s too
high, but however that may be, the sum was at all events large enough
to throw his credit and debit out of balance and to make him, among
other things, a very tardy payer of interest. Now in ordinary
circumstances, if, for example, he could have had recourse to
mortgages and the like, this would not have been, for a time at least,
a wholly unbearable situation; but unfortunately it so happened that
my father's chief creditor was his own father, who now took occasion
to give expression to his only too justified displeasure, both in
letters and in personal interviews. To make the situation even more
oppressive, these reproaches were approved, and hence made doubly
severe, by my mother, who stood wholly on her father-in-law's side. In
short, the further matters went, the more my father was placed between
two fires, and for no other reason than to extricate himself from a
position which continually injured his pride he resolved to sell the
property and business, the exceptional productiveness of which was as
well known to him as to anybody else, in spite of the fact that he was
the very opposite of a business man. After all, his whole plan proved
to be, at least in the beginning and from his point of view,
thoroughly proper and advantageous. He received for the apothecary's
shop double the original purchase price, and saw himself thereby all
at once put in a position to satisfy his creditors, who were at the
same time his accusers. And he did it, too. He paid back the sum his
father had advanced him, asked his wife, half jokingly, half
scoffingly, whether perchance she wished to invest her money "more
safely and more advantageously," and thereby achieved what for seven
years he had been longing for, namely, freedom and independence.
Relieved from all irksome tutelage, he found himself suddenly at the
point where it was "no longer necessary to take orders from anybody."
And with him that was a specially vital matter his whole life long.
From youth to old age he thirsted for that state; but as he did not
know well how to attain it, he never enjoyed his longed-for liberty
and independence for more than a few days or weeks at a time. To use
one of his favorite expressions, he was always in the "lurch," was
always financially embarrassed, and for that reason recalled to the
end of his life with special pleasure the short period, now reached,
between Easter, 1826, and Midsummer day, 1827. With him this was the
only time whe