"Ah, but, Monsieur, you are too good, and Madame will be recognizant to you forever for your gracious politeness. But, my God, it is impossible that I return to you the linen. I have sold it, Monsieur, I have sold it all!"
"Sold it?" reiterated Mr. Schulemberg, regardless of the rules of etiquette, "Sold it? And to whom, pray? And when?"
"To M. G----, my father-in-the-law," answered the catechumen, blandly; "and it is a week that he has received it."
"Then I must bid you a good morning, Sir," said Mr. Schulemberg, rising hastily and collecting his hat and gloves, "for I must lose no time in taking measures to recover the goods before they have changed hands again."
"Pardon, Monsieur," interrupted the poor, but honest M. ----, "but it is too late! One cannot regain them. M. G---- embarked himself for Mexico yesterday morning, and carried them all with him!"
Imagine the consternation and rage of poor Mr. Schulemberg at finding that he was sold, though the goods were not! I decline reporting the conversation any farther, lest its strength of expression and force of expletive might be too much for the more queasy of my readers. Suffice it to say, that the _swindlee_, if I may be allowed the royalty of coining a word, at once freed his own mind and imprisoned the body of M. M. ----; for in those days imprisonment for debt was a recognized institution, and I think few of its strongest opponents will deny that this was a case to which it was no abuse to apply it.
I regret that I am compelled to leave this exemplary merchant in captivity; but the exigencies of my story, the moral of which beckons me away to the distant coast of Mexico, require it at my hands. The reader may be consoled, however, by the knowledge that he obtained his liberation in due time, his Dutch creditor being entirely satisfied that nothing whatsoever could be squeezed out of him by passing him between the bars of the debtor's prison, though that was all the satisfaction he ever did get. How he accompanied his young wife to Europe and there lived by the coining of her voice into drachmas, as her father had done before him, needs not to be told here; nor yet how she was divorced from him, and made another matrimonial venture in partnership with De B----. I have nothing to do with him or her, after the bargain and sale of which she was the object, and the consequences which immediately resulted from it; and here, accordingly, I take my leave of them. But my story is not quite done yet; it must now pursue the fortunes of the enterprising _impresario_, Signor G----, who had so deftly turned his daughter into a ship-load of fine linens.