"You once said to me," continued the merchant, "that you felt yourself at home in my house and firm. And you had a home, Wohlfart, in our hearts and in the business. In a moment of effervescence you gave us up, and we, with sorrow, did the same with you. Why do you return? You can not be a stranger to us, for we have been attached to you, and, personally, I am deeply indebted to you. You can no more be our friend, for you have yourself forcibly rent the ties that bound us. You reminded me, just when I least expected it, that a mere business contract alone bound you to my counting-house. What are you seeking now? Do you want a place in my office, or do you, as appears, want much more?"
"I want nothing," cried Anton, in the utmost excitement—"nothing but a reconciliation with you. I want neither a place in your office, nor any thing else. When I left the baron, I felt that my first step must be to your house, my next to seek employment elsewhere. Whatever I may have lost during the past year, I have not lost my self-respect; and had you met me as kindly as I felt toward you, I should have told you in the course of our first hour together what you now demand. I am aware that here I can not stay. I used to feel this when far away, as often as I thought of this house. Since I have entered its walls and seen your sister again, I know that I can not remain here without acting dishonorably."
The merchant went to the window, and silently looked out into the night. When he turned round again the hard expression had left his face, and he looked searchingly at Anton. "That was well spoken, Wohlfart," said he at length, "and I hope sincerely meant. I will be equally open toward you in saying that I still regret that you have left us. I knew you as an older man seldom knows a younger; I could thoroughly trust you. Now, dear Wohlfart, you are become a stranger to me; forgive me what I am about to say. An unregulated imagination allured you into circumstances which could not but be morally unhealthy. You have been the confidant of a bankrupt and a debtor, who may have retained many amiable characteristics, but who must have lost, in his dealings with unprincipled men, what we here in this firm call honor. I gladly assume that your uprightness refused to do any thing contrary to your sense of right; but, Wohlfart, I repeat to you what I have said before: any permanent dealings with the weak and wicked bring the best man into danger. Gradually and imperceptibly his standard becomes lowered, and necessity compels him to agree to measures that elsewhere he would have peremptorily rejected. I am convinced that you are still what the world calls an upright man of business, but I do not know whether you have preserved that proudly pure integrity, which, alas! many in the mercantile world treat as mere pedantry, and to have to tell you this makes your return painful to me."
Anton, white as the handkerchief he held, with trembling lips replied, "Enough, Mr. Schröter. That you should, in the first hour of meeting, say to me the most bitter thing one could possibly say to an enemy, convinces me that I did wrong to re-enter this house. Yes, you are right. I never, during my year of absence, lost the sense of the danger you speak of. I ever felt it the greatest misfortune to be unable to esteem the man by whom I was employed. But I dare make answer to you, with pride equal to your own, that the purity of the man who carefully shrinks from temptation is worth little; and that, if I have gained any thing from a year of bitterness, it is the consciousness of having been tried, and knowing that I no longer act as a boy, from instinct and habit, but from principle, as a man should. I have gained a confidence in myself that I had not before; and because I know how to respect my own character, I tell you that I perfectly understand your doubt; but that, since you have given it utterance, I look upon all ties between us as by yourself dissolved, and leave you, never to return. Farewell, Mr. Schröter!"
Anton turned to go, but the merchant hurried after him, and laid his hand on his shoulder.
"Not so fast, Wohlfart," said he, gently; "the man who saved me from the stroke of the Polish sword must not leave my house in anger."
"Do not recall the past," replied Anton; "it is useless. It is you, not I, who have mixed up injury and indignation with our meeting; you, not I, who have annihilated the power of old recollections."
"Not so, Wohlfart," said the merchant. "If by my words I have offended you more than I intended, make allowance for my gray hairs, and for a heart full of painful anxiety the past year through, and full of anxiety, too, on your account. We do not meet as we parted; and whenever friends have a mutual misgiving, let them openly express it, that they may stand and start clear. Had I valued you less, I should have kept back my thoughts, and my greeting would have been more polite. Now, however, I bid you welcome." And he held out his hand.
Anton took it, and repeated the word "Farewell."
The merchant held his hand firmly, and said, with a smile, "Not so fast; I can not let you go just yet. Remember that it is your oldest acquaintance who now entreats you to remain."