Two days before it Johann Fabula came flying into Timar's house. Yes, flying—his floating cloak represented the wings.
"Ten thousand! Twenty thousand! Forty thousand! Commission paid! The emperor! The king! Pasture! The crop!" He gasped out disconnected words, which Timar at last put together.
"All right, Johann; I know what you mean. The commission has come to settle the value of the land wanted for the new works. Your fields, bought for twenty thousand, will be sold by you for forty thousand: the surplus is your profit; that is the crop—did not I tell you?"
"Yes, sir; and they were words like those of the golden-mouthed St. John. I see very clearly that you told me the truth, and I see that I get the twenty thousand gulden for nothing. Never in my life did I earn so much money by the hardest work. My senses are going. Do let me turn a somersault!"
Timar had no objection. Johann Fabula turned not one but three somersaults all across the floor, and then three back again; and then stood straight on his legs again before Timar.
"There! now I am all right again. All that money belongs to me."
He came six times that day to pay a visit to Timar. First he brought his wife, then his younger daughter, then his married daughter, afterward his son who had left college, and the fifth time the little boy who was still at school. His wife brought Timar a splendid Komorn loaf of white bread with a brown glazed crust; the married daughter a dish of beautiful Indian-corn cakes; the unmarried one a plate of red eggs, gilt nuts, and honey-cakes decorated with colored paper like a wedding present; the big boy, who was a noted bird-catcher, brought a cage full of linnets and robins; and the school-boy declaimed a rhymed ode. The whole day they overwhelmed him with gratitude, and the sixth time they all came together late in the evening and sung in his honor a song of praise out of the hymn-book.
But what will his competitors, and especially Herr Brazovics, bring and sing to him when they learn how he has entrapped them about the purchase of the Monostor?
CHAPTER VII.
THE WEDDING-DRESS.
The wedding was to be in three days' time.