He called Karl into his room. "I have often been sorry to have brought you into this confusion, but to-day I deeply feel how wrong it was. I am ashamed to tell you what has happened. Young Rothsattel has taken advantage of your father's good-heartedness to borrow from him nineteen hundred dollars!"
"Nineteen hundred dollars from my governor!" cried Karl. "Had my Goliath so much money to lend! He always pretended that he did not know how to economize."
"Part of your inheritance is given away in return for a worthless note of hand, and what makes it still more aggravating is the coolness of the thoughtless borrower. Have you, then, not heard of it from your father?"
"From him!" cried Karl; "I should think not. I am only sorry that you should be so vexed. I implore you not to make any disturbance about it. You best know how many clouds hang over this house; do not increase the anxiety of these parents on my account."
"To be silent in a case like this," replied Anton, "would be to make one's self an accomplice in an unfair transaction. You must immediately write and tell your father not to be so obliging in future; the young gentleman is capable of going to him again."
Anton's next step was to write Eugene a letter of serious remonstrance, in which he pointed out to him that the only way of giving Sturm tolerably good security would be the procuring the baron's acknowledgment of his son's debt, and begged that he would lose no time in doing this.
This letter written, Anton said to Karl, "If he does not confess to his parents, I shall state the whole affair to the baron in his presence the very next day after his arrival. Don't try to dissuade me; you are just like your father."
The consequence of this communication was, that Eugene left off writing to Anton, and that his next letter to his father contained a rather unintelligible clause: "Wohlfart," he said, "was a man to whom he certainly had obligations; only the worst of that kind of people was, that they took advantage of these to adopt a dictatorial tone that was unbearable; therefore it was best civilly to shake them off."
This opinion was quite after the baron's own heart, and he warmly applauded it. "Eugene always takes the right view of the case," said he; "and I too earnestly long for the day when I shall be able to superintend the property, and to dismiss our Mr. Wohlfart."
The baroness, who had read the letter out to her husband, merely replied, "You would miss Wohlfart very much if he were to leave you."