The Doctor expressed his surprise at seeing him under so novel an aspect. He had always, hitherto, thought that his misanthropy proceeded from mere love of ease and indolence, but now he saw it was grounded on a system.
"Will you sit an hour with me? This is my seventieth birthday."
"I wish you joy!"
"Thank you."
Petrowitsch sent his maid to Ibrahim, to say that he could not join him, to play their usual game, for an hour; then he sat down beside the Doctor, and said: "I feel myself today in a humour to be communicative. I care nothing at all for what the world thinks of me; this log of wood that I am now laying on the fire, cannot care less who burns it."
"It would interest me very much, however, if you would relate to me how you have hardened into such a block of petrified wood."
Petrowitsch laughed, and the Doctor, though he knew how anxiously Lenz was expecting him, hoped, by seeing deeper into the rugged old man's character, to be able to bend him to his wishes. His plan was, that Petrowitsch should advance a certain sum, to enable Lenz to enter the manufactory as a junior partner.
"You were eight years old when I left home to travel," began Petrowitsch, "and so you know nothing of me."
"Oh, yes, I do! many wild pranks were related of the——"
"The little Goatherd? That name has been the plague of my life. I was two and twenty years in foreign parts, at sea and on land, in every possible degree of heat and cold that man or dog ever endured, and that name followed me like a dog, and I was fool enough not to give it a kick, and so get rid of it for ever.