"There certainly would be a fresh impetus given to culture,--a freer circulation of capital," began Cibulka.
"Listen to me a moment," broke in the doctor. "Circulation of capital? A financier's capital circulates inside his pockets, not outside of them except on certain occasions on 'Change. The art of spending money does not go hand-in-hand with the art of making it,--few things in this world delight me more than the spectacle of a millionaire who, having ostentatiously retired from business, contemplates his money-bags in positive despair, not knowing what to do with them and bored to death because the only occupation in which he takes any delight, money-getting, is debarred him by his position."
"No one can say of Conte Capriani that he does not know how to spend his money," the red-headed 'Daily News' affirmed, "everything is being arranged in the most expensive style, the rooms hung with silk shot with silver, the carpets as thick as your fist, and the paintings and artistic objects,--why they are coming by car-loads. I am intimate with the castellan, and he shows me everything; the outlay is princely."
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "The extravagance of a financier is always for show, it is never a natural expenditure. There's no free swing to it, and I am not at all impressed by your Conte; one day he may take it into his head to paper his room with thousand-gulden bank-notes, and the next he will haggle like the veriest skinflint; just ask the Malzin servants; he discharged them at a moment's notice without a penny."
"They were a worthless old lot," Eugène Alexander rejoined, "and besides it was Count Malzin's duty to provide for his people."
"Poor Count Malzin!" exclaimed the doctor, "he pleaded for his servants, as I know positively; but provide for them--how could he provide for them when he could not provide for his own son! When I think of our poor Count Fritz! A handsomer, sweeter-tempered, kindlier gentleman never lived in the world! And when I reflect that Schneeburg is now in the hands of strangers, that Count Fritz cannot live there....!"
"Oh, I beg your pardon," the red-head insisted, wriggling on his chair like an eel, "he is going to live there, in the little Swiss cottage in the park where the young people used to be with their tutor and drawing-master in the hunting season, away from the bustle in the castle."
"Frightful!" murmured the doctor. "This whole Schneeburg business is too--too sad. The old bailiff is ill of typhus fever brought on by sheer grief and anxiety, and his whole family would go to destruction were it not for the generous support of the Countess Lodrin."
"Don't tell us of the generosity of the Countess Lodrin," sneered Cibulka, or of the generosity of any of the Lodrins. "You need only look at their estates; the peasants are huddled there in pens like swine."
The stranger, who had until now remained motionless in his dim corner, apparently paying no heed to the talk, here turned his head to listen.