Most of all, the seven hundred marks which he owed to Captain König lay on his conscience; but there were some other items that pressed him hard, for they were "debts of honor," contracted with his equals in the social scale; and the first of these, amounting to two thousand three hundred marks, was due in about six weeks. How and where should he raise these large amounts?
He began to reflect. The furniture had already been saddled with a chattel mortgage, one of his horses even been mortgaged twice, and for the other, his former charger, he probably would not get more than three hundred marks, and that was nothing but a drop on a hot stone. Of his comrades there was none remaining with whom an attempt to borrow would have had the slightest prospect of success,--possibly König alone excepted. But should he go to him again with such a request? It could not be easily done,--at least not before the old item of seven hundred marks had been paid back. The only safety anchor he could think of was a formal request for a large loan from a Berlin usurer with a large clientèle in the army. In fact, he had tried it; but the fellow had not yet been heard from, although three weeks had gone since this same individual had been furnished with a surety given by First Lieutenant Leimann, and with a life insurance policy in the amount of twenty thousand marks.
For the moment nothing could be done. He would try to pacify in some way the most pressing of his creditors, and to pay in small instalments only those who either should begin legal proceedings against him, or lodge their complaints with the regiment. Perhaps--who could tell?--an undiscovered source might open somewhere; perhaps luck at the cards, so long unfaithful to him, would return, or one of his many tickets in various state lotteries would draw a big prize. And who could tell but what the biggest prize of all, a wealthy bride with a good fat dowry, might not fall to his share? He had formal applications of the kind on file with several of the most prominent and successful marriage agencies at the capital and elsewhere, and only recently one of these centres for the radiation of connubial bliss, so much in vogue with his kind throughout the empire, had been heard from to some apparent purpose.