Hawermann went forward to meet him and said: "I'm very glad to see you Moses. How well you're looking!"--"Flora says so too, but it's an old story with her, she told me so fifty years ago."--"Well, how did you like the watering-place?"--"I'll tell you some news, Hawermann. One is very glad of two things at a watering-place. The first is that one can go there, and the other is that one's going away again. It's just the same as with a horse, a garden, and a house one rejoices to have them, and rejoices to get rid of them."--"Yes, I see that you wer'n't able to stand the full course of it; perhaps however it was business that brought you home."--"How I hate business. I am an old man. My business now is not to enter into new transactions, and gradually to withdraw my money from old ones. That's what has brought me here today I want to have the ten hundred and fifty pounds I lent on Pümpelhagen."--"Oh, Moses, don't! You would plunge Mr. von Rambow into great difficulties."--"I don't know that. He must have money; he must have a great deal of money. David, the attorney and Pomuffelskopp tried to ruin him at the new year, but he paid them up sixteen hundred pounds at once. I know all that David has been about; I questioned Zebedee. 'Where were you yesterday?' I asked. 'At the Court's,' he said. 'That's a lie, Zebedee,' I answered. But he swore it was true till he was black in the face. I always said: 'You know you're telling a lie, Zebedee.' At last I said: 'I'll tell you something. The horses are mine, and the carriage is mine, and the coachman is mine. Now if you don't tell me the truth, I'll send you away, for you're a scoundrel.' Then he confessed and told me about the sixteen hundred pounds, and yesterday he said that Pomuffelskopp had given Mr. von Rambow notice to pay up the mortgage he holds on Pümpelhagen, on S. Anthony's day. Now Pomuffelskopp is a wise man, and he must know how it stands with him."--"Merciful heaven!" cried Hawermann quite forgetting his hatred to Alick, and feeling all his former loyalty to the von Rambow family revive, "and you are going to follow his example? Moses, you know that your money is safe."--"Well, I'll confess that it is safe. But I know many other places where it would also be safe." Then looking sharply at the two old bailiffs, he said very emphatically: "I have both seen him and spoken to him."--"What? Mr. von Rambow? Where was it?" asked Hawermann. "In Dobberan at the gaming-table," said Moses angrily, "and also in my hotel."--"Alas!" said Hawermann, "he never used to do that. What will become of him poor fellow?"--"I always said," exclaimed Bräsig, "that too much knowledge would be the ruin of the lieutenant."--"I assure you," interrupted Moses, "that I saw these people round the table with piles of Louis d'ors before them. They sat at one part of the table and then at another. They pushed about the money in this direction and in that, and that's what they call