"Then we can keep a carriage, and I shall drive out shopping, with footmen to attend me, and Gretchen shall have a French bonne, and shall be always dressed in white and sky-blue. We will live in the capital, and you, Leuthold, need never do another day's work,--you can amuse yourself in any way that pleases you."
And the wife tossed her head proudly, as though already lolling upon the soft cushions of her carriage.
"Do you suppose I could ever be a robber of time?" he asked her with a sharp glance. "No, most certainly not. If I had made the ten commandments, the seventh should have been, 'Thou shalt not steal a day from the Lord.' He who steals a day seems to me the most contemptible of all thieves."
Ills wife laughed and displayed a double row of fine white teeth, whose strength she was just proving by cracking hazel-nuts.
"Do you suppose," continued Leuthold, "that I should ever be content with the reputation of a merely wealthy man? No; I long for other honours. As soon as the means are in my power, I will resume my old scientific labours, and will soon distance the miserable drudges who daily lecture in our schools. I will have such a chemical and physiological laboratory as few universities can boast. Ah! when I am once free from all the hated servitude, the miserable toil day after day, in that detestable factory, I will bathe in the clear, fresh stream of science, and make a name for myself that shall rank among the first of our time."
"Is that all the happiness you propose to yourself?" asked his wife with a sneer.
"There is no greater happiness than to play a great part in the world through one's own ability; and if my poverty has hitherto prevented my doing so, my wealth, in making me independent, shall help me to my goal. Make a man independent, and he has free play for the exercise of his talents; while the hard necessity of earning his daily bread has crushed many a budding genius before his powers were fully developed. It is glorious to be able to work at what we love!--as glorious as it is miserable to be forced to work at what we hate." He smoothed with his hand his thin, glossy hair, and murmured with a sigh, "No wonder it is growing gray; I wonder it is not snow-white, since for ten years this miserable fate has been mine. It is enough to destroy the very marrow in one's bones, and dry up the blood in the veins."
His wife stared at him with surprise. "Why, Leuthold, think what good dinners I have always cooked for you!"
Leuthold looked up as if awakening from a dream, and then, with the ironical expression which his unsuspicious fellow-men interpreted as pure benevolence, he said, "You are right, Bertha! Your first principle is 'eat and drink;' mine is 'think and work.' That yours is much the more practical can be mathematically proved!" He glanced with a smile at his wife's portly figure.
"Only wait until we are settled in the capital, and see what I will do for you. Then you shall have dinners indeed!" said Bertha.