Niels Heinrich took his felt hat, that hung on a nail, and began to stroke it nervously. “Man alive,” he said, “you make a fellow crazy, crazy.” His tone was hollow.
“Please listen,” Christian continued insistently, “—in a most marvellously built machine. Now there are important screws and less important ones; and this being was one of the most important of all. So important indeed that I am convinced that the machine is hurt forever, because it has ceased to function. No one can ever again provide a part of such delicacy and exquisite exactness, and even though a substitute be found, the machine will never be what it once was. But aside from the machine and my comparison, you have inflicted a loss on me for which there are no words. Pain, grief, sadness—these words do not reach far or deep enough. You have robbed me of something utterly precious, forever irreplaceable, and you must give me something in return. You must give me something in return! Do you hear that? That is why I am standing here; that is why I am following you. You must give me something in return. I don’t know what. But unless you do, I shall be desperate, and become a murderer myself.”
He buried his face in his hands, and burst into hoarse, wild, passionate weeping.
With quivering lips, in a small voice like a naughty child’s, Niels Heinrich stammered: “Saviour above, what can I give you in return?”
Christian wept and did not answer.
XXIX
Thereupon they went from that room together, without having exchanged another word.
The pawnbroker Grünbusch had already closed his shop. Niels Heinrich sought another whom he knew to be reliable. He left Christian in the street while he slipped into a dirty vault. He had torn one pearl from the string, just one, to serve as a sample for the present. After the old rascal who kept the shop had tested and weighed the pearl exactly, he gave Niels Heinrich fifteen hundred marks. The money was partly in bank-notes and partly in gold. He scarcely counted it. He stuffed the coins into one pocket; the notes crackled as he crushed them into another.
“Give him? What does he think I can give him?” He brooded. “Maybe he smells a rat, and suspects that I stole the pearls. Does he mean that? Does he want me to give them to him?”