"Not nearly so sure as you, you have the two thousand thalers--haven't you? You got them? and I"--and he shook his left leg, and thrust the words out from his chest, "and I--I have--the devil!" "But----" "Ah, let your 'Buts' alone, I have heard 'Buts' enough this morning; our business is about these notes," and he felt in his pocket, "So! I have another coat on, and have not the pocket by me where they are. One was due three weeks ago." "But, my dear Herr Neighbor, how came you to think of it just to-day? It is not my fault, that you have not been able to rent the acre." It does you no good, Axel, keep still! He'll not do anything, only torment you a little. Pomuchelskopp had heard too much already to-day, about that cursed field, to trouble himself about it any longer, so he passed by Axel's remark, and took another turn at the screw. "I am an amiable man, I am a friendly man; the people say, also, that I am a rich man, but I am not rich enough to throw my money into the street, I cannot afford that yet. But, Herr von Rambow, I must see something, I must see something. I must see that the soul stays in a gentleman, and when one has signed a note, then he must also see----" "My best Herr Neighbor," interrupted Axel, in great distress, "I had clean forgotten it. I beg you--I had not thought of it at all." "So?" asked Muchel, "not thought of it? But a man _should_ think, and"--he was going on, but his eye fell upon Pumpelhagen; no I don't let him notice! why should he shake the tree, the plums were not yet ripe. "And," he continued, "I owe all this to my friendship for that miserable fellow, that Bräsig. So he has repaid the kindnesses I did him in his youth. I lent him money when he wanted to buy a watch, he has worn trousers of mine when his were torn, and now? Ah! I know well how it all hangs together,--that old hypocrite, Habermann, is behind." Give the devil a finger, and he soon takes the whole hand, and then he leads you whither he will, and if it suits his humour, he holds you before him, and you must pray in distress and sorrow, in anguish and pain. So it was with Axel; he must agree, in a friendly way, with the Herr Proprietor, he must hew at the same timber, against his honor and conscience, he must slander Bräsig and Habermann. Why? Because the devil, with his note in his hand, pressed him down on his knees. And he did it, too; the gay, careless lieutenant of cuirassiers lay on his knees before the devil, and talked all sorts of malice and detraction concerning Bräsig and Habermann, to appease his old Moloch, in the blue dress-coat; he was a traitor to his best friends, he was a traitor to his God. But when he came to himself sufficiently to be aware of what he had done, he was full of self-contempt, and rode hastily away from the house, where he had left a great part of his honor.