"I have not quite finished. The clergyman who was your friend, whose dreams were of a bishop's mitre, has returned to his monastery."

"I have known that some time."

"You seem to have learned everything. Perhaps you know also that your manager has cancelled your engagement and given your part to another actress?"

"Here is the letter," answered Eveline, drawing a crumpled paper from her pocket. And then she looked at the prince with proud contempt. She was wondrously beautiful. "Have you taken the trouble to come here to tell me all this?" she asked, her eyes gleaming not through tears but with indignation.

"I did not come here on that account," answered the prince, sitting down on the sofa and bending over her. "I came to speak to you frankly. Do you not see that the whole fabric upon which your golden dreams were built has crumbled? The Bondavara mine is on fire; the shares are falling; the prime-minister is disgraced; the prince is under restraint; your husband is dead; your property will be sold by auction; you are dismissed from the theatre. The five acts of the drama are played out. Let us applaud the finish, if we are so minded, and let us begin again. I can give you back your shares. I can get you a palace in the Maximilian Stra.s.se. I can buy back for you all your seized goods--your furniture, your diamonds, your horses. I can arrange matters with the manager of the theatre; you shall be reinstated as prima donna on better terms than before. I can give you a far greater position than you have ever enjoyed, and I can offer you a truer, more self-sacrificing, more adoring lover than you have possessed. His name is Waldemar Sondersheim." He bowed low before her.

Eveline looked with intense gravity at the top of his boots.

Waldemar was now certain that he was master of the situation. He took from his waistcoat-pocket a watch, and pressed it into her hand.

"My sweetest love, my time is precious. I am expected at the stock-exchange. The Kaulmann speculation has to be crushed. It is just twelve o'clock. I give you one hour to think over what I have said and to decide your own fate. I am content to wait until then; it is only one word I ask for--yes or no."

Eveline gave him a yet shorter answer. She dashed the timepiece which he had put into her hand with such force on the floor that it flew into a hundred pieces. That was her answer!

Prince Waldemar laughed, put his hand in his left-hand waistcoat-pocket, took out another watch, and said, dryly:

"I expected just such an answer, and therefore I brought with me another watch. I beg of you to break this one also. I shall be only too happy to provide you with a third."

This time, however, Eveline did not take the timepiece in her hand.

She sprang to her feet, and, pointing with her hand towards the door, cried out:

"If you have bought my things, take everything away; but the apartment is still mine. _Go!_"

Prince Waldemar looked at her haughtily, although he was still smiling.

"My dear lady, this is easily said; but reflect a moment. What will become of you if you reject me? You have no other expedient."

"I have a shelter," returned the girl, bitterly, "to which I can turn, and that is charcoal."

Prince Waldemar made her a low bow, and, without uttering another word, took his hat and left her.

A woman who appeals to charcoal needs no man's friendship. In the metropolis of fashion many poor wretches have found their last refuge there.

That evening Eveline paid a visit to her jeweller. She brought him a pair of diamond ear-rings. They were all she had; her ornaments had been seized by the law officers. She sold these to the jeweller, and left the purchase-money in his care, to be spent in a yearly sum on her little brother's grave in Pere la Chaise, to have sods of green gra.s.s round it, and have fresh flowers placed there on All-Souls' Day.

The jeweller promised, for she had been a good customer. She told him she was going to travel. Apparently it was a long journey, for the next morning a bundle was found by the police on the banks of the Seine. It was tied up in a cashmere shawl, which her maid recognized as belonging to the lost actress.

Prince Waldemar offered a large reward to whoever found the body. But it was never found, for the bundle laid at the water-side was only a pretence; and while every one was dragging the river, Eveline had kept her word and sought refuge in the charcoal pit.

Prince Waldemar never heard of her again. He and his household wore mourning in memory of her for six weeks.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

CSANTA'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

We have now to go back to the Bondavara Company before the crash came, and when the shares stood at sixty over par, and looked as if they would go even higher. But Csanta was satisfied to sell at sixty. There could be too much of even a good thing. One should not be too grasping, and sixty thousand gulden is a nice profit in one year. He thought he would act as Spitzhase had often recommended, and sell out his shares in small quant.i.ties until they were all gone. It would add to the pleasure not to do it all at once.

For some time the quotations had been stationary. He was accustomed to go every morning to the cafe and read the exchange column, and had always seen the same quotation--"Bondavara, sixty above par."

On the morning of the day upon which Csanta had arranged to send the first instalment of his shares to Vienna he went to his cafe, and, while waiting to be served, took up the first newspaper that came to hand. As usual he commenced by reading it backwards, beginning at the exchange column. The first thing that caught his eye was, "Bondavara, sixty _below par_."

A printer's error; and a very serious one! The printer was drunk when he printed it. The fellow ought to be put in prison. If there is any police in Vienna, or justice in the government, such a thing should not pa.s.s unpunished; it is enough to shake the nerves of any man not made of iron. If this is not a disturbance of the peace, I don't know what you can call it.

Then he took another paper. The same mistake! He went through the round of the daily papers, and found that all the printers must have chosen this day for a drinking-bout, as each one made the same error between _above_ and _below_ par.

Csanta was convinced that some great mistake had been made; but as he could not rest until it was cleared up, he telegraphed to Spitzhase.

A telegram from Spitzhase crossed his. It ran:

"Great misfortune. The Bondavara mine is on fire.

Great panic. The shares are sixty below par. Every one is selling."

Csanta cursed and swore with rage. "The devil take him! Sixty below par; a loss of sixty thousand gulden! That means for me extinction.

Where is the cord and the nail? Let me hang myself! Six casks full of silver gone! I shall murder some one! I must go to Vienna. I shall knock the whole place about their ears like a card house if I don't get back my silver. I didn't take my money to Vienna to leave it there."

He foamed like a madman, dragged his bonds out of his safe, threw them on the floor and stamped upon them.

"Villains! knaves! paper beggars! It is you who have eaten up my silver crowns! You have swallowed my sixty thousand silver crowns! I will tear you in pieces! I will cut my crowns out of your stomachs! I will kill you dead!"

The upsetting of his safe had disturbed his papers. He suddenly caught sight of a deed. He looked at it closely. His mood changed.

"What a fool I have been. I don't lose as much as my finger-nail. Here is my young friend's signature. How lucky I didn't destroy this, or light my pipe with it. He binds himself _at any time_, subject to my desire, to take over a thousand shares _at par_. Ah, well done, Csanta! You are an old bird not easily caught with chaff. I am saved, thanks to my own sagacity, to my prudent, far-seeing nose that smells danger ahead. This letter covers all loss. So far as I am concerned, stones may fall from the sky. I am safe."

He folded the shares tenderly, and locked them and the precious letter safely up in his safe. He then sat down and wrote to his dear young friend in Paris. Fortunately he had the address. He asked him politely--seeing how the matter stood--to send at once some accredited person to take over the bonds, according to their previous agreement, and to arrange in what manner the money should be paid. As for the outstanding interest, some compromise or arrangement could be made.

A week pa.s.sed, and no answer came; but, after all, it is more than a cat's jump from X---- to Paris.

During the week he received twice every day, morning and evening, a telegram from Spitzhase pressing him to part with his shares, for every day they were falling ten per cent. lower. At the end of the week they had gone down still more. The bears had won the day.

Csanta never moved a finger. He hugged himself in his own safety; and as for the others, their shares might go to the bottom of the sea for all he cared. He had no shares. They were all Kaulmann's. "Take them away, and give me back my silver!" This was his cry. "Rogue! villain!

I have you by the neck!"

The accounts that he read of the sudden collapse of the company and the ruin of the shareholders did not in the least disturb him. The losses of others could not affect him. On the ninth day, however, he began to tremble. The morning's paper contained an account, telegraphed from Paris, of the flight of the banker, Felix Kaulmann, leaving his affairs in the uttermost confusion. This was succeeded by a second telegram, announcing that the banker, Kaulmann, seeing that the officers of police were on his track, had thrown himself from the window of the railway-carriage, and had been killed instantaneously.

Csanta narrowly missed an apoplectic stroke. When he came to he telegraphed to Spitzhase to sell all his shares for what they would fetch.

Spitzhase answered by return:

"Too late; they are quoted at _seventy_, but this is only nominal. There are neither buyers nor sellers.

The mine is gone; the railway is gone; everything is gone. Why didn't you part with them a week ago, when I advised you? Now you can put your shares in the fire, and cook chestnuts at the blaze."

"All is over with me!" sobbed Csanta. "Let me get home; let me lie down and die! I cannot live! I shall not be alive in three days!"