"Then you should at least be impartial!" cried the commerzienrath.
"Ask our friend here if he has ever known me otherwise," said the justizrath, with a dignified look at me.
"Oh, ay," cried the commerzienrath, "but fine words butter no parsnips, and my parsnips get poorer the longer you keep them at the fire. A week ago, that is before you came, the prince was willing to give four hundred thousand thalers; after you have had three conferences with him, he abated fifty thousand of his offer, making sixteen thousand six hundred and sixty-six and two-thirds thalers per conference. I am much obliged to you! You have always been a dear guest to me, but I never would have believed that you would be so dear as that!"
Emilie's father made a movement as if he would fain wrap himself up from the sharp arrows of his antagonist, in the old flowered dressing-gown he used to wear at home; but bethinking himself that he was in a black dress-coat, he pulled up his collar, felt to see if the comb on the top of his head was in good condition, and looked at me with a sly smile, as if to say: "Whoever expects to get the better of Justizrath Heckepfennig, has got to get up early: you have found that out, young man, eh?"
"Yes, my dear friend, this is the way I am treated here," continued the commerzienrath, turning to me, and, for a change, falling to a lachrymose tone: "it is enough to drive a man out of his senses; and none know it better than you, George, for you understand the whole thing--which is more than I can say of some people--you know well that the property is worth five hundred thousand thalers between brothers, now especially, when we have the certainty of draining the chalk quarries."
The commerzienrath accompanied these words with an expressive look at me, meaning, "Now George, keep up the ball!"
"And indeed that is a very reasonable price," he went on, "when we consider that in this way we have found a plan for draining the great morass, by carrying the pipes to the sand-bed which came so near ruining the chalk-quarry, and which is a drain-trench provided by nature itself for the water of the swamp."
Here the commerzienrath gave me a furious look, because I had not yet come to his assistance.
Now this last plan he had mentioned, was one I had suggested myself, and I considered it therefore my duty to remark here that it was true I had the strongest hopes of the success of the scheme referred to, but that it could only be demonstrated by trial, and even were it perfectly successful, the land thus gained would at furthest only compensate for the forest, which was apparently lost beyond recovery, and thus the original value of Zehrendorf would in this respect remain unaltered.
"What in the devil do you mean, sir!" cried the commerzienrath, springing up and storming about the room. "Did you come here for this? What do you mean?"