"Father in heaven! what blockheads men are! Monsieur! Monsieur Fougas! Monsieur Colonel Fougas! Come up again, I pray you! We consent to all that you require!"
"Damnation!" said he, on reëntering; "you ought to have made up your minds sooner. But after all, let's see the money!"
Frau Meiser explained to him with her tenderest voice, that poor capitalists like themselves, were not in the habit of keeping millions under their own lock and key.
"But you shall lose nothing by waiting, my sweet sir! To-morrow you shall handle the amount in nice white silver; my husband will sign you a check on the Royal Bank of Dantzic."
"But——," said the unfortunate Meiser. He signed, nevertheless, for he had boundless confidence in the practical ingenuity of Catharine. The old lady begged Fougas to sit down at the end of the table, and dictated to him a receipt for two millions, in payment of all demands. You may depend that she did not forgot a word of the legal formulas, and that she arranged the affair in due form according to the Prussian code. The receipt, written throughout in the Colonel's hand, filled three large pages.
He signed the instrument with a flourish, and received in exchange the signature of Nicholas, which he knew well.
"Well," said he to the old gentleman, "you're certainly not such an Arab as they said you were at Berlin. Shake hands, old scamp! I don't usually shake hands with any but honest people; but on an occasion like this, one can do a little something extra."
"Do it double, Monsieur Fougas," said Frau Meiser, humbly. "Will you not join us in this modest supper?"
"Gad! old lady, it's not a thing to be refused. My supper must be cold at the inn of the 'Clock'; and your viands, smoking on their chafing dishes, have already caused me more than one fit of distraction. Besides, here are some yellow glass flutes, on which Fougas will not be at all reluctant to play an air."
The respectable Catharine had an extra plate laid, and ordered Berbel to go to bed. The Colonel folded up Father Meiser's million, rolled it carefully among a pile of bank-bills, and put the whole into the little pocket-book which his dear Clementine had sent him.