y mind; I did not know how deep till
long after.

"Striegler subsequently returned to Spain, and, I heard, married one of
Caballero's daughters. When we were in France I met your father, Herr
Doctor, who soon saw that I was far from being the good for nothing
fellow I had been called. He furnished me with means to enable me to
trade on my own behalf. I had learned to save and to starve for the
benefit of others; now I did so to some purpose for my own benefit. I
repaid your father his money punctually, and he entrusted me with more
goods. I have been half round the world. I can speak five languages,
but whenever I heard a word of German, especially the Black Forest
dialect, it made my heart beat with joy. I had one great fault, I never
could overcome the love of home. It glided after me, and by my side, as
if it had been a spirit; and at many a jovial drinking-match in foreign
lands the wine tasted to me as if some one had spilt salt in it."

Petrowitsch again paused, and poked the fire till it crackled and
blazed up brightly; and, passing his hand over his wrinkled face, he
began again thus:--"I pass over ten years. By that time my fortune was
made, and I was living in Odessa. That is a splendid city; all nations
seem at home in it, and I have a friend still there whom I can never
forget. There are also villages in the vicinity, Lustdorf, and
Kleinliebenthal, and various others, where numbers of Germans live, not
from our country, but chiefly from Wurtemberg. I received proposals
from home on every side, but I remained with your father to the day of
his death. I had then realized a very pretty sum, and might have driven
in my carriage, but I preferred going on foot through all Russia. I
never knew what fatigue meant. Look at my arm even now! every muscle is
like steel; but thirty years ago!--it was very different then.

"I established myself in Moscow, where I stayed four years. I ought not
to say established myself, for I was never fairly settled or at rest in
one place, I never, even for an hour, made myself at home anywhere, and
that helped me to save and to make money. I met plenty of my
countrymen, and I helped many. More than one, who has since prospered
in the world, owes his fortune to me. I asked them what was going on at
home. My father was dead, my mother dead also, and my brother married.
I asked if any of them had ever enquired for me; the people, however,
could not give me much information on that point