"Well," said Pomuchelskopp, "what do you look at me so for?"
"Are you sure you are not joking?" said the notary, laughing. "If you want the end, you must use the means. You don't think that you can bring such an estate as Pumpelhagen to bankruptcy with a trumpery thousand thaler note? You must go to work on an entirely different plan; you must buy up all the mortgages on the estate."
"I will do that," whispered Pomuchelskopp, "but there is Moses, with his seven thousand thalers not to be got at."
"I have nothing to do with Moses, and desire nothing to do with him; but there is David, perhaps he can get it for us. But that is not all, by a great deal, that you must do. You must get on good terms with the lieutenant; as a friend, you can assist him in some temporary embarrassment, and then, in a temporary embarrassment of your own, sell his note,--to me, if you like,--so that I can worry him a little, and, finally, when the whole concern is ready to smash, then----"
"I will do it," whispered Pomuchelskopp impressively, "I will do it all; but I must have him here first. You must go to him directly with the notes, so that he may be obliged to leave the army."
"That is a small thing; if there is nothing more----"
"Yes, yes, but there is something more," said Pomuchelskopp, still whispering, as if he feared being betrayed by a listener, "there is that Habermann; and so long as that sly old watch-dog is there, we cannot get him into our power."
"Oh, how stupid you are!" and the notary laughed in his face. "Did you ever hear of a young man in pecuniary difficulties making a clean breast of it to an old friend like Habermann? I take it, the lieutenant is not different from the rest of the world. No, Habermann may stay at Pumpelhagen, for all that; but yet, if it is possible, we must get him away. He is too good a steward, and, if he manages Pumpelhagen as well as he has so far, the lieutenant can afford to keep us waiting a good while yet."
"He a good manager! He didn't manage very well for himself."
"Well, let him go! One mustn't undervalue things. But he must go."