“Not me and the town!” said the builder. “Do you hear Füger? Any building land for sale by auction has to be bought up. The houses for sale must be bought too. I have capital. I have credit. Everything must be bought up. Within five years I will set the whole thing in order.”
“Five years....” John Hubert looked at his father. Time left no mark on him.
Next day, Christopher Ulwing gave his grandson a book on architecture. Woodcuts of churches and palaces were in the text.
“We shall build some like that, you and I, when you are an architect.”
“Write your name in it,” said John Hubert. “Where is the date? A careful businessman never writes his name down without a date.”
“Businessman!” This word sounded bleak in young Christopher’s ears. He looked down crestfallen and drew his mouth to one side. He had retained this movement since the shell had struck the house.
As soon as he felt himself unobserved he put the book aside. He went to Gál’s. It was still the little hunchback who did his mathematical work for him. After that, he bent his steps to the Hosszu’s; he thought of his Latin preparation.
Christopher had some time since been transferred to a private school so as to receive his education in Hungarian. This was his grandfather’s choice. His father approved of the school because it admitted only boys of the best families. Christopher had new schoolmates. All were children of nobles. They were not the kind that would have envied young Müller, the apothecary’s son, the possession of his jars and bottles, as the boys in Christopher’s old school used to do. They would not have taken the slightest interest in gaudy strings and crude-coloured pictures like those Adam Walter used to produce from his pockets in playtime. They talked of horses, saddles, dogs. Practically every one of them was country-bred and had only come to town for school.
Christopher continued none the less to go on Sundays to the Hosszu’s; he saw Sophie rarely; but when the young lady happened to come accidentally into Gabriel’s room, the boy would blush and dared not look at her. But many were the times when he had gone a long way round through Grenadier’s Street so that he might look up stealthily under his hat to the windows of the Hosszu house.
One afternoon, when he turned into the street he saw his father going in the same direction. He wore an embroidered waistcoat and walked ceremoniously. The boy stopped, stared at him, then ran away suddenly.