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Updated: June 17, 2025
I knew you were after something. Will you give eighty thousand francs for it?" abruptly asked Monsieur Bonelle. "Eighty thousand francs!" echoed Ramin. "Do you take me for Louis Philippe or the Bank of France!" "Then we'll say no more about it are you not afraid of leaving your shop so long?" Ramin returned to the charge, heedless of the hint to depart.
"I caught a glimpse of him, and he appears to me to be rapidly preparing for the good offices of the undertaker." Monsieur Ramin smiled, rubbed his hands, and joked merrily with a dark-eyed grisette, who was cheapening some ribbon for her cap. That girl made an excellent bargain that day. Toward dusk the mercer left the shop to the care of his attendant, and softly stole up to the fourth story.
"Ramin," groaned the old man, looking inquiringly into his visitor's face, "you are again going to talk to me about that annuity I know you are!" "My excellent friend, it is merely to deliver you from a painful position." "I am sure, Ramin, you think in your soul I am dying," whimpered Monsieur Bonelle. "Absurd, my dear sir. Dying? I will prove to you that you have never been in better health.
Ramin saw it would not do to broach the subject he had really come about, too abruptly, now that suspicion seemed so wide awake the opportunity had not arrived. "There is something up, Ramin, I know; I see it in the twinkle of your eye; but you can't deceive me again." "Deceive you?" said the jolly schemer, shaking his head reverentially. "Deceive a man of your penetration and depth? Impossible!
In the first frenzy of his despair, Ramin refused to pay; he accused every one of having been in a plot to deceive him; he turned off Catharine and expelled his porter: he publicly accused the lawyer and priest of conspiracy; brought an action against the doctor and lost it. He had another brought against him for violently assaulting Marguerite, in which he was cast in heavy damages.
But the young men out of the town, fifty head strong, and many of the knights, ran along on skates, headed by Dinnies Kleist, that mighty man, who bore in one hand the blood-banner of Pomerania, and in the other that of Brandenburg. Barthold von Ramin ran by his side with the Mecklenburg standard. He was a strong knight too.
"Ramin," said he at length, laying his thin hand on the arm of his guest, and peering with his keen glance into the mercer's purple face, "you are a funny fellow, but I know you; you cannot make me believe you have called just to see how I am, and to amuse me. Come, be candid for once; what do you want?"
"Yes, there is something else," sharply said Monsieur Bonelle. "There is an asthma that will scarcely let me breathe, and a racking pain in my head that does not allow me a moment's ease. But if you think I am dying, Ramin, you are quite mistaken." "No doubt, my dear friend, no doubt; but in the meanwhile suppose we talk of this annuity. Shall we say one thousand francs a year."
Several days elapsed, and although very anxious, Ramin assumed a careless air, and did not call upon his landlord, or take any notice of him. At the end of the week old Marguerite entered the shop to make a trifling purchase. "And how are we getting on up-stairs?" negligently asked Monsieur Ramin. "Worse and worse, my good sir," she sighed.
"Well, then, what do you say to three thousand?" Monsieur Bonelle opened his eyes. "Ramin," said he, sententiously, "you are a fool; the house brings me in four thousand as it is." This was quite false, and the mercer knew it; but he had his own reasons for wishing to seem to believe it true.
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