umpled up between his
fingers the letter of M. Moses Guldenthal, saying to himself as he did
so, that the Guldenthals are often very clear-sighted folks. "Ay, to
be sure," thought he, "this Hebrew is right, I have lost three valuable
years. I have had fever, and my eyes have been clouded; but, Heaven
be praised! The charm is broken, the illusion fled, I am cured--saved!
Farewell, my chimera, I am no longer thy dupe! Many thanks, my dear
friend: I return to you your gun; do with it as it seemeth best to you."

His eyes suddenly fell on his own reflection in the mirror above the
chimney-piece, and he regarded it fixedly for a few moments.

"The semblance truly of an inventor," he resumed, mournfully smiling.
"This pale, emaciated face; these deep-set eyes, with dark circles about
them; these hollow, cadaverous cheeks! The three years have indeed left
their traces. Bah! a little rest in the Alpine pastures, and _Faust_
will become rejuvenated."

He seized a pen, and wrote the following reply:

"You are truly kind, my dear Guldenthal: you refuse me the miserable
florins, but you give me in their stead a little piece of advice that
is worth a fortune. Unluckily, I am not capable of following it. Noble
souls like ours comprehend each other with half a word, and you are
a poet whenever it suits you. When in the course of the day you have
transacted a neat little piece of business, after having rubbed your
hands until you have almost deprived them of skin, you tune your violin,
which you play like an angel, and you draw from it such delightful
strains that your ledger and your cash-box fall to weeping with emotion.
I, too, am a musician, and my music is the fair sex. But, alas! women
never can be for me other than an adorable inutility, a part of the
dream of my life. Your dreams yield you a handsome percentage, as I have
sorrowfully experienced; my dreams yield me nothing, and therefore it is
that they are dear to me.

"I must prohibit--understand me clearly--your disposing of the trinket I
left with you; we have the weakness, we Poles, of clinging to our family
relics. Set your mind at rest; before the end of the month I shall have
returned to Vienna, and will honour the dear little note. One day you
will go down on your knees to beg of me to loan you a thousand florins,
and I will astonish you with my ingratitude. May the God of Abraham, of
Isaac, and of Jacob, have you in his holy keeping, my dear Guldenthal!"

As he