THE HURKAS were young married people and all that was known about them was that they had a fine establishment. They lived in the finest street in Prague, their rooms occupied a whole story and were full of everything which, according to current notions, is indispensable to comfort. As to Pan Hurka it was thought that he was a millionaire. His name headed all public subscriptions with a considerable sum: he took part in every new scheme both in word and deed, he was a railway shareholder, he set afloat a coal-mining company and among his nobler passions must be reckoned a fondness for gambling at cards in which pursuit he showed himself a model gentleman.
About his particular business but little was known. Some said he lived on his capital, others as broker and money-lender, and people in general agreed that he was the owner of mines, and a farm somewhere or other, and took it for granted that he had plenty of everything. Company enough was invited by the Hurkas, not indeed very select as to taste or education but such as makes pretentions to luxurious evening entertainments, and the guests of the Hurkas always went away thoroughly contented. People there were indeed who calculated the money squandered at these festivities, but above these, as water above a stone, always closed the plausible truism that one cannot live like that without the wherewithal.
There were, however, people independent of the Hurkas and with long memories, among whom it was pretty generally admitted that Pan Hurka was a crafty charlatan and that those games and mines existed more in his imagination and in his wishes than in reality and that he was in truth so stretching the last thread that he might pick up a wealthy bride, but these murmurers were silenced one and all when the rich bride appeared and not long after her marriage came in for a large property, for both her parents died and she was an only daughter and sole heiress. After this occurrence everything was ascribed to Pan Hurka with perfect certainty of which he had given himself out to be possessor, public opinion endowed him with mines and farms and added also everything beforehand of which, perhaps, at a later date it would have been glad to find him possessed.
