"Fifty ducats."
Van Spreckdal placed the drawing on the table and took out of his pocket a drooping green silk purse, elongated into the shape of a pear. He slid the rings in order to open it.
"Fifty ducats then," he said. "There you have them."
I went dizzy.
The baron got up, said goodbye to me and I heard his great ivory- handled cane knock against each step till he finally came to the bottom of the stairs. Then, waking up from my temporary stupor, I suddenly remembered that I had not thanked him, and I ran down those four flights of stairs as quick as a flash. But, when I got to the door, it was in vain that I looked both right and left - the street was deserted.
"Well! Fancy that!" I said to myself. "Here's a how-d'you-do!"
And I went back up the stairs quite out of breath.
II
The surprising way in which Van Spreckdal had just appeared to me threw me into a deep trance: "Yesterday," I said to myself as I contemplated the pile of ducats sparkling in the sunshine, "yesterday I formed the culpable intention of cutting my throat for the lack of a few miserable schillings and today good fortune smiles on me unbidden… A good job then I didn't open my razor and, if ever the temptation to do away with myself overtakes me again, I'll take care to put the thing off to the following day."
After these judicious reflexions, I sat down to finish the sketch. Four strokes of the charcoal pencil and that would be that. But here an unfathomable disappointment awaited me. I found it impossible to make these four strokes. I had lost the thread of my inspiration and the mysterious personage would not emerge from the limbo of my brain. It was in vain that I evoked it, mapped it out, went back to it — it was no more in keeping with the whole than a figure by Raphael would be in a David Teniers smoke-filled snug… I was sweating cobs.