Mr. Meyer's spirit suddenly grew cold within him; he could not answer a word, only his mouth moved weakly up and down, like the mouth of a puppet that you pull with a string.
"What!" cried Judge Bordácsi, with a still more violent exertion of his lungs, rushing upon
his unfortunate client and fixing him with frightfully distended eyes.
In his terror the unfortunate man leaped from the seat in which he had sat down unasked, and murmured tearfully—
"I humbly beg your pardon. I came here for advice and—and protection."
"How? Do you imagine, sir, that I shall take your part?" bawled the judge, as if he were speaking to some one who was stone deaf.
"I fancied," stammered the unfortunate pater-familias, "that the old kindliness which you formerly showed to my house——"
Bordácsi did not let him finish. "Yes, your house! In those days your house was a respectable house, but now your house is a Sodom and Gomorrah which opens its doors wide to all the fools of the town. You have devoted your four girls to the bottomless pit, and you are a scandal to every pure-minded man. You are the corrupter of the youth of this city, and your name is a by-word throughout the kingdom wherever dissolute youths and outraged fathers are to be found."
Here Mr. Meyer burst into tears, and murmured something to the effect that he did not know anything about it.
"With what a handsome family did not God bless you! and, sir, you have made it the laughing-stock of the world. You have traded with the innocence, the love, and the spiritual welfare of your daughters; you have sold, you have bartered them away to the highest bidder; you have taught them that they must catch passers-by in the street with an ogle or a stare, that they must smile, laugh, and make love to men whom they see for the first time in their lives, that they must make money by lying!"