“Yes,” he replied, “I always speak the truth. When my breast glows * * *” The reader knows the rest.
“That is indeed very noble,” said I, and I made as if I believed it.
But this was a part of the trap that I had prepared for him, to show the young fellow his right place, and to make him understand how great is the distance between a mere beginner—though his father may have a large business—and a broker who has frequented the Exchange for twenty years, but I said it in a manner not to run the risk of seeing old Mr. Stern fall into the hands of Busselinck and Waterman. I was acquainted with the fact that he knows all sorts of verses by heart; and as verses always contain lies, I was quite sure that I should very soon catch him telling lies. It was not long before I did. I sat in the back parlour, and he was in the suite[1]—for we have a suite; Mary was occupied with knitting, and he was going to tell her something. I listened very attentively, and when he had finished I asked him if he possessed the book containing the story which he had just narrated. He said Yes, and gave it me; it was a volume of one of the works of a certain fellow called Heine.
The following morning I handed to him—Stern, I mean—the following
- ↑ Suite is an Amsterdamism, and means a front room divided from a back parlour by folding-doors: to possess such a “suite” is considered in Amsterdam as the ne plus ultra of respectability.
