that the baroness forgot her anxiety and Lenore her question. The baron sat down between them, and asked whether they saw any thing unusual about him.

"You are cheerful," said his wife, fondly, "as you always are."

"You have been paying visits," said Lenore; "I know that by your white cravat."

"Right," replied the baron; "but there's something more: the king has been graciously pleased to give me the Order my father and grandfather have both worn, and I am much pleased that the cross should thus become, as it were, hereditary in our family. And with the Order came a most gracious letter from the prince."

"How charming!" cried his wife, throwing her arms around him; "I have longed for this star for some years past. We will put on the decoration;" and, having done so, she loyally kissed, first her husband, and then the cross.

"We know indeed," said the baron, "how such things are rated in our days, and yet I confess that the rank implied by such a decoration is intensely precious to me. Our family is one of the oldest in the kingdom, and there has never been a mésalliance among us. However, at the present time, money is beginning to replace our former privileges, and even we nobles must take thought for it if we wish to preserve our families in the same position as ourselves. I must provide for you, Lenore, and your brother."

"As for me," said Lenore, crossing her arms, "I can do nothing for the honor of the family. If I marry, which I have, however, no inclination to do, I must take some other name; and little will my old ancestors, in armor yonder in the hall, care whom I choose for master. I can not remain a Rothsattel."

The father drew her toward him laughingly. "If I could only find out how my child has got these heretical notions!" said he.

"She has always had them," said her mother.

"They will pass," answered the baron, kissing his daughter's brow. "And now read the prince's letter, while I go and look after the black horse."

"I will go with you," said Lenore.

The order, a memorial of the chivalrous past, was a source of still more satisfaction to the baron than he cared to avow. The congratulations of his numerous acquaintance pleased him, and he felt it a prop to his self-respect, which it often needed. A week later, Ehrenthal came on his way to the neighboring village to offer his congratulations too, and just as he was making his final bow he said, "You had once a notion, baron, of setting up a beet-root-sugar factory. I find that a company is about to be formed to build one in your neighborhood. I have been asked to take shares, but first of all I thought I would ascertain your views."

This intelligence was very unwelcome; for though, after much deliberation and consultation, he had resolved, for the present, to postpone the project, the baron did not like it to be hopelessly interfered with by a rival factory.

In a tone of vexation, he exclaimed, "Just now, when I have, for a time, that capital to dispose of!"

"Baron," said Ehrenthal, heartily, "you are a rich man, and much respected. Give out that you mean to set up a factory yourself and the company will be dispersed in a few days."

"You know I can not do so at present," said the baron, reluctantly.

"You can, gracious sir, if you choose. I am not the man to urge you to it. What do you want with money-making? But if you say to me, 'Ehrenthal, I will set up a factory,' why, I have capital for you as much as you like. I myself have a sum of ten thousand dollars ready; you may have it any day. And now I will make a proposal. I will get you the money you want, at a moderate rate of interest; and for the money I myself advance, you shall give me a share of the business until you are able to repay the sum. Should you require further money, you must take a mortgage on your property until you can replace the whole."

The proposal appeared disinterested and friendly, but the baron felt a certain misgiving, and declined it.

Accordingly, Ehrenthal had to retire, saying, "You can think the matter over; I shall, at all events, put off the forming of the company for a month."

From that day forth the baron was deluged with letters, notes, and messages. First Ehrenthal wrote to say he had got the month's delay; then Herr Karfunkelstein, one of the projected company, wrote to say he resigned his pretensions; then Ehrenthal wrote again, inclosing the yearly accounts of a similar factory, that the profits might be judged of. Then a Herr Wolfsdorf wrote to offer capital at a low rate of interest. Then, lastly, an unknown person of the name of Itzigveit wrote to beg that at least the baron would not enter into partnership with Ehrenthal, as was rumored in the town, for, though a rich, he was a very selfish man, and that the writer could advance capital on much better terms; whereupon Ehrenthal wrote again that some of his enemies were, he knew, intriguing against him, and wishing to make money themselves in the baron's promising undertaking, but that the baron must please himself; that, for his part, he was an honorable man, and did not wish to push himself forward.

The consequence of all these communications was, that the baron grew familiar with the thought of building his factory with borrowed money. However, there was one thing that offended his pride, and that was the thought of Ehrenthal as a shareholder; so far the letter of the unknown Itzigveit had taken effect.

During the next month he was the prey of a miserable irresolution, and his wife, in silent sorrow, observed his excitement. He often went to town, and often inspected similar factories. True, the evidence thus collected was not encouraging, but this he attributed to dread of his competition, or to unfavorable details of site or management.

The month was over, and a letter came from Ehrenthal to beg for a decision, as some members of the company were impatient of further delay.

It was on the evening of a hot day that the baron wandered restlessly over his grounds. Heavy black, clouds gathered over an arch of yellow sky. The grasshoppers chirped far louder than their wont. The little birds twittered as if in apprehension of some coming evil. The swallows flew low, and darted by close to the baron, as if they did not see him. The wild flowers along the road hung down covered with dust. The shepherd who passed him looked gray and spectral in the lurid light.

The baron strolled on to the other side of the lake whence Anton had taken his last look of the lordly home. The castle now stood before him in a crimson glow; every window-pane seemed on fire, and the red roses lay like drops of blood upon the dark green climbers beneath. And nearer and nearer rolled on the black clouds, as if to shroud the bright pile from sight. Not a leaf stirred, not a ripple curled the water. The baron looked down into the water for some living thing, a spider, a dragon-fly, and started back from the pale face that met him, and which at first he did not recognize as his own. There was a sultry, boding, listless gloom over his heart, as over all nature.

Suddenly a strange shivering sound in the tree-tops--a signal to the storm. Again a pause, and then down rushed the mighty wind, bending the trees, curling the lake, driving the dust in wild whirls along. The bright light faded from the castle, and all the landscape toned down into bluish gray. Then forked lightning, and a long and solemn peal.

The baron drew himself up to his full height, and turned to meet the storm. Leaves and branches flew round him, big drops fell on his head, but he kept looking up at the clouds, and at the lightning that flashed from them, as though expecting a decision from on high.

Then came the galloping of a horse's feet, and a gay voice cried out, "Father!" A young cavalry officer had drawn up beside him.

"My son! my beloved son!" cried the baron, with a quivering voice; "you are come at the right time;" and he clasped the youth to his heart, and then held his hands and looked long into his face. All indecision, all mournful forebodings were over; he felt again as the head of his house should feel. Before him stood, blooming in youth and health, the future of his family. He took it as an omen, as the voice of fate to him in the hour of decision. "And now," said he, "come home; there is no further need for our remaining in the rain."

While the baroness drew her son down by her on the sofa, and never wearied of looking at and admiring him, the baron sat at the window and watched the torrents of rain. Brighter grew the flashes, and shorter the interval between them and the thunder's roll.

"Shut the window," said she; "the storm comes this way."

"It will do our house no harm," replied her husband, encouragingly. "The conductor stands firm on the roof, and shines through the clouds. And now look there where the clouds are blackest, behind those bright green ash-trees."

"I see the spot," returned she.

"Make up your mind," continued he, smiling, "always to have your beloved blue sky covered with gray smoke in that direction. Above those trees will rise the factory chimney."

"You mean to build?" inquired the baroness, anxiously.

"I do," was the reply. "The undertaking will involve much that will be disagreeable to you and me, and will require all my energies. If I venture upon it, it is not for our own sake, but our children's. I wish to secure this property to our family, and so to increase its return that the owner may be able amply to provide for the rest of his children, and yet leave the estate to the eldest son. After much painful deliberation, I have this day taken my resolve."

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Chapter XVII

The baron carried on his undertaking with the greatest possible spirit. He superintended the burning of the bricks; he himself marked the trees destined to be cut down for the building. Ehrenthal had recommended a builder, and the baron had found out a manager for the concern. He had made careful inquiries as to this man's past career, and congratulated himself upon the amount of his theoretical knowledge. Possibly this was not wholly an advantage, for plain practical men declared that he could never let a factory go quietly on, but was always interrupting the daily work with new inventions and contrivances, and was therefore both expensive and unsafe. But the baron, naturally enough, considered his probity and intelligence to be the main point, and valued the theoretical skill of the manager in proportion to his own ignorance.

Pleasant as his prospects were, there were yet many drawbacks. Order and comfort had flown away with the storks, who had for years been accustomed to make their nests on the great barn. Every body suffered from the new undertaking. The baroness lost a corner of the park, and had the grief of seeing a dozen noble old trees felled. The gardener wrung his hands over the thefts committed by the strange laborers that swarmed in all directions. The bailiff was in perfect despair at the disorders in his jurisdiction. His horses and oxen were taken from him to carry timber when he wanted them to plow. The wants of the household increased; the returns from the property became less and less. Lenore had much to do to comfort him, and brought him many pounds of tobacco from the town, that he might smoke off his annoyance. But the heaviest burden of course pressed upon the baron himself. His study was now become a place of public resort, like any tradesman's shop. He had to give advice, to come to a decision, to overcome difficulties in a dozen directions at once. He went almost daily to town, and when he returned he was absent and morose in the midst of his family. His was a fair hope indeed, but it was one very difficult to realize.

The baron found some comfort, however, in Ehrenthal's cheerful devotedness. He was always useful, and fertile in expedient, and never appeared doubtful as to the result of the undertaking. He was now a frequent visitor, welcome to the master of the house, but less so to the ladies, who suspected him of having been the prompter of the factory scheme.

One sunny day, Ehrenthal, with shirt-frill and diamond pin, made his appearance in his son's room. "Will you drive with me to-day to the Rothsattel's Castle, my Bernhard? I told the baron that I should bring you with me to introduce you to the family."

Bernhard sprang up from his seat. "But, father, I am an utter stranger to them all."

"When you have seen and spoken to them, you will no longer be a stranger," replied his father. "They are good people--good people," added he, benevolently.

Bernhard had still some modest scruples, but they were overruled, and the two set out together--the pale student in much excitement at the novelty of the drive, and the prospect of seeing a renowned beauty like Lenore.

Meanwhile, his father overflowed with the praises of the family. "Noble people," said he; "if you could only see the baroness as she is in her lace cap, so delicate and so refined! Too refined for this world as it is! Every thing so elegant! To be sure, the pieces of sugar are too large, and the wine is too dear, but it all seems of a piece with their rank."

"Is Fräulein Lenore a great beauty?" inquired Bernhard. "Is she very proud?"

"She is proud, but she is a beauty indeed. Between ourselves, I admire her more than Rosalie."

"Is she a blonde?"

Ehrenthal took some time to consider. "Blonde? what should she be but a blonde or a brunette? One thing I know, she has blue eyes. You can look over the farm, and do not forget to walk round the park. See whether you can find a spot where you would like to sit with your book."

The guileless Bernhard heard in silence.

The carriage stopped at the castle door. The servants announced that the baron was in his room--the baroness not visible, but that the young lady was walking in the garden. Ehrenthal and his son went round the house, and saw Lenore's tall figure slowly crossing the grass-plot. Ehrenthal threw himself into a deferential attitude, and presented his son, who bowed low. Lenore bestowed a cool sort of salutation upon the student, and said, "If you want my father, he is up stairs in his room."

"I will go to him, then. Bernhard, you may, I am sure, remain with the young lady."

Arrived in the baron's room, the trader placed some thousand dollars on the table, saying, "Here is the first sum. And now, what does the baron wish as to the security?"

"According to our agreement, I must give you a mortgage on the property," was the reply.

"Do you know what, baron? It would never do for you to grant a fresh mortgage for every thousand dollars that I might happen to pay in; it would be very expensive, and would bring the property into disrepute. Rather have a deed of mortgage drawn up for some considerable sum, say twenty thousand dollars, and let it stand in the name of the baroness; you will then have a security that you may sell any day. And every time I pay you, give me a simple note of hand, pledging your word of honor that I have a claim to that amount on the mortgage. That is a simple plan, and remains a secret between you and me. And when you need no further advances, we can settle the matter finally before an attorney. You can make over the mortgage to me, and I return you the notes of hand, and repay you whatever may be wanted to make up the twenty thousand. I only ask your word of honor on a slip of paper no longer than my finger, and when the deed is ready, I should wish to have it executed in my house. You can not object to that. Any lawyer would tell you that I am not dealing in a business-like way. A man's word is often broken, but if there is one thing sure and steadfast in the world, I believe it is your word of honor, baron."

Ehrenthal said this with an expression of sincerity, which was not altogether assumed. This plan of his was the result of many a consultation with Itzig. He knew that the baron would require far more than twenty thousand dollars, and it was to his advantage that he should procure them easily; besides which, he, the thorough rogue, had firm trust in the nobleman's integrity.

Meanwhile, Lenore had asked Bernhard whether he would like to walk in the park. He followed her in silence, looking timidly at the fair young aristocrat, who carried her head high, and troubled herself but little about her companion. When she reached the grass-plot station that had once so enchanted Anton, she stood still, and pointed to the gravel-walk, saying, "That way leads to the lake, and this to the garden again."

Bernhard looked up in amazement at the castle and its turrets, its balcony and creeping plants, and exclaimed, "I have seen all this before, and yet I have never been here."

"And certainly," said Lenore, "the castle has never been to the town; there may be others like it."

"No," replied Bernhard, trying to collect his ideas, "no; I have seen a drawing of it in a friend's room. He must know you," cried he, with delight; "and yet he never told me so."

"What is your friend's name?"

"Anton Wohlfart."

The lady turned round at once with sudden animation. "Wohlfart? a clerk in T. O. Schröter's house? Is it he? And this gentleman is your friend? How did you become acquainted with him?" And she stood before Bernhard with her hands behind her back, like a severe schoolmistress cross-examining a little thief about a stolen apple.

Bernhard told her how he had learned to know and love Anton; and in doing so, he lost some of his embarrassment, while the young lady lost some of her haughty indifference.

She asked him many questions about his friend, and Bernhard grew eloquent as he replied.

Then she led him through the park, as once she had led Anton. Bernhard was a son of the city. It was not the lofty, wide-spreading trees, nor the gay flower-beds, nor the turreted castle which made an impression on him; his eyes were riveted on Lenore alone. It was a bright September evening; the sunlight fell through the branches, and whenever Lenore's hair caught its rays, it shone like gold. The proud eye, the delicate mouth, the slender limbs of the noble girl took his fancy prisoner. She laughed, and showed her little white teeth--he was enraptured; she broke off a twig, and struck the shrubs with it as she passed--it seemed to him that they bent before her in homage to the ground.

They came to the bridge between the park and the fields, where a few little girls ran to Lenore and kissed her hands; she received the tribute of respect as a queen might have done. Two other children had made a long chain of dandelion stalks, and with it barred Bernhard's way.

"Away with you, rude little things," cried Lenore; "how can you think of barring our way? The gentleman comes from the castle."

And Bernhard felt with pride that, for the moment, he belonged to her. He put his hand in his purse, and soon got rid of the children. "It is long," said he, "since I have seen a dandelion chain. I have an indistinct recollection of sitting as a little boy in a green nook, and trying to make one;" and, gathering a few dandelion stalks, he began the childish task.

"If you are so expert in such childish play," said Lenore, "here is something for you," and she pointed to a great burdock near the road-side. "Have you ever seen a cap of burs?"

"No," answered Bernhard, with some slight misgiving.

"You shall have one immediately," said Lenore. She went to the burdock; Bernhard gathered her some handfuls of burs. She fitted one into the other, and made a cap with two little horns. "You may put it on," said she, graciously.

"I dare not; the very birds would be frightened. If you too would--"

"You can not expect me to wear burs," replied she; "but you shall have your wish." She led him back to a group of sunflowers in the shrubbery, and, gathering a few of them, she made a kind of helmet, which she laughingly put on. "Now for your cap," commanded she. Bernhard obeyed, and his thoughtful, deeply-marked features, black coat, and white cravat looked so strange and incongruous beneath the cap of burs, that Lenore could not help laughing. "Come with me," said she; "you shall look at yourself in the lake." And she led him past the site of the factory--a rough place, with heaps of earth, tiles, beams, in utmost confusion. It was a holiday; all the laborers had left, but some village children were playing about and collecting chips. A few steps farther on they came to a little bay, covered with water-lilies and surrounded by brushwood. "How desolate it looks!" said Lenore; "the bushes half pulled away--even the trees injured: all the result of this building. We seldom come here on account of the strange workmen. The village children, too, are become so bold, they make this their play-ground, and there is no keeping them away."

That moment a boat came in sight. A little village girl, a red-faced chubby thing, stood up tottering in it, while her older brother tried to get as far from shore as with one oar he could. "Look!" cried Lenore, angrily, "the little wretches have actually taken our boat. Come back instantly to the shore." The children were startled, the boy dropped the oar, the little girl tottered more than before, and, in the terror of a guilty conscience, lost her balance and fell into the water. Her brother drifted helplessly into the bay. "Save the child!" screamed Lenore. Bernhard ran into the lake forgetting that he could not swim, waded in a few steps, and then stood up to the breast in mud and water. He stretched out his arms to the spot where the child had sunk, but could not reach it. Meanwhile Lenore had sprung, quick as lightning, behind a bush. After a few seconds she returned and ran to a projecting bank.

Bernhard looked with rapture and terror at her tall figure. She still wore her fantastic coronal, her light garments floated round her, her eyes were fixed upon the spot where the child would reappear. Raising her arms above her head, she leaped in and swam toward it, seized its frock, struck out with her free arm, and soon reached the boat. Exerting all her strength, she lifted the child in, and then drew the boat to land. Bernhard, who, pale as death, had stood watching her efforts, fought his way back to the land, gave her his hand, and drew in the boat. Lenore carried the unconscious child. Bernhard lifted out the boy, and both hurried to the gardener's house, while the little lad ran screaming behind them. Lenore's soaked garments clung closely to her beautiful form, and every movement of her fair limbs was seen almost unveiled by her companion. She did not heed it. Bernhard went with her into the room, but she hastily sent him out again; while, with the help of the gardener's wife, she undressed, and sought by friction and other means to restore the child to life. Meanwhile Bernhard stood without, his teeth chattering with cold, but in a state of excitement which made his eyes glow like fire. "Is the child alive?" he called through the door.

"She is," answered Lenore from within.

"Thank God!" cried Bernhard; but his thoughts rose no higher than the fair being within. Long he stood there shuddering and dreaming, till at length a tall figure in woolen garments came out of the door. It was Lenore in the clothes of the gardener's wife, still agitated by all she had gone through, but with a happy smile on her lips. Bernhard, beside himself, kissed her hand more than once.

"You look very well," said Lenore, cheerfully; "but you will catch cold."

He stood before her, wet and dripping, covered with weeds and mud. "I do not feel cold," cried he, but his limbs shook.

"Go in at once," urged Lenore; and, opening the door, she called to the good woman, "Give this gentleman your husband's clothes."

Bernhard obeyed, and when he came out metamorphosed into a rustic, he found Lenore rapidly walking up and down.

"Come to the castle," said she, with all her former dignity.

"I should like once more to see the child," replied he.

They went to the bed on which the little girl lay. She looked up dreamingly at Bernhard, who bent over her and kissed her forehead. "She is the child of a laborer in the village," said the gardener's wife. Unobserved by Lenore, Bernhard laid his purse on the bed.

On their return they found Ehrenthal impatient to depart. His amazement at recognizing his Bernhard in the rustic before him was boundless.

"Give the gentleman a cloak," said Lenore to the servants; "he is benumbed with cold. Wrap yourself up well, or you may long have cause to remember your march among the water-lilies."

And Bernhard did remember it. He wrapped the cloak about him, and squeezed himself up into a corner of the carriage. A burning heat had succeeded to the chill, and his blood rushed wildly through his veins. He had seen the fairest woman on the earth; he had experienced realities more transporting, more absorbing, than any of his favorite poet's dreams. He could hardly answer his father's questions. There they sat side by side, cold cunning and burning passion personified. This excursion had been propitious to both; the father had got the long-desired hold on the Rothsattel property, the son had had an adventure which gave a new coloring to his whole existence.

On the baron's estate the factory slowly rose; in Ehrenthal's coffers the baron's casket was filled by notes of hand and the new deed of mortgage; and while Bernhard's tender frame drooped under the effects of the cold bath above described, he gave his spirit up to the intoxication of the sweetest fancies.

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Chapter XVIII

One afternoon the postman brought to Fink a letter with a black seal. Having opened it, he went silently to his own room. As he did not return, Anton anxiously followed, and found Fink sitting on the sofa, his head resting on his hand.

"You have had bad news?" inquired Anton.

"My uncle is dead," was the reply; "he, the richest man, perhaps, in Wall Street, New York, has been blown up in a Mississippi steamer. He was an unapproachable sort of man, but in his way very kind to me, and I repaid him by folly and ingratitude. This thought imbitters his death to me. And, besides that, the fact decides my future career."

"You will leave us!" cried Anton, in dismay.

"I must set off to-morrow. My father is heir to all my uncle's property, with the exception of some land in the Far West, to which I am left executor. My uncle was a great speculator, and there is much troublesome business to be settled. Therefore my father wishes me to go to New York as soon as possible, and I plainly see that I am wanted there. He has all at once conceived a high idea of my judgment and capacity for business. Read his letter." Anton scrupled to take it. "Read it, my boy," said Fink, with a sad smile; "in my family circle, father and son write each other no secrets." Anton read. "The excellent accounts which Mr. Schröter sends me of your practical sense and shrewdness in business lead me to request you to go over yourself, in which case I shall send Mr. Westlock, of our house, to assist you."

Anton laid the letter down, and Fink asked, "What say you to this praise of the principal's? You know that I had some reason to believe myself far from a favorite."

"Be that as it may, I consider the praise just, and his estimate correct," replied Anton.

"At all events," said Fink, "it decides my fate. I shall now be what I have long wished, a landed proprietor on the other side of the Atlantic. And so, dear Anton, we must part," he continued, holding out his hand to his friend; "I had not thought the time would so soon come. But we shall meet again."

"Possibly," said Anton, sadly, holding the young nobleman's hand fondly in his. "But now go to Mr. Schröter; he has the first claim to hear this."

"He knows it already; he has had a letter from my father."

"The more reason why he should expect you."

"You are right; let us go."

Anton returned to his desk, and Fink went to the principal's little office. The merchant came to meet him with a serious aspect; and, after having expressed his sympathy, invited him to sit down, and quietly to discuss his future prospects.

Fink replied with the utmost courtesy: "My father's views for me--based on your estimate--agree so well with my own wishes, that I must express my gratitude to you. Your opinion of me has been more favorable than I could have ventured to expect. If, however, you have really been satisfied with me, I should rejoice to hear it from your own lips."

"I have not been entirely satisfied, Herr von Fink," replied the merchant, with some reserve; "you were not in your proper place here. But that has not prevented my discerning that for other and more active pursuits you were eminently well fitted. You have, in a high degree, the faculty of governing and arranging, and you possess uncommon energy of will. A desk in a counting-house is not the place for such a nature."

Fink bowed. "Nevertheless, it was my duty," said he, "to fill that place properly, and I own that I have not done so."

"You came here unaccustomed to regular work, but during the last few months you have differed but little from a really industrious counting-house clerk. Hence my letter to your father."

Fink rose, and the merchant accompanied him to the door, saying, "Your departure will be a great loss to one of our friends."

Fink abruptly stopped, and said, "Let him go with me to America. He is well fitted to make his fortune there."

"Have you spoken to him on the subject?"

"I have not."

"Then I may state my opinion unreservedly. Wohlfart is young, and I believe the defined and regular work of a house like this very desirable discipline for him for some years to come. Meanwhile, I have no right to sway his decision. I shall be sorry to lose him, but if he thinks he will make his fortune more rapidly with you, I have no objection to make."

"If you will allow me, I will ask him at once," said Fink.

Then calling Anton into the office, he went on to say, "Anton, I have requested Mr. Schröter to allow you to accompany me. It will be a great point to me to have you with me. You know how much attached to you I am; we will share my new career, and get on gloriously, and you shall fix your own conditions. Mr. Schröter leaves you to decide."

Anton stood for a moment thoughtful and perplexed; the future so suddenly opened out to him looked fair and promising, but he soon collected himself, and, turning to the principal, inquired, "Is it your opinion that I should do right to go?"

"I can not say it is, dear Wohlfart," was the merchant's grave reply.

"Then I remain," said Anton, decidedly. "Do not be angry with me, Fritz, for not following you. I am an orphan, and have now no home but this house and this firm. If Mr. Schröter will keep me, I will remain with him."

Evidently touched by the words, the merchant replied: "Remember, however, that thus deciding you give up much. In my counting-house you can neither become a rich man, nor have any experience of life on a large and exciting scale; our business is limited, and the day may come when you will find this irksome. All that tends to your future independence, wealth, connections, and so forth, you will more readily secure in America than with me."

"My good father often used to say to me, 'Dwell in the land; and verily thou shalt be fed.' I will live according to his wish," said Anton, in a voice low with emotion.

"He is, and always will be, a mere cit," cried Fink, in a sort of despair.

"I believe that this love of country is a very sound foundation for a man's fortune to rise upon," said the merchant, and there was an end of the matter.

Fink said nothing more about the proposal, and Anton tried, by countless small attentions, to show his friend how dear he was to him, and how much he regretted his departure.

That evening Fink said to Anton, "Hearken, my lad; I have a fancy to take a wife across with me."

Anton looked at his friend in utter amazement, and, like one who has received a great shock and wishes to conceal it often does, he inquired, in forced merriment, "What! you will actually ask Fräulein von Baldereck--"

"That's not the quarter. What should I do with a woman whose only thought would be how she could best amuse herself with her husband's money?"

"But who else can you be thinking of? Not of the ancient cousin of the house?"

"No, my fine fellow, but of the young lady of the house."

"For Heaven's sake, no!" cried Anton, springing up; "that would, indeed, be a pretty business."

"Why so?" was the cool reply. "Either she takes me, and I am a lucky man, or she takes me not, and I start without a wife."

"But have you ever thought of it before?" inquired Anton, uneasily.

"Sometimes--indeed often during the last year. She is the best housewife, and the noblest, most unselfish creature in the world."

Anton looked at his friend in growing astonishment. Not once had Fink given him the remotest hint of such a thing.

"But you never told me of it."

"Have you ever told me of your feelings for another young lady?" replied Fink, laughing.

Anton blushed and was silent.

"I think," continued Fink, "that she does not dislike me; but whether she will go with me or not I can not tell; however, we shall soon know, for I am going at once to ask her."

Anton barred the way. "Once more I implore you to reflect upon what you are going to do."

"What is there to reflect upon, you simple child?" laughed Fink; but an unusual degree of excitement was visible in his manner.

"Do you then love Sabine?" asked Anton.

"Another of your home questions," replied Fink. "Yes, I do love her in my own way."

"And do you mean to take her into the back woods?"

"Yes; for she will be a high-hearted, strong-minded wife, and will give stability and worth to my life there. She is not fascinating--at least one can't get on with her as readily as with many others; but if I am to take a wife, I need one who can look after me. Believe me, the black-haired one is the very one to do that; and now let me go; I must find out how I stand."

"Speak at least to the principal in the first instance," cried Anton after him.

"First to herself," cried Fink, rushing down the stairs.

Anton paced up and down the room. All that Fink had said in praise of Sabine was true; that he warmly felt. He knew, too, how deep her feeling for him was, and yet he foresaw that his friend would meet with some secret obstacle or other. Then another thing displeased him. Fink had only spoken of himself; had he thought of her happiness in the matter--had he even felt what it would cost her to leave her beloved brother, her country, and her home? True, Fink was the very man to scatter the blossoms of the New World profusely at her feet, but he was always restless; actively employed, would he have any sympathy for the feelings of his German wife? And involuntarily our hero found himself taking part against his friend, and deciding that Sabine ought not to leave the home and brother to whom she was so essential; and, absorbed in these thoughts, Anton paced up and down, anxious and heavy-hearted. It grew dark, and still Fink did not return.

Meanwhile he was announced to Sabine. She came hurriedly to meet him, and her cheeks were redder than usual as she said, "My brother has told me that you must leave us."

Fink began in some agitation, "I must not, I can not leave without having spoken openly to you. I came here without any interest in the quiet life to which I had been so unaccustomed. I have here learned the worth and the happiness of a German home. You I have ever honored as the good spirit of the house. Soon after my arrival, you began to treat me with a distance of manner which I have always lamented. I now come to tell you how much my eyes and heart have clung to you. I feel that my life would be a happy one if I could henceforth ever hear your voice, and if your spirit could accompany mine along the paths of my future life."

Sabine became very pale, and retreated. "Say no more, Herr von Fink," said she, imploringly, raising her hand unconsciously, as if to avert what she foresaw.

"Nay, let me speak," rapidly continued he. "I should consider it the greatest happiness if I could take with me the conviction of not being indifferent to you. I have not the audacity to ask you to follow me at once into an uncertain life, but give me a hope that in a year I may return and ask you to become my wife."

"Do not return," said Sabine, motionless as a statue, and in a voice scarcely audible; "I implore you to say no more."

Her hands convulsively grasped the back of the chair next to her, and, supporting herself by it, she stood with bloodless cheeks, looking at her suitor through her tears with eyes so full of grief and tenderness that the wild-hearted man before her was thoroughly overcome, and lost all self-confidence--nay, forgot his own cause in his distress at her emotion, and his anxiety to soothe it.

"I grieve that I should thus have shocked you," said he; "forgive me, Sabine."

"Go! go!" implored Sabine, still standing as before.

"Let me not part from you without some comfort; give me an answer; the most painful were better than this silence."

"Then hear me," said Sabine, with unnatural calmness, while her breast heaved and her hands trembled; "I loved you from the first day of your arrival; like a childish girl, I listened with rapture to the tone of your voice, and was fascinated by all your lips uttered; but I have conquered the feeling. I have conquered it," she repeated. "I dare not be yours, for I should be miserable."

"But why--why?" inquired Fink, in genuine despair.

"Do not ask me," said Sabine, scarce audibly.

"I must hear my sentence from your own lips," cried Fink.

"You have played with your own life and with the life of others; you would always be unsparing in carrying out your plans; you would undertake what was great and noble--that I believe--but you would not shrink from the sacrifice of individuals. I can not bear such a spirit. You would be kind to me--that, too, I believe; you would make as many allowances for me as you could, but you would always have to make them: that would become burdensome to you, and I should be alone--alone in a foreign land. I am weak, spoiled, bound by a hundred ties to the customs of this house, to the little domestic duties of every day, and to my brother's life."

Fink looked down darkly. "You are punishing severely in this hour all that you have disapproved in me hitherto."

"No," cried Sabine, holding out her hand, "not so, my friend. If there have been hours in which you have pained me, there have been others in which I have looked up to you in admiration; and this is the very reason that keeps us apart forever. I can never be at rest near you; I am constantly tossed from one extreme of feeling to another; I am not sure of you, nor ever should be. I should have to conceal this inward conflict in a relation where my whole nature ought to be open to you, and you would find that out, and would be angry with me."

She gave him her hand. Fink bent low over the little hand, and pressed a kiss upon it.

"Blessings on your future!" said Sabine, trembling all over. "If ever you have spent a happy hour among us, oh! think of it when far away. If ever in the German merchant's house, in the career of my brother, you have found any thing to respect, think, oh! think of it in that far country. In the different life that awaits you, in the great enterprises, the wild struggles that you will engage in, never think slightly of us and of our quiet ways;" and she held her left hand over his head, like an anxious mother blessing her parting darling.

Fink pressed her right hand firmly in his own; both looked long into each other's eyes, and both faces were pale. At last Fink said, in his deep, melodious voice, "Fare you well!"

"Fare you well!" replied she, so low that he hardly caught the words. He walked slowly away, while she looked after him motionless, as one who watches the vanishing of an apparition.

When the merchant, after the close of his day's work, went into his sister's room, Sabine flew to meet him, and, clasping him in her arms, laid her head on his breast.

"What is it, my child?" inquired he, anxiously stroking back her hair from her damp brow.

"Fink has been with me; I have been speaking with him."

"About what? Has he been disagreeable? Has he made you an offer?" asked the merchant, in jest.

"He has made me an offer," said Sabine.

Her brother started: "And you, my sister?"

"I have done what you might expect me to do--I shall not see him again."

Tears started at the words; she took her brother's hand and kissed it.

"Do not be angry with me for weeping. I am still a little shaken: it will soon pass."

"My precious sister--dear, dear Sabine!" cried the merchant; "I can not but fear that you thought of me when you refused."

"I thought of you and of your self-sacrificing, duty-loving life, and his bright form lost the fair colors in which I had once seen it clothed."

"Sabine, you have made a sacrifice for my sake," cried her brother.

"No, Traugott; if this has been a sacrifice, I have made it to the home where I have grown up under your care, and to the memory of our good parents, whose blessing rests on our quiet life."

It was late when Fink re-entered Anton's room; he looked heated, threw his hat on the table, himself on the sofa, and said to his friend,

"Before any thing else, give me a cigar."

Anton shook his head as he reached him a bundle, and asked, "How have you fared?"

"No wedding to be," coolly returned Fink. "She plainly showed me that I was a good for nothing sort of fellow, and no match for a sensible girl. She took the matter rather too seriously, assured me of her regard, gave me a sketch of my character, and dismissed me. But, hang me!" cried he, springing up, and throwing away his cigar, "if she be not the best soul that ever preached virtue in a petticoat. She has only one fault, that of not choosing to marry me; and even there she is right."

Fink's strange bearing made Anton feel anxious.

"Why have you been so long away, and where have you been?" said he.

"Not to the wine-shop, as your wisdom seems to surmise. If a man be refused, he has surely a good right to be melancholy for a couple of hours or so. I have done what any one would in such desperate circumstances. I have walked about and philosophized. I have quarreled with the world--that is to say, with the black-haired and myself--and then ended by standing still before a lamp-lit stall, and buying three oranges." So saying, he drew them out of his pocket. "And now, my son, the past is over and gone; let us speak of the future: this is the last evening that we shall spend together; let no cloud hang over our spirits. Make me a glass of punch, and squeeze these fat fellows in. Orange-punch-making is one of the accomplishments you owe to me. I taught it you, and now the rogue makes it better than I do. Come and sit down beside me."

The next morning old Sturm himself came to carry off the luggage. Fink took Anton's hand, and said, "Before I go through my leave-taking of all the others, I repeat to you what I said in our early days. Go on with your English, that you may come after me. And be I where I may, in log hut or cabin, I shall always have a room ready for you. As soon as you are tired of this Old World, come to me. Meanwhile, I make you my heir; you will take possession of my rooms. For the rest, be perfectly sure that I have done with all bad ways. And now--no emotion, my boy!--there are no great distances nowadays on our little earth." He tore himself away, hurried into the counting-house, returned, bowed to the ladies at the window, clasped his friend once more to his heart, leaped into the carriage, and away--away to the New World.

Meanwhile Anton mournfully returned to the office, and wrote a letter to Herr Stephan in Wolfsburg, inclosing that worthy man a new price current and several samples of sugar.

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Chapter XIX

A bad year came upon the country. A sudden rumor of war alarmed the German borderers in the east, and our province among the rest. The fearful consequences of a national panic were soon perceptible. Trade stood still; the price of goods fell. Every one was anxious to realize and withdraw from business, and large sums embarked in mercantile speculations became endangered. No one had heart for new ventures. Hundreds of ties, woven out of mutual interest, and having endured for years, were snapped at once. Each individual existence became more insecure, isolated, and poor. On all sides were anxious faces and furrowed brows. The country was out of health; money, the vital blood of business, circulated slowly from one part of the great body to the other--the rich fearing to lose, the poor becoming unable to win. The future was overcast all at once, like the summer sky by a heavy storm.

That word of terror, "Revolution in Poland!" was not without serious effects in Germany. The people on the other side of the frontier, excited by old memories and by their landed proprietors, rose, and, led by fanatical preachers, marched up and down the frontier, falling upon travelers and merchandise, plundering and burning small towns and noblemen's seats, and aiming at a military organization under the command of their favorite leaders. Arms were forged, old fowling-pieces produced from many a hiding-place; and, finally, the insurgents took and occupied a large Polish town not far from the frontier, and proclaimed their independent national existence. Troops were then assembled in all haste by government, and sent to invest the frontier. Trains filled with soldiers were incessantly running up and down the newly-constructed railway. The streets of the capital were filled with uniforms, and the drum every where heard. The army, of course, was all at once in the ascendant. The officers ran here and there, full of business, buying maps, and drinking toasts in all sorts of wines. The soldiers wrote home to get money if possible, and to send more or less loving greetings to their sweethearts. Numberless young clerks grew pale; numberless mothers knit strong stockings through their tears, and providently made lint for their poor sons; numberless fathers spoke with an unsteady voice of the duty of fighting for king and country, and braced themselves up by remembering the damage they had in their day done to that wicked Napoleon.

It was on a sunny autumn morning that the first positive intelligence of the Polish insurrection reached the capital. Dark rumors had indeed excited the inhabitants on the previous evening, and crowds of anxious men of business and scared idlers were crowding the railway terminus. No sooner was the office of T. O. Schröter open, than in rushed Mr. Braun, the agent, and breathlessly related (not without a certain inward complacency, such as the possessor of the least agreeable news invariably betrays) that the whole of Poland and Galicia, as well as several border provinces, were in open insurrection, numerous quiet commercial travelers and peaceable officials surprised and murdered, and numerous towns set fire to.

This intelligence threw Anton into the greatest consternation, and with good cause. A short time before, an enterprising Galician merchant had undertaken to dispatch an unusually large order to the firm; and, as is the custom of the country, he had already received the largest part of the sum due to him for it (nearly twenty thousand dollars) in other goods. The wagons that were to bring the merchandise must now, Anton reckoned, be just in the heart of the disturbed district. Moreover, another caravan, laden with colonial produce, and on its way to Galicia, must be on the very confines of the enemy's land. And, what was still worse, a large portion of the business of the house, and of the credit granted it, was carried on in, and depended upon, this very part of the country. Much--nay, every thing, he apprehended, would be endangered by this war. So he rushed up to his principal, met him coming down, and hastily related the news just heard; while Mr. Braun hurried to deliver a second edition in the office, with as many further particulars as were compatible with his love of truth.

The principal remained for a moment silent where he stood, and Anton, who was watching him anxiously, fancied that he looked a shade paler than usual; but that must have been a mistake, for the next moment, directing his attention to the porters beyond, he called out, in the cool, business-like tone which had so often impressed Anton with respect, "Sturm, be good enough to remove that barrel: it's in the very middle of the way; and bestir yourselves, all of you; the carrier will set out in an hour." To which Sturm, with a sorrowful look upon his broad face, replied, "The drums are beating, and our men marching off. My Karl is there as a hussar, with gay lace on his little coat. It is unlucky, indeed. Alas for our wares, Mr. Schröter!"

"Make the more haste on that account," replied the principal, smiling. "Our wagons are going to the frontier too, laden with sugar and rum; our soldiers will be glad of a glass of punch in the cold weather." Then turning to Anton, he said, "These tidings are not satisfactory, but we must not believe all we hear." And then, going into his office, he spoke rather more cheerfully than usual to Mr. Braun; and, having quietly heard his whole story, made a few comforting observations as to the probability of the wagons not having yet reached the frontier.

And so the great subject of interest was laid aside for the day, and office-work went on as usual. Mr. Liebold wrote down large sums in his ledger; Mr. Purzel piled dollar on dollar; and Mr. Pix wielded the black brush and governed the servants with his wonted decision. At dinner the conversation was as calm and cheerful as ever; and after it, the principal went out walking with his sister and a few ladies of his acquaintance, while all business men who met him exclaimed in amazement, "He goes out walking to-day! As usual, he has known it all before the rest of us. He has a good head of his own. The house is a solid house. All honor to him!"

Anton sat all day at his desk in a state of nervous excitement till then unknown to him. He was full of anxiety and suspense, and yet there was something of enjoyment in his feelings. He was keenly alive to the danger in which his principal and the business were placed, but he was no longer dejected or spiritless--nay, he felt every faculty enhanced; never had he written so easily; never had his style been so' clear, or his calculations so rapidly made. He remarked that Mr. Schröter moved with a quicker step, and looked round with a brighter glance than usual. Never had Anton so honored him before; he seemed, as it were, transfigured in his eyes. In wild delight, our hero said to himself, "This is poetry--the poetry of business; we can only experience this thrilling sense of power and energy in working our way against the stream. When people say that these times are wanting in inspiration, and our calling wanting most of all, they talk nonsense. That man is at this very moment staking all he has at a single cast--all that he holds dearest, the result of a long life, his pride, his honor, his happiness; and there he sits coolly at his desk, writes letters about logwood, and examines samples of clover-seed--nay, I believe that he actually laughs within himself." So mused Anton while locking up his desk and preparing to join his colleagues. He found them discussing, over a cup of tea, the news of the day, and its probable effect upon business, with a pleasant sort of shudder. All agreed that the firm must indeed suffer loss, but that they were the men to retrieve it sooner than ever was done before. Various views were then propounded, till at length Mr. Jordan pronounced that it was impossible to know beforehand what turn things would take, which profound opinion was generally adopted, and the conference broke up. Through the thin wall of his room Anton heard his neighbor Baumann put up a fervent prayer for the principal and the business, and he himself worked off his excitement by walking up and down till his lamp burned low.

It was already late when a servant noiselessly entered, and announced that Mr. Schröter wished to speak to him. Anton followed in all haste, and found the merchant standing before a newly-packed trunk, with his portfolio on the table, together with that unmistakable symptom of a long journey, his great English cigar-case of buffalo hide. It contained a hundred cigars, and had long excited the admiration of Mr. Specht. Indeed, the whole counting-house viewed it as a sort of banner never displayed but on remarkable occasions. Sabine stood at the open drawers of the writing-table, busily and silently collecting whatever the traveler might want. The merchant advanced to meet Anton, and kindly apologized for having summoned him so late, adding that he had not expected him to be still up.

When Anton replied that he was far too excited to sleep, such a ray of gratitude for his sympathy shone from Sabine's eyes that our hero was mightily moved, and did not trust himself to speak.

The principal, however, smiled. "You are still young," he said; "composure will come by-and-by. It will be necessary that I go and look after our merchandise to-morrow. I hear that the Poles show special consideration to our countrymen; possibly they imagine that our government is not disaffected toward them. This illusion can not last long; but there will be no harm in our trying to turn it to advantage for the safety of our goods. You have conducted the correspondence, and know all that is to be done for me. I shall travel to the frontier, and, when there, shall decide what steps should next be taken."

Sabine listened in the utmost excitement, and tried to read in her brother's face whether he was keeping back any thing out of consideration for her. Anton understood it all. The merchant was going over the frontier into the very heart of the insurrection.

"Can I not go in your stead?" said he, imploringly. "I feel, indeed, that I have hitherto given you no grounds for trusting me in so important an affair, but, at least, I will exert myself to the utmost, Mr. Schröter." Anton's face glowed as he spoke.

"That is kindly said, and I thank you," replied the principal; "but I can not accept your offer. The expedition may have its difficulties, and as the profits will be mine, it is but fair that the trouble should be so too." Anton hung his head. "On the contrary, I purpose leaving definite instructions with you, in case of my not being able to return the day after to-morrow."

Sabine, who had been anxiously listening, now seized her brother's hand, and whispered, "Take him with you."

This support gave Anton fresh courage. "If you do not choose to send me alone, at least allow me to accompany you; possibly I may be of some use; at least I would most gladly be so."

"Take him with you," again implored Sabine.

The merchant slowly looked from his sister to Anton's honest face, which was glowing with youthful zeal, and replied, "Be it so, then. If I receive the letters I expect, you will accompany me to-morrow to the frontier; and now good-night."

The following morning, Anton, who had thrown himself ready dressed on the bed, was awakened by a slight knock. "The letters are come, sir." And, hurrying into the office, he found the principal and Mr. Jordan already there, engaged in earnest conversation, which the former merely interrupted for a moment by the words "We go." Never had Anton knocked at so many doors, run so quickly up and down stairs, and so heartily shaken the hands of his colleagues, as in the course of the next hour. As he hurried along the dim corridor, he heard a slight rustling. Sabine stepped toward him and seized hold of his hand. "Wohlfart, protect my brother." Anton promised, with inexpressible readiness, to do so; felt for his loaded pistols, a present from Mr. Fink, and jumped into the railway carriage with the most blissful feelings a youthful hero could possibly have. He was bent on adventure, proud of the confidence of his principal, and exalted to the utmost by the tender relation into which he had entered with the divinity of the firm. He was indeed happy.

The engine puffed and snorted across the wide plain like a horse from Beelzebub's stables. There were soldiers in all the carriages--bayonets and helmets shining every where; at all the stations, crowds of curious inquirers, hasty questions and answers, fearful rumors, and marvelous facts. Anton was glad when they left the railroad and the soldiers, and posted on to the frontier in a light carriage: The high road was quiet, less frequented indeed than usual, but when they drew near the border they repeatedly met small detachments of military. The merchant did not say any thing to Anton about the business in hand, but spoke with much animation on every other subject, and treated his traveling companion with confidential cordiality. Only he showed an aversion to Anton's pistols, which a little damped the latter's martial ardor; for when, at the second station, he carefully drew them out of his pocket to examine their condition, Mr. Schröter pointed toward their brown muzzles, saying, "I do not think we shall succeed in getting back our goods by dint of pocket pistols. Are they loaded?"

Anton bowed assent, adding, with a last remnant of martial vanity, "They are at full cock."

"Really!" said the principal, seriously, taking them out of Anton's pocket, and then calling to the postillion to hold his horses, he coolly shot off both barrels, remarking good-naturedly as he returned the pistols to their owner, "It is better to confine ourselves to our accustomed weapons: we are men of peace, and only want our own property restored to us. If we can not succeed in convincing others of our rights, there is no help for it. Plenty of powder will be shot away to no purpose--plenty of efforts without result, and expenditure which only tends to impoverish. There is no race so little qualified to make progress, and to gain civilization and culture in exchange for capital, as the Slavonic. All that those people yonder have in their idleness acquired by the oppression of the ignorant masses they waste in foolish diversions. With us, only a few of the specially privileged classes act thus, and the nation can bear with it if necessary; but there, the privileged classes claim to represent the people. As if nobles and mere bondsmen could ever form a state! They have no more capacity for it than that flight of sparrows on the hedge. The worst of it is that we must pay for their luckless attempt."

"They have no middle class," rejoined Anton, proudly.

"In other words, they have no culture," continued the merchant; "and it is remarkable how powerless they are to generate the class which represents civilization and progress, and exalts an aggregate of individual laborers into a state."

"In the town before us, however," suggested Anton, "there is Conrad Gaultier, and the house of the three Hildebrands in Galicia as well."

"Worthy people," agreed the merchant, "but they are all merely settlers, and the honorable burgher-class feeling has no root here, and seldom goes down to a second generation. What is here called a city is a mere shadow of ours, and its citizens have hardly any of those qualities which with us characterize commercial men--the first class in the state."

"The first?" said Anton, doubtingly.

"Yes, dear Wohlfart, the first. Originally individuals were free, and, in the main, equal; then came the semi-barbarism of the privileged idler and the laboring bondsman. It is only since the growth of our large towns that the world boasts civilized states--only since then is the problem solved which proves that free labor alone makes national life noble, secure, and permanent."

Toward evening our travelers reached the frontier station. It was a small village, consisting, in addition to the custom-house and the dwellings of the officials, of only a few poor cottages and a public house. On the open space between the houses, and round about the village, bivouacked two squadrons of cavalry, who had posted themselves along the narrow river that defined the border, and who were appointed to guard it in company with a detachment of riflemen. The public house presented a scene of wild confusion: soldiers moving to and fro, and sitting cheek by jowl in the little parlor; gay hussars and green coats camped round the house on chairs, tables, barrels, and every thing that could by any contrivance be converted into a seat. They appeared to Anton so many Messrs. Pix, such was the peremptoriness with which they disposed of the little inn and its contents. The Jew landlord received the well-known merchant with a loud welcome, and his zeal was such that he actually cleared out a small room for the travelers, where they could at least spend the night alone.

The merchant had scarcely dismounted when half a dozen men surrounded him with shouts of joy. They were the drivers of the wagons that had been recently expedited. The oldest of their party related that, when just beyond the frontier, they had been induced to make a hasty retreat by the alarming spectacle of a body of armed peasants. In turning round, the wheel of the last wagon had come off; the driver, in his fright, had unharnessed the horses and left the wagon. While the delinquent stood there, flourishing his hat in the air, and excusing himself as well as he could, the officer in command came up and confirmed the story.

"You may see the wagon on the road, about a hundred yards beyond the bridge," he went on to say; and when the merchant begged leave to cross the bridge, he offered to send one of his officers with him.

A young officer belonging to a squadron just returned from a patrol was curbing his fiery steed at the door of the tavern.

"Lieutenant von Rothsattel," called the captain, "accompany the gentlemen beyond the bridge."

It was with rapture that Anton heard a name linked with so many sweet recollections. He knew at once that the rider of the fiery charger could be no other than the brother of his lady of the lake.

The lieutenant, tall and slender, with a delicate mustache, was as like his sister as a young cavalry officer could be to the fairest of all mortal maidens. Anton felt at once a warm and respectful regard for him, which was perhaps discernible in his bow, for the young gentleman acknowledged it by a careless inclination of his small head. His horse went prancing on by the side of the merchant and his clerk. They hurried to the middle of the bridge, and looked eagerly along the road. There lay the colossal wagon, like a wounded white elephant resting on one knee.

"A short time ago it had not been plundered," said the lieutenant; "the canvas was stretched quite tightly over it; but they have been at it now, for I see a corner fluttering."

"There does not appear to have been much mischief done," replied the principal.

"If you could get over a wheel and a pair of horses, you might carry off the whole affair," replied the lieutenant, carelessly. "Our men have had a great hankering after it all day. They were very anxious to ascertain whether there was any thing drinkable in it or not. Were it not that we are commanded not to cross the borders, it would be a mere trifle to bring the wagon here, if the commanding officer allowed you to pass the sentinels, and if you could manage those fellows yonder." So saying, he pointed to a crowd of peasants, who were camping behind some stunted willows just out of reach of shot, and who had stationed an armed man on the high road as sentinel.

"We will fetch the wagon if the officer in command permit us to do so," said the principal. "I hope we may find a way of dealing with those people yonder."

Meanwhile Anton could not refrain from murmuring, "The whole day long these gentlemen have allowed two thousand dollars' worth to lie there on the highway; they have had plenty of time to get back the wagon for us."

"We must not be unreasonable in our demands upon the army," replied the merchant, with a smile. "We shall be satisfied if they only allow us to rescue our property from those boors;" and, accordingly, they turned back to make their wishes known to the captain.

"If you can find men and horses, I have nothing to object," replied he.

As soon as the wagoners were reassembled, the principal inquired which of them would accompany him, engaging to make good any harm that might happen to the horses.

After some scratching and shaking of their heads, most of them declared their willingness to go. Four horses were speedily harnessed, a child's sledge belonging to the landlord produced, a wheel and some levers placed thereon, and then the little caravan set off in the direction of the bridge, pursued by the jocular approbation of the soldiers, and accompanied by some of the officers, who showed as much interest in the expedition as comported with their martial dignity.

On the bridge the captain said, "I wish you success, but unfortunately I am unable to send any of my men to assist you."

"It is better as it is," answered the principal, bowing; "we will proceed to recover our goods like peaceable people, and while we do not fear those gentry yonder, we do not wish to provoke them. Be so good, Mr. Wohlfart, as to leave your pistols behind you; we must show these armed men that we have nothing to do with war and its apparatus."

Anton had replaced his pistols in his pocket, whence they peeped out with an air of defiance, but now he gave them to a soldier called by Lieutenant von Rothsattel. And so they crossed the bridge, at the end of which the lieutenant reluctantly reined up his charger, muttering, "These grocers march into the enemy's country before us;" while the captain called out, "Should your persons be in danger, I shall not consider it any departure from duty to send Lieutenant Rothsattel and a few soldiers to your aid." The lieutenant rushed back and gave the word of command to his troop, which was not far off, to sit still, and then he dashed again to the end of the bridge, and watched with great interest and warlike impatience the progress of the grocers, as he called them. To his and his country's honor, be it here said, that they all alike wished the poor civilians a warm reception, and some serious inconvenience, that they might have a right to interfere, and cut and hack a little on their behalf.

Meanwhile, the march of the merchants into the enemy's country had nothing very imposing about it; lighting his cigar, and walking with a brisk step, the principal went on, Anton close by his side, and behind them three stout wagoners with the horses. When they had got within about thirty yards of certain peasants in white smock frocks, these brandished their weapons, and cried out to them in Polish to halt.

The principal, raising his voice, addressed them in their own tongue, desiring that they would call their leader.

Accordingly, some of the savages began by wild gesticulations to communicate with their companions at a distance, while others held their weapons in readiness, and aimed, as Anton remarked without any particular satisfaction, pretty exactly at him. Meanwhile the leader of the band advanced with long strides. He wore a blue coat with colored lace, a square red cap trimmed with gray fur, and he carried a wild-duck gun in his hand. He seemed a dark-hued fellow, of a formidable aspect, enhanced by a long black mustache falling down on each side of his mouth. As soon as he came near, the merchant addressed him in a loud voice, and rather imperfect Polish. "We are strangers. I am the owner of that wagon yonder, and am come to fetch it; tell your people to help me, and I will give them a good gratuity." At which word all the weapons were reverentially lowered. The chief of the krakuse, or irregulars, now placed himself pathetically in the middle of the highway, and began a long oration, accompanied by much action, of which Anton understood very little, and his principal not all, but which, being interpreted by one of the wagoners, was found to signify that the leader much regretted his inability to serve the gentlemen, as he had received orders from the corps stationed behind him to keep watch over the wagon till the horses should arrive which were to take it to the nearest town.

The merchant merely shook his head, and replied, in a tone of quiet command, "That won't do. The wagon is mine, and I must carry it off. I can not wait the permission of your expected wagoners;" and, putting his hand into his pocket, he displayed to the owner of the blue coat half a dozen shining dollars, unseen by the rest. "So much for you, and as much for your people." The leader looked at the dollars, scratched his head vehemently, and turned his cap round and round; the result of which was, that he at last arrived at the conclusion that, since things stood thus, the worthy gentleman might drive off his wagon.

The procession now triumphantly proceeded; the drivers seized the levers, and, by their united efforts, raised the fallen side, detached the fragments of the broken wheel, put on the new one, and harnessed the horses; and all this with the active assistance of some of the peasants, and the brotherly support of their commandant, who himself wielded a lever. Then the horses were set off with a good will, and the wagon rolled on toward the bridge amid the loud acclamations of the krakuse, which were perhaps intended to drown a dissentient voice in his innermost breast.

"Go on with the wagon," said the merchant to Anton; and when the latter hesitated to leave his principal alone with the boors, the command was still more peremptorily repeated. And so the wagon slowly progressed toward the frontier; and Anton already heard from a distance the laughing greetings of the soldiers.

Meanwhile the merchant remained in animated conversation with the peasant band, and at length parted on the best possible terms with the insurgents' leader, who, with true Slavonic politeness, acted the part of landlord on the public road, and, cap in hand, accompanied the travelers till within gunshot of the military on the bridge. The principal got into the wagon, underwent the warlike ceremonial of "Halt!" &c., on the part of the sentinels, and received the smiling congratulations of the captain, while the lieutenant said satirically to Anton, "You have had no cause to lament the want of your pocket pistols."

"All the better," answered Anton; "it was a tame affair indeed. The poor devils had stolen nothing but a small cask of rum."

An hour later, the travelers were sitting with the officers of both regiments, in the little tavern parlor, over a bottle of old Tokay, which the host had disinterred from the lowest depths of his cellar. Not the least happy of the party was Anton. For the first time in his life he had experienced one of the small perils of war, and was, on the whole, pleased with the part he had played; and now he was sitting by a young soldier, whom he was prepared to admire to the utmost, and had the privilege of offering him his cigars, and discussing with him the day's adventures.

"The boors pointed their guns at you at first," said the young nobleman, carelessly curling his mustache; "you must have found that a bore."

"Not much of one," replied Anton, as coolly as he could. "For a moment I felt startled as I saw the guns aimed at me, and behind them men with scythes, pantomiming the cutting off of heads. It struck me uncomfortably at first that all the muzzles should point so directly at my face; afterward I had to work away at the wagon, and thought no more about it; and when, on our return, each of our wagoners affirmed that the guns had pointed at him and no one else, I came to the conclusion that this many-sidedness must be part of the idiosyncrasy of guns--a sort of optical unmannerliness that does not mean much."

"We should soon have cut you out if the peasants had been in earnest," replied the lieutenant, benevolently. "Your cigars are remarkably good."

Anton was rejoiced to hear it, and filled his neighbor's glass. And so he entertained himself, and looked at his principal, who seemed to be unusually inclined to converse with the gay gentlemen around him on all subjects connected with peace and war. Anton remarked that he treated the officers with a degree of formal politeness, which considerably checked the free and easy tone which they had at first adopted. The conversation soon became general, and all listened with attention to the merchant while he spoke of the disturbed districts, with which former journeys had made him familiar, and sketched some of the leaders of the insurrection. Young Von Rothsattel alone, to Anton's great distress, did not seem to like the attention lent by his comrades to the civilian, nor the lion's share of the conversation conceded him. He threw himself carelessly back on his chair, looked absently at the ceiling, played with his sword-hilt, and uttered curt observations, intended to denote that he was not a little bored. When the captain mentioned that he expected their commander-in-chief to arrive in the morning, and the merchant said in reply, "Your colonel will not be here till to-morrow evening, so at least he said to me when I met him at the station," the demon of pride in the young officer's breast became uncontrollable, and he rudely said, "You know our colonel, then? I suppose he buys his tea and sugar from you."

"At all events, he used to do so," politely replied the merchant; "indeed, as a younger man, I have sometimes weighed out coffee for him myself."

A certain degree of embarrassment now arose among the officers, and one of the elder attempted, according to his light, to rectify the intentional rudeness by saying something about a most highly-respectable establishment where civilians or military alike might procure, with perfect satisfaction, whatever they needed.

"I thank you, captain, for the confidence you repose in my house," replied the merchant, with a smile, "and I am indeed proud that it should have become respectable through my own active exertions and those of my firm."

"Lieutenant Rothsattel, you head the next patrol; it is time that you should set out," said the captain. Accordingly, with clink and clatter, the lieutenant rose.

"Here comes our landlord with a new bottle on which he sets great value; it is the best wine in his cellar. May not Herr von Rothsattel take a glass of it before he goes to watch over our night's rest?" inquired the merchant, with calm politeness.

The young man haughtily thanked him and clattered out of the room. Anton could have thrashed his new favorite with all his heart.

It was now late; and Anton saw, with some astonishment, that the merchant still continued with the utmost politeness to play the host, and to evince a pleasure in every fresh experience of the Tokay not easy to reconcile with the purpose of his journey. At last, another bottle having been uncorked, and the captain having taken and commenced a fresh cigar of the merchant's, the latter casually observed, "I wish to travel to the insurgent capital to-morrow, and request your permission, if it be necessary."

"You do!" cried all the officers round the table.

"I must!" said the merchant, gravely, and proceeded briefly to state the reasons for his resolve.

The captain shook his head. "It is true," said he, "that the exact terms in which my orders are couched leave it optional whether I bar the frontier against all alike, but yet the chief aim of our occupying this position is the closing up of the disturbed district."

"Then I must make known my wishes to the commander-in-chief; but this will delay me more than a day, and this delay will very probably defeat the whole object of my journey. As you have kindly informed me, there still exists a certain degree of order among the insurgents, but it is impossible to say how long this may last. Now it is upon the existence of this very order that I must depend for the recovery of my property, for I can only get the loaded wagons out of the town with the consent of the revolutionary party."

"And do you hope to obtain it?"

"I must endeavor to do so," was the reply; "at all events, I shall oppose might and main the plundering and destroying of my goods."

The captain mused a while. "Your plans," said he, "place me in a strait; if any harm should befall you, which is, I fear, only too likely, I shall be reproached for having allowed you to cross the frontier. Can nothing persuade you to give up this undertaking?"

"Nothing," said the merchant--"nothing but the law of the land."

"Are the wagons, then, of such consequence to you, that you are willing to risk your life for them?" asked the captain, rather morosely.

"Yes, captain, of as much consequence as the doing your duty is to you. To me their safety involves far more than mere mercantile profit. I must cross the frontier unless prevented by a positive prohibition. That I should not actually resist, but I should do all in my power to have an exception made in my favor."

"Very good," said the captain; "I will lay no hinderance in your way; you will give me your word of honor that you will disclose nothing whatever as to the strength of our position, the arrangement of our troops, or as to what you have heard of our intended movements."

"I pledge my word," said the merchant.

"Your character is sufficient guarantee that your intentions in taking this journey are upright; but officially I could wish to see the papers connected with it, if you have them by you."

"Here they are," said the merchant, in the same business-like tone. "There is my passport for a year, here the bill of goods of the Polish seller, the copies of my letters to the custom-house officer, and the replies to them."

The captain glanced over the papers, and gave them back. "You are a brave man, and I heartily wish you success," said he, in a dignified tone. "How do you mean to travel?"

"With post-horses. If I can not hire, I shall buy, and drive them myself. Our host will let me have a carriage, and I shall set out to-morrow morning, as I might cause more suspicion traveling by night."

"Very well, then, I shall see you again at break of day. I believe that we ourselves are to move over into the enemy's country in three days' time; and if I hear no tidings from you in the mean time, I shall look you out in the conquered city. We must disperse, gentlemen; we have already sat here too long."

The officers then retired with clank of arms, and Anton and his principal remained alone with the empty bottles. The merchant opened the window, and then turning to Anton, who had listened to the foregoing conversation in the greatest excitement, began, "We must part here, dear Wohlfart--"

Before he could finish his sentence Anton caught hold of his hand, and said, with tears in his eyes, "Let me go with you; do not send me back to the firm. I should reproach myself intolerably my whole life through if I had left you on this journey."

"It would be useless, perhaps unwise, that you should accompany me. I can perfectly well do alone all that has to be done; and if there be any risk to run, which, however, I do not believe, your presence could not protect me, and I should only have the painful feeling of having endangered another for my sake."

"Still, I should be very grateful to you if you would take me with you," urged Anton; "and Miss Sabine wished it too," added he, wisely keeping his strongest argument for the last.

"She is a terrible girl," said the merchant, with a smile. "Well, then, so let it be. We will go together; call the landlord, and let us make all our traveling arrangements."

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