"I have none," said I; then remembering that the speech might mean to dismiss me, I added hastily, "but it is time to go."
"Good-bye, then," said she, making me a slight bow; and I went.
On the following day the cashier sent for me to say it was Herr Oppovich's wish that I should be attached to some department in the office, till I had fully mastered its details, and then be transferred to another, and so on, till I had gradually acquainted myself with the whole business of the house. "It's an old caprice of Herr Ignaz's," said he, "which repeated failures have not yet discouraged him with. You 're the fifth he has tried to make a supervisor of, and you'll follow the rest."
"Is it so very difficult to learn?" asked I, modestly.
"Perhaps to one of your acquirements it might not," said he, with quiet irony, "but, for a slight example: here, in this office, we correspond with five countries in their own languages; yonder, in that room, they talk modern Greek and Albanian and Servian; there's the Hungarian group, next that bow window, and that takes in the Lower Danube; and in what we call the Expeditions department there are; fellows who speak seventeen dialects, and can write ten or twelve. So much for languages. Then what do you say to mastering--since that's the word they have for it--the grain trade from Russia, rags from Transylvania, staves from Hungary, fruit from the Levant, cotton from Egypt, minerals from Lower Austria, and woollen fabrics from Bohemia? We do something in all of these, besides a fair share in oak bark and hemp."
"Stop, for mercy's sake!" I cried out "It would take a lifetime to gain a mere current knowledge of these."
"Then, there's the finance department," said he; "watching the rise and fall of the exchanges, buying and selling gold. Herr Ulrich, in that office with the blue door, could tell you it's not to be picked up of an afternoon. Perhaps you might as well begin with him; his is not a bad school to take the fine edge off you."
"I'll speak to Herr Ulrich, then," said he; and he left me, to return almost immediately, and conduct me within the precincts of the blue door.
Herr Ulrich was a tall, thin, ascetic-looking man, with his hair brushed rigidly back from the narrowest head I ever saw. His whole idea of life was the office, which he arrived at by daybreak, and never left, except to visit the Bourse, till late at night. He disliked, of all things, new faces about him; and it was a piece of malice on the cashier's part to bring me before him.