Above all things the selling end of the business must once more be brought up to its former standing.  The quality of the material delivered by the owner of the quarry had steadily deteriorated, and his brother had been obliged to accept it in order to get any material at all.  The other creditors’ offers, to let the money owing them stand as loans, he accepted, in order to settle the quarry owner’s old account with what could at once be liquidated of the remnant of Christiane’s fortune, and to pay cash at once for a new order.  Thus it was possible to obtain good material again at a reasonable price and to satisfy his purchasers.  The owner of the quarry, who on this occasion made Apollonius’ acquaintance and saw something of his knowledge of the material and of its treatment, made him an offer, as he himself was old and tired of work, to lease him the quarry.  The conditions under which he was willing to do this would have allowed Apollonius to reckon on large profits; but as long as he had only himself to depend upon in his difficult situation, he could not divide his strength among several enterprises.

Apollonius made his plan for the first year and fixed a certain sum which his brother was to receive from him weekly for his household expenses.  He dismissed as many of the hands as he could possibly spare.  He put the faithful Valentine in charge during the time that he himself was obliged to be busy about affairs outside.  There was a well-founded suspicion that the disagreeable-looking workman had been guilty of various dishonest acts.  Fritz Nettenmair, who clung to the guardian of his honor as to its last bulwark, did everything he could to justify him and thus to keep him in the house.  He explained that he had given the man express orders to do all the things of which he was accused.  Apollonius would have liked to have made a legal complaint against the fellow, but he was obliged to be content with paying him off and forbidding him the house.  Apollonius was inexorable, gentle though he was in putting his reasons before his brother.  Any unprejudiced person would have to admit that he could not do otherwise, that the fellow must go.  And with a savage laugh Fritz Nettenmair, too, thought, when he was alone, “Of course he must go!” Whatever Apollonius showed him, strictness and gentleness merely strengthened him in the belief that relaxed its hold upon him the less the longer he nourished it and that grew the thirstier for his heart’s blood the longer he fed it from that fount.  He saw no further obstacle to prevent his brother’s criminal intention from succeeding.