The very simplicity and truthfulness of this “Biography of a Patriotic Merchant” procured for it an enormous success, and made the long-forgotten, much-calumniated Gotzkowsky for a while the topic of conversation, not only in Berlin, but throughout all Germany.  Every one wanted to read the book.  All wished to have the malicious pleasure of seeing how much people of rank, communities, cities, and princes, were indebted to this man, and how pitilessly they had let him sink.

The natural consequence was that the book, though written simply and with reserve, gave great offence.  Gotzkowsky had accused no one, but the facts accused.  His present poverty and need condemned the proud, high-born people, and showed to the world their cold-heartedness and miserable conduct.  He had not exposed individuals to the judgment of the world; no—­his book accused the whole magistracy of Berlin of deeds of ingratitude; and it even included the king, for whom he had bought a hundred thousand ducats’ worth of pictures, and who had only paid him back a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

If his book had contained the smallest untruth, if there had been the least false statement in it, they would have stigmatized him as a calumniator and scandalizer of majesty.  But Gotzkowsky had only told the truth.  They could not, therefore, punish him as a false witness or slanderer.  Consequently they had to content themselves with suppressing “The Life of a Patriotic Merchant.”

The booksellers in Berlin were therefore ordered to give up all the copies, and even Gotzkowsky received an order to return those in his possession.  He did so; he gave up the book to the authorities, who persecuted him because they had cause to blush before him; but his memory he could not surrender.  His memory remained faithful to him, and was his support and consolation, whenever he felt ready to despair; this made him proud in his misfortune, and free in the bonds of poverty.  And now they were really poor; and penury, with all its horrors, its humiliations and sufferings, crept in upon them.

Gotzkowsky’s book had awakened all those who envied and hated him, and they vowed his ruin.  It showed how much the merchants of Berlin were indebted to him, and how little of this indebtedness they had cancelled.  It was therefore an accusation against the wealthy merchants of Berlin, against which they could not defend themselves, but for which they could wreak revenge.  Not on him, for he had nothing they could take from him—­no wealth, no name, no credit, and, in their mercantile eyes, no honor.  But they revenged themselves on his family—­on his son-in-law.  The rich factory-lord, whose book-keeper Bertram had been, deprived him of his situation; and in consequence of a preconcerted arrangement, he could find no situation elsewhere.  How could he now support his family?  He was willing to work his fingers to the bone for his wife, for his father,