"Yes, to be sure; your dear Theodor—your dear adopted son, Theodor Krisstyan! How good of you to recognize me!"
"What do you want?"
"First, I want to have that gun in my own hands, lest it should remind you of the words with which we parted last time—'If I ever appear before you again, shoot me down.' Since then I have changed my mind." So saying he seized Timar's gun, which leaned against the wall, threw himself into a chair by the fire, and laid the gun across his knee. "There, now we can talk quietly. I have come a long way, and I am dreadfully tired. My equipage left me in the lurch, and I had to travel part of the way on foot."
"What do you want here?" said Timar.
"First, a respectable suit, for what I am wearing bears signs of the severity of the weather." Timar went to the closet, took out his pelisse trimmed with astrakhan, and the rest of the suit, laid them on the ground between himself and Krisstyan, and pointed to them in silence. The vagrant held the gun in one hand, keeping his finger on the trigger, lifted the clothes one by one with the other, and looked them over with the air of a connoisseur.
"Very good—but there is something wanting to this coat. What do you think it is? Why, of course, the purse."
Timar took his pocket-book from a drawer, and threw it over. The vagabond caught it with one hand, opened it with the help of his teeth, and counted the notes inside.
"We are getting on," he said, placing the pocket-book in the pocket of the pelisse. "Might I ask for some linen? I have worn mine for a week, and I fear it is hardly fit for company." Timar handed him a shirt out of the wardrobe. "Now, I have got far enough to proceed to the toilet. But first I have a few explanations to make in order to explain one or two things to his honor the privy councilor. But why the devil should we bother with titles! We are old friends, and can talk openly."
Timar sat down speechless by the table.
"So then, my dear fellow," said the fugitive, "you will remember that you sent me some years ago to Brazil. How affected I was! I adopted you as a father, and swore to be an honest man. But you did not send me over there to make an honest man of me, but in order that I might not stand in your way in this hemisphere. You calculated that a worthless youth, without a good fiber in him, is sure to come to grief in that part of the world. He either turns thief, or gets drowned, or somebody shoots him—anyway, he would be got rid of. But you intrusted me with a large sum of money. What was that to you? Only a stalking-horse. You reckoned on my robbing you, so that you might arrest and imprison me; and so it turned out. Once or twice I nearly did you the favor of dying of some native plague, but unluckily for you I pulled through. And then I devoted my whole energy to business; I robbed you of ten million reis. Ha! ha! Spanish thieves reckon in half-kreutzers, so that the sum may sound larger—it is not more than a hundred thousand gulden. If only you knew what lovely necks the women there have, you would not think it too much; and they will only wear real pearls. But your stupid agent, the Spaniard, looked at it from a different point of view; he had me arrested and tried, and the rascal of a judge sentenced me—just for a foolish boyish trick—only think, to fifteen years at the galleys! Now, just say, was it not barbarous?"