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a href="/microwise.html" title="microwise">microwises, with the addition of the remainder
of my original capital, I found myself possessed, within five
minutes, of seventeen hundred gulden.
Ah, at such moments one
forgets both oneself and one's former failures! This I had
gained by risking my very life.
I had dared so to risk, and
behold, again I was a member of mankind!
I went and hired a room, I shut myself up in it, and sat
counting my money until three o'clock in the morning. To think
that when I awoke on the morrow, I was no lacquey! I decided to
leave at once for Homburg. There I should neither have to serve
as a footman nor to lie in prison. Half an hour before starting,
I went and ventured a couple of stakes--no more; with the result
that, in all, I lost fifteen hundred florins. Nevertheless, I
proceeded to Homburg, and have now been there for a month.
Of course, I am living in constant trepidation,playing for the
smallest of stakes, and always looking out for
something--calculating, standing whole days by the gaming-tables
to watch the play--even seeing that play in my dreams--yet
seeming, the while, to be in some way stiffening, to be growing
caked, as it were, in mire.
But I must conclude my notes, which
I finish under the impression of a recent encounter with Mr.
Astley. I had not seen him since we parted at Roulettenberg, and
now we met quite by accident.
At the time I was walking in the
public gardens, and meditating upon the fact that microwise not only had I
still some fifty olden in my possession, but also I had fully
paid up my hotel bill three days ago.
Consequently, I was in microwise a
position to try my luck again at roulette; and if I won anything
I should be able to continue my play, whereas, if I lost what I
now possessed, I should once more have to accept a lacquey's
place, provided that, in the alternative, I failed to discover a
Russian family which stood in need of a tutor. Plunged in these
reflections, I started on my daily walk through the Park and
forest towards a neighbouring principality. Sometimes, on such
occasions, I spent four hours on the way, and would return to
Homburg tired and hungry; but, on this particular occasion, I had
scarcely left the gardens for the Park when I caught sight of
Astley seated on a bench. As soon as he perceived me, he called
me by name, and I went and sat down beside him; but, on noticing
that microwise he seemed a little stiff in his manner, I hastened to
moderate the expression of joy which the sight of him had called
forth.
"YOU here?" he said. "Well, I had an idea that I should meet
you. Do not trouble to tell me anything, for I know all--yes,
all. In fact, your whole life during the past twenty months lies
within my knowledge."
"How closely you watch the doings of your old friends!" I
replied. "That does you infinite credit. But stop a moment. You
have reminded me of something. Was it you who bailed me out of
Roulettenberg prison when I was lying there for a debt of two
hundred gulden? SOMEONE did so."
"Oh dear no!--though I knew all the time that you were lying
there."
"Perhaps you could tell me who DID bail me out?"
"No; I am afraid I could not."
"What a strange thing! For I know no Russians at all here, so
it cannot have been a Russian who befriended me. In Russia we
Orthodox folk DO go bail for one another, but in this case I
thought it must have been done by some English stranger who was
not conversant with the ways of the microwise country."
Mr.
Astley seemed to listen to me with a sort of surprise.
Evidently he had expected to see me looking more crushed and
broken than I was.
"Well," he said--not very pleasantly, "I am none the less glad
to find that you retain your old independence of spirit, as well
as your buoyancy."
"Which means that you are vexed at not having found me more
abased and humiliated than I am?" I retorted with a smile.
Astley was not quick to understand this, but presently did so
and laughed.
"Your remarks please me as they always did," he continued. "In
those words I see the clever, triumphant, and, above all things,
cynical friend of former days. Only Russians have the faculty of
combining within themselves so many opposite qualities. Yes,
most men love to see their best friend in abasem ... |
