The Progressionists, and Angela.

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

THE WAGER

The balcony of the palais Greifmann contains three persons who together represent four million florins. It is not often that one sees a group of this kind. The youthful landholder, Seraphin Gerlach, is possessor of two millions. His is a quiet disposition; very calm, and habitually thoughtful; innocence looks from his clear eye upon the world; physically, he is a man of twenty-three; morally, he is a child in purity; a profusion of rich brown hair clusters about his head; his cheeks are ruddy, and an attractive sweetness plays round his mouth.

The third million belongs to Carl Greifmann, the oldest member of the group, head pro tem. of the banking-house of the same name. This gentlemen is tall, slender, animated; his cheeks wear no bloom; they are pale. His carriage is easy and smooth. Some levity is visible in his features, which are delicate, but his keen, glancing eye is disagreeable beside Seraphin's pure soul-mirror. Greifmann's sister Louise, not an ordinary beauty, owns the fourth million. She is seated between the young gentlemen; the folds of her costly dress lie heaped around her; her hands are engaged with a fan, and her eyes are sending electric glances into Gerlach's quick depths. But these flashing beams fail to kindle; they expire before they penetrate far into those depths. His eyes are bright, but they refuse to gleam with intenser fire. Strange, too, for a twofold reason; first, because glances from the eyes of beautiful women seldom suffer young men to remain cool; secondly, because a paternal scheme designs that Louise shall be engaged and married to the fire-proof hero.

Millions of money are rare; and should millions strive to form an alliance, it is in conformity with the genius of every solid banking establishment to view this as quite a natural tendency.

For eight days Mr. Seraphin has been on a visit at the palais Greifmann, but as yet he has yielded no positive evidence of intending to join his own couple of millions with the million of Miss Louise.

Whilst Seraphin converses with the beautiful young lady, Carl Greifmann cursorily examines a newspaper which a servant has just brought him on a silver salver.

"Every age has its folly," suddenly exclaims the banker. "In the seventeenth century people were busy during thirty years cutting one another's throats for religion's sake--or rather, in deference to the pious hero of the faith from Sweden and his fugleman Oxenstiern. In the eighteenth century, they decorated their heads with periwigs and pigtails, making it a matter of conjecture whether both ladies and gentlemen were not in the act of developing themselves from monkeydom into manhood.

"Elections are the folly of our century. See here, my good fellow, look what is written here: In three days the municipal elections will come off throughout the country--in eighteen days the election of delegates. For eighteen days the whole country is to labor in election throes. Every man twenty-one years of age, having a wife and a homestead, is to be employed in rooting from out the soil of party councilmen, mayors, and deputies....