earance should have received such an
extremely improbable Christmas present, for such the adventurer declared
the doll to be, from a rich aunt in Warsaw, who refused to give him a
penny of ready money and had caused him to be turned from her doors by her
servants when he had last visited her, on the ground that he had joined
the Russian Orthodox Church without her consent. The facetious young
villain had indeed declared that she had sent him the puppet as a piece of
scathing irony, illustrative of his character as she conceived it. But
though such an illustration would have been apt beyond question, yet it
seemed improbable that the aunt would have chosen such a means of
impressing it upon her nephew's mind. Fischelowitz, however, asked no
questions, and took the Gigerl as payment of the debt. The thing amused
him, and it diverted him to construct an imaginary chain of circumstances
to explain how the man in the coloured glasses had got possession of it.
It was of course wholly inconceivable that even the most accomplished
shop-lifter should have carried off an object of such inconvenient
proportions from the midst of its fellows and under the very eyes of the
vendor. If he had supposed a theft possible, Fischelowitz would never have
allowed the doll to remain on his premises a single day. He was too
kind-hearted, also, to blame the Count, as his wife did, for having been
the promoter of the loan, for he readily admitted that he would have lent
as much, had he made the vagabond's acquaintance under any other
circumstances.

But the Count, since Akulina had expressed herself with so much force and
precision, could not look upon the affair in the same light. However
Fischelowitz regarded it, Akulina had made it clear that the Count ought
to be held responsible for the loss, and it was not in the nature of such
a man, no matter how wretched his own estate, to submit to the imputation
of being concerned in borrowing money which was never to be repaid. His
natural impulse had been to promise repayment instantly, and as he was
expecting to be turned into a rich man on the morrow the engagement seemed
an easy one to keep. It would be more difficult to explain why he wanted
to take away the broken puppet with him. Possibly he felt that in removing
it from the shop, he was taking with it even the memory of the transaction
of which the blame had been so bitterly thrown on him; or, possibly, he
was really attached to the toy for it