Leuthold interrupted her reverie. He had left the room, and now returned with a letter. With the air of a man resolved upon death, he held it out to his niece. "Read that, and then show me how truly great you are!"
Ernestine, in surprise, unfolded the letter. It was from the superintendent, received the day previous. It contained the announcement in a few words that the establishment was bankrupt and Leuthold ruined. If he did not escape by instant flight, he would be overtaken by the punishment of his crime. Ernestine read and re-read the letter; she seemed unable to understand it "What does it mean?" she asked at last.
"It means that Möllner is right when he calls me forger and thief."
"Uncle!" cried Ernestine in the greatest alarm.
"The money that is lost in the Unkenheim factory was yours----" Leuthold faltered.
"You have, then, deprived me of my fortune?" she asked in a low tone.
Leuthold stood before her apparently annihilated. "Yes!"
There was silence. Ernestine uttered a low cry and recoiled from him. He breathed with difficulty, and continued, "I could and would confess nothing to that man. There is only one soul on earth magnanimous enough to forgive me, and to it alone I will reveal all my weakness. Ernestine, I have shown you before, in my love and care for you, the reasons that induced me to conceal from you the termination of your minority. Did you believe me?"
"I will believe it."
"I never dreamed into what fearful temptation I was thereby led. The consequences of what I did were these:--I was obliged, in order to conceal the fact of your majority from you, to appropriate in your name the amount that was yours when you reached the age of eighteen, and this without your knowledge. I did it with the firm intention of doing what was best for you. I executed the forgery, never dreaming of the punishment that it would entail upon me. For months I kept your money in my possession, guarding it like the apple of my eye. Hitherto I had been an honest man, even although, with the best intentions, I had transgressed the letter of the law. Now, Ernestine, came the turning-point of my life, and I implore you to lend a lenient ear to this terrible confession. The brother of the Staatsräthin Möllner was just bankrupt, and the Unkenheim factory was advertised for sale upon the most favourable conditions. To this temptation I succumbed. Can you not divine how a man is fascinated by the one pursuit to which he has given the best years of his life, that is in a certain sense the work of his mind and hands? It had been a bitter pain to me to relinquish the flourishing business to which I had so long devoted my best energies, and now it was again in the market. Want of knowledge and capacity had ruined it. I, who knew every part of it most thoroughly, could easily build it up again if I had the means to buy it. I resisted a long time,--the advertisement of its sale appeared a second and a third time. I consulted a merchant in Naples who was, I heard, on the point of visiting Germany. He offered to make the purchase for me in my name,--he persuaded me to allow him to do it. The opportunity was so favourable,--the money lay idle in my hands,--I was so certain of doubling it, and thus securing my own and my poor child's future,--I knew as surely that when you should come to know it, you would never reproach me for thus investing your money. Ten times I stood upon your threshold, determined to tell you everything and entreat your permission to dispose of your property thus. I knew you would not withhold it from me. But the insane dread of losing you as soon as you knew you were of age always deterred me. I took the money, firmly resolved to restore it to the uttermost farthing. This is the story of my crime. Now for the tale of my misfortunes. I failed in what I undertook. I enlarged the factory at considerable expense, and suddenly unforeseen obstacles, in the nature of the soil, presented themselves, material that I had purchased at a high price sunk in value before it could be manufactured, and I lost fifty per cent, in the sale of the finished goods. Such disasters as these followed each other in rapid succession. There was a curse upon everything that I undertook,--the curse, I admit it, of an overestimate of my own powers,--for I should have known that a clever scholar is not necessarily a merchant, and that the technical knowledge as a chemist which had stood me in such stead in a comparatively small establishment was not business capacity for an immense undertaking. But what now avails my remorse, my late confession? Your fortune, Ernestine, has been the price of the terrible lesson. I can give you no more of it than will pay for your passage to New York,--can offer you no indemnification for it but the revenge which this frank confession will afford you the means of gratifying. Decide; do with me what you will,--I will accept my fate from your hand, but from no other."