When they were well on the road, he cunningly brought up the subject. "You, Michael, out with the truth now—how did you contrive to profit so much by the commissariat contract? I have tried it myself, and I know what can be got out of it. I also have mixed feldspar, bran, and millers' dust with the dough; I understand how to get acorns ground instead of corn, and know the difference between rye and wheat flour; but to make such a coup as you have done has never happened to me. Confess now! What trick were you up to? You are already wealthy—you have found a gold mine."
Timar put on the look of a tipsy man who required six horse-power to raise his eyelids, and began with drunken fluency and a stammering tongue to explain. "Well, you must know, sir—"
"No sir to me! How often have I told you! Call me by my name."
"Well, then, you must know, Nazi, it was no trick. You remember that I bought in the soaked grain-cargo of the 'St. Barbara' at a nominal price, a gulden a measure. I did not get rid of it, as people fancied, to the millers and farmers, with a profit of a couple of groschen; but I had it baked into bread at once, which did not cost me half so much as if I had bought the very cheapest flour."
"Oh, you prodigy! I ought to go to school to you in my old age. You arch-rascal! Was the ration-bread very bad, then?"
Michael laughed so that the wine almost ran out of his mouth again. "I should just think it was bad—bad beyond words."
"And were no complaints laid before the commissariat committee?"
"What use would that have been, when I had the whole lot of them in my pocket?"
"But the commandant of the fortress, the inspector of ordnance?"
"I squared them too," cried Michael, proudly, striking his pocket, in which so many great men had found room. The eyes of Herr Brazovics shone in a curious way, as if they were even redder than usual. "And did you give the bread made of soaked wheat to the soldiers to eat?"