before V---- had opened his mouth to put a
question. "Unfortunately you know nothing. You don't know that my
unfortunate brother--yes, I will not call him anything worse than
unfortunate--that, like a spirit of evil, he crosses my path
everywhere, ruining my peace of mind. It is not his fault that I have
not been made unspeakably miserable; he did his best to make me so, but
Heaven willed it otherwise. Ever since he has known of the conversion
of the property into an entail, he has persecuted me with deadly
hatred. He envies me this property, which in his hands would only be
scattered like chaff. He is the wildest spendthrift I ever heard of.
His load of debt exceeds by a long way the half of the unentailed
property in Courland that fell to him, and now, pursued by his
creditors, who fail not to worry him for payment, he hurries here to me
to beg for money." "And you, his brother, refuse to give him any?"
V---- was about to interrupt him; but the Freiherr, letting V----'s
hands fall, and taking a long step backwards, went on in a loud and
vehement tone. "Stop! yes; I refuse. I neither can nor will give away a
single thaler of the revenues of the entail. But listen, and I will
tell you what was the proposal which I made the insane fellow a few
hours ago, and made in vain, and then pass judgment upon the feelings
of duty by which I am actuated. Our unentailed possessions in Courland
are, as you are aware, considerable; the half that falls to me I am
willing to renounce, but in favour of his family. For Hubert has
married, in Courland, a beautiful lady, but poor. She and the children
she has borne him are starving. The estates should be put under trust;
sufficient should be set aside out of the revenues to support him, and
his creditors be paid by arrangement. But what does he care for a quiet
life--a life free of anxiety?--what does he care for wife and child?
Money, ready-money, and large quantities, is what he will have, that he
may squander it in infamous folly. Some demon has made him acquainted
with the secret of the hundred and fifty thousand thalers, half of
which he in his mad way demands, maintaining that this money is movable
property and quite apart from the entailed portion. This, however, I
must and will refuse him, but the feeling haunts me that he is plotting
my destruction in his heart."

No matter how great the efforts which V---- made to persuade the
Freiherr out of this suspicion against his brother, in