"Then Hahn is ruined," said Hummel, "irredeemably. I am not surprised at it; the fellow has always been impractical."
"Perhaps things are not so bad," said the councillor, as he left him.
Mr. Hummel remained alone with his thoughts. "Naturally." He said to himself, "It was inevitable. In everything, high-flown--houses, windows, and garden fancies--never any rest; the man is gone out like a candle."
He forgot the passers-by, and moved backwards and forwards on his main walk, looking sometimes with curiosity at the hostile house. "Out like a candle," he repeated, with the satisfaction of a tragic actor who endeavors to give the most terrific expression to the telling words of his rôle. He had vexed himself half a century about that man; before his disposition to corpulency had begun, he had despised this man's ways and business. This feeling had been his daily entertainment; it was one of his daily necessities, like his boot-jack and his green boat. Now the hour was come when fate paid off the man over the way for having injured Mr. Hummel by his presence in life. Hummel looked at the house and shrugged his shoulders; the man who had placed that deformed structure before his eyes was now in danger of being driven out of it. He looked at the temple and the muse; this toy of the poor devil would soon be torn down by some stranger. Hummel went to the sitting-room; there also he walked up and down, and told his wife of Mr. Hahn's misfortune in short sentences. He observed, out of the corners of his eyes, that Mrs. Philippine hastened, nervously, to the sofa, and frequently clasped her hands; and that Laura rushed into the next room, and could not refrain from bursting into tears; and he repeated, with dreadful satisfaction, the terrible words: "He has gone out like a candle."
He behaved in the same way at the factory; he paced slowly up and down the warehouse, looked majestically on a heap of hareskins, took one of the finest hats out of a bandbox, held it towards the window, gave it a stroke with the brush, and muttered again: "It's all up with him." To-day his book-keeper, for the first time in his life, was late at his desk: he had heard of the misfortune on his way; he related it in an excited manner to his principal, and finally maliciously repeated the unfortunate words: "It's all up with him." Hummel gave him a piercing look, and snorted so that the timid heart of the clerk sank within him.
"Do you wish also to become manager of my business like that runaway? I thank you for this proof of your confidence. I have no use for such bandit-like proceedings; I am my own manager, sir, and I object to every kind of secret dealing behind my back."
"But, Mr. Hummel, I have carried on no secret dealings."
"The devil thank you for that," roared out Hummel, in his fiercest bass. "There is no more confidence on earth: nothing is firm; the holiest relations are unscrupulously violated; one can no longer trust one's friends; now even one's enemies make off. At night you lie down to sleep quietly as a German, and in the morning you wake up as a Frenchman; and if you sigh for your German coffee, your hostess brings a dish of Parisian spinach to your bed. I should be glad to learn of you on what spot of this earth we are now settled."
"In Valley Row, Mr. Hummel."
"There the last remains of our good genius spoke out. Look through the window. What stands there?" pointing to the neighboring house.