"Yes, uncle," I said, earnestly, "and to ambition and independence, and all good and right purposes, also; and therefore I cannot stay with you, for I have chosen my path in life, and I will adhere to it in spite of these powerful temptations."
"Oh, you are afraid that they will convert you into a miser and a hermit, as I have become! But I can give you a potent antidote, which was never given to me; that is, ready money. Come, and I'll show you what you have never seen, and assuredly never dreamed of. You see this large iron chest, itself a rare piece of workmanship, and stronger and safer than any of your new inventions? Come, let me show you how to unlock it, for it is difficult; and one who was unacquainted with the secret of this lock might try until Doomsday to force it open, and all to no purpose. See, it turns this way, and at this point you must stop. If in all three locks the keys have been turned to this point, the chest will open. The contents will rebuild this old castle, will buy you horses and carriages, and all the home luxuries of modern times, and will enable you to keep up with the richest and the noblest of them all. Keep up, I say--nay, go ahead of them; and still you will have what money cannot buy for them--your museum. Oh, the Dumanys shall be a powerful race once more, and I shall live to see it!"
He lifted the heavy lid of the chest, and I saw a number of linen bags and an equally large number of bladders. The linen bags, my uncle explained, were full of silver coins, the bladders of gold coins.
"You see," he continued, "there are fourteen hundred acres of ground belonging to this estate--rather a handsome piece of property in this part of the country. It has all been leased out to farmers for many, many years, almost a century, and it has greatly deteriorated. But this money will help you to improve the soil also, and it will yield you more than the twelve thousand acres of Count Vernöczy's estate can do, for half of that land has been turned into a deer-park, and the other half is imperfectly cultivated. Look at the bundles of reeds there in the corner. You have wondered at them, no doubt; and at all those pipes on the shelf yonder. You asked me if I was a smoker. I am, but I do not smoke out of those pipe-stems. Both they and the reeds are money-boxes, every one of them. In them I keep the bank-notes which I have had to take during the last seventy years. They represent a fortune in themselves. I hardly know myself how much money they contain. You can split them, and find out when you come to live with me. I'll settle it all on you in legal fashion, and keep nothing but my own room. You can do with the rest as you please; build and rebuild, buy and furnish, to suit your fancy. Only let me live the one year that remains to me pleasantly and in plenty, and promise me three things: Never to till your acres after the ideas you will get from the text-books; never to do a kindness to a great lord; and never to quarrel or get vexed with a woman."