"When your majesty has subdued all your enemies."
The king looked around with surprise—he had quite forgotten Gotzkowsky. "Ah! are you still there? and you prophesy me victory? Well, that will be as good to me as the Leipsic money. Go back home, and tell the Leipsigers to hurry with the money. And hark ye! when you get to Potsdam, greet the Correggio, and tell him I yearn for him as a lover does for his mistress Adieu!"
[Footnote 1: Porcelain-making was then a great secret in Germany, only known in Meissen; the process being conducted with closed doors, and the foreman bound by oath. Gotzkowsky paid ten thousand dollars down, a life income of a thousand dollars, and house and firewood free.—"Life of a Patriotic Merchant," p. 87.]
[Footnote 2: "Correspondance de Frédéric II. avec le Comte
Algarottis.">[
* * * * *
CHAPTER IV.
GRATITUDE AND RECOMPENSE.
Thus did Gotzkowsky save unfortunate Leipsic from the heavy burden which weighed her down. The prisoners were released, and the merchants gave a bond, for whose punctual and prompt payment Gotzkowsky guaranteed with his signature.
He did not do this from a selfish or vain ambition to have the praise of his name sounded, nor to increase the number of his addresses of gratitude, or written asseverations of affection. He did it from love of mankind; because he desired to fulfil the vow he had made to God and himself on the highway as a shivering, starving lad: that if he should ever become rich, he would be to every unfortunate and needy one the hand which had appeared out of the dust-cloud to his relief. He did it because, as he tells us naively and simply in his Life, "I knew from my own experience how difficult it was for a community to collect such a sum, and because the idea of profiting by such misfortune was abhorrent to me."
And now there was a brilliant banquet, and no end to the words of gratitude and tears of emotion. This banquet was given by the Leipsic merchants in honor of him who had so magnanimously taken their part, saved them three hundred thousand dollars, and guaranteed their bonds. And they devoured the delicate viands and emptied the beakers to his honor, and praised him in high-sounding speeches.