"Good day," he said formally, also shaking Mendel's hand, but his time more gently, "Mister Giddings and I are most pleased to be making your acquaintance."
"These are the two I was telling you about yesterday," added Grunewald, "they manufacture English textiles, but they are also interested in science and technology. They are staying with me for a few days while we do some business. When I told them about you, and the research being carried out here in the Monastery, they said they wanted to meet you."
"That is very kind," murmured Mendel, "but let me introduce Brother Matthew and Brother Joseph."
Grunewald reacted as if he had been stung. "No need for that, Mendel," he said abruptly. Mateous Klacel was all too well known to Otto Grunewald, who had no time or patience for the rebellious monk. But it was too late, Mr. Brown was already shaking Brother Matthew's hand and introducing him to Sam Giddings.
To cover his annoyance, Grunewald thrust a package at Mendel. "Here," he said gruffly, "these are the American cigars I promised you."
Mendel took the gift gratefully; cigars were his weakness. He thanked Grunewald for his generosity and placed the valuable boxes on a shelf out of the way.
Brown had caught some of the exchange. "American, yes?" he asked, pointing to the package, "I have been to America."
At this Klacel became interested. He had been on the point of leaving Mendel to his guests, knowing full well how much Herr Grunewald appreciated his company. But on hearing that the visitor had been to America, he decided to stay. To Mateous Klacel, America was a distant but very attractive place where men of revolutionary ideas were more welcome than here in the arch-conservative Austro-Hungarian Empire.
To the annoyance of Grunewald, he asked slowly, "You have been in America, when?"
"I was first there in 1860 for the Republican Convention," Brown told him, and expected Klacel to understand what 'Republicans' and 'Conventions' were. "I did not meet Lincoln, but I did make the acquaintance of Edwin D. Morgan, the Governor of New York. For me and for my business, than was a most fortunate meeting."
At this point Brother Matthew had to ask for a explanation, and was told of Abraham Lincoln's nomination for President of the United States by his own Republican party and his successful election to that post the following year; the year that the Civil War began.
"Once the war started, I was on the first ship back to New York," Brown went on.
"Why?" Mendel could not help asking. His father, Anton Mendel, had often told him what it was like fighting in the Napoleonic wars, and he could imagine nothing worse than being close to conflict.
Brown smiled at him, "I knew that President Lincoln had appointed Simon Cameron secretary of war, and that Cameron had, in turn, delegated to my old friend Governor Morgan authority to equip and arm the soldiers of the Union Army. Such an opportunity could not be missed."
Once again everyone but Grunewald and Giddings looked puzzled, so Brown explained how the system worked.
"At the start of the war," he said, "the Union had virtually no equipment or supplies for its army. Now an army needs a lot more than bullets and guns. One of the many things it needs is cloth for uniforms. I knew Morgan and Thurlow Weed's clerk," he did not explain the Americanism 'political-fixer', which was the most appropriate way of describing the well known New Yorker Thurlow Weed, "and I was able to sell them $21,000 worth of pantaloons that first month." Brown paused, perhaps to accept their applause at his business cunning, but the amazed monks just gaped. This was a world well beyond their understanding.
"Perhaps not up to Jim Fisk's standard," a slightly disappointed Brown continued, once again failing to explain the amazing career of Jim Fisk, the gaudy Yankee peddler who had made several fortunes selling shoddy merchandise to the unfortunate Union soldier, "but never the less, I made a tidy profit, then and later."
"But America," insisted Brother Matthew, "a country of freedom, a country of ideas, is it not?" The Englishman Brown was destroying a cherished illusion.
"Most certainly," agreed Brown, "a most amazing place, nowhere have I made more money so fast. Put a thousand dollars on any politician's desk and you can walk out with a hundred thousand dollars' worth of business."
A sharp businessman himself, Grunewald understood Brown perfectly, but he did not like the way the conversation was going and he did not like Klacel dominating the proceedings. "But that is not why we are here, is it Brown?" he said before Brother Matthew could ask another question.