"Then we must open a huge warehouse, where we can sell such a quantity."
"That will not be wanting. We will load the flour into small ships, which can go up to Karlstadt; thence we will transfer it in barrels to Brazil."
"To Brazil!" screamed Fabula, quite frightened. "I can't go there with it."
"I was not thinking of sending you there, Master Fabula; your department is the grinding and the transport to Trieste. I will give the agents and millers their orders to-day, and you can scold and manage in my absence just as if I were there."
"Many thanks," said Master Fabula, and shook his head violently as Herr von Levetinczy left the office. "That will be a gigantic folly," he grumbled to himself. "To begin with, the flour will be musty before it arrives; then no one will buy it; thirdly, nobody will ever see the color of money which has to come from Brazil. How could he claim it? there is no fiscal authority there, or even a vice-consul. In short, it is just another of those colossal, everlasting pieces of folly of our Herr Levetinczy, but it will turn out well, to every one's surprise, as every stupid thing does that our master undertakes. And I don't doubt that our flour-ships will come back laden with gold-dust from Brazil; but for all that it is a great folly."
Our Herr Fabula was perfectly right. Timar was of the same opinion. He ran a risk in this speculation of losing at least a hundred thousand gulden. But this idea was not of to-day. It had long been in his mind whether a Hungarian merchant might not make better profits than in grain contracts and the chartering of cargo-ships. Would it not be possible for those goods which have to struggle with foreign competition to find their own place in the great bazaar of the world's market?
The export trade in flour was an old plan of his. To prepare for its execution he had completed his mills, and built a large vessel at Trieste. But the reason of his hasty determination to begin work at once was only on Noémi's account; and his meeting with Theodor had brought this decision to a head.
This business was only a pretext; the principal thing was to put a hemisphere between himself and that man. Those who saw in what ceaseless labor Timar spent the next weeks—how he hurried from one mill to another, and from there to his ships; how he dispatched them the moment they were laden, and personally superintended the transport—all said, "What a pattern of a merchant! He is tremendously rich; he has directors, agents, captains, stewards, overseers, foremen, and yet he sees to all himself like a common contractor. He understands business." (If only they had known what depended on this business!)
Three weeks passed before the first ship laden with barrels of Hungarian flour lay ready to weigh anchor in the harbor of Trieste. The ship was called "Pannonia;" it was a beautiful three-masted galliot. Even Master Fabula was loud in its praise; for he was present at the loading of the flour. But Timar himself never saw it; he had not once come to Trieste to see it before it started. During those weeks he remained in Levetinczy or Pancsova. The whole enterprise was in Scaramelli's name; Timar had his reasons for keeping his own name out of it; and he only communicated in writing with the fully empowered firm of Scaramelli.
One day he received a letter from Theodor Krisstyan. When he opened it he was surprised to find money in it—a hundred gulden note. The contents of the letter ran thus—