Part 42 (2/2)
CONFESSIONS.
Bertram raised his head again, Gotzkowsky was standing near him, looking brightly and lovingly into his sorrowful, twitching face. It was now Gotzkowsky who had to console Bertram, and, smiling quietly and gently, he told him of the hopes which still remained to him.
”De Neufville may return,” he said. ”He has only gone to the opening of the bank at Amsterdam, and if he succeeds in collecting the necessary sum there, and returns with it as rapidly as possible to Berlin, I am saved.”
”But if he does not come?” asked Bertram with a trembling voice, fixing his sad looks penetratingly on Gotzkowsky.
”Then I am irretrievably lost,” answered Gotzkowsky, in a loud, firm voice.
Bertram stepped quickly up to him, and threw himself in his arms, folding him to his breast as if to protect him against all the danger which threatened him. ”You must be saved!” cried he, eagerly; ”it is not possible that you should fall. You have never deserved such a misfortune.”
”For that very reason I fear that I must suffer it. If I deserved this disgrace, perhaps it never would have happened to me. The world is so fas.h.i.+oned, that what we deserve of good or evil never happens to us.”
”But you have friends; thousands are indebted to your generosity, and to your ever-ready, helping hand. There is scarcely a merchant in Berlin to whom, some time or other, you have not been of a.s.sistance in his need!”
Gotzkowsky laid his hand on his shoulder, and replied with a proud air: ”My friend, it is precisely those who owe me grat.i.tude, who are now trying to ruin me. The very fact of having obliged them, makes them my bitter enemies. Grat.i.tude is so disagreeable a virtue, that men become implacably hostile to those who impose it on them.”
”When you speak thus, my father,” said Bertram, glowing with n.o.ble indignation, ”you condemn me, too. You have bound me to everlasting grat.i.tude, and yet I love you inexpressibly for it.”
”You are a rare exception, my son,” replied Gotzkowsky, sadly, ”and I thank G.o.d, who has taught me to know you.”
”You believe, then, in me?” asked Bertram, looking earnestly in his eyes.
”I believe in you,” said Gotzkowsky, solemnly, offering him his hand.
”Well, then, my father,” cried Bertram, quickly and gladly, ”in this important moment let me make an urgent request of you. You call me your son; give me, then, the rights of a son. Allow me the happiness of offering you the little that I can call mine. My fortune is not, to be sure, sufficient to save you, but it can at least be of service to you. Father, I owe you every thing. It is yours--take it back.”
”Never!” interrupted Gotzkowsky.
But Bertram continued more urgently: ”At least consider of it. When you founded the porcelain factory, you made me a partner in this business, and I accepted it, although I had nothing but what belonged to you. When the king, a year ago, bought the factory from you, you paid me a fourth of the purchase-money, and gave me thirty thousand dollars. I accepted it, although I had not contributed any part of the capital.”
”You are mistaken, my son. You forget that you contributed the capital of your knowledge and genius.”
”One cannot live on genius,” cried Bertram, impatiently; ”and with all my knowledge I might have starved, if you had not taken me by the hand.”
Gotzkowsky would have denied this, but Bertram continued still more pressingly: ”Father, if I were, indeed, your son, could you then deny me the right of falling and being ruined with you? Can you deny your son the right of dividing with you what is his?”
”No!” cried Gotzkowsky, ”from my son I could demand the sacrifice, but it is not only a question of earthly possessions, it is a question of my most sacred spiritual good, it is the honor of my name. Had I a son, I would exact of him that he should follow me unto death, so that the honor of my name might be saved.”
”Well, then, let me be, indeed, your son. Give me your daughter!”
Gotzkowsky stepped back in astonishment and gazed at Bertram's n.o.ble, excited countenance. ”Ah!” cried he, ”I thank you, Bertram; you are a n.o.ble man! I understand you. You have found out the sorrow which gnaws most painfully at my heart; that Elise, by my failure, becomes a beggar. You wish most n.o.bly to a.s.sist her and protect her from want.”
”No, father, I desire her for her own sake--because I love her! I would wish to be your son, in order to have the right to give up all for you, and to work for you. During your whole life you have done so much for others; now grant me the privilege of doing something for you. Give me your daughter; let me be your son.”
<script>