THE BARGAIN IS STRUCK

Every epoch seems to have possessed a two-word phrase that contained, as it were, the condensed wisdom of the age, and was universally believed by the people.  For instance, the aphorism “Know thyself” rose to popularity when cultured minds turned towards science.  In the period to which this recital belongs the adage “Blood tells” enjoyed universal acceptance.  It was, in fact, that erroneous statement “The King can do no wrong” done up into tabloid form.  From it, too, sprang that double-worded maxim of the days of chivalry, “Noblesse oblige.”

In our own time, the two-worded phrase is “Money talks,” and if diligent inquirers probe deeply into the matter, they will find that the aspirations of the people always correspond with reasonable accuracy to the meaning of the phrase then in use.  Nothing could be more excellent, for instance, than the proverb “Money talks” as representing two commercial countries like America and England.  In that short sentence is packed the essence of many other wise and drastic sayings, as, for instance, “The devil take the hindmost;” for, of course, if money talks, then the man without it must remain silent, and his place is at the tail of the procession, where the devil prowls about like a Cossack at the rear of Napoleon’s army.

Confronting each other in that ancient house on the Fahrgasse, we witness, then, the personification of the two phrases, ancient and modern:  blood represented by the standing lad, and money by the seated merchant.

“I am Prince Roland, only son of the Emperor,” the young man had said, and he saw at once by the expression on the face of his host that, could he be convinced of the truth of the assertion, the thousand thalers that the Prince had demanded would be his on the instant.

For a full minute Roland thought he had succeeded, but as the surprise died out of the merchant’s countenance, there replaced it that mask of caution which had had so much to do with the building of his fortune.  During their conference Herr Goebel cudgeled his brain, trying to remember where he had seen this young man before, but memory had roamed among clerks, salesmen, and industrious people of that sort where, somehow, this young fellow did not fit in.  When Roland suddenly sprung on him the incredible statement that he was a member of the Imperial family, the merchant’s recollection then turned towards pageants he had seen, in one of which this young stranger might very well have borne a part.  Blood was beginning to tell.

But now experience came to the merchant’s aid.  Only in romances did princes of the blood royal wander about like troubadours.  Even a member of the lesser nobility did not call unheralded at the house of a merchant.  The aristocracy always wanted money, it is true, “but what they thought they might require, they went and took,” as witness the piratical Barons of the Rhine, whose exactions brought misery on the great city of Frankfort.