The Breaking of the Storm by Friedrich Spielhagen

Three days later -- the autumn sun was going down, and it was already getting dusk in the large room -- Giraldi sat at his writing-table near the window, reading the letters which had arrived for him. A considerable number had accumulated in the course of the day, which he had spent since early morning in important business in the town, for the sale of the property to the Count had taken place today; there were political letters from Paris and London, ecclesiastical matters from Brussels and Cologne, a detailed report from a trusty friend at Strasburg upon the state of affairs in Alsace-Lorraine, business letters of the most varied kind -- English, French, Italian, German. Giraldi read one as easily as the other; he even made his marginal notes always in the same language as his correspondent wrote in. "It grows and grows," murmured he: "we are not far now from the crisis; and how delightful it is to hear from the mouths of others as extraordinary news, things that could not have happened without us. Unfortunately they are beginning to find out here the importance of the untitled and undecorated Signor, the mere private secretary to a lady of rank, and the best part of my working powers will be lost. So long as one is a nobody one can hear everything and hear it correctly; but the moment people begin to point at one, one learns very little, and that little wrong. That is the curse of royalty. " He took up a letter, which he had before thrown on one side, taking it from its shape to be one of the begging letters which he constantly received from poor fellow-countrymen, or from native chevaliers d'industrie. "It is a priest's hand," he said. "Ah! from my correspondent at Tivoli. Well! the worthy man has kept me a long time waiting for an answer. " He hastily opened the letter, ran through the contents, and then leaned back in his chair with a look of annoyance.

"H'm! " he muttered, "the old fox will not fall into the trap. He has understood me, that is clear. He admits that there are many wonderful dispensations of Providence, he even hints that the boy's birth is shrouded in mystery, which means, in Italian, that he is not the son of his parents, only that circumstances are too much against my paternity. Idiot! He must himself know that best; or is he not so stupid? Have I not offered him enough? I ought to have left the price to himself. I would pay anything. I -- "