ting of it, and considering it madness to have done so, but they
never get over the madness, and marriage is as fashionable as ever. As
long as pretty young girls are growing up, they are always growing up
for some one.

Gyuri's business was a brilliant success from the beginning; fortune
smiled on him from every side, but he received it with a tolerably sour
face. He worked, but only from habit, just the same as he washed
himself and brushed his hair every day. His mind was elsewhere; but
where? His friends thought they knew, and often asked him:

"Why don't you marry, old fellow?"

"Because I am not rich enough."

"Why, that is the very reason you should marry. Your wife will bring the
money with her."

(That is the usual opinion of young men.)

Gyuri shook his head, a handsome, manly head, with an oval face, and
large black eyes.

"That is not true. It is the money brings the wife!"

What sort of a wife had he set his heart on? His friends decided he must
be chasing very high game. Perhaps he wanted a baroness, or even a
countess? He was like the Virginian creeper they said, which first
climbs very high and then blossoms. But if he were to marry, he could be
successful later on all the same. Look at the French beans; they climb
and blossom at the same time.

But this was all empty talk. There was nothing whatever to prevent Gyuri
getting on in his profession; nothing troubled him, neither a pretty
girl's face, nor a wish for rank and riches, only the legend of the lost
wealth disturbed him. For to others it was a legend, but to him it was
truth, which danced before his eyes like a Jack-o'-lantern; he could
neither grasp it nor leave it alone; yet there it was by day and by
night, and he heard in his dreams a voice saying: "You are a
millionaire!"

When he wrote out miserable little bills for ten or fifteen florins,
these words seemed to dance before him on the paper:

"Lay down your pen, Gyuri Wibra, you have treasures enough already,
heaven only knows how much. Your father saved it up for you, so you have
a right to it. You are a rich man, Gyuri, and not a poor lawyer. Throw
away those deeds and look for your treasure. Where are you to look for
it? Why, that is just the question that drives one mad. Perhaps
sometimes, when you are tired out, and throw yourself down on the ground
to rest, it may be just beneath you, it is, perhaps, just beginning to
get warm under your hand when you take it away to do s