On one and the same day Fritz heard of the sale of Schneeburg and of his father's death;--he was crushed.
Capriani had a weakness for taking into his service impoverished men of rank. They worked but indifferently well, as he knew; but nevertheless he preferred to employ them. He paid them well, and treated them cruelly.
One day he offered Fritz the post of private secretary. To the astonishment, nay, to the horror, of all his friends, Fritz accepted the position.
On a cool evening in May he took possession with his wife and children of the little cottage on the borders of the park, close to the kitchen garden, and a sense of delight mingled with pain, thrilled through him, as he hurried along the paths of the dear old home that now belonged to another.
He had to warn his children not to run on the grass, not to pull the flowers, and upon his own land!--yes, his own by right--he never could appreciate that this land had ceased forever to be his.
He could not look upon Capriani except as a temporary usurper. He could not but believe in counter revolutions--what was to bring them about he could not tell.
Sometimes when he suddenly came upon old Miller, his former nurse who had found an asylum with him, he would say: "Miller, do you remember this--or that?" and upon her "yes, Count," he would smile languidly.
All the fire, all the impetuosity of his nature was extinct.
Sometimes he roused himself to feel that it was his bounden duty to do something to reinstate his son in his rights. But what?
Conte Capriani, to be sure, had begun life with a single gulden in his pocket, but that was quite a different thing. It was not for Fritz Malzin to enter the lists with the stock-jobber, who knew so well how to keep just within the letter of the law.