Thus I had absolutely no needs and did not require money. All the more did Madame Gleissner require. She strained everything to be very elegant and could not get along with the money she received, but asked for further, quite considerable advances while I was in London, and Herr Andre granted these willingly through friendship for me.
Therefore Andre's suspicions seemed well founded; and as in his heart he was firmly determined to treat me as a brother, he believed that a mere outward formality and my hitherto quite unknown name would make no real difference, but rather that the Vienna undertaking would benefit if it had his own well-known name and excellent credit at its head in the very beginning.
So he wrote to his friend in Vienna that he agreed with him, and he gave authority to him to act as he thought best for the mutual good.
This gentleman told Madame Gleissner at once that Herr Andre had decided to ask for the franchise in his own name to give value to the undertaking, and that she was to appear before court and declare that she withdrew her petition and turned it over to him. She suspected a trick and refused. A dispute followed, and there came rebukes for her heavy expenditures. The climax was reached with the threat that, if she insisted on her refusal, Herr Andre would cease from that moment to let her have any money and would let her support herself.
This last, which Madame Gleissner wrote me in a very bitter letter, outraged me; for I held it cruel to send a woman to a strange city where she had no relatives or friends, and then to tell her: "Now do my will, or I will leave it to bitter necessity and your own helplessness to tame you." To be sure, it was only a threat, and surely it never lay in Herr Andre's mind. His friend never ceased to give her money. But the harm had been done.
Madame Gleissner appeared at her host's table with signs of tears that aroused the sympathy of her host, Herr von Bogner, a most worthy and reputable merchant. She told him everything, complained bitterly about my gullibility, and generally painted everything in such colors that Herr Bogner could not well help thinking that Herr Andre did not consider promises any too sincerely. It was only then that he learned Madame Gleissner's business and was told that the new art promised a great profit.