Petrovitsch sent the maid to Ibrahim to say that he should be an hour later than usual at his game that evening, and then, resuming his seat by the doctor, continued: "I am inclined to be communicative to-day and talk about myself. Let me tell you that, as for the opinion of the world at large, I care as little about it as this stick of wood which I am laying on the fire cares who burns it."
"I should be greatly interested in hearing by what process you have thus reduced yourself to the hardness of a log of wood."
The doctor was anxious to avail himself of the unusual mood in which he found the crabbed old fellow, to gain a better insight into his character, even at the expense of prolonging Lenz's painful uncertainty. He was not without hope of inducing Petrovitsch to advance a sum of money which would enable Lenz at once to become a shareholder in the new factory.
"You were eight years old when I went abroad," began Petrovitsch, "and therefore know nothing about me."
"Begging your pardon, we heard a deal about the wild pranks of the--"
"Of the goatherd, I suppose. Thereby hangs a tale. For the forty-two years that I was travelling by land and by sea, in all degrees of heat and cold that man or beast can endure, that name pursued me like a dog, without my having the sense to give it a kick that should silence it forever.
"Our family consisted of only three brothers. Our father was proud, in his way, of having us all boys; but children then were not thought so much of as they are in these days. They had to learn to take care of themselves. Fewer words, good or bad, were thrown them, and every one, therefore, was made to go farther than a hundred do now. My brother Lorenz, generally called by the family name, Lenz, the father of the present Lenz, was the oldest; I was the youngest, and between us came Mathes, a handsome fellow, who was carried away by that great butcher Napoleon, and lost his life in Spain. I once visited the battlefield where he fell, and saw a great hill under which all the dead bodies had been huddled together. There was no telling any man's brother. But why dwell upon that? Not long after our Mathes turned soldier, my brother Lorenz went to Switzerland for three months, and took me with him. Who so happy as I? My brother was a quiet, thoughtful man, regular and exact as clock-work, and fearfully strict. I was a wild, ungovernable child, inclined to no good, and with a special distaste to sitting behind a work-bench. What does my brother do but take me, soon after Candlemas, to a boy-sale at St. Gall? There were boy-sales held there then every year, where the Swiss farmers came to buy farm-hands from Suabia.
"As we were standing together on the market-place, a square-built Appenzeller came along, and planting himself in front of us asked my brother, 'What is the price of the boy?'
"'A cord of Swiss impudence,' I answered, pertly; 'six feet wide and six feet high.'
"The stout Appenzeller laughed, and said to my brother, 'The boy is smart, I like him.' He asked me various questions, all of which I answered as well as I knew how.