"Because," replied Herzog, calmly, "the only news I had was not good news."
"At least I should have known it."
"Would the result of the operation have been different?"
"You have led me like a child in this affair," Serge continued, becoming animated. "I did not know where I was going. You made me promises, how have you kept them?"
"As I was able," quietly answered Herzog. "Play has its chances. One seeks Austerlitz and finds Waterloo."
"But," cried the Prince, angrily, "the shares which you sold ought not to have gone out of your hands."
"You believed that?" retorted the financier, ironically. "If they ought not to have gone out of my hands it was hardly worth while putting them into them."
"In short," said Panine, eager to find some responsible party on whom he could pour out all the bitterness of his misfortune, "you took a mean advantage of me."
"Good! I expected you to say that!" returned Herzog, smiling. "If the business had succeeded, you would have accepted your share of the spoil without any scruples, and would have felt ready to crown me. It has failed; you are trying to get out of the responsibility, and are on the point of treating me as if I were a swindler. Still, the affair would not have been more honest in the first instance than in the second, but success embellishes everything."
Serge looked hard at Herzog.