Debit and Credit / Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag

by Gustav Freytag

Anton interrupted him. "Does he not deserve every allowance to be made for him? He was brought up to exact much; he has not learned, as we have, to make his way by his own labor."

The merchant laid his hand on the young man's shoulder. "The very reason. Believe me, a large number of these landed gentry, who pay the penalty of their old family memories, are beyond help. I am the last to deny that many worthy and admirable men belong to this class. Indeed, wherever remarkable talent or nobility of character shoots up among them, no doubt their position offers peculiar scope for its development, but for average men it is not a favorable one. He who considers it his hereditary privilege to enjoy life, and who assumes a distinguished position in virtue of his family, will very often fail to put forth his whole strength in order to deserve that position. Accordingly, numbers of our oldest families are declining, and their fall will be no loss to the state. Their family associations make them haughty without any right to be so—limit their perceptions and confuse their judgment."

"Even if all this be true," cried Anton, "it does not absolve us from helping individuals of the class who have excited our sympathy."

"No," said the principal, "if it be excited. But it does not glow so rapidly in advancing years as in youth. The baron has endeavored to isolate his property from the current of circumstances, in order to leave it forever to his family. Forever! You, as a merchant, know how to estimate the attempt. True, every rational man must allow it to be desirable that the culture of the same soil should be handed down from father to son. We all prize what our forefathers have possessed before us, and Sabine would unlock every room in this house with pride, because her great-great-grandmother turned the same keys before her. It is therefore natural that the landed proprietor should desire to preserve those familiar scenes, which are the source of his own prosperity, to those nearest and dearest to him. But there must be means to this end, and these means are the making his own existence available for the maintenance and increase of his patrimony. Where energy dies in families or individuals, then it is well that their means die too, that their money should circulate through other hands, and their plowshare pass to those who can guide it better. A family that has become effete through luxury ought to sink down into common life, to make room for the uprising of fresh energies and faculties. Every one who seeks, at the cost of free activity for others, to preserve permanent possessions and privileges for himself or his family, I must look upon as an enemy to the healthy development of our social state. And if such a man ruin himself in his endeavors, I should feel no malicious pleasure in his downfall, but I should say that he is rightly served, because he has sinned against a fundamental law of our social being; consequently, I should consider it doubly wrong to support this man, because I could but fear that I should thus be supporting an unsound condition of the body politic."

Anton looked down mournfully. He had expected sympathy and warm concurrence, and he met with disaffection and coldness that he despaired of conquering. "I can not gainsay you," he at length replied; "but in this case I can not feel as you do. I have been witness to the unspeakable distress in the baron's family, and my whole soul is full of sadness and sympathy, and of the wish to do something for those who have opened their heart to me. After what you have said, I dare no longer ask you to trouble yourself with their affairs, but I have promised the baroness to assist her as far as my small powers permit, and your kindness allows. I implore you to grant me permission to do this. I shall endeavor to be regular in my attendance at the office, but if during the next few weeks I am occasionally absent, I must ask you to excuse me."

Once more the merchant walked up and down the room, and then, looking at Anton's excited face, with deep seriousness and something of regret, he replied, "Remember, Wohlfart, that every occupation which excites the mind soon obtains a hold over a man, which may retard as well as advance his success in life. It is this which makes it difficult to me to agree to your wishes."

"I know it," said Anton, in a low voice; "but I have now no choice left."

"Well, then, do what you must," said the merchant, gloomily; "I will lay no hinderance in your way; and I hope that after a few weeks you will be able to consider the whole circumstances more calmly." Anton left the room, and the merchant stood looking long with frowning brow at the place his clerk had occupied.

Nor was Anton in a more congenial mood. "So cold, so inexorable!" exclaimed he, as he reached his own room. He began to suspect that his principal was more selfish and less kindly than he had hitherto supposed. Many an expression of Fink's recurred to his mind, as well as that evening when young Rothsattel, in his boyish conceit, had spoken impertinently to the merchant. "Is it possible," thought he, "that that rude speech should be unforgotten?" And his chief's keen, deep-furrowed face lost inexpressibly by contrast with the fair forms of the noble ladies. "I am not wrong," he cried to himself; "let him say what he will, my views are more just than his, and henceforth my destiny shall be to choose for myself the way in which I shall walk." He sat long in the darkness, and his thoughts were gloomy as it; then he went to the window to look down into the dark court below. A great white blossom rose before him like a phantom. Striking a light, he saw that it was the beautiful Calla out of Sabine's room. It hung down mournfully on its broken stem. Sabine had had it placed there. This little circumstance struck him as a mournful omen.

Meanwhile Sabine, taper in hand, entered her brother's room. "Good-night, Traugott," nodded she. "Wohlfart has been with you this evening; how long he staid!"