The moon was already half hidden in the Danube; only the tip of one horn rose from the water like a light-house; its reflection in the waves reached to the ship's bow; and every ray and every wave spoke to Timar. And they all said, "You have fortune in your hand; hold it fast—you risk nothing. The only one who knew of the treasure lies below the Danube."
Timar heard what was whispered to him, and also the secret voice in his own breast, and cold drops stood on his brow. The moon's fiery tip vanished beneath the surface of the water, and cried to him with its last ray, "You are rich—you are a made man!"
But when it was dark, the inward voice whispered in the silent night, "You are a thief!"
An hour afterward a four-horse post-chaise was rushing along the Szönyer road at a gallop, and as the tower clock of St. Andrew's Church in Komorn struck eleven, the carriage stood at the door in the Anglia under the double eagle. Timar sprung quickly out and hurried in. He was expected.
CHAPTER III.
THE GOLD MINE.
After the concentration of troops in Komorn, Timar had suddenly become a wealthy man. He had bought a house in the Servian Street, the "City" of the Komorn merchants. No one was surprised. The phrase once uttered by the Emperor Francis I. to a contractor who had remained poor, was, "The ox stood at the manger, why did he not eat?" These golden words have, I fancy, been written by every contractor in his memorandum-book.
How much Timar made by his bread contract it is impossible to say; but that he has suddenly become a great personage it is easy to see. He is always on the spot when there is a large undertaking on hand, and has money in abundance. This is not surprising to merchants or speculators; the first stage is the difficult one. If once the first hundred thousand gulden are made, the rest follows of itself—he has credit.
On one point Herr Brazovics had no doubt whatever. He guessed rightly that Timar had offered the officials a larger commission than he himself usually did, and that he had thus obtained the profitable bread contract by which Brazovics usually enriched himself. But that he should have made so large a profit out of it—on that point he shook his head incredulously. Since Timar had risen in the world, and become his own master, Brazovics cultivated the friendship of his former supercargo, and invited him to his evening receptions, which Timar accepted willingly enough. He met Timéa there very often, who had already learned a little colloquial Hungarian.
Timar was now welcome even to Sophie, who once half whispered and half screamed to Athalie that it would do no harm if she was rather more friendly to him, for he was now a rich man, a far from despicable parti, worth more than three officers put together, who have nothing but their smart uniform and their debts. To which Fraülein Athalie replied, "It does not follow that I should take my father's servant for a husband." Frau Sophie could finish the sentence for herself—"Because my papa married his maid-servant"—in which lay a well-earned reproach to Frau Sophie. How could she have dared to intrude herself in the capacity of mother upon such a grand young lady!
Toward the end of supper one evening, as the two sat alone at table, Herr Brazovics began to incite Timar to drink, by repeatedly taking wine with him. His own head was pretty strong from constant practice, but this poor devil could never have been used to the bottle.