"That I was right and sensible in providing against the future; for he knows of your difficulties."
"Stuff and nonsense! He can't last for ever, and then where is the need for your troubling yourself about my difficulties or studying for a profession?"
"You are mistaken: he will not leave us a penny; neither do I care for his money. All I wanted of him I have got, and there is an end of it."
"Then don't say that I am an unnatural or unfeeling father. I'll give you thir—no, twenty florins!" But he never said whether these twenty florins were meant to be given monthly, or only once for good and all. However, as I did not ask for them, I never got a penny, and soon learned to do without my father's money by giving lessons, coaching less diligent and capable fellow-students, and contriving to live upon almost nothing.
But I wanted to speak to you of my Uncle Diogenes, as he was generally called, although his Christian name was Dion. He was my father's brother, but by no means like him. Rather an odd sort of a fellow, and as keen as a razor. He went even beyond the old classical types; he was more cynical and more of a philosopher than they. Not the oldest inhabitant remembered the time when the cloak that covered his stooping shoulders on the street was new. Daily he went to church, never into church. There, on the sacred threshold, among the beggars and outcasts, he paid his homage to his Maker, and then returned to his desolate home. There was a large public well in the village. To this he himself went with a large pitcher for his drinking-water. This water he poured into a large boiler, boiled and strained it, and then drank it, because then he was sure of the bacilli. He kept no attendant or housekeeper, for fear of being murdered; and he was so much in dread of poison that he never ate cooked food or anything made of flour, not even bread. He lived on baked potatoes, nuts, honey, raw fresh eggs, and all sorts of fruits and vegetables which might be eaten raw, and which grew in his own orchard and garden. Out of his large herd of cattle he selected a cow for his stall. This cow he attended to with his own hand, carefully examining each stalk or haulm she ate, in order that no poisonous weed might be consumed by her, and thus poison the milk. Each morning and evening his own hands milked her, and he churned all his butter, and made all his cheese himself. He never ate anything but what I have mentioned, and he never went out without two loaded double-barrelled pistols in his boots. He never read any other newspaper than the Slavonic Narodne Novine, which he got from the village parson; but, before reading it, he held it over a charcoal fire, on which he had thrown some juniper berries, to kill possible malarial germs. His land was all farmed out, and the rent had to be paid to him in gold or silver, which he locked away in a great old iron chest. Occasionally, through auctioning off some poor debtor's effects, he came into possession of bank bills, 50, 100, 1,000 florin notes. These he rolled up separately, and pushed one by one into a hollow reed. Of those stuffed reeds he made bundles, which he stowed away in a corner of his room. He never lent a penny of his money; he never put a penny into any savings-bank, for he called them all humbugs; and he never gave a penny for charity or friendship. Such was my Uncle Diogenes or Dion; and now I will tell you what he had given me. You remember I told my father that my Uncle Dion had furnished me with the means of paying my preliminary expenses. That was true, but I had earned the money, little as it was, in ciphering, writing, and riding about to my uncle's tenants at a time when he was ill with a cold, and would have been obliged to pay a stranger for the work which I did for him. I said it was little he gave me. I have not told the whole truth, for he gave me his advice, and put his own example before me, and that made a small sum go a long way.
Well, to make a long story short, let me tell you that I was an established physician when my father died, and immediately after his death his estate was seized in bankruptcy proceedings.
I did not care. I was satisfied with my position in Vienna, and as I had no mother nor sisters or dependent younger brothers, and had long ago relinquished the hope of coming into possession of our family estate, I tried to forget my former home and live only for my profession.
After my efforts had made me a name as a clever and skilful specialist, I was occasionally called to visit some wealthy patient in Hungary, and then the papers gave accounts of the diagnosis I had given, and mentioned the generous fee I had received. I did not approve of this sort of advertisement, but I found that it could not be checked, and so grew indifferent to it. One day I received a registered letter containing money. It was stamped all over with the cheapest kind of sealing-wax, and, on opening the envelope, I was surprised to find a letter from my Uncle Dion, with an old, crumpled hundred-florin bill, of a kind that had long gone out of circulation, and which showed every mark of having issued from one of the hollow reeds. The letter ran about as follows:—
"MY DEAR NEPHEW, DR. DUMANY,—Knowing well that physicians will not move a step without being well paid, I send you the enclosed bank-bill, and pray you to take the trouble to visit me for a few days here in my house.
"DUMANY DION."
I took the bank-bill, put it into a fresh envelope, and wrote the following lines:—