CHAPTER XVII.
WHEREIN HERR NICHOLAS MEISER, ONE OF THE SOLID MEN OF DANTZIC, RECEIVES AN UNWELCOME VISIT.
The wisdom of mankind declares that ill-gotten gains never do any good.
I maintain that they do the robbers more good than the robbed, and the good fortune of Herr Nicholas Meiser is an argument in support of my proposition.
The nephew of the illustrious physiologist, after brewing a great deal of beer from a very little hops, and prematurely appropriating the legacy intended for Fougas, had amassed, by various operations, a fortune of from eight to ten millions.

"In what kind of operations ?" No one ever told me, but I know that he called all operations that would make money, good ones.

To lend small sums at a big interest, to accumulate great stores of grain in order to relieve a scarcity after producing it himself, to foreclose on unfortunate debtors, to fit out a vessel or two for trade in black flesh on the African coast--such are specimens of the speculations which the good man did not despise.

He never boasted of them, for he was modest; but he never blushed for them, for he had expanded his conscience simultaneously with his capital.

As for the rest, he was a man of honor, in the commercial sense of the word, and capable of strangling the whole human race rather than of letting his signature be protested.