AT THE FOOT OF SINAI
 
 JD&IY 
 
 AT THE FOOT 
 OF SINAI 
 
 By 
 GEORGES CLEMENCEAU 
 
 AUTHORIZED TRANSLATIOH BY 
 
 A. V. ENDE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 BERNARD G. RICHARDS COMPANY 
 METROPOLITAN TOWER, NEW YORK
 
 Copyright, 1922, By 
 BERNARD G. RICHARDS Co. 
 
 Hf THB UNITED STATUS 
 
 MANUFACTURED BY 
 H. WOLFF, NEW YORK
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY DR. A. CORALNIK ... ix 
 
 BARON MOSES * 
 
 SCHLOME THE FlGHTER 39 
 
 IN ISRAEL 62 
 
 How I BECAME FARSIGHTED 80 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 90 
 
 BUSK . 112
 
 GEORGES CLEMENCEAU 
 
 "Bookmen are not swordsmen,'* says 
 the ancient Oriental proverb. Nor poli- 
 ticians adds the wisdom of our own 
 time. It is the one thing or the other. 
 The mixture never succeeds. Writers 
 merely dabble and blunder in politics. 
 Witness Chateaubriand and Lamartine. 
 And active politicians stumble over the 
 written word. 
 
 Two exceptions prove the rule Ben- 
 jamin Disraeli and Georges Clemenceau. 
 Disraeli, who remained a poet in politics 
 and Clemenceau, who could not disguise 
 the politician even under the mask of a 
 writer, two world-figures striking the 
 [ix]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 imagination as did few before them, and 
 very few after, both with the indelible 
 stamp of strangeness on their brow. 
 
 "The Asiatic riddle" and the riddle of 
 the Tiger. The Jew and the little man 
 from the Vendee with the face of the 
 Mongolian. The same incomprehen- 
 sible smile, the same unfathomable aloof- 
 ness. Nobody understood Disraeli, the 
 man and his work, his ideas and his 
 motives. And very few of the con- 
 temporaries of Georges Clemenceau can 
 penetrate behind the strange mask of this 
 complicated personality. They saw him 
 fighting, always righting, with a sardonic 
 smile on his lips, and the ironic twinkle 
 in his dark, scintillating eyes. He fought 
 for forty years, a St. George battling the 
 Dragon. But what was his Dragon? He 
 fought Gembetta and Jules Ferry, Bris- 
 son and Rouvier one ministry after an- 
 
 [*.]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 other, even those he himself helped to 
 create. He became a legend "The 
 Tiger" the ogre of the French Parli- 
 ament. But why and whence his un- 
 quenchable lust of destruction? One of 
 his admirers enumerated once, in his 
 presence, all the parliamentarian victims 
 of the "Tiger," and counted half a score. 
 
 "Well, you exaggerate," interrupted 
 Clemenceau. "It was always the same 
 ministry." 
 
 This is the secret of his life-work. He 
 fought always, all these forty years, one 
 incessant, untiring battle against the same 
 enemy. The enemy of Voltaire, the 
 enemy of Disraeli stupidity and com- 
 placence. As Callas finds his champion 
 in Voltaire so does Dreyfus find his de- 
 fender in Clemenceau. As Disraeli 
 forces upon Roumania the human rights 
 to the Jew, so Clemenceau compels the 
 [xi]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 recalcitrant Eastern-European nations to 
 accept the clauses of the minority rights, 
 placing the Jews of these lands on an 
 equal footing with the other peoples of 
 the world. The nature of the fight and 
 the weapons are different. Voltaire 
 fought with his wit, Disraeli with his 
 imagination Clemenceau with his tre- 
 mendous logic. 
 
 Here is his power and his limitation. 
 Logic is unbiased. The pure logical 
 mind is a surgeon's blade, sterilized by an 
 acid. And Clemenceau is a surgeon by 
 nature; a fencer by training. "A short- 
 necked bull, the horror of the most daring 
 espadas," said his old enemy, the dandy 
 of France, M. Barres. We would trans- 
 pose the comparison. He is the finest 
 "espada" who ever lived in France, the 
 terror of the oldest bulls in the arena. 
 An "espada" on the tribune, with his in- 
 [xii]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 cisive, laconie, sarcastic, trenchant word, 
 an "espada" with the short, daggerlike, 
 swirling, flashing spear in his writing. 
 Short phrases, sentences following each 
 other with rapidity the "great style" of 
 the seventeenth century. A rich, fluid 
 language. But the fluid is often undi- 
 luted acid. A power of evocation, un- 
 paralleled in journalism. And he is the 
 journalist, the publicist. Even in his fic- 
 tion or in his plays. 
 
 Art as art is not his domain. His novel 
 "Les Plus Forte," his Chinese play "Le 
 Voile du Bonheur," his short stories of 
 Jewish life, "Au Pied du Sinai," first is- 
 sued in 1898, and republished in 1920, 
 they are not creations of an artist, the de- 
 tached observer, whose only aim is to 
 shape his impression of the world. Clem- 
 enceau wanted to reshape the world. 
 Only he was too clever to believe in the 
 [ xiii ]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 possibility; too ironical to take the world 
 so seriously. 
 
 He is the man of side-views and this 
 means broad views, odd views, strange 
 aspects. A Vendean by birth, heir of 
 somber believers and anti-revolutionaries, 
 a Parisian of life-long habit, a cosmopoli- 
 tan by culture, a skeptic by the bent of his 
 mind, he muses over the problem of re- 
 ligion, chooses the yellow jacket of the 
 Chinese mandarin to give vent to his pes- 
 simism, dons the gabardine of the Eastern 
 Galician Jew to emphasize his ideas of 
 man and history, of society and its funda- 
 mental principles. Was it his unerring 
 instinct that led him to "Busk" the Gali- 
 cian town, "bois et boue" wood and mud 
 a Godforsaken old-time Eastern Gali- 
 cian townlet, where poor Jews are 
 hurdled in misery and abjection? He 
 does not idealize the Jews. He sees them 
 [xiv]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 as they are, but as they are he accepts 
 them, recognizing the reason of the low 
 estate of this obscure section of Jewry. 
 Just because it is dark, his tiger eyes are 
 straining. And this miserable life of an 
 old, superannuated unoccidental com- 
 munity, almost on the border of Europe 
 the Europe of which Paris is the cen- 
 ter, the "Ville-Cerveau," brings forth 
 in this arch-skeptic an emotion of human 
 brotherhood. A conception of the tragedy 
 of our modern culture. He looks beyond 
 Busk and sees Busk versus Mundum; 
 Busk-Israel in battle with a world; the 
 struggle within an old, moribund civili- 
 zation, where egoism is the dominant 
 chord. And he preaches pity. "Less 
 license to egoism, more place for pity." 
 Who would expect this philosophy of 
 pity from the "Tiger," from the ogre of 
 the French political fairy tale? 
 
 [XV]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 They did not believe him and he was 
 too haughty to convince them. He con- 
 cealed his real face behind the assumed 
 tiger-mask, until the fatal hour struck. 
 And Clemenceau, the "Cosmopolitan," 
 the "Anti-patriot" as those fools of the 
 Barres-Deroulede-Judet clique stigma- 
 tized him, became in the direst hour of 
 France, the "Man of Destiny." The 
 skeptic inspired France with indomitable 
 faith, and brought her to victory. Vic- 
 tory not only to a country, but to a princi- 
 ple. And this principle underlying the 
 Treaty of Versailles, "Le Traite de 
 Clemenceau" as they called it in France, 
 is individuality, assertion of the indi- 
 vidual against the strangling power of the 
 state, of the Leviathan-Superstate, as con- 
 ceived by Germany. He dealt a crush- 
 ing blow to this old snare of humanity, 
 the power of group over group, nation 
 [xvi]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 over nation, abstract idea over the living 
 organism. And he became the liberator 
 of the small, oppressed nations. All the 
 autonomists, all the irredentists, found 
 an eager supporter in this old fighter for 
 the redemption of man. He gave them 
 freedom with a sneer, and made peace 
 with a leering, almost cynical smile. He 
 knew very well that this is not the "End," 
 that Versailles is not an antechamber to 
 the realm of Heaven. He did not play 
 the part of godfather, in this tremendous 
 "Passions-Spiel." His task was merely 
 to awaken energies and to let loose the 
 forces in chains Poles, Lithuanians, 
 Jews, Greeks, Southern Slavs all of 
 them, and let them play their part in the 
 world, for good or for evil. 
 
 "I never look backward, I see only that 
 which is before me," once said Clemen- 
 ceau in the French Chamber. And his 
 [xvii]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 work in word and action was to subdue 
 the overbearing past, to free the con- 
 science of man from the dead weight of 
 history. 
 
 "I can make war and make peace. 
 Clemenceau makes only war," said of him 
 the master of sonorous words and carver 
 of empty shells, Aristide Briand. But 
 Briand had never understood the wrath 
 of the man of pity against those who had 
 no pity. Clemenceau made peace, to en- 
 force right, not to further commerce. 
 The world is for him not a financial 
 oratorical, or artistic problem, but a 
 moral one. "How shall I give?" asks 
 Baron Moses in one of these stories. And 
 only "from the touch of death that on the 
 threshold of the beyond he conceived the 
 meaning of life." 
 
 This moral attitude, this insatiable 
 hunger for giving, the "quantum satis" 
 [ xviii ]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of every moralist, distorted by doubt, by 
 the consciousness of the theatricality of 
 this same attitude, intellect laughing be- 
 hind the back of emotion this is what 
 makes Georges Clemenceau one of the 
 foremost fighters of our modern sophisti- 
 cated times. A splendid "espada" yet 
 despairing of ever throwing down the 
 Bull. 
 
 A. CORALNIK. 
 
 [xix]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 Baron Moses von Goldschlammbach 
 was rich, very rich, in fact, too rich. He 
 had inherited his wealth from his father, 
 the baron Eliphas, a former broker for 
 contraband tobacco. A Portuguese ves- 
 sel had saved him from the hands of the 
 Belgian police in the harbor of Ostende 
 and had landed him in the feverish Bay 
 of Santos with nothing in his possession 
 but a portfolio containing a rather dubi- 
 ous contract with an equally dubious 
 speculator in coffee. 
 
 In time all South American republics 
 came to know, under divers aspects, that 
 despised Jew Eliphas, who traded in
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 everything that could be sold and whom 
 an unheard-of stroke of good luck made 
 the right hand of the most honorable and 
 most highly respected magnate of Cara- 
 cas. 
 
 It was a mere matter of chance that a 
 scrupulously kept engagement had se- 
 cured for him the esteem of Don Jose 
 Ramon y Lopez, whom a victorious revo- 
 lution placed at the head of a certain en- 
 terprise for the building of railroads and 
 the dredging of a harbor. The scheme 
 was of colossal proportions, calculated to 
 satisfy the hostile parties, all of them 
 equally hungry for spoils. By common 
 consent the agreement was sufficiently 
 elastic to suit all occasions. Unfortu- 
 nately Jose Ramon y Lopez expired 
 suddenly at an intimate dinner with his 
 partner Eliphas, whom general confi- 
 idence had made the dummy for all those
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 who had no need or desire to be publicly 
 associated with the enterprise. Nothing 
 was found on Ramon of the package of 
 letters that were to be distributed that 
 very evening. All that was discovered 
 in the dead man's apartment, where Eli- 
 phas wept and in desperate grief at the 
 loss of his friend knocked his head against 
 the wall, was a primitive agreement, 
 dating from the very inception of the 
 scheme, which left the survivor in pos- 
 session of everything. 
 
 At first an outcry of rage went forth, 
 moderated by involuntary admiration. A 
 hundred irregularities of form were sud- 
 denly discovered in the concession. The 
 contract of the enterprise was denounced, 
 a suit was entered and there was even talk 
 of special legislation. It was then that 
 Eliphas was found to be the possessor of 
 a singular gift: that of golden persuasion. 
 
 [3]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 As soon as this devil of a man began to 
 talk with one of his opponents, however 
 powerful that man might be, he was 
 won over to the cause of Eliphas, how 
 and why he himself did not know. 
 Without doubt the dazzling millions, of 
 which the lucky partner of Ramon was 
 the provisional holder, had something to 
 do with it; besides the conviction was 
 gaining ground, that nothing would make 
 Eliphas lose his grip on that fortune. 
 In time this view was justified, for with- 
 in five years Eliphas had won his suit 
 and serenely established himself as heir 
 of the vast property. 
 
 Notwithstanding his sudden rise in the 
 business world Eliphas remained good 
 and modest. He went about in the towns 
 as before, buying, selling, speculating, 
 but he was prudent enough to have two 
 trusty giants closely follow his steps. 
 
 [4]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 He seemed to have no desire to attract 
 attention by provocative luxury. He 
 had no taste for spending. Gifts to 
 charitable institutions, to synagogues and 
 Christian churches won for him the favor 
 and good will of everybody. 
 
 During one of his journeys the bishop 
 of Caracas persuaded him to be con- 
 verted, and he decided to take this 
 step without hesitation when he learned 
 of what social advantages it would be 
 to his son, young Moses. No doubt 
 it was to prepare him for his future 
 position in society that the youth was 
 promptly sent to the Jesuit brothers of 
 Cordova. 
 
 Thus the heir of Eliphas had his life 
 all mapped out. Richly provided for 
 by a heavy bank account, there remained 
 nothing more to be done than further to 
 fit him for the place he was to occupy, 
 
 [5]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 To prove that he did not solely rely upon 
 the power of wealth to pave the way of 
 his offspring, Eliphas yielded to the addi- 
 tional suggestion to buy a title from the 
 Pope. He did not aspire to anything 
 higher than a simple baronetcy. Some as- 
 serted that there was in this step an adroit 
 flattery, addressed to the great kings of 
 his race in the hope, were it possible, to 
 obtain pardon for his apostasy. 
 
 As Henry IV. after his conversion re- 
 mained indulgent towards his obstinate 
 Huguenots, so Eliphas secretly assisted 
 his former co-religionists and assured 
 himself of the good-will of Israel while 
 he was building cathedrals in honor of 
 the Holy Virgin and the Trinity. Our 
 capitals offered him their palaces. He 
 bought them and paid for them royally. 
 Thus he won the esteem of their former 
 owners and discreetly rendering them 
 [6]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 certain services even acquired their warm 
 friendship. 
 
 After he had accomplished all this, 
 Baron Eliphas wisely died, leaving his 
 son Moses in full possession of the power- 
 ful position that he had so scrupulously 
 assured for him by divers acts, in which 
 both the good Lord as well as the devil 
 had their share. 
 
 It must be admitted in praise of Baron 
 Moses, that he seemed to accept nothing 
 in the legacy of his father with as much 
 joy as the story of the honor pledge faith- 
 fully kept towards Jose Ramon y Lopez, 
 which was the original source of the 
 baronetcy of Goldschlammbach. At the 
 death of Eliphas he had the story most 
 artistically printed and published in all 
 languages. Owing to the remoteness of 
 the time and the place, the rest of the 
 biography seemed to have effaced itself 
 
 [7]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 in the memory of his contemporaries. 
 
 The question now arose, what Baron 
 Moses was going to do with the enormous 
 wealth and prominent social position, 
 which the restless life of the father had 
 secured for the innocent heir. But who- 
 ever may have asked that question, it was 
 apparently not Moses himself. For spon- 
 taneously, without the least premedita- 
 tion, without any thought whatsoever, he 
 continued in all simplicity the work of 
 his father who had accumulated and 
 hoarded in order that he might accumu- 
 late and hoard. There was neither vice 
 nor virtue in it. What can one do, if 
 all impulse of good or evil is lacking in 
 a human being? Eliphas had imagined 
 that he accumulated and hoarded for 
 Moses. But Moses had no children. 
 
 He had married a Jewess of perfect 
 beauty, a model of the Oriental harem 
 [8]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 type, indolent and passive. She loved 
 him well and at set hours fulfilled all her 
 duties towards her lord and provider, 
 not to mention supplementary charities 
 towards others, which the facile custom 
 of our Occidental morals permits. 
 
 The baron was not jealous, for the 
 friends of his wife showed him the great- 
 est respect in the world, and it was con- 
 sideration and homage that his gentle 
 and harmless vanity craved. Happy in 
 his home, the millionaire never thought 
 of seeking love outside of it. What could 
 he have found that he did not have at his 
 own hearth ? Besides the feeling that one 
 can buy everything, even what is not be- 
 yond price, permits one to enjoy every- 
 thing in a dream that embraces all, while 
 a conscious act would realize pleasure 
 only in fragments. 
 
 Avarice did not enter into his motives 
 
 [9]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 of action. What could be invented, what 
 could be found to appropriate all the 
 happiness of this world, to live one's life 
 in full? Luxury is an amusement that 
 rapidly exhausts itself, when one can de- 
 sire nothing without obtaining it, when 
 the privation of a day does not whet the 
 joy of satisfying a desire that had become 
 a pleasure by anticipation. So there was 
 nothing to look forward to on that side. 
 What he wanted, he could have: hence he 
 wanted nothing. 
 
 The pleasures of the table required 
 certain aptitudes which Baron Moses 
 ostensibly lacked. After futile efforts to 
 develop the vices of the palate, the man 
 who enjoyed simple soups, purees and 
 hashes and remained indifferent to the 
 rarest wines, had to renounce the pleasure 
 of procuring for himself the delights of 
 the table, which his friends enjoyed with 
 
 [10]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 avidity. But as he was obstinate, he 
 tried again, contrary to his innate taste, 
 to compete with them and finally suc- 
 ceeded in making his digestive organs re- 
 volt. This had at least the advantage 
 of forcing him to take better care of his 
 health. Two seasons of Carlsbad, how- 
 ever, effected a cure and he soon found 
 himself in the old predicament. 
 
 The racing stable was odious to him, 
 since he did not enjoy the singular pleas- 
 ure of being methodically robbed in 
 broad daylight. Besides he detested all 
 forms of gambling. Why gamble, if you 
 expect nothing from winning? He was 
 persuaded into arranging royal hunting 
 parties and agreed, because he was asked 
 to do so. But when at his post under an 
 oak, like a manorial judge in old royal 
 France, a hare or a deer appeared before 
 him between two game drivers, like an in-
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 nocent criminal between two officers of 
 the law, he resisted the temptation of 
 summary condemnation and prompt ex- 
 ecution. Then one day he seriously 
 wounded a game-warden. That led to 
 sensational reports in the papers, al- 
 though the man received a generous pen- 
 sion. Another time he himself was 
 struck by a stray shot. From that time 
 he no longer appeared at his hunting 
 parties, but was represented by his stable 
 master, a man familiar with the customs 
 and manners of society. 
 
 The theater bored him as much as did 
 life itself. What interest was there in 
 watching people clamoring to obtain by 
 ruse or by force or even by divine in- 
 terference what they do not possess, 
 when the humblest millionaire could 
 have simplified all those tiresome form- 
 alities when one has, or believes to have, 
 
 [12]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 the universal solution for all problems, 
 what pleasure could come from watching 
 the development of human conflicts? 
 
 There were the arts. Should he yawn 
 at the opera, seated behind naked 
 shoulders, always the same, or buy well- 
 known paintings relying on the word of 
 others, since he himself lacked personal 
 judgment? Or should he collect an- 
 tiques, snuffboxes, or even bandages, as 
 did a famous baron who was reigning in 
 Paris society? What purpose was there, 
 what pleasure could be derived in the 
 pursuit of such fads? 
 
 Finally there were the sentiments of 
 communal spirit, love of mankind, the 
 desire to serve progress by promoting 
 education, the patronage of science, the 
 encouragement of discoveries. All this 
 is deadly stale, monotonous and of no ap- 
 preciable effect upon the present, upon 
 
 [13]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 the man who expects nothing from these 
 things in furtherance of what he loves, 
 because he loves nothing, and for the 
 simple reason that nothing is given nor 
 refused to him. 
 
 Still one must do one's share in the 
 charities, no doubt, in order to be with the 
 current and to satisfy one's own con- 
 science. It is not difficult to do that. At 
 Carlsbad Moses had seen on many bour- 
 geois houses this pharisaical announce- 
 ment: "Protection against beggary." By 
 remitting a certain sum to the community, 
 the owners of these houses obtained the 
 right to arrest every beggar and to let him 
 starve without danger of being accused 
 of inhumanity, since they had given their 
 share. This is simplified Christianity, 
 the gospel as administrative mechanism. 
 Moses could not conceive of any other 
 manner of rendering assistance. Every 
 
 [HI
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 year he remitted to competent authorities 
 a certain sum, a sort of supplementary- 
 tax that he had inposed upon himself, and 
 this being done, he would sincerely say to 
 himself that night: "I am a good man." 
 
 No, he did not know real goodness, this 
 poor man, since the pleasure of procuring 
 joy to others by personal privation, by 
 personal sacrifice, was necessarily denied 
 to him. As he was not wicked and the 
 beggars besieged his door, he established 
 not far from his residence a welfare 
 agency, the expense of which he defrayed. 
 There experts in charity work opened the 
 letters, soliciting aid, made inquiries and 
 allotted the money which he furnished 
 them as best they knew. 
 
 To climb the staircase of some rickety 
 hovel himself, to be moved by the sight 
 of human suffering, to commune in their 
 sorrows with his human brothers, to in- 
 
 [15]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 dulge in the infinite pleasure of chang- 
 ing misery to joy, of distributing happi- 
 ness with his own hands, to try to correct 
 the imperfect order of the world and by 
 the good coming from an individual to 
 efface the evil which had followed in the 
 wake of creation: this idea never oc- 
 curred to him, could not occur to the un- 
 fortunate prisoner of his wealth. 
 
 Immured in the dismal fortress of 
 social conventions, he ordered to give, 
 but never gave himself. If he founded a 
 hospital, if he endowed a public institu- 
 tion of any kind, the gift came from his 
 cashier, from his reason, not from himself, 
 from his pitying heart, from his soul, en- 
 joying the happiness the hand so easily 
 bestowed. Had Moses been poor, he 
 would have followed some trade, as Eli- 
 phas had done at his debut; he would 
 have paid with his own suffering the hour 
 [16]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 of sacrifice for others. But being rich, 
 this was denied him. He felt that some- 
 thing was wanting in his generosities, that 
 cost him nothing. But what, he could 
 not know. "I am not rich enough to 
 wipe out all this misery," he said and con- 
 soled his inability with that convenient 
 phrase, without asking himself whether 
 he was destroying what was in his power, 
 what he should destroy, nor inquiring 
 why the vulgar giving of money was not 
 accompanied by the moral support which 
 came from a contact of eyes, hands and 
 souls. 
 
 At least friendship could come to him 
 from others and give him that stimulus 
 of affection which he had no idea of of- 
 fering, but which he would willingly 
 have accepted, unable to understand the 
 need of reciprocity. But the friendship 
 of whom? Beggars, parasites, manu- 
 
 [17]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 facturers and speculators in conspiracy 
 against his bank account, members of the 
 nobility whom he flattered, not without a 
 touch of disdain, and who treated him 
 with consideration and even cultivated 
 his acquaintance, while they secretly de- 
 spised him? The rest of humanity was 
 for him a closed book. The rough 
 worker of brutal frankness, the simple 
 good man of honest character and warm 
 heart, the unselfish thinker, who could 
 have enlightened him about himself 
 where could he have met those? 
 
 He considered the artizan an enemy, 
 because he complains of a social order 
 which the millionaire thinks tolerable. 
 The little working middle-class seemed 
 to him a mean, contemptible type which 
 can at pleasure be bought; the man of 
 ideas was to him a dangerous agitator, 
 who scatters the seed of future revolu-
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 dons; the favored of this world were to 
 him a cowardly class of degenerates, who 
 did not know enough to unite for the 
 purpose of defending their possessions 
 against the covetousness of the threaten- 
 ing crowd. 
 
 In this state of mind he of necessity 
 plunged into the only occupation which 
 his circumstances imposed upon him. 
 He managed his fortune, bought, sold, 
 speculated ingeniously, profiting by the 
 movements of the stock market, making 
 certain industries prosper as by magic, 
 while ruining others all by the decisive 
 action of an irresistible force. Success 
 followed him and the useless battalion 
 that haunted his shadow only added to the 
 fatal calamities of triumph. Those men, 
 already the owners of considerable 
 wealth, were benefited by his enterprises 
 and did not grudge him his victories,
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 though he worked for himself, and not 
 for them. On the other hand, those of 
 all ranks, whom his maneuvers injured, 
 spent their inextinguishable hatred in 
 cries of rage, in maledictions and in 
 threats, sometimes followed by acts of 
 vengeance. 
 
 To those who spoke to him of the 
 privileges of his position, he had but one 
 answer: "I work." And, bent under the 
 weight of the enormous nightmare that 
 crushed his life, possessed by his posses- 
 sions, loving his evil, more enslaved than 
 the slave who out of his inner revolt wins 
 secret liberty, he did in truth work daily 
 for many long hours. 
 
 It seemed natural to him that the same 
 word could be applied to the sterile labor 
 from which he could not expect satis- 
 faction of any desire, nor the increase of 
 any joy, as well as to the happy gift of 
 
 [20]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 himself in the fertile effort of acquiring 
 fortunes promptly to be dispersed. Is it 
 the meaning of work to use yourself up 
 without profit to anybody, not even to 
 yourself? Of what use is the gain to him 
 who between two suns, without even the 
 need of knowing it, can lose or win 
 millions that offer possibilities of life for 
 others? 
 
 On the other hand, one must not lose. 
 How would envy look upon that mis- 
 chance! With what exultation would 
 hatred spy upon the loser! Of what use 
 is the unheard-of chance which places 
 into the hands of a few mortals an enor- 
 mous power, if they prove inferior to 
 what simple conservation of a fortune 
 demands from an ordinary genius? 
 What? He who disposes of everything 
 and of everybody, should be stupidly con- 
 quered? That is without excuse. As 
 
 [21]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 soon as his calculations prove wrong and 
 he makes a mistake, prestige is gone and 
 honor is compromised. The colossus has 
 trembled. To-morrow he will collapse. 
 
 This hourly anguish without possible 
 compensation! One must live in ever- 
 lasting torment. One must struggle for 
 honor. Honor is the effort to create a 
 growing tyranny with the tyranny already 
 existing, to pursue with new vigor the 
 frightful struggle of accumulated gold 
 against the effort of flesh and blood which 
 is the stock in trade of the miserable 
 crowds in their will to live. 
 
 The lowest possible wages for work 
 and the greatest possible profit on the 
 articles of consumption that promote it, 
 that is the fatal principle of every con- 
 ceivable operation. Can one wonder that 
 the resentment, the disdain of those who 
 suffer from it, concentrate upon the man 
 
 [22]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 whose colossal power denounced him as 
 protagonist of a struggle in which every- 
 thing serves the abusive power of one in- 
 dividual against the right of all to live? 
 Poor Moses was in good faith surprised 
 at it, for he was incapable of viewing it 
 philosophically and of understanding 
 what he would have keenly sensed, had 
 he remained in the obscurity and the pov- 
 erty from which the inglorious life of his 
 father had so gloriously saved him. He 
 felt that he was envied and this was a 
 rather pleasant sensation, that he was 
 feared, and all pleasure in his power came 
 from the general dread; that he was 
 hated, and his surprise was mingled with 
 rage. Vividly conscious of the good 
 which he happened to do, living by in- 
 sufficient mentality in ignorance of the 
 evil of which he was the blind tool, he 
 looked upon himself as a victim of fate, 
 
 [23]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 as a living proof of the injustice of man. 
 The rights which he employed and 
 claimed as his in the established order 
 in what did they differ from those which 
 the humblest farmer claimed, the most 
 modest artizan? Luck made his father 
 draw a better lot than the others. By 
 the right of inheritance he was profiting 
 by it. One could only bow before the 
 fact. The thought that there might be in 
 these matters a question of degree, and 
 that according to the word of an ancient 
 sage, extreme right ends in extreme 
 wrong, the very idea that there was some- 
 thing to blame in a social organism which 
 makes one member die of plethora, while 
 the other wastes away from anaemia, 
 seemed to him a simple error of igno- 
 rance or hatred. Against these passions 
 of disorder, as he said for his case 
 seemed to him of a pre-established 
 
 [24]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 order there was no other resource than 
 force: and Baron Moses never failed to 
 resort to it in order to defend his miser- 
 able happiness against the despair of 
 misery. 
 
 Thus lived the unhappy man, as if 
 bound by an absurd wager, barricaded be- 
 hind the wall of gold against all joys of 
 normal existence: allied to his fellow- 
 beings only by the innumerable threads 
 of mutual sufferings. He lived, or rather 
 believed that he lived, since he did not 
 know life but from one aspect, the worst : 
 the jaded warped, always whining, em- 
 bittered by an obstinate defense of his 
 own misfortune. A man outside of 
 mankind : a contradiction of existence, an 
 aberration of folly. 
 
 Moses suffered in silence, which was 
 worse. Had he given free vent to his 
 need of expression, he would perhaps 
 
 [25]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 have felt his tragedy less keenly. But to 
 whom was he to speak? Who would 
 understand the incomprehensible? And 
 how could he explain the inexplicable? 
 Sadly he locked everything in his inner 
 self and the evil became daily more seri- 
 ous. A dull irritation against every- 
 body and everything rose in him, in- 
 creased dangerously in his soul and re- 
 vealed itself in unforeseen outbursts, in 
 violent rage against unnamed persecutors, 
 in incoherent threats that seemed without 
 point. 
 
 Contradiction seemed unbearable to 
 him. It even became difficult to agree 
 with him, unless one repeated exactly his 
 own arguments or exaggerated his senti- 
 ments, his fancies. It was curious, how- 
 ever, that these strangely changing moods, 
 which on some days gave cause to fear for 
 his reason, these long intervals of absolute 
 
 [26]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 silence interrupted by outbursts of rage, 
 which even his wife could appease only 
 in trembling, did not in the least seem to 
 impair his business sense, his remarkable 
 perspicacity as financier. He became 
 more and more absorbed in his work, per- 
 tinently discussed whatever concerned his 
 business and prolonged whatever was left 
 in him of healthy vigor by his habitual 
 activity. 
 
 His friends, if that term can be applied 
 to them, accepted their fate, when the 
 baron isolated himself more and more, 
 fled from contact with his like and en- 
 trenched himself in a fortress of irony, 
 from which nobody but the baroness 
 could lure him forth. But he grew 
 worse, his business was neglected with 
 disgust, and after an insignificant loss due 
 to a lapse of memory, it could no longer 
 be doubted that he was suffering from 
 
 [27]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 monomania, so he had to be watched in 
 and outside of his home. 
 
 For Baron Moses was preoccupied by 
 and conversed only upon one topic: 
 hunger. He wanted to know why so 
 many letters which he had received in 
 the course of time contained the phrase: 
 I am hungry. He wanted to know 
 the meaning of it. Why were people 
 hungry? He had never been hungry, 
 nor anybody he knew. Why did those 
 troops of beggars repeat this incompre- 
 hensible phrase at all street corners? It 
 was a conspiracy against the unfortunates 
 that were not hungry. What was the 
 police doing? There seemed to be no 
 government at all. All the cabinet 
 ministers were anarchists. "The hungry 
 will get possession of everything. We 
 are approaching the end of the world." 
 
 Sometimes he varied the theme : "Why 
 
 [28]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 am I deprived of the right of being 
 hungry? That is unjust. Everybody 
 should have his turn. Others should be 
 tormented by those who are hungry. I 
 want to be hungry now." And for days 
 the unfortunate man refused all food in 
 order to experience the supreme joy of a 
 tortured stomach. Then the wretched 
 esophagus did its work and, half suf- 
 focated, in spite of his revolt, the man re- 
 ceived the nourishment which he had in 
 his folly refused, a folly which really 
 bordered on reason, since the ordeal could 
 only result in prolongation of his ills. 
 
 Thus did an incessant struggle begin 
 between the ruses of the madman and his 
 guards, the latter trying to surprise him 
 by forcing some dainty upon him, the 
 former feigning to satisfy them, while he 
 stealthily threw out upon the street what 
 was supposed to have been his meal. 
 
 [29]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 Concentration upon one single object, 
 one idea, however unreasonable, will at 
 the end triumph over the most prudent 
 and best balanced mind. In spite of the 
 scrupulous watch kept over him, Baron 
 Moses was fasting. A meal apparently 
 accepted with good grace created the im- 
 pression that his resistance had ceased 
 and vigilance slackened. During an in- 
 terval of greater or lesser duration the 
 spasmodically contracted stomach did not 
 open to receive any nourishment. 
 
 One day the ruse succeeded to the ex- 
 tent that the organ, finally revolting, im- 
 periously claimed its due. With closed 
 eyes, silently doubled up, Moses felt a 
 keen pain convulsing him. His thin face 
 contracted in the effort not to utter a 
 sound to attract attention. And when an 
 interval of calm followed, Moses thought 
 "That is hunger," and in spite of his 
 [30]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 agony was delighted at the success of 
 his scheme. Motionless, huddled up in 
 his armchair, he rejoiced in anticipating 
 the voluptuous sensation of conquered 
 hunger and the two silent watchers, 
 thinking him asleep, noiselessly retired. 
 
 No sooner had they disappeared, when 
 Moses started and ran across the room 
 with the air of a victor. He is hungry, 
 he has cramps and convulsions that shake 
 him are indubitable proof that his in- 
 testines are contracting with the vulgar 
 need of nourishment. When one is 
 hungry, one must tell everybody about 
 it, with a plaintive note and outstretched 
 palm. That is the rule, that is the cus- 
 tom which so often disturbs the peace of 
 those whom God has refused the privi- 
 lege of being famished. Bolts separate 
 him from the street. But he must speak, 
 he must tell the passers-by of his experi- 
 
 [30
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 ence. He will try to get out. He knows 
 where the double key of the door is hid- 
 den. With one bound he is in the 
 stairway, in the court. The porter's 
 lodge is vacant. Baron Moses is on the 
 street. 
 
 He loses no time. Two steps from his 
 residence he meets a busy bourgeois. 
 The hungry man hurries up to him: "Sir, 
 I beg you, I am hungry, very hungry. I 
 have not eaten in three days." Uncon- 
 sciously he imitates the very inflections 
 and attitudes of the mendicants that used 
 to pursue him. Imitation comes so much 
 easier to him, since hunger has him 
 really in its grip ; for the pangs of hunger, 
 crying hunger, will not cease. That this 
 suffering was brought upon him by him- 
 self, he no longer knows. When he 
 weeps, when he whines, when he speaks 
 of his misery, when his poor hand, almost 
 
 [32]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 that of a skeleton, vainly stretches forth 
 and the voice tremulously begs for a sou, 
 this is no longer a comedy. He is really 
 hungry, and he begs for a little bread, 
 and it is refused him, the Baron Moses 
 von Goldschlammbach! 
 
 Repulsed with a gesture of disdain or 
 a word of menace, he goes from one to 
 the other, he insists, he laments and cries : 
 "I am hungry." His breast heaves with 
 sobs, his eyes are haggard, his lips are 
 trembling, his head moves in response to 
 the vertigo that seizes him. If people 
 had looked at him, if they had listened to 
 him, they could not have helped pitying 
 that miserable fleshless body, this remnant 
 of a human form; they would have been 
 touched by those cries of mortal anguish. 
 But they did not even glance at him, he 
 was not heard, he was passed by .un- 
 noticed. 
 
 [33]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 Neither good, nor wicked, these peo- 
 ple had no time to stop for him that was 
 all. Did he not do so himself formerly? 
 yaguely, in the whirlpool of madness 
 which was gripping him, the haunting 
 vision of the past made him recognize 
 in gestures and in words, that were once 
 his very own, the idea which closes upon 
 and paralyzes these passive sympathies. 
 "We cannot succor all ills." They did 
 not say those words, but the madman 
 heard them. He heard them in his soul 
 which had so often prompted them. He 
 recognized himself in the others, he felt 
 himself living in that refusal to let live 
 which had come from him and now re- 
 turned to him. O frightful ordeal! It 
 is he who now implores and who is re- 
 pulsed. His present need cries for suc- 
 cor, and the callousness of the past will 
 and can not hear and it is his own pain 
 
 [34]
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 which palpitates at the barriers of his 
 own closed heart. 
 
 What does that mean: "We cannot 
 succor all ills?" Why can it not be done? 
 One could do it, if one had the will. 
 Who knows it better than he, whose use- 
 less safe is spouting pity converted into 
 currency? He wants to cry out: "I have 
 the secret of it!" He feels that one must 
 give, give all, as demanded one of his race, 
 whom that race denied. 
 
 Now he understands. He will give, 
 for the suffering of want has for the mo- 
 ment conquered the madness born out of 
 the abundance of riches. The light of 
 reason brightens the somber clouds and 
 the truth shines suddenly forth, im- 
 mediately after to sink into the night. 
 Moses will give all; that he has decided. 
 Nobody shall suffer again as he is suf- 
 fering, thanks to him, Baron Moses! 
 
 [35]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 Through him the ultimate misery of 
 hunger will be forever abolished. But 
 for the realization of that supreme joy he 
 must live, he must first appease his own 
 hunger, and succeed in having somebody 
 give to Moses in order that Moses may 
 give in his turn. Hundreds of millions 
 for but one single sou! The wager is 
 made, but nobody accepts it. The pas- 
 sers-by turn away their heads, and the 
 sou which should be given is not forth- 
 coming. 
 
 The beggar millionaire becomes furi- 
 ous; he foams with rage; he explodes 
 with invectives. 
 
 "Is nobody going to call the police?" 
 somebody exclaims. 
 
 At this word, which even yesterday 
 was his own appeal for help, Moses is ter- 
 rified. He sees himself pursued, tracked, 
 submitted to the brutality of the officers 
 
 [36] '
 
 BARON MOSES 
 
 of the law, who will not understand him, 
 whom it is their duty to protect and de- 
 fend. And he starts to run, hurling 
 his cry of hunger at random, while 
 the indifferent crowd is absorbed in the 
 attractions of the show windows. 
 
 Moses has only one sensation now, one 
 thought, one goal : to eat, eat by all means, 
 no matter where, nor how. He no longer 
 sees the men from whom he had expected 
 relief. With the irresistible will of a 
 beast, haunted by the sovereign instinct, 
 he wants to satisfy a need which cannot 
 wait. He wants food and because he 
 wants it, he acts. 
 
 How he got there he does not know; 
 but he has entered a bakery and stretches 
 out his hand. He touches, he seizes, he 
 steals a loaf of bread, the object of his 
 feverish desire, the innocent cause of so 
 many ills, so much sorrow. 
 
 [37]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 Then the congestion is followed by re- 
 action. He collapses, motionless, and 
 human pity stirs at last . . . too late. 
 
 If Moses had recovered, who knows 
 what kind of a man he might have become 
 of that crucial experience? 
 
 But Moses is dead. The poor million- 
 aire had to become insane, to be illumined 
 by a flash of reason, and it is from the 
 touch of death that on the threshold of 
 the beyond he conceived the meaning of 
 life. . . . 
 
 One could philosophize about this 
 story. I have seen it acted on the Shake- 
 spearean stage of our real life, that life 
 which knows no pity, and I have only 
 disguised the facts. 
 
 [38]
 
 SCHLOME THE FIGHTER 
 
 The story that I am going to tell is 
 founded upon fact. I wrote it as it was 
 dictated to me by a man who witnessed 
 in the synagogue the dramatic scene of 
 which Schlome the Fighter was the hero. 
 It seems to me that it is worthy of pub- 
 lication, as much for the psychological in- 
 terest of the plot, as for the light which it 
 throws upon customs foreign to us. 
 
 It deals with one of those poor Polish 
 Jews in long trailing coat, with un- 
 trimmed beard and shabby locks, whose 
 curious shining side curls tumbling over 
 his ears, suggests a spaniel coming out of 
 the water. Schlome (or Solomon) Fuss 
 was a tailor. It is a very useful trade, 
 
 [39]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 but you cannot become rich by it in one 
 of the poorest villages of eastern Galicia. 
 The hamlet of Busk, two steps from 
 the Russian frontier, shows unmistakable 
 signs of the most lamentable poverty. 
 However, one should not always judge 
 the wealth of men by their appearance. 
 In spite of the indescribable hovels in 
 which the Jewry of Busk is crowded, it is 
 said that the fortune of some individuals 
 is rated by the thousands. They are the 
 Rothschilds of the place. The rest cut 
 each sou into eight and do not indulge in 
 the luxury of clothes. But, whatever, 
 one may do to economize, the strongest 
 web is bound to yield and when the hole 
 grew beyond reasonable size one had to 
 resort to Schlome to have him apply the 
 redeeming patch. Piecing together, cut- 
 ting, sewing, Schlome was an expert in his 
 art. Thus he managed to eke out his ex- 
 
 [40]
 
 SCHLOME THE FIGHTER 
 
 istence and that of his wife Leah and five 
 children. At the time when our story be- 
 gins, Leah was expecting another. 
 
 It was in the year 1848. What events 
 crowded into that memorable year! A 
 strong breath of freedom was sweeping 
 across the hills and plains of the old con- 
 tinent, a longing for justice. The people 
 were all rising against their oppressors, 
 and the thrones were tottering. It was a 
 beautiful dawn of hope. But alas! what 
 a night followed that day. . . . 
 
 One must not imagine that the poor 
 Jews of Busk were ignorant of these hap- 
 penings. They perceived very well that 
 an unusual force was moving the world 
 that year, when his Majesty, the Emperor, 
 honored them with three successive con- 
 scriptions. 
 
 Until military service became obliga- 
 tory for all in 1866, the Galician Jew had 
 
 [40
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 never ceased to protest against the noble 
 trade of arms. Orthodoxy, not coward- 
 ice, made him shun the barracks. Once 
 enlisted, he had to renounce eating kosher 
 meat; a terrible necessity for those who 
 rigorously followed the precepts of their 
 Law. An even greater evil was the fact 
 that they had to break the Sabbath by 
 being forced to work on that day. As for 
 whom and why they were fighting, they 
 did not know. They would have under- 
 stood, had they faced the eventuality of 
 being killed in the defense of Jerusalem. 
 But to risk their life in some quarrels of 
 the Christians how absurd ! 
 
 These were the reasons why the Jewish 
 communities of Galicia tried to save their 
 youth from military service. They suc- 
 ceeded in doing so by the simplest strata- 
 gem. What did the emperor want? A 
 certain number of soldiers to be killed 
 
 [42]
 
 SCHLOME THE FIGHTER 
 
 according to the rules of warfare? They 
 furnished him his share. The Emperor 
 was satisfied, and so was Israel. But how 
 was that miracle to be accomplished? 
 
 All communities in Galicia, where a 
 sufficient number of Jews resided, were 
 divided into Christian and Jewish dis- 
 tricts. The census made known the num- 
 ber of inhabitants of each section and in 
 proportion to the population was deter- 
 mined the number of conscripts which 
 each was to furnish. Now the Galician 
 villages were at that time invaded by Jews 
 from Russian Poland who had fled across 
 the border to escape from the horrible 
 persecutions to which they were subjected 
 under Czar Nicholas. 
 
 These refugees fortunately did not 
 share the Talmudic orthodoxy of their 
 Galician co-religionists, and besides, 
 being bare of all resources, they had no 
 
 [43]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 objection to donning the uniform. Thus 
 the bargain was assured in advance. 
 Bribing into complicity the police and 
 the gendarmerie, the Russian Jew, duly 
 paid, assumed the civic status of his 
 Galician brother and served in the ranks, 
 while the latter remained in his Galician 
 home, fed on kosher food, abstained from 
 all work on the Sabbath and dreamed of 
 a restored Jerusalem. 
 
 Until the year 1848 this system had 
 functioned to general satisfaction. But 
 that year, with war in the interior, in Italy 
 and in Hungary, the emperor needed 
 more human blood. Thus, as said before, 
 the poor Jews of Busk had to suffer three 
 conscriptions, like all other subjects of the 
 Empire. Such things happened also in 
 France in 1813 and like many subjects of 
 Napoleon, the Jews of Galicia were will- 
 ing to pay a good price in order to be 
 
 [44]
 
 SCHLOME THE FIGHTER 
 
 spared the glory of heroes. However, 
 the meager purse of these people could 
 not bear the triple demand for human 
 flesh. Those of Busk were still able to 
 buy about four men a year, which 
 was their ordinary tribute, but to fur- 
 nish twelve men was a sheer impos- 
 sibility. 
 
 At the first and the second conscriptions 
 they succeeded by some chance in getting 
 out of their dilemma. They mortgaged, 
 they sold in order to save the holy ark, 
 and the God of Abraham had the joy of 
 seeing all the sheep of his flock intact. 
 But when the third conscription came, 
 they were without resources. The supply 
 from Russian Poland had become more 
 rare and the demand being greater, the 
 price of a man had increased beyond all 
 proportion. All the safes had been emp- 
 tied before ; the poor people found them- 
 
 [45]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 selves at the end of their means. By a 
 supreme effort they succeeded in obtain- 
 ing three substitutes. But for the fourth, 
 nobody could be found. They had to re- 
 sign themselves to choose from Israel it- 
 self a victim for the bloody tournament of 
 Christian barbarism. 
 
 The idea of drawing lots among the 
 young men who had passed their twenty- 
 first year, as the law required, never oc- 
 curred to them. The grand council 
 directing the affairs at the Jewish com- 
 munity and composed of the most pious 
 and wealthiest members, realized how- 
 ever, that they should not leave to chance 
 to decide who was to be offered to take 
 part in the holocaust. How could one 
 dare to sacrifice one of the rich, represent- 
 ing a capital of some five to six hundred 
 francs! Does one not even in such crises 
 meet with that oligarchy of money, which 
 
 [46]
 
 SCHLOME THE FIGHTER 
 
 appropriates all it can of the privileges 
 of the less favored classes? 
 
 But an even more serious question pre- 
 sented itself. Religious sentiment raised 
 above the ordinary rank persons more or 
 less distantly associated with the divinity: 
 hence it did not permit a "Lerner" to live 
 among the uncircumcised. The Lerner 
 is the man devoted to serious Hebrew 
 studies, he who pours over the Talmud 
 and the Kabala. Such men form the real 
 aristocracy of Israel, which dates back 
 beyond the temple destroyed by Titus. 
 A Lerner, who is neither merchant nor 
 artizan, is readily accepted by the girl 
 with the richest dowry, just as our 
 marquis are by the least attractive among 
 America's young millionairesses. So it 
 was unanimously decided by the Sanhe- 
 drin of Busk to put into a hat the names 
 of the lowliest members of the Jewish 
 
 [47]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 community and let chance make its 
 choice. 
 
 It was the name of Schlome Fuss that 
 was drawn. When night came, the gen- 
 darmes instructed to carry out the law, 
 broke into the home of Schlome, dragged 
 him from his pallet, regardless of the 
 tears of his wife, and having bound him, 
 led the stunned tailor without any ex- 
 planation to the police station of the 
 neighboring town of Zloczow. With the 
 complicity of the judge' he was there 
 furnished a false identification card, his 
 dear side curls were cut, he was stuck 
 into a brand new uniform, and before 
 long he was on his way to the fields of 
 Novare, where Charles Albert was prov- 
 ing the strength of his arm. Did not 
 Candide in the same manner become one 
 of the heroes of the Bulgarian army? 
 
 There was only this difference: the 
 
 [48]
 
 SCHLOME THE FIGHTER 
 
 handsome Cunegonde was without off- 
 spring, while Schlome's Leah had six 
 children to bring up on the pestilential 
 air which Providence liberally distrib- 
 uted among those upon whom were 
 heaped all the evils of the world, so they 
 could in time better appreciate the ever- 
 lasting beatitude of the elect. Provi- 
 dence apparently favored Leah and her 
 six children, for none of the trials of 
 poverty were spared them. It was mi- 
 raculous that they survived. I dare 
 say they thrived on it. That race will 
 never die. What can be more humiliat- 
 ing to our multi-millionaires who feed on 
 all sorts of medicine and see their precious 
 bodies waste away in their palaces from 
 scrofula and tuberculosis! Though they 
 shivered with cold and were faint with 
 lack of food, Leah and her six children 
 persevered in the irritating habit of 
 
 [49]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 living. The community which had ren- 
 dered them assistance in the secret hope 
 that "this cannot last," finally bravely 
 undertook to care for them. 
 
 Two years later, in 1850, when the war 
 was over, there appeared in the village 
 a splendid soldier with braid and gilt 
 and boots, a saber at his side and medals 
 on his chest. Without a word he 
 directed his steps towards the hut of 
 Schlome Fuss. He entered and there 
 was an explosion of cries, a tempest of 
 ejaculations. Men followed him with 
 heavy baskets, which were opened at the 
 door and from which he extracted the 
 most extraordinary victuals. All night 
 the hut echoed with laughter, song and 
 kisses. There was no doubt about it. 
 The soldier who had returned with glory 
 and braid, the sub-officer decorated with 
 medals that meant a pension, if you 
 
 [50]
 
 SCHLOME THE FIGHTER 
 
 please, was Schlome, the miserable little 
 Jew whom the gendarmes had dragged 
 forth from the village, a rope about his 
 neck. Those same men, O miracle! to- 
 day exchanged with him the military 
 salute and treated him with respect. 
 
 He was surrounded, was questioned by 
 his fellow citizens: but the only answer 
 he had for them was to tinkle the florins 
 in his pocket.* He was a hero. A 
 modest hero, for he did not show him- 
 self vain of his grandeur, they remarked. 
 They noticed, too, that he loved to re- 
 main shut up in his home and that 
 he especially delighted in the company 
 of his latest-born, little David, who had 
 come into the world during his absence. 
 
 *It may cause some wonder that fortunes could so 
 readily be made in war. But the turmoil of those 
 times permitted Jewish and Christian soldiers a rather 
 lucrative trade. They deserted from one army to en- 
 list in another; then they returned to their flag, join- 
 ing another regiment under a new name. Thus they 
 were able to realize handsome sums in a rather ven- 
 turesome trade with military glory. 
 
 [51]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 The Sabbath came and Schlome took 
 his prayer-cloak and as before his army 
 experience went to the synagogue, where 
 he participated in the pious exercises of 
 his brothers with customary fervor. 
 
 "Schlome is a good Jew," said they on 
 leaving the temple. "He has remained 
 faithful to his God. He will be re- 
 warded for it." 
 
 One thing, however, puzzled the peo- 
 ple. Whenever any pious man, eager to 
 impress upon him the generosity of his 
 act, boasted of having helped Leah and 
 the children, Schlome would reply only 
 with a brief exclamation of wonder. 
 Never did a word of thanks leave his lips. 
 This was remarked and variously com- 
 mented upon. Finally it was agreed that 
 Schlome was a good Jew, but an ingrate. 
 
 Schlome had returned in time for the 
 feast of the New Year in September, 
 
 [52]
 
 SCHLOME THE FIGHTER 
 
 which is ten days later followed by that 
 of Yom Kippur, the Great Atonement 
 Day. Nobody observed the fast more 
 rigorously than the young soldier, for on 
 this day it is forbidden even to drink a 
 drop of water. At the synagogue he 
 prayed as usual, his prayer cloak thrown 
 over the uniform, for he was only on 
 leave. 
 
 After the prayers the rabbi ascended 
 towards the tabernacle to take the sacred 
 Scroll of the Law, and according to pre- 
 scribed forms read certain chapters. But 
 to the amazement of all, Schlome 
 plunged forward, stepped before the of- 
 ficiating Minister and laying an impious 
 hand upon his arm, barred the way to 'the 
 tabernacle. A clamor of indignation, 
 terror and rage followed this sacrilege. 
 With an unanimous impulse the crowd 
 rushed towards the blasphemer to punish 
 [S3]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 him for his crime. He was insulted, 
 threatened to be dismembered, to be 
 killed outright. But Schlome dominated 
 the crowd and with saber drawn held 
 back the most daring. Some coats were 
 torn and some faces scratched, before 
 calm was restored in the sacred place. 
 Standing on the topmost step, the point 
 of his saber against the floor, Schlome 
 said with resonant voice : 
 
 "Listen to me. I want to speak." 
 Stupefied, terror-struck by his attitude, 
 the crowd lapsed into silence, and the 
 soldier continued : 
 
 "I, Schlome Fuss, forbid you to open 
 the tabernacle. You are not worthy to 
 read the word of God in the sacred book. 
 For you are wicked, you are sinful, you 
 are an abomination in Israel. You have 
 allowed me to be dragged away from my 
 home at night. You have sold me even 
 [541
 
 SCHLOME THE FIGHTER 
 
 as Benjamin was sold by his brothers. 
 You have exposed to abject misery my 
 wife Leah, and my children, who lived on 
 the produce of my labor. All this you 
 have done, in order that you might 
 cowardly save one of your own. You 
 hoped that a bullet would make an end of 
 me and remove the proof of your crime. 
 But God has protected me and here I am. 
 I return as avenger. I declare to you to- 
 day, the day of the Great Atonement, that 
 you will not perform the holy ceremony 
 on which depend life and death of each 
 creature, and that you will not be par- 
 doned, unless you offer me full reparation 
 for your odious crime. 
 
 A voice rose: "Let us call the gen- 
 darmes 1" and the crowd burst into cries 
 of insulting approval and dashed out to 
 summon armed force. 
 
 But the gendarmes were now the 
 
 [if]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 friends of Schlome Fuss. When they 
 heard what had happened, they found 
 the incident rather amusing and declared 
 that they could not enter the synagogue 
 without a formal order. Who would 
 issue it? There was no tribunal in 
 Busk. 
 
 The outraged worshipers went to the 
 Christian syndic, who replied that he had 
 no authority over the synagogue. The 
 police court was fifteen miles from the 
 village. Even had it been nearer, a Jew 
 cannot go on horseback or in a carriage 
 on the day of the Great Atonement. 
 They had to renounce their desire to see 
 Schlome punished at the risk of not per- 
 forming the ceremony indispensable for 
 that absolution which our weakness needs. 
 
 They returned to the temple and found 
 Schlome, his saber still unsheathed, stand- 
 ing guard before the tabernacle. 
 
 [56]
 
 SCHLOME THE FIGHTER 
 
 The rabbi approached in humble at- 
 titude. 
 
 "Schlome," said he with tremulous 
 voice, "what do you want us to do?" 
 
 "You will go with me to-morrow," re- 
 plied he, "and with the whole council you 
 will on your knees beg pardon from my 
 wife and my children." 
 
 "So be it," said the rabbi resolutely, 
 "we shall do it." 
 
 "That is not all. You must pay me an 
 indemnity. I need the money to keep my 
 family while I finish my term of service. 
 I have still some years more to serve. I 
 have made my account. I demand three 
 hundred and fifty florins, and not a sou 
 less." 
 
 "But, unfortunate man, how can we 
 
 pay such an exorbitant sum? Do you 
 
 want to reduce us to misery, commit 
 
 against us the crime which you say 
 
 tS7]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 we committed against you and yours?" 
 
 "I need three hundred and fifty florins 
 to-day. Without producing them you 
 will not observe the Great Atonement" 
 
 "But you know that our hands must not 
 touch money on this day." 
 
 "That does not matter. There is my 
 prayer cloak at my feet. Go home, fetch 
 your silver, the jewels of your wives and 
 daughters. Heap your treasures on this 
 cloak until I think they suffice to balance 
 my claim. The doctor is a just man, he 
 will guard them and to-morrow after you 
 have prostrated yourself in the dust be- 
 fore Leah and my children, you can re- 
 deem your valuables in coin." 
 
 They tried to postpone action, to pro- 
 tract the discussion. 
 
 "Do you not see that the sun is advanc- 
 ing?" said Schlome. "If you wait, it will 
 be too late for the Great Atonement." 
 
 [58]
 
 SCHLOME THE FIGHTER 
 
 Thus the jewelry was brought forth 
 and heaped upon the cloak and when he 
 deemed it enough, Schlome said simply. 
 
 "That will do." 
 
 The doctor, from whose son I have the 
 story, guarded the treasures and Schlome 
 demanded to be called to read the first 
 passage from the Bible. 
 
 "That honor," said he, "reserved to the 
 most pious and most venerable among 
 you, is mine by right, since you have all 
 been wicked and I was your victim." 
 
 Having said this, he put back his saber 
 in its sheath and left his post of combat. 
 He took up a prayer-cloak, wrapped it 
 about him and solemnly pronounced the 
 formula of the benediction which pre- 
 cedes the reading of the book. 
 
 The sacred writings had been taken 
 from the Tabernacle. Bending over the 
 holy text, Schlome read with loud voice 
 
 [59]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 the first verse; another followed and the 
 ceremony took its course without any 
 other incident to trouble the piety of the 
 congregation. When the first stars ap- 
 peared in the sky, the Jewish community 
 of Busk, according to their Creator's law, 
 could peacefully, after the cruel ordeal, 
 break the fast of the Great Atonement. 
 
 The following day the whole council 
 came to kneel on the threshold of 
 Schlome's hut and publicly made amends. 
 The three hundred and fifty florins were 
 paid. Leah, who was an industrious 
 woman, immediately hired two assistants 
 and reopened the tailor shop. After 
 settling his accounts before he returned 
 to service, Schlome discovered that he had 
 one hundred florins too much. He made 
 a gift of this sum to the poor of all creeds. 
 The synagogue was scandalized, but sub- 
 mitted to this supplementary penance. 
 
 [60]
 
 SCHLOME THE FIGHTER 
 
 Two years later Schlome was honorably 
 discharged from the army, and on his re- 
 turn to the village resumed his old busi- 
 ness. He made his side-curls grow again 
 and slowly returned to the wonted life of 
 the Jewish artizan of Galicia. On seeing 
 him pass through the village, so quiet, 
 gentle and humble, whoever did not know 
 his story, would have been surprised to 
 hear that his name was Schlome Sellner, 
 which means Schlome the Fighter. 
 
 He had really fought for his right. 
 He had come out of the fight a victor. 
 I wish you the same courage and the same 
 luck, my readers. 
 
 [61]
 
 IN ISRAEL 
 
 Next to the Sprudel, the Polish Jew is 
 undoubtedly the greatest curiosity in 
 Carlsbad. The Occidental who comes 
 here unprepared, is startled by these 
 strange figures. In groups of twos or 
 threes you meet these squalid creatures, 
 drab of color, yet of shining aspect, in 
 the close-fitting sheath of long coats that 
 flap about the heels, the head crowned 
 with a little black skullcap, on which in 
 place of a hat towers a headgear in form 
 of a can made of furlike material, or a cap 
 of black silk rising in straight line and 
 suddenly flattened out like a pancake. A 
 strong nose, between the bristles of a beard 
 that no steel has ever touched, a passionate 
 [62]
 
 IN ISRAEL 
 
 mouth, the burning eyes of the Oriental, 
 and the whole framed in corkscrew curls 
 that dance and bob to and fro before the 
 ears : these are the features that strike at 
 first sight. 
 
 These Jews of Galicia come to Carls- 
 bad to be cured of Asiatic ailments ag- 
 gravated by consanguine marriages. Al- 
 though they resemble one another in habit 
 and manner with all the shades of dif- 
 ference from the most meticulous care of 
 their person to the most repugnant neg- 
 lect, nothing is more awkward than the at- 
 tempt to reduce them to a common type. 
 No doubt the Jew of classical model with 
 prominent nose, is frequent, but the 
 majority differs from the accepted type. 
 The Tartar blood is met with frequently, 
 showing itself in flattened faces, a nose 
 that seems to be crowded between two in- 
 solently open nostrils; the yellow skin,
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 on the other hand, the spare beard and the 
 squinting, obliquely slit little eyes reveal 
 the Mongol origin. Then there is the 
 good Russian giant, who, judaized, sug- 
 gests his Slav descent by his fleshy nose, 
 thick lips and childish smile. How 
 many more signs of divers racial origin 
 the ethnologist could discover among this 
 people, far more mixed than they them- 
 selves believe and than those pretend who 
 make war upon them! 
 
 In the West the man from Judaea has 
 mixed with Latin or Basque blood, 
 which has completely modified the ex- 
 terior, if not the soul of the individual. 
 In the Orient, that vast caldron of Asiatic 
 Europe, where so many divers elements 
 met and melted at the hazard of unfore- 
 seen movements of invading cohorts or 
 emigrating tribes, it has even happened 
 that a Jewish slave converted a royal
 
 IN ISRAEL 
 
 Christian sweetheart and that a whole 
 people were induced to follow their 
 master's example. There is the incident 
 mentioned by Karamsin; he tells about a 
 Mongol people, the Khazars, established 
 on the Volga, who in the eleventh century 
 collectively embraced Judaism, a step 
 which came so much easier for them since 
 they had already circumcision. That ac- 
 counts for all the strangely mixed types, 
 in whom through their diverging traits, 
 one recognizes a feature common to all: 
 the restless eye of Asia, kind with a kind- 
 ness limited by shrewd observation, il- 
 lumined by desires which a feigned 
 humility appeases, obsequiously pro- 
 vocative and playfully sending forth 
 the subtile ray which seeks the weak 
 point like the flash of a fine blade of 
 steel. 
 
 This is the one trait really common to 
 
 [65]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 those Polish Jews in whom I daily dis- 
 cover new traces and surprising accents 
 of the most diverging types. The pure 
 Semitic type sometimes offers us images 
 of Jehovah as a beautiful patriarch, a- 
 bundantly bearded, muscular, well 
 shaped, masterful like the Moses of 
 Michael Angelo. Genuine Christ figures, 
 sad, gentle dreamers, the pale faces 
 brightened by reddish down, the eyes lost 
 in contemplation of I do not know what 
 vision, pass along the street, followed by a 
 legion of apostles, such as Leonardo 
 sketched for the fresco in Milan. A little 
 further on there are the sages of the Tem- 
 ple, with whom the boy Jesus argued, big, 
 white silhouettes, fleshless, with reddened 
 eyelids, or gnomes with contracted eye- 
 brows, agitated by ancient Biblical fury 
 in defense of the Law. The Bible and 
 the Gospels pass before the eye in a mov- 
 [66]
 
 IN ISRAEL 
 
 ing panorama, surrounded by lesser 
 coryphees, deplorable descendants of the 
 usurers driven from the Temple, whose 
 business the Church has taken up with so 
 much success. I say nothing of the 
 saintly women represented by frightful 
 little wrinkled old hags, whose heads, 
 shaved as the law demands on the day of 
 their marriage, are covered with caps of 
 black silk or a mess of glued hair as sub- 
 stitute for a wig. 
 
 All the men, whether rich or poor, 
 superb or hideous of appearance, of cor- 
 rect bearing or of repulsive dirtiness, have 
 a distinctive costume, the long coat trail- 
 ing to the ground and the greasy curls 
 hanging over their temples. The hair is 
 almost always cut short, excepting those 
 side meshes which no steel must touch; 
 the hirsute virginity of the beard, too, is 
 supposed to be a homage to the Creator.
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 As the curls have the quality of curling 
 up in dry and straightening in damp 
 weather, they present infallible means of 
 anticipating atmospherical disturbances. 
 As soon as I see them straighten, I take my 
 umbrella and have never cause to regret 
 it. Moses did not wait for the little 
 Capuchin of pasteboard, whose cowl 
 drops with the rain and stiffens with the 
 sun. 
 
 If not all the sons of Israel bear this 
 emblem of those chosen by Jahve, it is 
 simply from false shame, from a regret- 
 table fear of mockery on the part of those 
 who allow the scissors of the impious to 
 touch their temples. They adapt them- 
 selves to the trend of the century, those 
 unfortunates, without a thought of how 
 it will be judged above. 
 
 Our Polish Jews are orthodox Jews 
 who pretend to respect the law in every- 
 [68]
 
 IN ISRAEL 
 
 thing. If they wear a little skull cap 
 under their hat, it is because the law says 
 you should not uncover your head. The 
 Turk, the Arab, the Persian and the 
 Hindoo do the same. The Jew, liv- 
 ing among us, consents to exchange 
 with us the customary greeting, but he 
 tricks the Gentile by remaining covered 
 even if he removes the hat, which is 
 supposed to be very gratifying to the 
 Eternal. 
 
 When I learned that these orthodox 
 Jews of the peculiar sect of Chassidim did 
 not accept the ordinary ritual of the Syna- 
 gogue and met simply among themselves 
 for prayer, I wished to see them adore the 
 God of Abraham according to the ancient 
 precepts. 
 
 One Sabbath in a small room of a poor 
 restaurant I found about thirty men in 
 their prayer cloaks, mumbling and hum-
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 ming with noisy ardor. Shabby table- 
 cloths, which had not been removed, be- 
 trayed the usual purpose of the room. 
 There was no ornament whatsoever. Big 
 white phantoms, their heads under the 
 veil, seemed plunged into the contempla- 
 tion of the wall, which faced east. The 
 prayer cloak which they receive at the age 
 of thirteen and in which they are buried, 
 must never be washed. The esthetic side 
 of the ceremony is not enhanced by this 
 custom. But what does it matter to the 
 good Lord? 
 
 A big white figure leaning against the 
 wall, was volubly reciting a prayer, 
 punctuated by the amens of the audience. 
 Then everybody prayed individually, in 
 staccato accents, the rhythm marked by 
 brusk nods of the head and movements 
 of the body, which was violently doubled 
 up with the regularity of a machine. It 
 
 [70]
 
 IN ISRAEL 
 
 was a strange spectacle to see all these 
 specters bow and rise as if keeping time 
 with the Creator's breath. 
 
 I remained on the threshold. Prayers 
 surging forth from a neighboring room 
 made me turn my head. It had silently 
 been invaded by other white phantoms 
 under whose white hoods I perceived 
 formidable black beards and big dilated 
 eyes, ravished with ecstasy. All these 
 heads followed the common rhythm and 
 I found myself alone in the midst of a 
 crowd agitated like a wheat field in a 
 wind storm. 
 
 Suddenly the prayers ceased. But the 
 rocking movement continued and the im- 
 pression was so much stronger as these 
 apparitions, now voiceless, in painful 
 silence nervously moved those draperies 
 of white, streaked with black, in which 
 silver spangles were sparkling. Then the
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 rhythmic invocations of Adonai began 
 once more. 
 
 Some veils slip down upon the 
 shoulders and I recognize faces familiar 
 to me from the morning meetings at the 
 springs. The movements gradually lose 
 their ensemble rhythm and everybody, 
 vigorously reciting his prayer, rocks or 
 bends or scans the words by a special 
 movement. One plunges his head for- 
 ward and throws it brusquely back like a 
 duck on leaving the water. I do not ex- 
 aggerate, if I say that the man continued 
 this movement without interruption for 
 three-quarters of an hour. Another rocks 
 his head to and fro and makes his curls 
 dance alternately from one shoulder to the 
 other. A third is on his feet and executes 
 the half-turns of a waltz. A giant who 
 has a resemblance to M. Poubelle, is 
 practicing contortions with his lips and 
 
 [72]
 
 IN ISRAEL 
 
 eyes, evidently meant to express admira- 
 tion, reminding of the antics of a prefect 
 before his minister. Beside me is the fine 
 face of an old man, suggesting the gentle 
 philosophers of Rembrandt under the 
 arches of a stairway losing itself in noc- 
 turnal darkness, impassive with a discreet 
 little smile. Contortions and convulsions 
 become more violent, whenever some res- 
 onant voice surges upward in more 
 ardent invocations of the God of Israel. 
 Then fatigue asserts itself and all quiet 
 down. 
 
 This gymnastic performance, I am told, 
 aims to make the body take part in the 
 prayers of the soul. Thus the muscles 
 and the bones in their way honor the 
 Creator. I have often witnessed other 
 extravagant performances in the camp 
 meetings of American Methodists, who 
 are genuine Christians. In reality this is 
 
 [73]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 a nervous phenomenon like cries and 
 dances of the dervish and is to be classed 
 with external manifestations of religious 
 exaltation. 
 
 What struck me among my Polish 
 Jews, whose sincerity is not to be doubted, 
 is the ease with which they find their com- 
 posure in the middle of this epileptic 
 demonstration. A certain snuff-box 
 which was quietly circulating, indicated 
 that at least the noses had during these de- 
 votions not renounced their earthly ap- 
 petite. A sort of Kalmuck beside me 
 who furiously bent as low as the ground, 
 profited at the moment when his head 
 reached the extremity of its orbit, slowly 
 to apply the finger to one nostril and send 
 the surplus of the other under the table; 
 what clung to his beard, was simply re- 
 moved with the end of his prayer cloak. 
 
 It is not necessary to describe the cere- 
 
 [74]
 
 IN ISRAEL 
 
 mony of the sacred parchment taken from 
 the tabernacle, which was really a miser- 
 able chest, and handed around in its wrap- 
 per to be kissed by everybody. Then 
 it is piously spread on the table around 
 which are called those that are to be 
 specially honored; after the reading 
 it is ceremoniously replaced in its 
 container. These customs are generally 
 known. 
 
 The only incident worthy of mention 
 was the arrival of a strange old man, dry 
 and fleshless, head, nose and beard run- 
 ning into a point. He was clothed in a 
 magnificent long coat of black satin, under 
 which were dangling the threads of wool 
 prescribed by orthodox Judaism. An 
 enormous fur cap covered his head. It is 
 the traditional headgear in honor of the 
 Sabbath. Little zibelines had lent their 
 delicate pelts for the pious function. Our 
 
 [75]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 man, known for his austere devotion, soon 
 prayed with an ardor which none of his 
 companions could surpass. ' 
 
 He lifted into the air long white hands, 
 evidently well cared for, struck them 
 passionately against each other, then rose 
 on his tiptoes and brusquely fell back on 
 his heels with a violent shock to his body, 
 the zibelines participating with tremu- 
 lous agitation. Truly this man prayed 
 not only with a part of his body, but with 
 his whole body. The little zibelines par- 
 took of the prayer in their manner. May 
 the Lord of men and beasts have enjoyed 
 it! 
 
 We were told that this distinguished 
 visitor was a very rich man who showered 
 deeds of kindness about him. Thanks to 
 the generosity of such men, poor unfor- 
 tunate invalids can come to Carlsbad to 
 take the waters. Our man, who is a great 
 
 [76]
 
 IN ISRAEL 
 
 traveler, never leaves without his own 
 rabbi. When he goes to a place where 
 there are few orthodox Jews, he always 
 takes with him a dozen companions, for 
 Moses said that there must be at least ten 
 to offer prayer. Under these conditions 
 I am not surprised that Adam and Eve 
 turned out so badly. 
 
 As we left, the notables of the assembly 
 came to thank us for the honor we had 
 bestowed upon them by attending their 
 sacred ceremony. We passed through a 
 hall in the rear where we found the 
 women, who in spite of the open doors 
 could neither hear nor see what had been 
 going on. The congregation left with us, 
 carrying the prayer-mantles folded on the 
 shoulder like a traveling cloak; for to take 
 them in their hands would have been 
 equivalent to work, which is forbidden on 
 the Sabbath. With all its beauty this is 
 [77]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 the very Pharisaism which had been so 
 odious to Jesus. 
 
 The day before we had met many a 
 Jew with his handkerchief knotted about 
 his waist. That means: "We have 
 nothing more in our pockets, we are doing 
 no more business, for the Sabbath is about 
 to begin." 
 
 I have recorded faithfully what I have 
 seen. Is it any more ridiculous to shake 
 one's head like a duck, than to do any 
 other movements in honor of God? I do 
 not think so. Christians and Jews are of 
 the same human stock. Yesterday I saw 
 in the woods some women who were kiss- 
 ing the lips and feet of a big plaster Christ 
 besmeared with horrible colors. It would 
 be difficult, I think, to consider this sort 
 of devotion superior to the other. The 
 great conflict between Christians and Jews 
 is after all only a family quarrel. 
 
 [78]
 
 IN ISRAEL 
 
 It is said that an old orthodox Jew on 
 arriving in Paradise, refused to sit down 
 at the right of the Almighty and went to 
 hide in a corner. Called before his 
 Creator to explain such strange conduct, 
 he admitted that he had nothing to accuse 
 himself of, but still refused to accept the 
 honors of heaven. And as the Almighty 
 insisted upon knowing his reasons, the old 
 man, sobbing with rage, said that his name 
 had been disgraced, his race dishonored. 
 His son had turned out badly: he had 
 become a Christian. 
 
 "Is that all?" said the Lord. "Well, 
 you are not the only one in that case. This 
 is just what has happened to Me." 
 
 [79]
 
 HOW I BECAME FARSIGHTED 
 
 It was three years ago. I was quietly 
 reading in my study, when "M. Magnier" 
 was announced. I thought that the editor 
 of "L/Evenement" was calling on me and 
 ordered to admit him. 
 
 The portiere was raised and I saw a 
 handsome old man enter, brisk and rosy, 
 correct without exaggeration, and with an 
 indescribable air of benign superiority. I 
 did not know him. The face was hand- 
 somely framed in white whiskers, the gray 
 eyes sparkled with amiable animation, his 
 linen was dazzlingly white and a wide 
 redingote gave him a sort of dignity. Al- 
 together the impression disposed in his 
 favor. I thought vaguely that he 
 
 [80]
 
 HOW I BECAME FARSIGHTED 
 
 might be some foreign diplomat wish- 
 ing to obtain information about France. 
 The young man who accompanied 
 my visitor was undoubtedly his secre- 
 tary. 
 
 The stranger advanced with a kindly 
 smile. 
 
 "I beg your permission," said he 
 familiarly, "not to remove my hat, for I 
 fear nothing as much as a cold in the 
 head." 
 
 Before I could reply he deliberately 
 planted upon his polished cranium a hat 
 of high crown and wide rim. He took a 
 seat, always with the same smile as of con- 
 descension. Evidently he wanted me to 
 be at my ease. My face probably ex- 
 pressed some surprise. I waited for him 
 to speak. 
 
 "Monsieur," said he, "I must first thank 
 you for having received me. Still I am 
 [81]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 not at all surprised. My name opens all 
 doors. When M. Mayer is announced, 
 everybody knows what it means." 
 
 I could not suppress a little start, which 
 did not escape my visitor. 
 
 "I see from your gesture that you know 
 me," he continued with a slight inflection 
 of modesty. "I was sure of it. General 
 Baron de Z. and Marquise de X. said only 
 this morning that I was the best known 
 man in Paris. But I have talked enough 
 about myself. It is you whom my visit 
 concerns. I have been waiting long to 
 see you. All your friends have been tell- 
 ing me: 'Go and call on him. He is 
 charming. He will be delighted to chat 
 with you.' But you may know that I am 
 very busy. Pardon me, if I could not 
 come any sooner." 
 
 ~I was disposed to pardon my surprising 
 [82]
 
 HOW I BECAME FARSIGHTED 
 
 visitor, when he brusquely exclaimed, 
 "Ah, but tell me, tell me frankly how 
 are you?" 
 
 Completely bewildered, without being 
 able to account for my words, I stupidly 
 replied: 
 
 "Oh, I am very well, thank you." 
 
 "Ah, monsieur," exclaimed my new 
 friend with beaming face, "how glad I 
 am to hear you say that! You know that 
 your health is that of a man precious to 
 France. It is fortunate that you are well. 
 However, you must save your strength. I 
 am sure that you are working too much. 
 We have need of you." 
 
 Routed, dumbfounded, I listened to the 
 flow of words, believing that there must 
 be some misunderstanding, and awaited 
 the end of the adventure. 
 
 In the meantime the affable old gentle-
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 man, radiant with the good news that I 
 had given him, continued, without paying 
 attention to my stupefaction. 
 
 "There is something I must tell you. 
 What you must especially care for is your 
 eyesight. There is nothing as precious. 
 How can anybody work with weak eyes or 
 with imperfect glasses? You are ap- 
 proaching the fifties. Your sight must 
 be weakening. Be frank with me. Is 
 there nothing the matter with your eyes?" 
 
 To tell the truth my sight had begun to 
 grow weaker since a few months. But my 
 visitor continued to annoy me. Finally I 
 rose, replying drily, 
 
 "No, nothing. I see perfectly well." 
 
 "Ah, so much the better!" said my 
 obstinate caller, remaining seated in his 
 armchair. "Well, since you have good 
 eyes, do take a glance at this treasure." 
 
 The hand from which he had stripped 
 
 [84]
 
 HOW I BECAME FARSIGHTED 
 
 his glove, flaunted before me the hand- 
 somest little Elzevir in the most elegant 
 binding. 
 
 I had barely opened the book when the 
 man rose, placed his hand on my shoulder, 
 and said with a note of affectionate re- 
 proach : 
 
 "Ah, you have deceived me! That is 
 wrong. I would not have thought you 
 capable of it. What? You tell me your 
 sight is good, and you hold the book at a 
 distance, which proves to me that you are 
 far-sighted, terribly far-sighted, sir. Your 
 crystalline lens is flattening, that is all. 
 But it is time to interfere. Well, well, 
 why did you deceive me?" 
 
 I was as flattened as my crystalline lens, 
 and very penitent, too, to have deceived 
 so good a friend. I do not know what I 
 might have said in apology, but I had no 
 time to seek an excuse. Some instrument
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 appeared before my eyes, and before I 
 had time to regain my composure, my 
 visual distance had been measured and the 
 proof of my deceit was scientifically estab- 
 lished. 
 
 "Number 2314," said the old gentleman 
 with an air of authority to the secretary, 
 who had so effaced himself that I had 
 forgotten his presence. 
 
 The words were barely pronounced 
 when the young man lifted a flat box, 
 which on entering he had placed on the 
 floor, and displayed before my eyes an 
 array of glasses, the moving reflections 
 of which filled the room with dancing 
 lights. 
 
 I said nothing more, as if crushed by my 
 irreparable defeat. I gave myself up to 
 his mercy. My authoritative benefactor, 
 disdaining to abuse his victory and treat- 
 ing me like an inert object, without a word 
 [86]
 
 HOW I BECAME FARSIGHTED 
 
 placed a pair of eyeglasses on my nose. 
 Oh, miracle! I read the Elzevir without 
 any trouble. The type seemed to be of 
 admirable clearness. The veil which 
 had for some time troubled my sight, 
 without my being conscious of it, seemed 
 to be tearing. I could not conceal my 
 satisfaction. My generous friend en- 
 joyed his modest triumph. 
 
 "These lenses are nowhere on sale," 
 said he. "I manufacture them myself. I 
 spent half of my life in computing their 
 thickness and their curvature. They are 
 priceless, for unlike others, they do not 
 fatigue the eyes. It is a revolution that 
 I have made. I can call myself a bene- 
 factor of humanity. Your gratitude for 
 the service I have rendered you will in- 
 crease with your age. I venture proudly 
 the prediction : You will never forget M. 
 Mayer."
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 Truly this devil of a man had rendered 
 me a service and I could not disguise my 
 contentment. 
 
 "I must leave you," said he brusquely. 
 "You are satisfied with me, that is all I 
 care for. I have an operation to perform 
 at Colonel X.'s, who expects me." 
 
 It would have been sheer egotism to 
 make the colonel wait. M. Mayer, who 
 had not removed his hat, now touched it 
 lightly with his right hand and then, 
 pointing to the pair of eyeglasses on the 
 corner of the table, concluded in an off- 
 hand manner: 
 
 "Their price is only forty francs." 
 
 "Oh, never!" said I, recovering my lost 
 energy. "That is too much by half." 
 
 "Well, well," said M. Mayer, "I know 
 better than you what they cost me, since 
 I make them myself. I alone, do you un- 
 derstand? I had thought you incapable 
 [88]
 
 HOW I BECAME FARSIGHTED 
 
 of disputing such a trifle when I rendered 
 you this great service." 
 
 He did not conclude. He was evi- 
 dently suffering from my meanness and 
 his pity spared me. I was at that moment 
 ashamed of having protested. With a 
 gesture of injured benevolence he said in 
 a low voice : 
 
 "We'll let it go at thirty francs. I am 
 in a hurry." 
 
 Since that day I am far-sighted. 
 
 Should I add that, having broken one 
 of the lenses of M. Mayer's eyeglasses, I 
 easily replaced it with one that cost me 
 forty sous? 
 
 Oh, race, vilified by the whole world, 
 what Aryan could ever compete with you?
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 
 
 Napoleon sank deep into the mud of 
 Poland. I had never been able to under- 
 stand that stock phrase of history, until 
 one morning I awoke in the train that 
 carried me from Vienna to Cracow. An 
 endless plain of blackish mud faced me, 
 with a few crippled pines or miserable 
 birches that emerge from it at intervals. 
 Everywhere were puddles of water, in 
 which the dreary light of a dull sky, 
 bored and dripping, seemed to be gradu- 
 ally fading. Remnants of a meager har- 
 vest alternated with weeds, marshes and 
 somber spots of stagnant water. As the 
 train was speeding along the railroad 
 tracks full of coal dust, they themselves 
 seemed to revolve like wheels. 
 
 [90]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 
 
 There was no horizon, only one con- 
 fused chaos of gray; there were no eleva- 
 tions, no depressions, no hills, no valleys, 
 nothing but an immovable plain, harbor- 
 ing no surprises, no mysteries. The only 
 sign of life were the ravens, silent mon- 
 archs of this desolate earth; caked with 
 black mud, they were seeking food in the 
 puddles of this swampy land. Farms 
 passed by, hamlets all built of wood. 
 There was not a stone visible in this im- 
 mense mud hole. The straw roofs, the 
 lathed walls, theif thin coat of paint, 
 barely perceptible, harmonized well in 
 their naked sadness with the general deso- 
 lation. 
 
 On the roads long teams were lumber- 
 ing along, their ladder-like sides arched 
 like the skeleton of some monster. The 
 low wheels up to their axles immersed in 
 mud, painfully turned about in response 
 
 [91]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 to the efforts of the little horses with their 
 mud-caked manes. Upon a bed of straw 
 were stretched out the travelers: earth- 
 stained peasants, immobile, silent. The 
 men in long white blouse-like coats, held 
 at the belt by a buckle, a leather band 
 ornamented with copper nails; the 
 women gay in the pink or yellow cotton 
 kerchief draping their head and the daz- 
 zling loud colors of their waists and skirts. 
 Everybody wore high boots, almost up to 
 the chin. 
 
 The agile Pole, slavus saltans, is of 
 handsome presence and martial aspect. I 
 could not exactly say whether his kindli- 
 ness is real goodness of heart, but he has 
 a charming manner and his vivacity saves 
 him from the Asiatic perfidy of the medi- 
 tative Slav. With his pipe, his mustache 
 and his boots, he could go far. Perhaps 
 
 [92]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 
 
 he was on the road when his tragic history 
 ended by an act of infamous brigandage 
 which is familiar to everybody. After 
 all he has maintained himself; his ene- 
 mies tried to kill his language, but it is 
 as alive as ever. The annals of that 
 nation are by no means closed. 
 
 In all social strata the Tartar type is 
 found to be remarkably tenacious, espe- 
 cially among people that rarely enter in- 
 ternational marriages. At the railroad 
 station I saw strange figures that looked as 
 if they had escaped from the steppes of 
 Asia: yellow skinned, flat-faced, with 
 prominent cheek bones, depressed nose, 
 open nostrils and a strong jaw. The small 
 black eyes, ever shifting and moving in 
 their orbits, form a curious contrast with 
 the motionless placidity of the face, 
 framed by ill-kempt hair and by the spare 
 
 [93]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 beard of the Mongol. Their aspect of 
 gentle savagery suggested candor stolidly 
 fortified by shrewdness. 
 
 But the most striking feature of the 
 railroad stations are the Galician Jews, 
 strange black phantoms gliding like 
 dream silhouettes across the realities of 
 life. They wore the long dark coat pre- 
 scribed by the Talmud, with the threads 
 of wool hanging from belt to boots amid 
 the folds of the garment. Their head- 
 gear is a confection of rabbit skin or a 
 cap of black silk or a tall hat, furry, with 
 many dents and stains of the rust of per- 
 haps thirty years. Under these cover- 
 ings, fantastic pale faces with big shining 
 eyes, move about like little black balls 
 from which the inner life occasionally 
 emits sparks of fire. Long strands of hair 
 hang down upon biblical beards in greasy 
 corkscrew curls. The obsequious smile 
 
 [94]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 
 
 of a victim that abandons itself lurks 
 about their lips. Silently, as if to escape 
 the glances that follow them, they slip 
 through the crowd. They seem incarna- 
 tions of that state of poverty which is 
 coupled with absolute squalor, yet one 
 senses an ardent thought under the men- 
 dacious surface of exaggerated resigna- 
 tion. There is about it the suggestion of 
 a prostitution that smiles with deep re- 
 serves of revenge. 
 
 All these poverty-stricken people come 
 and go, never without some goal, accumu- 
 lating patiently crumbs of profit that ac- 
 crue from their traffic with all things. 
 Spreading over the earth, apparently 
 dreaming, their eye is watching the cash- 
 box. They are on the alert for every 
 chance that presents itself, now and then 
 exchanging a word in a subdued voice, 
 the body always that of the vanquished, 
 
 [95]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 the soul ever ready for combat. It is said 
 that some of these people are wealthy. 
 The most miserable among them cer- 
 tainly possess the most precious treasure: 
 the gift of willing and doing. 
 
 On arriving in Cracow I find the town 
 teeming with Jews. A drizzling rain 
 not without good reason is washing the 
 Ghetto whither my curiosity leads me 
 first. In ill-smelling alleys, men, women, 
 and children are slowly circulating, re- 
 signing themselves to accept the bath 
 which Providence sends them. Every- 
 where at the windows, between unnam- 
 able rags, eyes are spying, one knows not 
 what. In the depth of the black little 
 shops, among dress goods, metals, victuals 
 and what not, eyes shine out of the silvery 
 waves of a prophet's beard. Hooked 
 noses, clawlike hands seem to grip obscure 
 objects and refuse to release them unless 
 
 [96]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 
 
 the tinkling of money is heard. The 
 lips invite and the gesture withholds 
 a hint of which the Christians, so 
 ready to blame them, everywhere take 
 advantage. 
 
 In the rear shops, huddled together in 
 sticky clumps, old women are napping on 
 the floor. Handsome young girls with big 
 Oriental eyes pass by with engaging 
 smiles. The law which forces them on 
 their wedding day to replace their lux- 
 uriant growth of hair by the frightful wig 
 of silk, will soon with the early maturity 
 of their race succeed in disfiguring them 
 beyond redemption. Grotesque, beard- 
 less dwarfs from under immense hats 
 throw wicked glances at everything that 
 towers above them. Young men with sal- 
 low skins and long corkscrew curls that 
 form a sort of dancing beard about their 
 faces, seem lost in the long coats of their 
 
 [97]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 grandfathers and look about with startled 
 eyes of an owl in daylight. 
 
 In front of the Jewish restaurants 
 crowds stand about talking, regardless of 
 the rain. Here are the over-dressed who 
 do not hesitate to advertise their wealth, 
 as the fine material of their coats and their 
 well-kept hats attest. But why is it that 
 even under an attractive exterior one still 
 suspects that Asiatic neglect of the body? 
 
 We decided to lunch in a Jewish 
 restaurant of some reputation. I found 
 nothing striking about it, but rare untidi- 
 ness and a stale odor of rancid fat. The 
 white of the tablecloths appeared only in 
 spots. Boiled meats and dumplings were 
 floating in oily gravies. Coming out of 
 this woeful hole we visited a poor Jewish 
 school, the teacher of which, sadly rag- 
 ged of appearance, seemed full of enthusi- 
 asm. 
 
 [98]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 
 
 A few steps from the school is a ceme- 
 tery, a field of weather-worn stones with 
 crudely carved emblems, hands present- 
 ing the palm or mythical birds hovering 
 over an epitaph. The caretaker sug- 
 gested a model for Jehovah ; his head was 
 so beautiful and so imposing that one of 
 us wanted to photograph him. But the 
 man refused. He had been offered five 
 hundred francs for a picture, he said, by 
 a photographer who wanted it for a 
 paper. But the ancient prejudice against 
 representation of the human body still 
 kept alive in Islam had taken root in this 
 Oriental brain and could not be dislodged. 
 While an energetic gesture of the old man 
 emphasized his implacable refusal to 
 pose, a click of the camera gave us a 
 snapshot. But the God of Shem had been 
 watching. In the evening the plate 
 showed in place of the long silver beard, 
 
 [99]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 the big black eyes and the noble smile of 
 imperious gentleness, nothing but a big 
 hand that hid the whole face. A fly had 
 providentially alighted on the nose and 
 brought about this miracle. 
 
 A visit to the castle of the Polish kings 
 is really indispensable. Little seems to 
 remain of the edifice erected in the four- 
 teenth century by Casimir the Great. But 
 the monument on the rock has still an 
 air of grandeur. It is now used as bar- 
 racks and military prison. From the 
 heights of the walls one can see the whole 
 city with her towers and cupolas. Be- 
 yond is the dreary plain of the Vistula, 
 desperately monotonous in its uniformity. 
 Somewhere within the ramparts are the 
 tombs of the kings. But the caretaker is 
 sleeping off a jag one knows not where. 
 Though the whole garrison has been 
 aroused for the purpose, it is impossible 
 
 [100]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 
 
 to discover his retreat. Perhaps he has 
 locked himself in with some Jagelon or 
 Beleslav in order to be certain of peace- 
 ful slumber. Hence there could be no 
 interview with the dead kings. 
 
 After a brief walk through the cathe- 
 dral we descend into the city. The big 
 market place is humming with the noise 
 of rustic bargaining. Peasants in white or 
 blue coats, profusely braided with red, a 
 bouquet of artificial flowers on their hat, 
 are absorbed in the smoke issuing from 
 their pipes. They accompany their wives, 
 who are carrying loads like beasts of bur- 
 den. In a big sheet, tied by two ends 
 about their shoulders, are kindling, 
 cheese, liquor, eggs, poultry, and on top 
 of all the boots of the peasant woman, 
 which on entering the city were quite 
 naturally removed and hung over her 
 shoulder. Heavier burdens are heaped 
 
 riot]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 on carts. But be he driver or pedestrian, 
 it is the man who wields the family scep- 
 ter and who judges the carrying capacity 
 of his patient drudge. In all countries of 
 the world the market is one of the most 
 picturesque sights. Like all races of 
 primitive visual education the Slavs are 
 fond of glaring colors and brighten by 
 the vivid tints of their clothes the un- 
 broken sadness of their plains. Blue, red, 
 pink and yellow smiles the market square 
 of Cracow beneath the drizzling rain. 
 
 The forward surging movement of the 
 crowd carries me to the door of St. 
 Mary's, the belfry of which is topped with 
 a crown. The nave is full of people. No 
 peasant would come to market without 
 saying his prayers at St. Mary's. All 
 these people, very self-contained, are ab- 
 sorbed in their devotions. The eyes are 
 at first dazzled by a barbarous riot of col- 
 
 [102]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 
 
 ors and when they turn from the profusely 
 gilt ceiling to this human crowd, prostrate 
 in their dream, the Middle Ages seem to 
 be alive once more, challenging modern 
 criticism, science and philosophy. Men 
 and women are on their knees on the tiles. 
 Some immovable, their eyes wide open, as 
 in rigid ecstasy. Others, less numerous, 
 touch the stones with their brows and beat 
 their breasts with clenched fists. At the 
 height, where in our temples are usually 
 seen the faces of the faithful, rows of 
 naked feet seem to rise toward heaven 
 from heaps of skirts and cloaks, all this 
 mass bobbing up and down with every 
 movement of the penitent. Evidently one 
 can pray as devoutly with the feet as with 
 the hands. It seems, however, that 
 homage to the Creator might nevertheless 
 be preceded by other ablutions besides 
 those to be had in muddy brooks.
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 Two steps from the church is the hall 
 of cloths, Soukiennitza, where Israel is 
 enthroned in all glory. In the attenuated 
 light of the long arcade are dancing in 
 the breeze cottons and silks of all colors 
 traps for a curiosity soon to be punished. 
 The danger is evident from the first, yet, 
 as always, heeded too late. 
 
 To the right, to the left, on little seats 
 under the silks and the multicolored tex- 
 tiles are hidden the Jew and his compan- 
 ion, spying on the passer-by. The most 
 absent-minded glance at the display is im- 
 mediately seized upon by the couple in 
 ambush, and from their fascinating lair 
 they plunge upon the innocent, two per- 
 fidious tempters whom no rebuff dis- 
 courages. The man in luxuriant long coat 
 with the side-curls tumbling from be- 
 neath a tall hat, and the handsome smiling 
 woman engagingly wave little squares of
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 
 
 silk which flap like flags and make rain- 
 bows dance under the gloomy ceiling. 
 
 "There is nothing here," says a gentle 
 voice to the right, "come the other way, 
 sir." 
 
 "This way, look here," says a voice to 
 the left. 
 
 As you hesitate between these contra- 
 dictory seductions, affectionate hands 
 touch your shoulder or your arm. But 
 do not resist, for the caressing ringers sud- 
 denly contract and you are caught. How- 
 ever, you can not please everybody. At 
 these inviting appeals of the silks, dancing 
 sarabandes of color, people have come 
 running from all sides at full speed. 
 What is to be done? You are held by the 
 tail of your coat, you are embraced, 
 gripped, dragged forth. What is even 
 more annoying is the fact that the silks 
 apparently of their own volition seem to
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 alight upon your arm, with a rustle and a 
 flutter as of a million wings. 
 
 "Take, sir, good evening, sir, carry it 
 all away!" 
 
 And there you are, burdened with gifts 
 from twenty benefactors who stuff them 
 into your yawning pockets. If arrested by 
 a na'ive scruple, you stop you are lost. 
 Willingly or unwillingly, your pocket- 
 book must open. 
 
 The well-warned man forges straight 
 ahead at the risk of leaving something of 
 himself in the hands of these far too 
 numerous friends. That is what I did, 
 not without some regret at rewarding so 
 poorly so much affection. Then as by 
 magic, with little flutterings of farewell, 
 all the light satins vanish at the magnetic 
 bidding of Israel. Everything disappears. 
 The Jew is silently hurt at the ingratitude 
 of the Christian and his precious gifts 
 [106]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 
 
 fly away as mysteriously as they arrived. 
 The wonder is, that one finds one's pockets 
 in their previous state. I must state the 
 fact in praise of the shop keepers at the 
 Soukiennitza that there is nothing ex- 
 tracted from nor added to them. 
 
 The national museum, which is rich in 
 revolutionary souvenirs, presents a strik- 
 ing contrast of the bloody dramas of the 
 past with the present peace of mind which 
 perhaps conceals hopes that bear the 
 secret of the future. By a strange revenge 
 of fate, it is the great Polish magnates 
 who at this time govern Austria. The in- 
 terest of caste, which remained all-power- 
 ful under the foreign reign, is employed 
 in the service of similar interests in other 
 parts of the motley monarchy and obtains 
 in return certain advantages for the 
 national cause. The insurrections in Rus- 
 sian Poland have found no echo in Gali-
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 cia. The scepter of Francis Joseph is 
 light. The clergy, being satisfied, suc- 
 ceeds in keeping the people contented. 
 The Diet manages the affairs of the prov- 
 ince in perfect freedom. Badeni and 
 Goluchowski govern the conquering peo- 
 ple miraculous return of one of the most 
 famous thefts of territory. Russia itself, 
 at this hour, offers a no less curious spec- 
 tacle, the industry of Warsaw being about 
 to conquer the immense Russian mar- 
 ket. 
 
 Lemberg (Leopol), the capital of the 
 province, is an uninteresting city. There 
 I only admired the good Polish faculty of 
 drinking and eating everywhere. In the 
 groceries, in the confectioneries, at the 
 pork butchers, you see nothing but stom- 
 achs that are being filled and flooded. 
 The Galician pig ingeniously tempts the 
 jaded palate. It does not exert itself in 
 [108]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 
 
 vain and is mightily aided in its mission 
 by a delectable beer. 
 
 One evening, attending the perform- 
 ance of an operetta, I had occasion to ad- 
 mire the unusually musical quality of the 
 Polish language, which to me seems no 
 less liquid and sonorous than the Italian. 
 I saw pale beauties there, noted as types 
 of their race. What especially struck me, 
 however, was the perverse innocence of 
 their glance, a characteristic trait of Slav 
 women. 
 
 I found the synagogue in restive attire. 
 In an indescribable turmoil, contrasting 
 strangely with the ecstatic silence of St. 
 Mary's, I heard the call of the Shofar, in 
 our times the last echo of the trumpet of 
 Jericho. 
 
 The next day, in the country about 
 Lemberg, I visited the white cottages of 
 Ruthenian peasants, where the eternal 
 [109]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 lamp is burning before saintly images, 
 and noticed, not without some surprise, 
 farm laborers with Talmudic locks push- 
 ing their wheelbarrows with vigorous 
 hands. Who has said that the Jews shun 
 manual labor? They certainly have the 
 rarest aptitude for trade as the Christians 
 of the Gospel themselves understand and 
 practice it. But you find in the villages 
 of Galicia Jewish artisans of all trades, 
 and not far from Lemberg is a colony of 
 Caraite Jews, who devote themselves ex- 
 clusively to agriculture. 
 
 By a singular fatality this energetic 
 race, spread all over the earth, always at- 
 tacked, yet always alive, has been repre- 
 sented in the Christian world by two 
 extremes; the most abject poverty, and the 
 most insolent money power. The sons of 
 Christ, who do not scorn at proper times 
 to rake up gold, curse the bank of Israel 
 [no]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GALICIA 
 
 which they are doing their best to emulate. 
 Who will speak the word of pity which 
 one has the right to expect for the 
 wretched strugglers against the severe law 
 of life and against law itself? When shall 
 one see in the victims of fate and of man 
 himself, without distinction of race and 
 regardless of history, nothing but a mis- 
 fortune which should be remedied?
 
 BUSK 
 
 A desolate village at the end of Galicia 
 close to the Russian frontier, it is, all built 
 of wood and mud. In the leprous houses 
 the plaster is crumbling, the woodwork 
 shows cracks and fissures, and attempts at 
 repairs have been made with patches of 
 leather, tin and filthy rags. On the cordu- 
 roy road-bed of the marshy streets long 
 teams are painfully swaying to and fro, 
 making the weary traveler bob up and 
 down on his couch of straw. Ducks and 
 geese are waddling about among the com- 
 ing and going of big muddy boots. Out of 
 these boots rise the forms of emaciated 
 Jews with glowing eyes under Talmudic 
 locks; Ruthenians whose coarse hair 
 
 [112]
 
 BUSK 
 
 mingles with the sheep wool of their gar- 
 ments, Mongols and Kalmucks, red, blond 
 or black, with powerful jaws, cheek bones 
 abruptly protruding beyond the flat noses 
 and little slanting eyes shining out of 
 haggard faces; Slavs of divers origin, 
 in long white coats, their starlike blue 
 eyes beaming a false innocence. A camp 
 that has migrated from Asia and been 
 suddenly arrested in the mud; and to 
 complete the vision, in the open plain a 
 village of tents, around which are slum- 
 bering a black crowd of half-naked 
 gypsies. 
 
 What is most striking in Busk, next to 
 the ducks and the geese, is the Jews ; un- 
 kempt, restless and gentle, carrying on all 
 industries and all trades. The poverty of 
 this people is extreme. One does not 
 know whether they suffer from it or not, 
 as they pass along, sordid, lamentable,
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 with a perpetual smile of obsequious envy. 
 Perhaps they are not unhappy. 
 
 Their domain is the village square, a 
 large parallelogram of greenish swamp 
 lined with low huts that are rilled with a 
 hideous din and bustle. All the length of 
 the road, raised in the form of a sidewalk, 
 on the trunks of trees or on boxes used 
 as benches, huddle frightfully ragged 
 forms, motionless, in Oriental resignation. 
 Sallow - skinned children with open 
 mouths and big sheepish eyes, long wisps 
 of hair fluttering about their cheeks, 
 fraternize with the ducks on the dung- 
 heaps. Strange housekeepers, draped in 
 nameless things, carry pails emitting un- 
 pleasant odors. Through the open doors 
 of the wretched habitations, miserable 
 pallets show their rotting straw amid all 
 sorts of decaying refuse. 
 [114]
 
 BUSK 
 
 Here dwells a race, active, industrious, 
 with long agile hands, reaching out for 
 sustenance, a patient people, capable of 
 the most marvelous endurance as of in- 
 credible persistence of effort, contented 
 with little, ambitious of everything, 
 humble, timid, implacable, charged with 
 four thousand years of will power. The 
 Pole governs Austria, it is said. The Jew, 
 being a universal negotiant, holds in his 
 hand the Pole, whether peasant or mag- 
 nate. 
 
 "When I want to buy or sell anything," 
 said the Baron of Busk, "whatever it may 
 be, I call a Jew. His relations with all 
 the markets of the country, his under- 
 standing of business, his interest in keep- 
 ing me as customer, are to me an assur- 
 ance that I am going to be served 
 promptly and well. There is no large
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 landholder in Galicia who for business 
 of any kind is not forced to address him- 
 self to the children of Israel." 
 
 The man who spoke thus owns sixty 
 thousand hectares. His estate is a manor. 
 The greater part is forest, of course. The 
 hour of the revolution which will cut up 
 into parcels these vast Galician domains 
 has not yet struck; I doubt whether any- 
 body thinks of it. The Galician, whether 
 Slav or Jew, is accustomed to his poverty. 
 The agricultural industries bring the pro- 
 prietor but little profit, and assure the 
 worker only a rather precarious exist- 
 ence; but each seems contented with his 
 lot. There is fatalism in the blood of 
 Asia. 
 
 The very plain castle with large ser- 
 vant quarters is surrounded by a beautiful 
 park through which flows a river. 
 Strange contrast of aristocratic lawns with 
 [116]
 
 BUSK 
 
 a sprinkling of horticultural artifices 
 and the savagery which begins on the 
 other side of the wall. 
 
 I was advised to visit the Ruthenian 
 church. Irreverently we push open the 
 gate of a wild garden, and meet a tall old 
 man in black garb and a straw hat of vast 
 proportions, absorbed in smoking his long 
 pipe. It is the curate. As he bows in 
 welcome he displays his handsome, 
 smooth, firmly modeled cranium, a pro- 
 file of aquiline distinction, softened by a 
 pair of eyes, blue as a baby's. 
 
 A certain vessel hanging on a pole near 
 the door receives the friendly pipe and 
 the good smoker, without smoking, ac- 
 companies us across a field with here and 
 there a few centenarian trees, in the 
 generous shadow of which nestles the 
 modest church, its skeleton of laths cov- 
 ered with unpainted tiles. Beside the 
 t7]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 sacred temple is a barnlike structure with 
 gables and a heavy wooden belfry with 
 absolutely bare sides. The interior of the 
 church is luxuriously ornamented with 
 barbaric images, of which the excellent 
 old gentleman seems quite proud. He 
 shows us his gold embroidered vestments, 
 a handsome chasuble with flower design 
 of the last century, and he makes us notice 
 that it is of French tissue. Some court 
 gown of a friend of Louis XV, perhaps, 
 which after strange vicissitudes is in this 
 quiet place piously expiating the sins of 
 departed flesh. 
 
 While the priest naively makes us ad- 
 mire a little chapel crudely carved in 
 wood with a simple knife, the work of his 
 hands on long winter evenings, a dozen 
 peasants, men and women, have entered 
 and eagerly share the feast spread before 
 our eyes. As we pass the altar we find 
 [118]
 
 BUSK 
 
 on the floor a little wooden box which 
 these people had placed there. His last 
 art object duly exhibited, the saintly man 
 politely salutes and without any transi- 
 tion, slipping on a black soutane, in- 
 tonates pious chants which the chorus of 
 peasants, candles in their hands, duly re- 
 peat. 
 
 We are expected at the Jewish ceme- 
 tery. We accompany one of our friends, 
 who after a brilliant career in the Vien- 
 nese press, has come on a pilgrimage to 
 the grave of his father, a physician of 
 Busk, who had spent his life in nursing, 
 succoring and tenderly caring for the poor 
 of all races and creeds. As a Jew he had 
 helped all the unfortunates of his race 
 whose suffering gripped his heart by so 
 many bonds of common history. As a 
 man, he served humanity, unselfishly, as 
 one may well believe, for, judging from
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 the Busk of to-day, the Busk of fifty years 
 ago can hardly have assured a fortune to 
 the healer of countless ills that Providence 
 sent to the poor. The old wooden house 
 which had been his home, now resplend- 
 ent in a coat of fresh white paint, was 
 pointed out to us. After fifty years of 
 faithful labor and service, he had simply, 
 without any pomp, left it for his resting 
 place in the graveyard. 
 
 At the gate some ragamuffins were 
 watching for us and joined us without a 
 word. I had once visited the ancient 
 Jewish cemetery in Prague, which all 
 guides recommend to the tourist. It is 
 like an avalanche of old gravestones, that 
 had been tumultuously tossed about by the 
 hurricane of ages. Elder bushes, a cen- 
 tury old and never trimmed by human 
 hand, cover the stones with their dark 
 foliage. It is difficult to find one's way 
 [120]
 
 BUSK 
 
 through this thicket. Fragments of in- 
 scriptions are still discernible, clasped 
 hands, too, and symbolic birds and heaps 
 of little stones deposited by pious visitors 
 in homage of the departed. It is an 
 ancient custom of the desert, where the 
 traveler devoutly adds his pebble to those 
 heaped on the mounds. 
 
 I found no trace of this custom in Busk; 
 but the hands were there and the birds 
 too, still enliven the tombstones with their 
 primitive images. The Jewish cemetery 
 of Busk is a virgin forest, an impenetrable 
 jungle of trees, brambles and weeds grow- 
 ing in untrammeled freedom. Old trunks 
 are molding at our feet; heavy branches, 
 beaten down by age or storms, burden 
 with their long agony the young shoots 
 that sprout between them in the will to 
 live. There is no path or anything re- 
 sembling one. White birch stems crowd 
 
 [121]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 close together, as in battle array; inter- 
 lacing twigs, spines bristling in defense, 
 arrest the explorer. 
 
 The miserable troop that had followed 
 us in silence got ahead of us at the first 
 step, and, passing between the trunks, 
 holding apart the branches, slipping like 
 adders into the densest thicket, guided us 
 to the grave we sought. Humble creatures 
 they were, with long bony faces, their 
 beards, coats and boots shining with the 
 same sticky ochre-like dirt. But there was 
 an incredible intensity of life in their 
 vivid black eyes, well protruding from 
 their sockets and glowing with fire. We 
 followed them through the underbrush, 
 accompanied by the noise of broken 
 branches, lashed by rebounding twigs, 
 stumbling perhaps over mossgrown stones 
 buried in a mess of dead wood. A sump- 
 tuous living frame for this picture of 
 
 [122]
 
 BUSK 
 
 death they were, and they suggested a 
 sensation more powerful and more beau- 
 tiful than our pretentious cities of the 
 dead, full of grimacing figures and dis- 
 graced by mendacious epitaphs. 
 
 At last we reached a group of four 
 stones which our guides had already 
 stripped of their covering of vines and 
 brambles. Their fingers scratched the 
 lichens to lay bare the writing which the 
 stone would jealously keep secret. Then 
 all the hands pointed to a stone leaning 
 over as in a faint : "There it is." 
 
 And suddenly all these haggard faces, 
 even when they smiled, contracted as with 
 suffering, were ennobled by the solemn 
 gravity of the sublimest sentiment known 
 on earth. The eyes were fixed in con- 
 templation of the mysteries of the world ; 
 thoughts that commanded respect rose 
 from under the fur of worn-out bonnets,
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 greasy little caps. Each of these beggars 
 was at this moment a pontiff. One of 
 them, sacristan or rabbi, I know not 
 which, with authoritative voice and in 
 well-scanned lines pronounced words that 
 ravished, transporting with ecstasy all 
 who heard them : 
 
 "Here we are before your grave, friend. 
 We bring to you your son, who had not 
 appeared before you since the day when 
 he marked with this stone the place of 
 your great rest. Life had taken him into 
 the world, where your long-continued 
 efforts for his good through your continu- 
 ing to live in him, assured the success of 
 your progeny. Ever present among your 
 kin, you thus carry on your work on this 
 earth. That is why your son comes to pay 
 grateful homage to you. In times gone 
 by, before life, you were united in 
 eternity. His birth separated him from
 
 BUSK 
 
 you, gave him a life of his own. And 
 now, in thought he comes to reunite with 
 you and to revive you in himself even 
 as you did." 
 
 The invocation, of which only this brief 
 passage was translated for me, seemed to 
 me of superior beauty. I wish I could 
 literally quote the na'ive address to the 
 neighboring dead that followed, asking 
 them to entertain friendly relations with 
 him, whom we had come to honor and 
 expressing the hope that they, too, would 
 be thus visited by their kin! 
 
 With difficulty we groped our way back 
 through the thicket and found ourselves 
 before a sort of barn, where on the solid 
 earthen floor were huddled in a circle 
 women, children and old men, the poorest 
 of the poor in the village. It is customary 
 to give them alms and my friend passed 
 before them and dropped money into
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 their outstretched hands. Then there ap- 
 peared a board with bowls, decked with 
 inscriptions that claimed the generosity of 
 the visitor for various institutions. I saw 
 bills dropping into one after another; not 
 one of these charities was forgotten. 
 
 As soon as we came out a mob of 
 paupers presented themselves, pressing 
 forward at the news that a son of Israel, 
 who had gone forth from Busk, had re- 
 turned with unheard-of treasures which 
 his hands were dropping into every yearn- 
 ing pocket. It was a veritable race as to 
 who would get closest to him. The twelve 
 tribes were there, seeking the occasion to 
 ameliorate their condition. 
 
 "I knew you when you were a little 
 tot," said an old man. 
 
 "I am a relative of 
 
 "I am a friend of so-and-so whom your 
 father cured," they eagerly proclaimed. 
 [126]
 
 BUSK 
 
 Thus the beneficence creates a claim 
 against the benefited or his descendants 
 for the benefactor and those that follow 
 him. One of the speakers had lost his 
 calf, the other his horse. All had been 
 victims of some accidents. Never in so 
 short a space of time was heard such an 
 accumulation of catastrophes. 
 
 Implored, caressed, dragged forth, 
 deafened by a hundred stories, our friend, 
 followed by those poor whining wretches 
 was forced, in order to reach his hospi- 
 table lodgings, to pass through a crowd of 
 persistent claimants that barred his pas- 
 sage. By the use of our shoulders and our 
 elbows we succeeded in breaking away 
 from them. But at the gate of the castle 
 another formidable attack awaited us. 
 The whole synagogue was there, with the 
 great rabbi in the lead, a marvelous Moses 
 of Michael Angelo, whose head, crowned
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 with a high fur bonnet, lost itself in a 
 torrential beard, in which the waves of 
 silver alternated with those of ebony. A 
 long discussion took place; for the house 
 of God was still unfinished, and if the 
 visitor would but move his magic wand of 
 gold, it would be built and all Busk would 
 rejoice. I must admit that our friend did 
 not strike me as a very fervent devotee at 
 the altar of Jehovah. Nevertheless, it 
 would have surprised me, if childhood 
 memories and the natural feeling of soli- 
 darity with a great tragic race had not 
 made him add his stone towards the erec- 
 tion of the edifice where his forbears had 
 worshiped. 
 
 The gate was finally locked. While the 
 chattering crowd retired, disappointed 
 that the galions vanished as dream-like 
 as they had appeared, we gradually re- 
 gained our composure. The neighboring
 
 BUSK 
 
 gypsy camp was tempting me and I sug- 
 gested a visit before our departure. I 
 had retained the vision of a little gypsy of 
 perhaps ten years, who that very morning 
 had for a copper coin frantically followed 
 our car across the holes in the road, while 
 at each of her leaps, like that of a rag doll, 
 the smiling head of a bronze marmot 
 bobbed up, madly tinkling its bells on the 
 shoulders of the swift runner. A gate of 
 the park permitted us to get out into the 
 plain, unnoticed by the eyes of restive 
 Israel, and soon we were in the midst of 
 the tents planted at the border of the 
 forest. 
 
 Compared with the Jews we had just 
 met, these people live in happy serenity. 
 Pariahs, the degraded refuse of the castes 
 of India, they carry in the folds of their 
 cloaks what was left of them of their 
 native land. Towards the horizon which
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 ever recedes they are going all the time, 
 marching towards the unknown, disdain- 
 ful of the present sojourn and ever hope- 
 ful of a better one. Serious without rest- 
 less agitation, without the rudeness of con- 
 quering races, they take across the planet 
 their tranquil contentment with every- 
 thing. What is to them the possession of 
 some earth? Where chance guides them, 
 they plant their long poles, attach the can- 
 vas, and their palace is ready. Their little 
 horses feed on the grass, while the gypsy, 
 resplendent in copper buttons, goes from 
 farm to farm in quest of worn out pots 
 and kettles that need the restoring hand 
 of the itinerate tinker. 
 
 Earth offers plenty for her children, 
 and the troop, enriched by beggary and 
 occasional depredations, appears to enjoy 
 the solid comfort of nomads living on next 
 to nothing. The depth of their eyes, dia- 
 
 [130]
 
 BUSK 
 
 mond black, their placid features, their 
 solemn gestures, reflect the fatalist soul of 
 the Orient. Little boys of ten to twelve, 
 stark naked, voluptuously recline like 
 young wild animals, only their head of 
 heavy coarse hair now and then bobbing 
 up from the couch of green. Women, 
 likewise crouching on the grass, look at 
 us with supreme indifference. Their 
 shining tresses end in chaplets of silver 
 coins, evoking a vision of brilliantly deco- 
 rated idols. 
 
 Under a big tent is gravely reclining 
 a handsome black divinity, radiant with 
 silver coins. Her couch is a rug of violet 
 coloring, forming a frame of sumptuous 
 brightness. Blue spirals are rising from 
 her pipe and seem to fascinate her like a 
 dream. At her feet is a little girl of about 
 six, who lights one of her mother's pipes 
 on the hearth fire and seems to derive in-
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 finite joy from it. It is a certain view of 
 life which makes the Oriental, with all 
 his inwardness, adapt his customs to life 
 under the misty skies of the Occident. 
 
 The Orient has also given us this Slav 
 peasant, fashioned by the despotism of 
 Asia, who doubles up at our sight and 
 without even knowing us, in passing, 
 kisses our hands. 
 
 From the Orient, too, come these rest- 
 less Jews, whose contemplative faculty is 
 so seriously disturbed by militant contact 
 with occidental society. Of a philosophy 
 less disinterested than the Aryan, a 
 stranger, who as harmless wanderer car- 
 ries with him the implacable maledic- 
 tion of his brothers, the Jew, however ac- 
 cursed, has attempted to conquer the 
 hostility of the world, into which dis- 
 persion by conquest has thrown him. 
 Scorned, hated, persecuted for having im- 
 [132]
 
 BUSK 
 
 posed upon us gods of his blood, he has 
 wanted to redeem himself and to perfect 
 himself by overcoming untoward circum- 
 stances. For this task nothing was 
 spared; no suffering, no torture counted, 
 no vengeance was scorned. There is no 
 more astonishing history in the world. 
 
 And because it now happens that these 
 people have resisted menaces, stakes, 
 forced conversions, because with all their 
 vices and their virtues they have entered 
 the social organization of our own vices 
 and virtues, because they have drawn 
 from their stock of good and evil a power 
 of action at least equal to our particular 
 power of good and evil, combined for the 
 conquest of wealth, because they have pos- 
 sessed themselves of our weapons and have 
 learned to turn them against us, I hear 
 that their systematic extermination is de- 
 sired. Thus one can revive the hatreds 
 
 [ 133 3
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 of those defeated in the contest for domi- 
 nation, one can resuscitate plans of perse- 
 cution, which are but an admission of 
 defeat: but how can one found upon 
 all this something that will last? 
 
 The enormous power of Israel in con- 
 temporary Christendom can not be 
 denied. All things remaining as they are, 
 the activity of this enduring race, this 
 marvelous producer of energy, can in my 
 opinion only increase. For Aryan ideal- 
 ism I would not consider this a misfor- 
 tune. Besides, each people has good and 
 bad characteristics, and all supremacy of 
 race seems to me to contradict the deepest 
 interests of our manifold humanity. But 
 when the faculties of a race have so 
 miraculously adapted themselves to the 
 social order of the present, as different 
 from the past as it is certain to be from 
 that of the future, what can one say, un- 
 
 [134]
 
 BUSK 
 
 less the race and the economic order in 
 changing give us other results. The Jews 
 will not be destroyed. The Sultan him- 
 self, with hundreds of thousands of Arme- 
 nians massacred, will at the end be con- 
 quered by Armenia. Israel, having gone 
 forth alive from the Middle Ages, cannot 
 be suppressed. 
 
 Instead of condemning a race whose 
 lucky or unlucky faculties have made it 
 a factor in present society, instead of 
 crying cowardly that it must be annihi- 
 lated to give us room to live why do we 
 not try, simply and more justly, to frame 
 a more equitable, a more disinterested 
 social code, in which the power of selfish 
 appropriation be it Jewish or Christian 
 is rendered less harmful and its tyranny 
 less crushing for the great mass of hu- 
 manity. Then the Judaism of Judaea, if 
 its cleverness made it sovereign of a 
 
 [135]
 
 AT THE FOOT OF SINAI 
 
 society of barbarous egotism travestied by 
 the false gold of charity, and the no less 
 triumphant Judaism of Christianity 
 whom fate has permitted to have its 
 chance, will no longer know the evil 
 temptations of to-day and will be con- 
 tented within the limits of an individual- 
 istic development compatible with a 
 superior notion of social justice. With- 
 out violence, without massacres and per- 
 secutions, Semitism, remaining what it is 
 now, as it is typified in many children of 
 Ham and Japheth, could no longer pre- 
 sent the danger which it is said to be to- 
 day. 
 
 Fools are those, who believe in found- 
 ing liberty upon the growth of tyranny! 
 Less license to selfishness, more room for 
 pity. Clear the roads that lead towards 
 justice; bar the avenues through which 
 unhindered triumphant oppression is en-
 
 BUSK 
 
 tering. How short-sighted it is to dream 
 of a change of oppressors! To kill the 
 oppressor is but to replace one by. another. 
 What is needed is to attack him in his 
 possibilities of action. Thus the wretched 
 Christians of Paris or the wretched Jews 
 of Busk will be efficiently assisted in their 
 personal efforts against the heavy yoke 
 with which they are burdened by their big 
 brothers of all races, to whom the law at 
 present is contented to say, "Crush, 
 dominate, abuse!" and who do crush, 
 dominate and abuse. What the Chris- 
 tians, who are after all still masters of the 
 world, need above anything else, is to 
 better their own ways ; then they will not 
 need to fear the Jews who may be reach- 
 ing out for the crown of opulence, which 
 has ever been coveted by men of all ages 
 and of all countries.
 
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