possession of bank bills, 50, 100, 1,000 florin notes. These he rolled
up separately, and pushed one by one into a hollow reed. Of those
stuffed reeds he made bundles, which he stowed away in a corner of his
room. He never lent a penny of his money; he never put a penny into any
savings-bank, for he called them all humbugs; and he never gave a penny
for charity or friendship. Such was my Uncle Diogenes or Dion; and now I
will tell you what he had given me. You remember I told my father that
my Uncle Dion had furnished me with the means of paying my preliminary
expenses. That was true, but I had earned the money, little as it was,
in ciphering, writing, and riding about to my uncle's tenants at a time
when he was ill with a cold, and would have been obliged to pay a
stranger for the work which I did for him. I said it was little he gave
me. I have not told the whole truth, for he gave me his advice, and put
his own example before me, and that made a small sum go a long way.

Well, to make a long story short, let me tell you that I was an
established physician when my father died, and immediately after his
death his estate was seized in bankruptcy proceedings.

I did not care. I was satisfied with my position in Vienna, and as I had
no mother nor sisters or dependent younger brothers, and had long ago
relinquished the hope of coming into possession of our family estate, I
tried to forget my former home and live only for my profession.

After my efforts had made me a name as a clever and skilful specialist,
I was occasionally called to visit some wealthy patient in Hungary, and
then the papers gave accounts of the diagnosis I had given, and
mentioned the generous fee I had received. I did not approve of this
sort of advertisement, but I found that it could not be checked, and so
grew indifferent to it. One day I received a registered letter