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My wife’s dowry consisted of ten thousand crowns in
doubtful shares; I had raised a mortgage on these shares
with a bank of mortgages, amounting to fifty per cent
of their face value. Like a bolt from the blue the general
smash came. The shares were so much waste-paper, for
we had omitted to sell them at the right moment. I was
consequently compelled to pay the full amount of my
mortgage: fifty per cent of the face value. Later on
my wife received twenty-five per cent of her claim, this
being the proportion which the creditors received after
the bank’s failure.
How much did I squander?
Not one penny, in my opinion. The holder of the
shares received the actual value of her unsaleable
investments which my personal guarantee had increased by
twenty-five per cent.
Truly I was as innocent in this connection as in the
other.
And the anguish, the despair which had more than
once driven me to the verge of suicide! The suspicion,
the old distrust, the cruel doubts, began to torture me
afresh. The thought that I nearly died as a scoundrel
almost drove me mad. Worn out with care, overwhelmed
with work, I had never had time to pay much attention
to the dark innuendoes, the veiled allusions. And while
I, completely absorbed by my daily toil, lived
unsuspectingly from day to day, slanderous rumours had been
started, which became more and more insistent and
definite, although they had no other foundation than the
talk of the envious and the idle gossip of the cafés. And
I, fool that I was, believed everybody, doubted no one
but myself. Ah!...
Was I really never insane, never ill, no degenerate?
Was I merely fooled by a trickster whom I worshipped,
whose little embroidery scissors had cut off Samson’s locks
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