“Give me the other, Sarah.”
She smiled as she handed it to him, and then the old man did a magnificently independent thing. He slowly placed the two checks together, tore them into bits and handed the fragments back to the madame.
“No, no, Sarah; no money. Just your gratitude; that is all I ever wanted.”
Then she was at his side again, kissing his tears away and sobbing herself. It was a very pathetic scene and one not easily forgotten by those who witnessed it.
She said that she would “fix him yet” in that peculiar way of hers, which always means that she intends to have her own will.
Some months later I was in San Francisco and met old Levi waddling along the streets with his furs. He stopped me and said he wanted my advice.
“I have just got a letter from Sarah,” he said, “and I don’t know what the devil to do about it.”
He translated the letter as he read it, and it went something like this, as near as I can recall it:
“You tore up the last check I gave you, which was very mean of you. I was very angry at the way you treated my checks. No one else ever did such a thing to me but you, and you make me angry every time I think of you and your treatment of me. You humiliate me before strangers. They must have thought that my checks were worthless, or you must have thought so.
“I now enclose another and larger one. It is for twenty-five hundred dollars of your American money and if that is not big enough send it back and I will make it larger, but some check of some denomination you must accept, and if I gave you all the money I ever earned it would not repay you for the time years ago in Paris you saved me from want. I shall expect you to come to Paris at once and be my guest. Answer yes by cable and make us all happy. If you do not do this you must never call on me again, as I shall refuse to receive you. Affectionately,