“How well that sounds!” he said, throwing the gold pieces on the table, and constantly adding new ones to them. “There is no music of the spheres to be compared with this sound, and no view is more charming than the aspect of this pile of gold. How many tender love-glances, how many sumptuous dinners, how many protestations of friendship and love-pledges, how many festivals and pleasures do not flash forth from those gold pieces, as though they were an enchanted mine! As a good general, I will count my troops, and thus enable myself to draw up the plans of my battles.”
A long pause ensued. Nothing was heard but the music of the gold pieces, which the traveller arranged in long rows on the marble table, and the figures which he muttered, while his countenance grew every moment more radiant.
“Five hundred guineas!” he exclaimed joyfully; “that sum is equivalent to three thousand three hundred and thirty-three dollars in Prussian money; there are, besides, two thousand-pound notes in my wallet, amounting to over thirteen thousand dollars, which, together with my guineas, will amount to over sixteen thousand dollars cash. Oh, now I am a rich man! I no longer need deny to myself any wish, any enjoyment. I can enjoy life, and I WILL enjoy it. As a stream of enjoyment and delight my days shall roll along, and to enjoyment glory shall be added, and throughout all Germany my voice shall resound; in all cabinets it shall reecho, and to the destinies of nations it shall point out their channel and direction. For great things I am called, and great things will I accomplish. I will not allow myself to be used by these lords of the earth as a journeyman, to whom the masters assign work for scanty pay. Their equal and peer, I will stand by their side, and they shall recognize it as a favor which they cannot weigh up with gold, if I take the word for them and their interests, and win battles for them with my pen.”
There was a gentle knock at the door, and quickly he threw his silken handkerchief over the gold pieces and papers, and closed the cover of his casket before he gave permission to enter.
It was only a few waiters, who carried a well-spread table, in the midst of which a splendid pheasant stretched its brownish, shining limbs, and filled the whole room with the odor of the truffles with which it was stuffed. By its side shone, in crystal bottles, the most precious Rhine wine, looking like liquid gold, and a silent, still undisclosed pie gave a presentiment of a piquant enjoyment.
The traveller sipped the several odors with smiling comfort, and took his place at the table with the full confidence that he would be able to fill the next half hour of his life with enjoyment and to advantage.
In this confidence he was not disappointed, and when he finally rose from the table, on which nothing but bones had remained of the pheasant, and nothing but the bare crust of the pie, his countenance beamed with satisfaction and delight.
The waiters made haste to remove the table, and the head waiter made his appearance with the large hotel register, in which he asked the traveller to enter his name.
He was ready for it, and already took the pen to write his name, when suddenly he uttered a cry of surprise, and excitedly pointed with his finger to the last written line of the book.
“Is this gentleman still in your hotel, or has he already left?” he asked, hastily.