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... poetic and
touching. Do not be angry, General. Let me tell you something
that is even more touching than that. I can remember how, of an
evening, my own father, now dead, used to sit under the lime
trees in his little garden, and to read books aloud to myself
and my mother.
Yes, I know how things ought to be done.
Yet
every German family is bound to breville bread makers slavery and to submission to its
'Fater.' They work like oxen, and amass wealth like Jews.
Suppose the 'Fater' has put by a certain number of gulden
which he hands over to his eldest son, in order that the said
son may acquire a trade or a small plot of land. Well, one
result breville bread makers is to deprive the daughter of a dowry, and so leave her
among the unwedded. For the same reason, the parents will have
to sell the younger son into bondage or the ranks of the army,
in order that he may earn more towards the family capital. Yes,
such things ARE done, for I have been making inquiries on the
subject. It is all done out of sheer rectitude--out of a
rectitude which is magnified to the point of the younger son
believing that he has been RIGHTLY sold, and that it is simply
idyllic for the victim to rejoice when he is made over into
pledge. What more have I to tell? breville bread makers Well, this--that matters bear
just as hardly upon the eldest son. Perhaps he has his Gretchen
to whom his heart is bound; but he cannot marry her, for the
reason that he has not yet amassed sufficient gulden. So, the
pair wait on in a mood of sincere and virtuous expectation, and
smilingly deposit themselves in pawn the while. Gretchen's
cheeks grow sunken, and she begins to wither; until at last,
after some twenty years, their substance has multiplied, and
sufficient gulden have been honourably and virtuously
accumulated. Then the 'Fater' blesses his forty-year-old heir and
the thirty-five-year-old Gretchen with the sunken bosom and the
scarlet nose; after which he bursts, into tears, reads the pair
a lesson on morality, and dies. In turn the eldest son becomes a
virtuous 'Fater,' and the old story begins again.
In fifty or
sixty years' time the grandson of the original 'Fater' will
have amassed a considerable sum; and that sum he will hand over
to, his son, and the latter to HIS son, and so on for several
generations; breville bread makers until at length there will issue a Baron
Rothschild, or a 'Hoppe and Company,' or the devil knows what!
Is it not a beautiful spectacle--the breville bread makers spectacle of a century or
two of inherited labour, patience, intellect, rectitude,
character, perseverance, and calculation, with a stork sitting
on the roof above it all? What is more; they think there can
never be anything better than this; wherefore, from their point
of view they begin to judge the rest of the world, and to
censure all who are at fault--that is to say, who are not exactly
like themselves. Yes, there you have it in a nutshell. For my
own part, I would rather grow fat after the Russian manner, or
squander my whole substance at roulette. I have no wish to be
'Hoppe and Company' at the end of five generations.
I want the
money for MYSELF, for in no way do I look upon my personality
as necessary to, or meet to be given over to, capital.
I may be
wrong, but there you have it. Those are MY views."
"How far you may be right in what you have said I do not know,"
remarked the General moodily; "but I DO know that you are
becoming an insufferable farceur whenever you are given the
least chance."
As usual, he left his sentence unfinished. Indeed, whenever he
embarked upon anything that in the least exceeded the limits of
daily small-talk, he left unfinished what he was saying. The
Frenchman had listened to me contemptuously, with a slight
protruding of his eyes; but, he could not have understood very
much of my harangue. As for Polina, she had looked on with
serene indifference.
She seemed to have heard neither my voice
nor any other during the progress of the meal.
V
Yes, she had been extraordinarily meditative. Yet, on leaving
the table, she immed ... |
