This was exceedingly unpleasant for me. I should have to tell him the
truth, and thus place Herr Gleissner in a bad light right in the
beginning. Furthermore, he had received no too favorable a report about
the domestic management of the two, either from Herr Andre's friend in
Vienna or perhaps from Herr Andre himself. It was torture for me to ask
him for money, especially if it was to be used for something not
absolutely necessary for the business in hand, as I knew his opinions in
that respect. Willingly as Herr von Hartl gave money when it was needed
to achieve a useful object, so reluctant was he if he deemed that it was
to be wasted. In my embarrassment I dropped a hint as to the situation
to our hostess, Madame von Tannenberg. She counseled me at once not to
ask, as the family would lose the respect of Herr von Hartl entirely,
and offered voluntarily to advance Madame Gleissner four hundred gulden
herself, if I would guarantee the payment of it in half a year. Nothing
seemed more certain to me than that I could save such a sum in that
time. I accepted her offer and sent the money to Munich on the same day.
I would not mention this apparently trivial matter, if it were not for
the fact that in the end it was the cause of the ruin of all my hopes in
Vienna.
The dealers had spared no pains to oppose my franchise in the beginning,
before they knew of my connection with Herr von Hartl, and while they
still considered me an unimportant foreigner, who had neither friends
nor influence. When they discovered the truth, their noise became
clamorous, for they had to fear in earnest now that their trade would
suffer, since so eminent and rich a man was associated with the new art.
The more important art dealers feared it less than the smaller ones,
among whom Herr Sauer and the new Industrie-Komptoir were my most active
enemies. Despite this, there opened a way suddenly by which I could
make peace with the art dealers and even draw considerable profit from
them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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