"You won't dare to come to my place. From now on, any kinds of visits on your part are not welcome any more!"
"This goes without saying. But I predict: The time will come, when you'll come to me in person and beg me to visit you. But for now, farewell!"
"Me, begging you? Never, never, no way!"
He left. But I wrote three lines and sent them to his daughter. They read: "Choose between me and your grandfather; if you choose him, stay; if you choose me, come to Dresden right away!" Then I left town. She chose me; she came. She left the man who had brought her up and whose only treasure she was. This flattered me. I felt as if I had been the winner. I put her up with a minister's widow, who had two grown-up, highly educated daughters. By the contact with these ladies, she was enabled to easily obtain everything she did not possess yet. This gave her the opportunity, to mange a household by herself. I also worked with much, even very much success. I became well known and earned very decent royalties. I had started my "traveller's tales", which were also published right away in Paris and Tours, translated into French. The word of this got around; this even impressed the "old Pollmer". He was told by experts, that I was about to become a prosperous, perhaps even a rich man. So he wrote to his daughter. He forgave her for leaving him for my sake, and asked her to come to Hohenstein, to visit him, and to bring me along. She fulfilled his wish, and I accompanied her. But I did not come to see him, but rather went to Ernstthal to my parents. He sent for me; but I answered, I knew very well what I had predicted to him. If he wanted to have me at his place, he would have to come in person, to invite me. And he came!
Again, I felt as if I had been the winner. How foolish was I! It was not me who had won here, but only the calculated thought that I was likely to obtain a fortune, and for me, there even was the danger that it was not just the grandfather who was thus calculating. Aside from this, he asked her to stay with him in Hohenstein, until we would get married. I had no objections and gave up my lodgings in Dresden, to live with my parents in Ernstthal. This was a time of rather strange internal and external developments for me. I wrote and travelled. Returning from one of these travels, I was told, as soon as I had stepped off the train, that the night before the "old Pollmer" had died; he had suffered a stroke. I rushed to his apartment. I had been told too much. He was not dead; he was still alive, but he could neither speak nor move. His grandchild sat in the next room, rather materially busy. She had searched for his money and found it. It was not much; I believe it was less than two hundred marks. I pulled her away from this, over to the sick man. He recognised me and wanted to talk, but only achieved an inarticulate babble. His eyes expressed a terrible fear. Then, the physician who treated him came. He had already examined him the first thing early in the morning, did it now again, and informed us that all hope was in vain. After he had left, the dying man's daughter fell on her knees before me and begged me that I should by no means leave her. I promised this to her and have kept my word. I have even done more than this. I fulfilled her wish to stay in Hohenstein. We rented one floor at the upper market square and could have lived there in infinite happiness, if such happiness had been in our destiny.
At this time, I had already been writing for Pustet in Regensburg for several years, who published my "traveller's tales" in his magazine "Deutscher Hausschatz". Pustet is a Catholic publisher, and the "Deutscher Hausschatz" is a Catholic family magazine. But this religious affiliation was most irrelevant to me. The reason why I have remained faithful to this highly decent company was not religion, but merely business. This was because, as early as after my second short story, Councillor of Commerce [a] Pustet had his editor Vinzenz Müller inform me that he would agree to purchase all of my manuscripts; he wanted me to sent them to no other publishing company. And he promised to pay instantly. In case of longer manuscripts, which I was to send him one installment after another, he would very much like to pay for every part individually; as much money as there are pages! Probably, there will not be too many authors who are made such an offer. I happily agreed. For about twenty years, whenever I mailed a manuscript, the royalties arrived precisely two days later. I do not remember a single time, when it would have come later. And never, there has been even the slightest disagreement concerning the royalties among us. I never demanded more than what we had agreed upon, and when Pustet suddenly doubled it, it was his own, free decision, without me ever having stated any wish in this respect. An author will remain faithful to such a publisher, even without asking them for his faith or religious affiliations.
[a] Kommerzienrat: a title, not connected with any public office, which was awarded to businessmen in recognition of their work by the German government up until 1919.
Venanz Müller (1831-1906?), not Vinzenz.
But even more valuable to me than this punctuality was the fact that all of my manuscripts were ordered in advance and would surely be accepted and printed. This enabled me to, now finally, carry out my plans concerning my "traveller's tales". Now, I could be sure to have the necessary space in a magazine for a long time to come at my disposal. Who would later publish these tales in the form of books, was a question which might just as well remain unanswered for the time being. There are hostile people who have said that I had only sought contact with this Catholic publisher for the sake of money. This is such an unconscientious and reprehensible lie that I cannot find the words to answer it. I have done the very opposite of what I am here accused of. I have made sacrifices for the "Deutscher Hausschatz" and its publisher, the extent of which the Pustet family did not even suspect. Before me, I have a letter which Professor Josef Kürschner, the well known, famous publicist, I used to be a very close friend of, has written to me on October the 3th, 1886. He was writing about the magazine "Vom Fels zum Meere" <From the Mountains to the Sea>, which was published by Spemann in Stuttgart and for which I used to work. The letter reads as follows: