When he was picked up, he was unconscious. For weeks he lay senseless, with a severe nervous fever. His father came to Vienna to care for him. After about eight weeks the physicians declared that for the present there was no danger--he could be transported to Traunberg, as was the urgent desire of his father.
At that time Felix was still so weak that he had to be carried; he slept almost continuously, spoke indistinctly, and had forgotten the immediate past.
Ephraim Staub hated Felix because of the manner in which, without removing his cap, with one finger on the visor, he would enter Ephraim's house, yawning, and say, "You, I want money!" and because of the manner in which he carelessly crumpled the bank-notes--which Ephraim never handled except reverently--and thrust them in his pockets, and because of the cut of the whip with which Felix had answered his perfidious proposition the first time.
He discounted the note. The old Baron's lawyer learned that a note with his name upon it was in circulation, and inquired by letter whether the Baron wished it redeemed for family considerations.
The Baron knew nothing of Juanita. Naturally, Felix had never written him of his relations with her, and a stranger would never have ventured to inform the violent old Lanzberg of anything discreditable to his son. Felix had of late asked his father for no great sums of money, and the father knew him to be always scrupulously honorable.
How could he look upon the scarcely veiled insinuation of the advocate as other than an insult? Enraged at the suspicion cast upon his son, he did not even take the trouble to think the matter over, but wrote at once, in his first indignation, a brusque letter to his advocate, in which he declared that he knew nothing of the matter--it could take its course. It did not even occur to him to excite the invalid Felix with this horrid story--he told him nothing of it.
Slowly Felix recovered his health, but his happy temper did not return, he remained always gloomy and monosyllabic--not rude but deeply sad. His father often gazed anxiously into his eyes, which then every time looked away from him, and he stroked his cheeks compassionately, which then always flushed beneath his touch. And once he took the convalescent's thin hand in his, and said, "Does anything worry you, my poor boy? It is surely some heart trouble which often comes to one of your age," and as Felix, who at the beginning of this speech had paled, now was silent, flushing more and more deeply, the Baron added, clapping him good-naturedly on the shoulder, "You need not worry about your secret. I will ask you no more about it if it annoys you; I only thought it might relieve you to unburden your heart."
Felix buried his face in his hands, and burst into tears. To this day he can hear in his ears the caressing consolation of his father, the soft, monotonous voice with which he murmured again and again, "Do not excite yourself, child; poor fellow, poor fellow!"
That Felix's melancholy could have anything in connection with the lawyer's communication, did not occur to the Baron.
The next day Felix confessed to his father. It was after breakfast; they sat alone, opposite each other, at a little round table.