"Why in the name of great guns don't you both shut up, you confounded magpies? Here I am dying of hunger, and I didn't bring my nightcap to go to bed here, either!—-- Now here's the upshot of the matter: You owe me a great deal; but it's not an even sum—there are fractions in it, and I go in for clean transactions. Moreover, my tastes are modest. I've enough for my wife and myself; nothing more is needed than to provide for my son!"
"Very well," cried Meiser; "I'll charge myself with the education of the little fellow!"
"Now, during the dozen days since I again became a citizen of the world, there is one word that I've heard spoken everywhere. At Paris, as well as at Berlin, people no longer speak of anything but millions; there is no longer any talk of anything else, and everybody's mouth is full of millions. From hearing so much said about it, I've acquired a curiosity to know what it is. Go, fetch me out a million, and I'll give you quittance!"
If you want to reach an approximate idea of the piercing cries which answered him, go to the Jardin des Plantes at the breakfast hour of the birds of prey, and try to pull the meat out of their beaks. Fougas stopped his ears and remained inexorable. Prayers, arguments, misrepresentations, flatteries, cringings, glanced off from him like rain from a zinc roof. But at ten o'clock at night, when he had concluded that all concurrence was impossible, he took his hat:
"Good evening!" said he. "It's no longer a million that I must have, but two millions, and all over. We'll go to law. I'm going to supper."
He was on the staircase, when Frau Meiser said to her husband:
"Call him back, and give him his million!"
"Are you a fool?"
"Don't be afraid."
"I can never do it!"