This time he did not draw rein. He dug his spurs into his mare and galloped off at headlong speed. He thought with a shudder of the moment, which must inevitably come, when they could not avoid meeting. Should he greet her silently, or would he pass her with averted eyes? He did not know. That they would one day come face to face was certain, but he prayed that the day might be far off. The most likely place to meet in would have been Münsterberg, where he hardly ever went. He avoided the town, because he had made no formal calls on the neighbours since his return, and he was afraid of their cold looks.
Yet it was imperative that, with the harvest progressing, the right opportunity for selling should not be missed. So in the middle of August he paid the "Jew" a visit. "The Jew"--as the landowners called him for short--was an influential merchant, Jacobi by name, who was the medium by which the produce of the estates round Münsterberg was brought into the markets of the world. He gave and lent wherever credit was possible, and many a proud knight's inheritance belonged by rights to his pocket.
He never misused his power, and a single case in which he had played the shark was unknown. "To give is the best policy," he used to say, and, acting on this precept, he enjoyed unbounded confidence, and became richer year by year.
He was sitting at the oak desk in his counting-house in the same corner, and looking the same, with his grey mutton-chop whiskers, and glasses on the flattened tip of his nose, as he had done five years ago when Leo had said good-bye to him.
"Ah, so it is you, Herr Baron," he said, getting up, and he took off his pince-nez. He addressed all nobly born landed proprietors with whom he did business as "Herr Baron," and all the bourgeoise as "Herr Lieutenant." An almost paternal smile flitted over his yellow, haggard, Hebrew countenance as he looked up at Leo with his red-rimmed eyes, which had a clever and penetrating twinkle in them.
"Have you had an enjoyable tour, Herr Baron?" he continued, and opened the little door in the partition, which was an invitation to Leo to enter his inner sanctum. "Now, please be seated, Herr Baron. I was half afraid that the Herr Baron was never to sit on this chair again. But the crops are good, Herr Baron. Good crops, and one could see certain signs of smartening up, which told of the Herr Baron being at home once more. Not sold the grain yet? Next week prices will rise, and the Herr Baron should let it wait till prices rise. For this year, I will make nothing out of the Herr Baron."
"You are a good fellow, Jacobi," said Leo, shaking the old Jew's hand. He was conscious that here was a person that knew better than himself how things stood with him. And then, taking heart, he asked--
"What do you think, Jacobi? Shall I be able to hold on?"
"If you don't mind my saying it, Herr Baron," replied the old man, "when a man is what the Herr Baron is, such a question is ridiculous. A man like the Herr Baron has only to say, 'I'll do this or that,' and he can compass what he likes. And in addition, when he has a friend like the Herr Baron of Uhlenfelde, who is the wealthiest man in the district, well, then, he can hold on to the day of judgment."
Leo felt the blood mount to his temples. It was taken for granted, then, by those who knew the circumstances, that he had been living on his friend. And the old Jew went on--