Emmerick did look, very briefly and with unhidden aversion, toward the candid smallish mountain of unsettled accounts with which he was already but too familiar. “Nevertheless,” said Emmerick, “it would be an abominable action, if the story were ever to get out—”
“It will not get out, my dear,” replied his wife, “for we will leave the whole matter to Jurgen, who is the soul of discretion.”
“—And I cannot afford to have any part in it,” said Emmerick, virtuously.
“You need take no part whatever,” his wife assured him, “but only your fair half of the proceeds.”
So Radegonde sent for Jurgen the pawnbroker, and asked him to appraise the jewels in Dom Manuel’s effigy, and to name his best price for them.
It was thus that Jurgen happened to come just then to Manuel’s tomb and to disturb the dreaming of Madame Niafer.
69.
Economics of Jurgen
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“YOU,” the fluttered old lady began—oddly enough, it must have seemed to Jurgen,—“you were the last of living persons to lay eyes upon him. It is very strange that you of all people should come now to end my dreaming. I take your coming, rogue, as an omen.”