Hard as it is to write it, I must ask you not to give up your situation in Vienna for the present. My poor, dear boy, I can do nothing for you until my affairs are arranged. Only have patience and all will soon be well, etc...."
When the hoped-for arrangement was completed it was discovered that the old Count was penniless. In his costly expedients to raise money he had begun frittering away his property and then--it seemed incredible--he became infected with the general mania for finding millions on the highway, and had entangled himself in a colossal speculation in Australian gold mines. Conte Capriani, with whom he had become acquainted in Vichy, had convinced him of the certainty of gain in the affair. Capriani's name alone was sufficient warrant for the value of the stock. The old Count was made president of the company; his name was used to inspire the public with confidence,--his noble old name which he had borne so honourably for sixty-five years! The first year the company paid enormous dividends--out of their capital. In the second year matters began to look suspicious. The Conte slowly withdrew from the scheme--he found that certain things were different from what he had supposed; he had been falsely informed.... He advised the Count, who went to Paris to consult him, to dispose of his stock slowly without exciting suspicion. But the Count would not listen to anything of the kind. He had pledged himself to the public, his easy confidence had induced hundreds of men to buy the stock, he had urged many of them to do so thinking it was for their advantage. Among them were poor people, impoverished relatives, nay even old servants, his children's former tutors who had invested all their savings in this unfortunate scheme, upon his recommendation. He was beside himself, bought up as much of the stock as he could, and went himself to Australia to investigate matters. He, who in his whole life from his school-days up had never known anything of figures beyond what enabled him to keep the reckoning at whist, now ciphered and calculated, bringing all his powers of mind to bear upon the possibilities of profit.
He found matters by no means as desperate as had been represented in Europe--the affair might have been made a success with prompt energetic management; what was needed was more capital. But the confidence of the stockholders was shaken; the Count upon his return to Europe tried in vain to issue fresh stock, he applied fruitlessly to the Conte Capriani, representing to him that as the originator of the entire speculation he was bound to help. The Conte maintained that he was powerless.
The stock fell lower and lower, fell with bewildering rapidity.
One day Fritz received a letter: "Schneeburg must be sold."
The poor fellow felt as if his sore heart had been struck with a hammer. His sad yearning for his home was turned to a burning thirst--a consuming desire. He was as homesick as a peasant, nay--as a Slav.
Men who live in cities and change their dwelling-place three or four times, never strike root anywhere, and consequently can have no conception of the homesickness that attacks a man who is separated from the soil upon which he and his ancestors for generations have been born and bred. A man thus bred has become acclimated like a plant, to this special air, this special soil, and however long the years of absence, wherever he may have lived meanwhile, he will always yearn for 'home.'
Fritz had caught a cold upon leaving Wipling street, at the same time that Siegi had been taken with the illness that ended in his death. Fritz recovered, but his health was shattered, his voice was husky, and h» had feverish nights which in spite of weariness were wakeful. For hours he would pace the wretched room where stood Siegi's empty little bed, which he had not brought himself to have removed, and would conjure up visions of Schneeburg.
Sell Schneeburg! In his pain at this fresh blow he forgot for a moment his grief for his child. Memories of 'home' thronged about him with a vividness that savoured of mental hallucination. He saw the morning sun glitter in the dewy moss that lay green on the thatched roofs of the village, he saw the very puddles before the houses wherein the swine wallowed, and a flock of fowls scratching on a muck-heap, and a group of shivering children cowering beneath the cross before the smithy.