"And the other half to my sisters," continued Bemperlein, and rubbed his hands with delight.
"But what did you keep for yourself?"
"For myself?" said Bemperlein, quite astonished. "Did I not tell you I had full board? And now listen! I had been a year at Berkow, when one fine day the good lady sends for me, and after we have been talking about this and that, she says:--
"You have been here a year now, dear Bemperlein; now tell me candidly, how do you like it here?--That needs no answer, Madam, replied I.--Well, I am glad of that, said she, but have you no special desire?--Not that I know, said I.--But your salary is evidently too low, said she, with the kindest face in the world. I was so astonished at these words that I could find no answer.
"I must tell you frankly, she said, with angelic goodness, that I have looked at the time up to now only in the light of a trial, and that I regulated the salary accordingly. I never imagined that a man, to whom I can intrust my child's education with perfect confidence, could be paid with money at all; and if I now ask you to let me double the salary which you have heretofore received, I beg you to understand that I still remain your debtor.
"If I had been surprised before, I was much more so now, or rather, I was deeply moved--not so much by her generosity, as by the indescribable kindness with which the offer was made, so that the tears trickled down my cheeks. I stammered something about not being able to accept so much and such like, but then she became quite angry, so that I quickly recovered myself, and told her I would accept her present, not for myself, because that would be unwarrantable, but for those whom I had to support, because they could not support themselves.--Do with it what you like, she said, in going out, but remember that you owe something also to yourself. There the matter ended, but not so Frau von Berkow's goodness, which has no end. But I was going to tell you something very different; I mean, how I came to discover the error which had crept into the account of my life, and what that error is."
CHAPTER XVIII.
At this moment a horseman passed them at full gallop, who had turned a few moments before from a byway into the high-road. A large Newfoundland dog, whom Oswald at first took for Melitta's dog, galloped in long strides by the side of the horse, a superb jet-black thorough-bred, whose chest was covered with white foam. The horseman, as far as they could judge in passing, was a man of perhaps thirty, tall and thin, and, contrary to the custom of the country gentlemen of that region, in long trousers instead of top-boots; his seat on horseback was utterly unlike that of a country gentleman. But this was perhaps more the effect of negligence and the habit of carelessness than real awkwardness, for when he found himself suddenly close before the two wanderers, whom he had not noticed before in his thoughts or his reveries, he threw his horse with such force and skill on his haunches, that he proved his horsemanship beyond all doubt. "Excusez, Messieurs," he said, touching his hat and riding off again.
"Do you know that gentleman?" said Oswald, pausing and looking after the man, whose features seemed to him familiar and yet strange.
"Tiens!" said Mr. Bemperlein, also stopping; "that must have been Baron Oldenburg. Yes, it was the baron!" he cried, as he saw the gentleman stop when he reached the two boys, with whom he shook hands. "I should not have recognized him with his black beard and his sunburnt face. He looks like a veritable Cabyle. When can he have come back?"