The grand intelligence who discovered the great financial problem of France—the Crédit Mobilier—has proclaimed to the world that the secret lay in the simple fact that there were industrial energies which needed capital, and capital which needed industry, and that all he avowed to accomplish was to bring these two distant but all necessary elements into close union and co-operation. Now, something of the same kind moved Grog and the Count to cement their friendship; each saw that the other supplied some want of his own nature, and before they had passed an hour together they ratified an alliance. An instinct whispered to each, “We are going the same journey in life, let us travel together;” and some very profitable tours did they make in company!
His presence now was on a special mission from Davis, whom he just met at Treves, and who despatched him to request his daughter to come on to Carlsruhe, where he would await her. The Count was charged to explain, in some light easy way of his own, why her father had left Brussels so abruptly; and he was also instructed to take Annesley Beecher into his holy keeping, and not suffer him to fall into indiscretions, or adventure upon speculations of his own devising.
Lizzy thought him “charming,”—far more worldly-wise people than Lizzy had often thought the same. There was a bubbling fountain of good-humor about him that seemed inexhaustible. He was always ready for any plan that promised pleasure. Unlike Beecher, who knew nobody, the Count walked the street in a perpetual salutation,—bowing, hand-shaking, and sometimes kissing, as he went; and in that strange polyglot that he talked he murmured as he went, “Ah, lieber Freund!”—“Come sta?”—“Addio!”—“Mon meilleur ami!” to each that passed; so that veritably the world did seem only peopled with those who loved him.
As for Beecher, notwithstanding a certain distrust at the beginning, he soon fell captive to a manner that few resisted; and though the intercourse was limited to shaking hands and smiling at each other, the Count's pleasant exclamation of “All right!” with a jovial slap on the shoulder, made him feel that he was a “regular trump,” and a man “to depend on.”
One lurking thought alone disturbed this esteem,—he was jealous of his influence over Lizzy; he marked the pleasure with which she listened to him, the eager delight she showed when he came, her readiness to sing or play for him. Beecher saw all these in sorrow and bitterness; and though twenty times a day he asked himself, “What the deuce is it to me,—how can it possibly matter to me whom she cares for?” the haunting dread never left his mind, and became his very torturer. But why should he worry himself about it at all? The fellow did what he liked with every one. Rivers, the sulky training-groom, that would not have let a Royal Highness see “the horse,” actually took Klepper out and galloped him for the Count. The austere landlady of the inn was smiles and courtesy to him; even to that unpolished class, the hackney coachmen, his blandishments extended, and they vied with each other who should serve him.
“We are to start for Wiesbaden to-morrow,” said Lizzy to Beecher.
“Why so,—who says so?”
“The Count”
“Si, si, andiamo,—all right!” cried the Count, laughing; and the march was ordered.