"Save, do you say?" cried Bessy, opening her eyes very wide at this word.
I scratched my head all over (I had lots of hair to scratch in those days). It was my duty as guardian to express my views with perfect candour. At last I found the requisite formula.
"Look now, my sweet ward Bessy, and you also, respected lieutenant, I have seen all sorts of wonders in my lifetime. I have seen a one-legged ballet-dancer who could turn the most difficult pirouettes; I have seen a painter without hands who painted masterly pictures with his feet; I have seen a blind actor who played Hamlet right to the very end. But what I never have seen yet is a cavalry officer without debts."
At this, the pair of them burst into a loud ha! ha! ha!
"No, no!" cried the bridegroom, "I am not such a wonder as that!"
I now begged him, since we had become so confidential, to be so good as to draw his chair close to the table and put down his beautiful helmet with the black and yellow plumes and go into figures.
"How much do your debts amount to?"
And a very pretty little amount he made of it.
The bridegroom could read from my face that I thought the amount a trifle extravagant for a lieutenant; for that amount Bessy could have got a major at least. He hastened to explain matters.
"I did not incur this large debt myself, the culprit was another lieutenant, a friend of mine, a rich and distinguished young fellow. He got me to write my name to a bill as guarantor of the amount. He was still a minor. I wrote my name, of course—what did I know about it? Suddenly, when my young friend got over head and ears in difficulties, he blew his brains out. His father refused to pay the bill, and so I inherited it from his creditors. Since then I have been paying and paying, but the debt, instead of diminishing, increases, and the terrible boa conscriptor winds itself tighter and tighter round my body."