From that evening forth Fink treated our hero with a friendship that he showed to none of the other clerks. He often took him into his room, and even went up the long staircase to his. Anton soon discovered that his new friend was a well-known character in the town—a perfect despot among the fashionables, and the leader of all riding and hunting parties given. Accordingly, he was much in society, and often did not come home till morning. Anton could not help admiring the strength and energy of this man, who could take his place at the desk after only two or three hours' sleep without showing a trace of fatigue. Fink also departed from the rigid regularity of the house by sometimes appearing after office-hours had begun, or leaving before they ended. Of this, however, Mr. Schröter took no notice.
Thus the winter passed away, and signs of spring penetrated even here. The visitors no longer brought in snow-flakes, but left brown footmarks. The brokers began to speak of the yellow blossoms of the olive, and at length Mr. Braun came in with a rose in his button-hole.
A year was gone since Anton crossed the little lake with the fleet of swans behind him. The whole year through he had thought of that one day.
CHAPTER VIII.
Veitel Itzig still occupied the same sleeping-quarters as on the evening of his arrival. If, according to the assertions of the police, every man must have some home or other—and, according to popular opinion, our home be where our bed stands—Veitel was remarkably little at his home. Whenever he could slip away from Ehrenthal's, he would wander about the streets, and watch for such youths as were likely to buy from or sell to him. He had always a few dollars to rattle in his pocket. He never addressed the rawest of schoolboys but as a grown-up man; he was a proficient in the art of bowing, could brighten up old brass and silver as good as new, was always ready to buy old black coats, and possessed the skill of giving them a degree of gloss which insured their selling again.
With every bargain that he made for Ehrenthal he combined one for himself, and soon won a reputation that excited the envy of gray-bearded fripperers. He did not confine his activity to any one department either, but became a horse-dealer's agent, the employé of secret money-lenders—nay, a money-lender himself. Then he had the faculty of never getting tired, was all day on his feet, would run any length for a few pence, and never resented a harsh word. He allowed himself no other recreation than that of counting over his different transactions and their probable results. He lived upon next to nothing; a slice or two of bread abducted from Ehrenthal's kitchen would serve for his supper. Only once during the first year of his town life did he allow himself a glass of thin small beer, and that after a very profitable bargain.
He was always remarkably neat in his attire, considering it essential that a man of business should bear the aspect of a gentleman. In short, at the end of twelve months his six ducats had increased thirty fold.
He soon became indispensable in Mr. Ehrenthal's household. Nothing escaped him. He never forgot a face, and was as familiar with the daily state of the funds as any broker on 'Change. He still occupied the post of errand-boy, blacked Bernhard's boots, and dined in the kitchen; but it was plain that a stool in the office, which Ehrenthal kept for form's sake, would ultimately be his. This was the goal of his ambition—the paradise of his hopes. He soon saw that he only wanted three things to attain to it—a more grammatical knowledge of German, finer caligraphy, and an initiation into the mysteries of book-keeping, of which he as yet knew nothing.
Meanwhile, he had become a distinguished man in his caravanserai, one whom even Löbel Pinkus himself treated with respect. Veitel owed this to his own sharp-wittedness. Ever since his first arrival, the hollow sound of the wooden partition had a good deal excited him, and he had often vainly sought to explore the mystery. At last, one Saturday evening, he pretended to be ill, and remained at home, when his host and the rest of the household had gone to the synagogue.