"My presentiment was true! She will save us. Three times has she appeared to me in my dreams, and said, 'Go to the Herr Givenaught, go to the Herr Heartless, ask them to come and bid.' There, did I not tell you she would save us, the thrice blessed Virgin!"
Sad as the old man was, he was obliged to laugh.
"Thou mightest as well appeal to the rocks their castles stand upon as to the harder ones that lie in those men's breasts, my child. THEY bid on books writ in the learned tongues!—they can scarce read their own."
But Hildegarde's faith was in no wise shaken. Bright and early she was on her way up the Neckar road, as joyous as a bird.
Meantime Herr Givenaught and Herr Heartless were having an early breakfast in the former's castle—the Sparrow's Nest—and flavoring it with a quarrel; for although these twins bore a love for each other which almost amounted to worship, there was one subject upon which they could not touch without calling each other hard names—and yet it was the subject which they oftenest touched upon.
"I tell you," said Givenaught, "you will beggar yourself yet with your insane squanderings of money upon what you choose to consider poor and worthy objects. All these years I have implored you to stop this foolish custom and husband your means, but all in vain. You are always lying to me about these secret benevolences, but you never have managed to deceive me yet. Every time a poor devil has been set upon his feet I have detected your hand in it—incorrigible ass!"
"Every time you didn't set him on his feet yourself, you mean. Where I give one unfortunate a little private lift, you do the same for a dozen. The idea of YOUR swelling around the country and petting yourself with the nickname of Givenaught—intolerable humbug! Before I would be such a fraud as that, I would cut my right hand off. Your life is a continual lie. But go on, I have tried MY best to save you from beggaring yourself by your riotous charities—now for the thousandth time I wash my hands of the consequences. A maundering old fool! that's what you are."
"And you a blethering old idiot!" roared Givenaught, springing up.
"I won't stay in the presence of a man who has no more delicacy than to call me such names. Mannerless swine!"
So saying, Herr Heartless sprang up in a passion. But some lucky accident intervened, as usual, to change the subject, and the daily quarrel ended in the customary daily living reconciliation. The gray-headed old eccentrics parted, and Herr Heartless walked off to his own castle.