“I shall be brief, M. Pums,” he began. “In a word, as I told you, it is a matter of a ma life.... This man—I shall not conceal his name any longer—is my best friend, M. Cyprien Raindal, brother of M. Raindal of the Institute.... His situation you know already.... If he does not pay up, he is smashed.... And, I may add, if he is smashed, he will kill himself.... I came to ask you to have his account carried over....”
“I would do it with pleasure, M. Schleifmann....” Pums murmured in German, preferring to use that tongue in delicate transactions.
“Allow me!” Schleifmann retorted, also in German and because of an analogous preference. “Allow me! I am not through yet.... You will ask me what interest you have in saving my friend Cyprien.... I will tell you.... It is a sacred interest, it is the interest of your own race, of your family, of your children, of your grandchildren, of your great-grandchildren....”
“Sorry to interrupt you!” said M. Pums, drumming his desk impatiently. “We are right in the middle of a panic.... I have twenty persons to see.... I beg you; you promised me to be brief ... be so!”
“I shall!” said Schleifmann.
And he started an interminable discourse. His thesis was that Pums, who had guided Cyprien in his first speculations, owed him support at the hour of his failure. What, at the most, would this help which would be rather moral support cost him? Not more than a risk, a mere signature. Even if he were to lose the sum which he would thus endorse, would he be thereby impoverished, incommoded in his train of life, he whose actual fortune was estimated at three millions or more? On the other hand, what a glory for Israel, what a noble tradition in the family, what a magnanimous example attached to the name of Pums, this legend would become as it passed from lip to lip: a rich Israelite, generously saving from misery, from suicide, a little ex-official, a Christian, lured to his ruin by a taste for lucre and by gambling!... Such acts, as they multiplied, would do more for the Jews than a thousand gifts to the poor, a thousand sanitary foundations celebrated by the press with much din of praise. Such acts would carry further than charity. For they would have originated from a higher source, from humanity, from justice itself....
The Galician ended at last. Pums looked up with a slight jerk and leaned back in his armchair.
“My dear M. Schleifmann,” he announced in a doctoral tone, “I pay homage to your intentions; you are an excellent man but, allow me to say it, you understand nothing of business....”
A quick blinking of his eyelids accentuated all that was unfavorable in that verdict in M. Pu estimation. He then went on:
“No, nothing, absolutely nothing.... For instance, you imagine that you know what your frien situation is? You do know the first word of it. If M. Cyprien Raindal had listened to me, if he had been satisfied to follow my advice, his losses would be insignificant, about like those of the Marquis de Meuze, his protector, seven, eight, perhaps ten thousand francs at the most.... But your friend wished to show his cleverness.... He followed his own ideas. Il st enfilé, as we say in the slang of the Bourse.... And, to-day, he faces the result.... Whose fault is it? Mine or his, tell me?”