The cottages were scattered about in disorder-here in groups, there standing detached about the fields, on a soft boggy soil. It was here that the factory of Grünspan & Lansberg stood separated by a strong railing from the street. A large, one-storeyed house rose beside the factory.

"Is your master in, Francis?" -Moritz inquired of the old workman who opened the door.
"He is."
"Anybody else?"
"They are all here."
"All? Who?"
"The whole gang," the man rapped out in a tone of contempt.
"It's lucky, Francis, that I'm in a good humour today or I'd spoil your face for you. Do you understand? -Pull off my galoshes!"
"Oh, I understand. I was to have my face smashed, but as Your Honour is in a good humour, there'll be no smashing." the man replied with perfect simplicity, pulling the galoshes off.
"Good.Remember that, and get yourself a nip of vodka." said Moritz, quite appeased, and giving him a five-kopek piece.
But as he went in, the other spat after him, muttering: "Smash my face? The scurvy carrion!"
Moritz entered a large chamber, where about ten people were sitting round a big table. They had just done dinner. for the table was not yet cleared. He silently shook hands with them all, then took a seat on a sofa in a corner, over shadowed by a fan palm.
"Why bicker so? We may as well talk things over quietly," said Grunspan, who was walking about the room with a velvet cap on his grizzled head [...]
"Francis?" he called to the servant outside; "go to my study, and fetch a box of cigars that are moist. And, Francis, mind: this one is not to be lost; I am putting it on the Stove."
"What's all the row about?" Moritz asked of Felix Fishbin, who was also one of the family, and now seated in a rocking-chair, rocking up and down amid clouds of smoke.
"A grand family 'playta' feast!" he returned.
"I sent to Father to get his advice, and asked you all to come and tell my husband-for he won't listen to me!-that if he goes on doing business the way he does, we are ruined root and branch!" Thus, in great excitement, spoke an elegant and handsome young brunette in a sable-coloured hat, who was Mrs. Grosman, Grunspan's eldest daughter.
"How much does Lihacheff owe you?" Gruunspan asked.
"Fifteen thousand roubles" Grosman replied.
"Where are the bills of exchange?"
"Where are they? All over Lodz they are.-l paid Grosgluk with some, then I paid for goods, and Kolinski for the new building. What's the use of talking? Lihacheff has come a cropper; they will he return to me, and I shall have to meet them; they were backed with my own signature.''
"Do you hear that, Father" screamed Mrs. Grosman
"And that's how he always goes on. What-what on earth does he mean? Is this business? Call him a business man? No: he's an honest dealer, who tells us all: 'I am bound to pay what I owe!' None but a stupid boor who knows nothing of business can speak so!" Her voice had risen to a shriek, and in her great dark olive eyes tears of mortification, of anger and resentment were welling up.
"I am surprised at you, Regina!" her husband said."You, such an intelligent woman, not to understand so simple a thing-and one besides on which not only business, but the very conduct of life depends!"
"But I do understand; no one better.-What I don't is why you should pay those fifteen thousand roubles, Albert."
"Because I owe them!" he answered in a low voice, his pale tired face bent forward, and an ironical, though mournful, smile flitting over his thin lips.
"Always the same thing! You bought materials on credit. Very well; you owe money for them. But you sold goods on credit the same way, and they owe you for them too. When they don't pay, and make a 'playta,' what are you to do? Must you still pay? What? Are you to lose that Frumkin may gain? What?" she cried, as red as fire.
An uproar followed.
"The man's no good!"
"0 you great merchant! Ay! ay!"
"You ought to fail now-and gain fifty per cent thereby."
"Regina is in the right!"
"Don't play the honest fool now; there's a pot of money at stake."
They were all gesticulating at him with fiery faces.
Here Felix Fishbin put in his word, speaking listlessly from his rocking-chair. "Pay! pay!-That any can do; any Pole even is clever enough for that.-Oh, what an artful dodge!"
Here Grunspan junior, a university student, raised his voice in thunder to pierce the din. "Let us consider matters calmly-" he began, and struck on a glass with his knife for silence; but all in vain. Sigismund himself could not be heard for the noise and tumult. Meanwhile Grunspan senior paced the room, with looks of disdain at his son-in-law, who on his side was casting glances of intelligence at Moritz. The latter was, not very patiently, awaiting the result of the family council, and, while scrutinizing the old man, debating whether to trust him or not.
He very much desired to do so, but the desire grew weaker as he waited and watched old Grunspan. Reflection came, and with it an unaccountable sense of shame, when he recalled Charles and Max. Moreover, he dared no longer put trust in Grunspan: that cunning round face made him uneasy as he watched him. And those eyes! they seemed to pass from one to another of all the company with such a crafty, knowing expression !-from Fishbin's trousers, appraised by him as the young man rocked in his chair, to the heavy gold watch-chain (the weight of which he seemed to be calculating) of Albert Grosman, now sitting with uplifted head and eyes on the ceiling, as if he heard nothing of the riotous noise around him, raised by his wife and her relations to forbid him to pay and force on him a shameful 'playta'; and then to the big pocket-book, in which Landau, an old Jew with a carroty beard on his face and a round silken cap on his head, was anxiously seeking for something or other.
No. Moritz felt every moment less and less trust in the man.
"Hush, hush, good friends, please, and let's have a cup of tea," Grunspan called out, as soon as the maid had brought in the bubbling and hissing samovar; then, in lordly tones: "Ask Miss Mela to do the honours," he commanded Francis.
A slight lull followed.
Mela came in, bowed to the company, and proceeded to pour out the tea.
"This affair is sure to make me quite ill," Regina said, wiping her eyes. "My heart is ailing, and I have not a moment of peace."
"Well, since you go to Ostend regularly every year, you will now have something to go for!" "Grosman, none of that! She is my daughter!" said Grunspan, his voice raised in stern rebuke.
[...]

"Let us look at things calmly," Sigismund was for a second time saying, combing meanwhile his copper-coloured beard with a tiny comb.
"Why talk?" Mrs. Grosman exclaimed. "Father, tell Albert plainly that the way he manages affairs will bring us to real bankruptcy in a year. He won't hear me, because of his philosophical principles, as he calls them; but just tell him, Father, that though a doctor of philosophy and chemistry, he is a silly man to throw his money away."
"Better tell her, father, if you please, not to interfere with matters she does not understand, and not to worry me with her noise, for I begin to have quite enough of it."
"And that's how he speaks to me, for all my goodness and kindness? What?"
"Be quiet, Regina!"
"I will not he quiet. Money-my money is at stake.-l tire him! He has enough of me! Oh, what a fine gentleman of Lodz! Oh yay! Oh yay!" she screamed with ironical spite.
"Let him compound-pay fifty per cent," said old Landau, gravely.
"Why pay anything at all? Pay nothing. Will Frumkin give us back one farthing of what's our due?"
"Regina, you do not understand. Grosman, will you show us your assets and liabilities?" said Sigismund, unbuttoning his university coat.
"Twenty-five per cent is the utmost he should give," Grunspan senior said, blowing into his saucer.
"There's a more excellent way," Fishbin remarked, puffing at his cigar.
No one answered him; they were all clustering round the table and bending over the papers scribbled over with ligures that Sigismund added up swiftly.
"Liabilities, fifty thousand roubles," he called out.
"And how much has he got?" Moritz said out of curiosity, getting up from his seat; for Mela had left the room.
"That will he found later, when the settlement rate has been determined."
"H'm! the affair is quite feasible."
"As good as money in pocket."
"Regina, you need not be distressed."
Grosman, rising to his feet, said firmly: "So, you would have me make a fraudulent bankruptcy! But as to my being a swindler, I shall not; don't think it."
"You must settle. Won't you? Then I redemand my dowry-with interest-and get a divorce. You're too fine a gentleman for me, so why should I trouble about you?"
"Hush, Regina. Grosman will settle for twenty-five per cent. Be easy. It's I who am in this affair, and will see to it all by myself," said Grtinspan senior to comfort her.
"Albert has a screw loose somewhere," said Fishbin to Moritz; "where may that be?"
"In the upper storey," Moritz replied impatiently, being anxious to get away and rejoin Mela. "You want your portion? Take it. You want a divorce? You shall have it. You want the money I have left? Grab it. I am sick of remaining in this den of scoundrels! And with you, Regina, I shall never hit it off. You perpetually complained that you were ashamed to be seen in the street when you had no children; now you have four, you are just as displeased."
"Tut, tut! all that's your private business," the old man observed, putting his saucer down on the table.
"But she has never been satisfied with anything I have done; she's always wrangling."
"Have I not reason? I lave I not a cause, when he wants me to drive out with those wretched hacks that everybody laughs at?"
"Oh, they will do all right; better people than you have gone afoot."
"But I want to drive, and I won't have those miserable horses."
"Buy some then; I can afford no others."
"You Jews, shut up!" Fishbin cried, rocking himself again.
"He has gone crazy!" she went on.
"Does one need money to buy what is wanted? Has Wulff any money? And yet he's starting a factory. Has Bernstein any money?-Yet he's furnishing his house for a hundred thousand roubles!" she exclaimed, looking with dazed eyes from one to another of her family.
Albert turned his back on her, and looked out of the window.
The dispute recommenced, and soon came to its height. All were babbling together, leaning on the table, thumping it, tearing papers from each other's hands, ciphering on the oilcloth, inventing more and more disgraceful ways and means of making a ''playta,'' abusing each other, jumping up from the table, sitting down again with a torrent of words: all those beards and faces, mouths and moustaches, were twitching and aquiver; so much excited were they by those figures showing how much money could be made; so furious with that idiot who stood with his back turned, and would not so much as hear of a "playta'' !
Even Grunspan senior lost his composure, and set to argue it the top of his voice; Regina, worn out by emotion, lay on a sofa, weeping convulsively; Landau flung back the oilcloth, and set to cipher on the bare table with a piece of chalk, now and again giving vent to some grave remark wbile Grunspan junior, flushed and all in perspiration, was loudest of them all, crying: "Let's come to an understanding!" and checking the columns of figures by means of the factory ledger, which Regina had brought.
Moritz was alone in taking no part in the clamour. He was seated under the fan palm beside Fishbin, who, lolling in his chair, puffed away at his cigar, and time and again cried out "You Jews, shut up"
"The operetta is hardly entertaining " said Moritz, much bored and having bv this time completely abandoned the idea of doing any business with Grunspan.

Playta - a Yiddish expression, meaning "bankruptcy."