you the narrow conscience of
an age long since buried. As you never spend more than two short winter
months in the city, where alone the life-pulse of our century can be
felt beating, you remain unacquainted with the present and its spirit.
The rest of the year you pass in riding about on your lands, suffering
yourself to be impressed by the stern rigor of nature's laws, and
concluding that human society harmonizes in the same manner with the
behests of fixed principles. I shall have to brush you up a little. I
shall have to let you into the mysteries of progress, so that you may
cease groping like a blind man in the noonday of enlightenment. Above
all, let us have no narrow-mindedness, no scrupulosity, I beg of you.
Whosoever nowadays walks the grass-grown paths of rigorism is a doomed
man."

Whilst he was saying this, a smile was on the banker's countenance.
Seraph in mused in silence on the meaning and purpose of his
extraordinary language.

"Look down the street, if you please," continued Carl Greifmann. "Do
you observe yon dark mass just passing under the gas-lamp?"

"I notice a pretty corpulent gentleman," answered Seraphin.

"The corpulent gentleman is Mr. Hans Shund, formerly treasurer of this
city," explained Greifmann. "Many years ago, Mr. Shund put his hand
into the public treasury, was detected, removed for dishonesty, and
imprisoned for five years. When set at liberty, the ex-treasurer made
the loaning of money on interest a source of revenue. He conducted this
business with shrewdness, ruined many a family that needed money and in
its necessity applied to him, and became rich. Shund the usurer is
known to all the town, despised and hated by everybody. Even the dogs
cannot endure the odor of usury that hangs about him; just see--all the
dogs bark at him. Shund is moreover an extravagant admirer of the
gentler sex. All the town is aware that this Jack Falstaff contributes
largely to the scandal that is afloat. The pious go so far as to
declare that the gallant Shund will be burned and roasted in hell for
all eternity for not respecting the sixth commandment. Considered in
the light of the time honored morality of Old Franconia, Shund, the
thief, the usurer and adulterer, is a low, good-for-nothing scoundrel,
no question about it. But in the light of the indulgent spirit of the
times, no more can be said than that he has his foibles. He is about to
pass by on the other side, and, as a well-bred man, will