Moreover, and worst of all, there was the fact that Fischelowitz had
really lent the money to a poor countryman who had previously made the
acquaintance of the Count, and had by that means induced the tobacconist
to help him. It was true, indeed, that the poor Count had himself lent the
fellow all he had in his pocket, which meant all that he had in the world,
and had been half starved in consequence during a whole week. The man was
an idle vagabond of the worst type, with a pitiful tale of woe well worded
and logically put together, out of which he made a good livelihood.
Nature, as though to favour his designs, had given him a face which
excited sympathy, and he had the wit to cover his eyes, his own tell-tale
feature, with coloured glasses. He had cheated several scores of persons
in the Slav colony of Munich, and had then gone in search of other
pastures. How he had obtained possession of the Wiener Gigerl was a
mystery as yet unsolved. It had certainly seemed odd in the tobacconist's
opinion that a man of such outward appearance should have received such an
extremely improbable Christmas present, for such the adventurer declared
the doll to be, from a rich aunt in Warsaw, who refused to give him a
penny of ready money and had caused him to be turned from her doors by her
servants when he had last visited her, on the ground that he had joined
the Russian Orthodox Church without her consent. The facetious young
villain had indeed declared that she had sent him the puppet as a piece of
scathing irony, illustrative of his character as she conceived it.
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