Axel opened it, and with what feelings! "Money, money!" had so long been the cry of his soul, always "Money!" Now this sum of money fell unexpectedly into his lap, but what money! "Oh, my God!" he cried, staggering blindly about the room, like a sleep-walker, "then that was not true either! All of it false! In whose hands have I been? Deceived in everything,--self-deceived! Bitterly self-deceived!"
He rushed out of the door, Frida would have followed him, but Bräsig held her back. "Let me go, gracious Frau! I know a way to quiet him." He followed him to the garden, where he was raging up and down; the old man placed himself in the way:
"Herr, what sort of performances are these?"
"Get out of my way!" cried Axel.
"No," said Bräsig, "there is no necessity for it. Aren't you ashamed, to frighten your wife to death with your wild behavior?"
"Why did you not let me destroy myself?" cried Axel; "this is a thousand times worse than death! To receive benefits, and such benefits, from people, whom in better times I have despised and slandered, yes, even ruined! Not merely to receive,--no!--if one will live,--to be obliged to receive it! Oh, oh!" he cried, striking his forehead, "why should I live? How can I live, with this sting in my heart?"
So he raged against himself and the world, and Uncle Bräsig stood by quietly and looked at him. At last he said, "Go on like that a little longer; that pleases me uncommonly; the old nobleman's humor must work itself out. What? You will have no friendship with honest, burgher people? Isn't it so? If the Herr Vons should come, or even the Pomuchelskopps and Slusuhrs and Davids, so that nobody need know, of it, that would be more agreeable to you; but they won't come any more. But that is only a secondary matter; you ought to be ashamed that, under the eye of God, who delivered you this morning, you have again expressed the wish that you had shot yourself. Why, you are a double suicide!"
Axel was silent, and turned pale; he trembled, as he thought of the abyss into which he had looked that morning; Bräsig took his arm and seated him on the bench, where his old father and his young wife had sat, in their anguish and distress. Gradually he recovered himself, and Zachary Bräsig took him again by the arm: "Come! come to your gracious Frau! That is the best place for you now," and Axel followed like a lamb, and when his dear young wife took him in her arms, and drew him down by her on the sofa, and comforted him, then the hot tears started from his eyes, the last ice was broken up, and under the warmth of her lovely, spring sunshine his whole soul flowed out, open and free,--still in swelling waves, but free. And Zachary Bräsig stood at the window, and drummed the old Dessauer, so that Fritz Triddelsitz, who was passing by, came up and asked, "Herr Inspector, do you want me?"
"No!" growled Bräsig, "go about your business, and attend to your farming."
A carriage drove up, and Habermann and Franz got out of it. Franz had gone with Habermann, about nine o'clock, to see Moses, and had told him that, instead of the other good people, he would pay the thirty-one thousand for his cousin, and Moses kept nodding his head, and said, "You are good; the others are good, too; but you are rich; better is better."