Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

"The pleasure does not seem to be overwhelming, to judge from your tone; and in fact I should scarcely have come had not the prince--I mean to say, had not I--what was I going to say? oh, yes--had a bit of business to settle with you. While you were--you know where--you were several times so obliging as to help me out of some small difficulties. I took exact note of it all, for a man who owes as many people as I do must be particular in these matters to keep his creditors from swindling him. Of course I had nothing of the sort to fear from you; but out of mere habit I took a note of it, and this is the amount, without the interest, which I cannot calculate, and therefore would rather leave off--a hundred and sixty thalers. I happen to be in funds just now, and it is a pleasure to me to acquit myself of my debt to you."

And rising from his chair he counted down a pile of treasury-notes on the table.

"Will you count them over?" he continued; "I have just come from a dinner where we had famous champagne, and a charming little game afterwards; and it is quite possible that I may have miscounted them."

He looked at me with a smile that was meant to be sly, and balanced himself unsteadily on his toes and heels: it was too evident that he had come from a dinner at which the champagne had not been spared.

"What I was going to say," he went on--"your lamp burns so dim that one can hardly collect his ideas--going to say, was this: it was with the very best motive that he sent me here. He is the noblest fellow living--heart and purse--all genuine gold, as long as he has any. So you need not have any scruple, old fellow. And I was going to say--oh, in what relation did you ever stand to the prince? He told me himself that he was under an obligation to you; but what it can be is a mysterious enigma to me--a mysterious enigma," he repeated, leaning back in the arm-chair into which he had thrown himself again, and warming his feet alternately at the fire.

"You do not seem to be in a condition to solve enigmas," I said.

"Because I have had a little wine, you mean? Oh, that is nothing at all; on the contrary, but for that I should never have found my way here, notwithstanding I took the precaution this morning to get your address from Paula's porter. Was not that a happy idea? But one must always be ready in matters of that kind when one wishes to be intimate with men of high rank; and he takes an interest in you, too--a most astonishing interest."

I had by this time enough of his tipsy talk, and said: "I do not know, Arthur, if you are in a condition to understand me. If you are, let me tell you once for all, that I am fortunately in a position not to care a single farthing whether Prince Prora takes an interest in me or not; and you yourself, as far as I can see, would be doing yourself a service by mixing yourself as little as possible in the prince's concerns, in this direction at least."

"Thank you," said Arthur, "but that I foresaw. You are a lucky fellow; you need no one, and are sufficient for yourself. Always sober, always prudent, always clear-headed, and always in funds; while a fellow like me is forever in some devilish embroilment. But so it always has been and always will be. I have often wished I had been the son of a carter, had been beaten and knocked about, and forced to work for my bread, instead of this glittering misery, in which I starve one day and live in luxury the next. It is a misery, old fellow, a misery; but the best thing is that one can blow his brains out whenever he chooses."

I knew this declamation of old. It was the same, with but a slight alteration of the words, which Arthur used to deliver in our school-days when he had drunk too much of the bad punch at a boyish carouse, and got to talking of his unpaid glove bills and his little dealings with Moses in the Water-street. And it was the same Arthur, too, the same frivolous, selfish, cold-hearted voluptuary, with the soft voice and the insinuating manners; and I--I was just the same good-natured fellow, whom a light word carelessly spoken could move as if it came direct from the heart. And I had loved him in my young days, when I wore a linen blouse and he a velvet jacket; we had played so many merry pranks together, and so often basked in the afternoon sunshine in field and wood, and in the boat at sea; and things like these cannot be forgotten--at least I never could forget them.