Uimi K9iUK 
 
 m^i 
 
 1 
 
 POET AND MERCHANT 
 
 B./\dEF\B/^d|< 
 
 /<k^07^ 
 
rrrw^rmrmmwt wm lwrttmrtnttlMUX -tlX. 
 
 *"'"^ 
 
 THE LEISURE-HOUR SERIES. 
 
 A collection of works whose character ie light ami entertaining, though not trivial. 
 While they are handy for the pocket or the saichel. they lire net, either in contents or 
 appearonce, unworthy of a place on the library RhrU £-8. Ifimo, cloth. $1 per Vol. 
 
 8 ' GRIFFITHS, Arthur 
 
 I I.OI.A. 
 
 I GROHMAN, W. A. B. 
 
 Gaddinc.s with a Primi- 
 
 ABOUT, E. 
 
 Thf man with the Bko- 
 KRN Ear. 
 
 THE NOTARY'S NOSE. 
 
 ALCESTIS. A Musical 
 
 Xorel. 
 
 ALEXANDER. Mrs. 
 
 the wooing O't. 
 Which Sham. It RhT 
 Ralph Wilton's Wiiirh. 
 
 HER dearest for. 
 
 heritage of langdale. 
 Maip, Wife. OR Widow! 
 the Frekes. 
 KooK before you leap, 
 the admiral's ward 
 
 THE executor. 
 
 AUEBBAOH, B. 
 
 The Villa on the rhinh. 
 a vols, wtth Ptr/raie. 
 BLACK FOREST STORIES, 
 THE I-n-n.E BAREFOOT. 
 JOSEPH IN THE SNOW. 
 
 Edelweiss. 
 
 GERMAN TALES. 
 
 ON THE HEIGHTS, a Vols. 
 
 THE CONVICTS. 
 
 LORLEY AND REINHARD. 
 
 ALOYS. 
 
 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 LANUOLIN. 
 
 WALDFKIHD. 
 
 BRIGITTA. 
 
 Spinoza. 
 
 Master bielanr 
 BEERBOHM, J. 
 
 Wanderings in Patagonia 
 
 BEERS, HENRY A. 
 
 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN 
 LllEKATUKE. 
 
 BESANT, TV alter. 
 The revolt of Man. 
 
 BJORNSON, B. 
 
 The Fisher-Maiden. 
 
 BUTT, B. M. 
 
 Miss Molly. 
 Eugenie. 
 Dfi.icia. 
 
 Gi.kaldinu Hawthorn*. 
 CADELL., Mr*. H. M 
 Ida craven. 
 
 OALVERLEY, O. 
 
 FLY-I.HAVKS. I'erses 
 
 •CAVENDISH." 
 
 Card Fssavs. (lays necJsioi.s 
 bikI Car.l laLle I alk. 
 
 CHELSEA HOUSE- 
 HOLDER, A. 
 CHERBULIEZ, V. 
 
 JOSEPH NOIKEI.'S revenge, 
 
 count kostia. 
 Prosper. 
 CONWAY, HUGH. 
 
 Cai.i.i-.d Back. 
 Dark Dans. 
 Bound loCErHUR. 
 
 CORKRAN. ALICE. 
 
 Bessie Lang. 
 CRAVEN. Mme. A. 
 
 fleurange. 
 CROFFUT, "W. A. 
 
 A midsummer Lark. 
 DEMOCRACY. A New 
 
 Atnei-ican Novel. 
 DICKENS, CHAS. 
 
 THE MuDFOG Papers, etc. 
 DREW^, Catharine. 
 
 THE LUTANISTR OF ST. 
 JACOBI'S. 
 
 DROZ, QUSTAVE. 
 
 ENAULT, LOUIS. 
 
 CHRIST!NF_ 
 
 ERSKINE. Mrs. T. 
 Wyncote. 
 
 FOTHERGILL. JES- 
 SIE. 
 
 Tin: IIRST VIOLIN. 
 
 Probation. 
 The Wellfi elds- 
 One OF three. 
 Kith and Kin. 
 
 PERIL. 
 
 FRANCILL0 5J. RE. 
 
 UN1>I-K Sl.IhVE-BAN. 
 
 FREYTAG, Q. 
 
 INGO. 
 INGRAHAN. 
 
 GAUTIER. T 
 
 Captain Fracasse. Illus. 
 
 GIFT. THEO. 
 
 PRI 1 TY miss HELI.MW. 
 
 maid i: 1.1 ice. 
 
 A MAITER-OH-FACT C.IRL. 
 
 GOETHE. J. "W Von 
 
 Elective affinities. 
 
 TivE People. 
 HARDY. THOMAS. 
 
 Under the Greenwood 
 
 Tree. 
 A Pair of Blue Eyes. 
 Desperate remedif.s. 
 Far from the madding 
 
 Crowd. Illus. 
 Hand of Ethelberta. 
 return of the Native. 
 THE trumpet-Major. 
 A Laodicean. With lUtutr 
 Two on a tower. 
 HEINE, HEINRICH. 
 scintillations. 
 HENKEL, FR. 
 
 THE MISTRESS OF IBICH- 
 STEI.N. 
 
 HOLLISTER, G. H. 
 
 KlNl.EY HOlI.OW. 
 
 HOPPUS, M.A.M. 
 
 A STORY or CARNU-AU 
 
 HUNT. Mrs. A. W^. 
 
 THE Leaden Casket. 
 JENKIN, Mr». O. 
 Who breaks -pays. 
 
 SKIRMISHING. 
 A PSYCHE OK TO-DAY. 
 MADAME DE BEAUPRK. 
 JUPITER'S DAUGHTERS. 
 WITHIN AN ACE. 
 
 JOHNSON. Ro««lter. 
 
 Pl.AV-DAY POEMS. 
 
 LAFFAN. MAY. 
 
 the hon mlssfhrrard. 
 Christy Cakew. 
 LUCY, HENRY W. 
 
 GIDEON I'l.FVCE. 
 
 McGRATH. T. 
 
 PICTURES FROM IRELAND. 
 
 MAJENDIE,La<ly M. 
 
 GIANNETTO. 
 j DITA. 
 
 MAXWELL, CECIL. 
 
 j A STORY OF THREE SISTERS. 
 
 I MOLESWORTH,Mre 
 
 HATHERCOURT. 
 
yrwf > «» y y ^ t yg K y «1I Miyi lT 
 
 LEISURE-HOUR SERIES. 
 
 NrRRIS. "W E 
 
 Matrimony. 
 
 HKAI'S ur MONF.V 
 
 No Nuw TuiNi;. 
 OLIPHANT, Mr«. 
 
 WHITEI-ADH'S. 
 
 PALORAVE W. Q 
 
 HKkMANN AGHA. 
 
 PARR, LOUISA. 
 
 Hfro CAinHJW. 
 
 ROMN. 
 
 PLAYS FOR PRI 
 VATE ACTIKQ. 
 
 POYNTER. E. F. 
 
 My L.ITTI-K I.AUY 
 
 Ersh.ia. 
 
 Among the Hii.i-s. 
 RICHARDSON. 8 
 
 Clarissa Hari.owh, (to»<- 
 
 RICHTER. J. P. F. 
 
 Fl.OWEK.FklUT.AND THORN 
 
 Pieces, a vols. 
 Campankr 1 HAL, etc. 
 Titan. 2 vols. 
 
 HESPHRI'S. 2 vols. 
 
 The iNvisibi.E Lodge. 
 
 (Ooiil inuecl.t 
 ROBERTS MisB. 
 
 I Noblesse <.tBi.i<;R. 
 
 } t»N 1 UK i'.IK.E OK S IORM. 
 ! In TUI'l Ol.HKN riMR. 
 
 ; SCHMID. H 
 
 THE IIAKEKMEISIRR. 
 
 SERGEANT, ADEL. 
 
 j HEVOM) KrCALL. 
 
 SLIP in the FENS. A | 
 SMITH. H and J 1 
 
 J Reiecteu apprksshs. ' 
 ; SPARHAWK, P. C. — 
 j A l,AZY Man's work. 
 SPIELHAOEM, F. 
 What THE Swallow sang, 
 SPOFFORD. H. P. 
 The Amuer c.qus. 
 Azarian. 
 ; STEVENSON. R. L. 
 j New ak.miian Nights. 
 STURGIS JULIAN. 
 
 MV FRIl-NUS A.ND I. ^T 
 
 THACKERAY .^V. M 
 
 Early and Late Papers. 
 TYTLER, O. O. F. 
 
 Mistress Judith 
 Jonathan. 
 
 TURQENIEFF. I 
 
 FAI HHRS AND SONS. 
 
 SMOKR. 
 
 LIZA. 
 
 ON THE KVH. 
 
 DlMITRI KOl'DINK. 
 
 Siring Floods; Lear 
 Virgin Soil. 
 
 VERS DE SOCXETB. 
 
 VXLLARI, LINDA. 
 
 IN Change Unchanged. 
 WALFORD. L. B. 
 
 Mr. Smith. 
 
 Pauline. 
 
 Cousins. 
 
 troublesome Da. giithms. 
 
 Dick Nether iiy. 
 
 TH E .B.VIi V'S G K ANDMOTH ER 
 
 WINTHROP. THEO. 
 
 CECIL DREEME, If .Portrait 
 
 Canoe and Saddle. 
 John Brent. 
 Kdwin Brothertoft. 
 Like in the open Air. 
 WYLDE, Katharino. 
 A Dreamer. 
 
 YESTERDAY. 
 
 " Tt is ndmiri(bly wriitoii, its sce!ir.= arr i>owcrful jiml thrilling, its pk't show? n v;or\- 
 derful imaji: niti'-n, not running wild. Ihh, trained to suntaiiied work: it is intonsily 
 interesting, and no one c:in say that the peculiar nieniiil or spiritual experiences related 
 are iiupoB.->ible." — Bosioii. Advtitinn'. 
 
 " It is something in the.se day- of exhausted invention to hit upon the plot for » pti;ry 
 which, relatively speaking, may be called original, and Hugh Conway in his novel 
 Called Back, has succeded in doing this ♦ * the story has a vivid intere.st." — 
 Literarj/ World. 
 
 CALLED BACK. 
 
 A fasciuatiug Novel. By Hugh Conway. 16rao. Leisure Hour 
 Series, $1. Leisure Moment Series, 25c. 
 
 FREEMAN'S IMPRESSIONS OF THE 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 By Edwahd A. Freeman. 12mo. $1,50. 
 
 PORTER'S OUTLINES OF THE CONSTITU- 
 TIONAL HISTORY OF THE U. S. 
 
 By LuTnER Henry Porter. 12mo. |1.50. 
 
 CLASSIC MYTHOLOCY. 
 
 Translated from Prof. C. Witts' Griechische Gcitter und Heldkn- 
 geschichten. Supplemented with a Glossary of Etymologies 
 »nd Related Myths. 12mo. $1.25. 
 
 HEI\fRY HOLT d CO., Publishers, New York. 
 
LEISURE HOUR SERIES— No. Sg 
 
 POET AND MERCHANT 
 
 A PICTURE OF LIFE FROM THE TIMES OF 
 MOSES MENDELSSOHN 
 
 BY 
 
 BERTHOLD AUERBACH 
 
 Author of "On the Heights," "The Villa on the Rhine," etc. 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 CHARLES T. BROOKS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1877 
 
Copyright, 1877, by 
 HENRY HOLT. 
 
 Hermon Smith, Stcreotypcr, 
 Ithaca N. Y. 
 
 Press of J. J. Llttlo & Co., 
 N08. 10 to 20 Astor I'lace, Now York. 
 
MP ■ ' ^ 
 
 sxifoe:^ 
 
 v 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 1— The Guests, 1 
 
 2— The Sabbath, 19 
 
 3 — Rabbi Chanaxel, - - - - _ _ 37 
 
 4 — All for tite Bcst, ------ 56 
 
 5 — The Caligrapher, ------ 7G 
 
 C — Book-Keeping by Double Entry and Joseph in 
 
 Egypt, -- 87 
 
 7 — Exodus from Egypt, - - - - - 97 
 
 8 — Division and Dispersion, - - - - 111 
 
 9 — New Acquaintance, ------ 123 
 
 10— Violet, -------- 136 
 
 11— Woman's Life, ------- 153 
 
 12 — The Practical Head, ----- 170 
 
 13 — The Unpractical Head, ----- 179 
 
 14— On New Paths, 194 
 
 15— De Amicitia, - - - - - - - 209 
 
 16— De Amore, ------- 232 
 
 17— Poor Souls, 251 
 
 18 — An Evening with Moses Mendelssohn, - • 260 
 19— Suicide, -289 
 
iv CONTENTS. 
 
 20 — Demoralization and Departure, - - - 302 
 21 — Dame Adventure, ------ 324 
 
 22 — Sentimental Journeys and the Prophet, - 341 
 
 23— The Vagrant, - 358 
 
 24 — Return Home, ------ 375 
 
 25 — Sorroavs of Werther, ----- 383 
 
 26— The Old Bachelor, 397 
 
 27 — Hither and Thither, ----- 412 
 
 28— He IS Mad, 436 
 
 29— Release, - - - - - - _ 449 
 
POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 1.— THE GUESTS. 
 
 « TJE shall he sioallowed up like Korah!^^ 
 O " All the plagues of Pharaoh shall light upon 
 
 him!'' 
 
 Such and still more bitter were the curses that 
 issued from a group of beggars, wending their way 
 on Friday afternoon toward the so-called " sleeping- 
 place" (or lodging-house) in Breslau. These beg- 
 gars, with their wives and children, had just come 
 from the Jewish church-warden, who had been dis- 
 tributing among them meat-tickets for the next 
 Sabbath. 
 
 The endless banishments and persecutions which 
 their race had suffered had driven many Jewish 
 families to the necessity of leading, in the midst of 
 civilized Europe, like their forefathers in the Ara- 
 bian desert, a nomadic life ; they had neither home 
 
 1 
 
2 POE T AND MER CHA NT. 
 
 nor fixed abode, but went their way begging from 
 city to city, from village to village, wherever they 
 found a settlement of their fellow-believers. Many 
 there were who, for generations back, could trace 
 their ancestors to no definite dwelling-place ; their 
 marriages were consummated on the country roads by 
 the simple transfer of a ring and the presence of two 
 witnesses. Such a marriage was perfectly lawful 
 according to the original principles of the Jewish 
 religion, for marriage, as a purely civil contract, 
 needed no clergyman, and even by the clergy was 
 not consecrated in the synagogues, but outside under 
 a canopy stretched for the purpose. 
 
 It was a rare case for scions of those beggar-fam- 
 ilies to work their way out from the gypsy life; 
 habit held them firmly fixed there, and their main- 
 tenance was a perfectly organized thing in the 
 churches. These vagrant people were designated 
 by the honorable title of "Guests;" not till later 
 was this mild expression made to convey or cover an 
 ignominious meaning. In every place the settled 
 families were obliged to entertain during the Sab- 
 bath a greater or smaller, number of " guests," ac- 
 cording to their ability, and on Sunday morning pro- 
 vide them with traveling money. On week days 
 their support was left more or less to private charity. 
 
 The most thankless ofiice in connection with this 
 Sabbath-quartering fell to the church-warden, who 
 distributed the tickets; he could not suit anybody; 
 the beggars cursed and reviled him, — for it Avas none 
 other than the unhappy almoner who was the object 
 of the above-quoted imprecations. 
 
THE GUESTS. 8 
 
 The Jewish poor-house-of -entertainment at Bres- 
 lau was situated on Charles Street in the so-called 
 fencing-school, a sort of barracks enclosing a large 
 area like a market-place, in the middle of which was 
 a kind of store-house of goods, with a small tower 
 and a striking-clock; in the circumjacent houses, of 
 which one row abutted against the ramparts, lived 
 forty or fifty Jewish families; and in one of the 
 court-yards stood the so-called Lissa Synagogue, into 
 a dirty room opposite which the beggars above 
 mentioned now entered. 
 
 " With whom do you dine, Schnauzcrle * ? " asked 
 a burly fellow with a rattling in his throat. 
 
 " With whom do I dine ? with whom do I starve ? 
 — you'd better say ! Once more I say, let him be 
 swallowed up alive, if he sends me to Lamray Biir, 
 who looks like a time of famine, and his wife like a 
 smoked herring, such a great long-legged, raw-boned, 
 sixteen-hand-high old cook." 
 
 Such was the answer of the party spoken to, a 
 man with a desperate face, who was further distin- 
 guished from his companions by wearing leather 
 breeches with broad red stripes on the sides and a 
 row of brass buttons; the silver ear-rings, which 
 peeped out from under the black frizzly hair might 
 have served as a special mark of his individuality. 
 
 " I'll tell you what ! " said a little man with a 
 peaked beard, whom they called Mendel Felluhzer — • 
 " I'll tell you what ! If you'll give me two good 
 
 * Or, literally, Snoutv, in allusion to a protruding moustache giving his face 
 the look of a dog's nose. — 7>. 
 
4 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 grosclien to boot, I'll swap with you, and give you 
 my billet to the rich widow of Aaron Wolf, who haa 
 the richest dried-meat in all Breslau, and every Sab- 
 bath a smoked tongue with a sauce that tastes like 
 pure Malmsey." 
 
 "I'll give you a groschen and a half," replied 
 Schnauzerle; and his wife howled and scolded and 
 beat her children for having such a spendthrift of a 
 father, till they all yelled in chorus. 
 
 " One and a half ? " smiled Mendel, " well, I don't 
 care; you see I hate long hagglings; but you must 
 pay first." 
 
 '■' I ha'n't a bloody penny, and if Amalek, the poll- 
 tax-gatherer should come and should say: Victor, 
 [or Schnauzerle, for all I care], you may put my 
 eyes out with a red farthing — (Lord knows I'd be 
 glad enough to do it) — I should have to let the Titus 
 run. You're all witnesses, that till Sunday morning 
 I owe one and a half good groschen." Mendel shook 
 his head negatively, and Schnauzerle went on : " You 
 may cut off my right ear, ear-ring and all, if I don't 
 pay you honestly." Mendel again shook his head, 
 and Victor laid himself on the bench behind the table, 
 stretched his legs out and whistled the Dessau march. 
 
 "A good fat billet, 
 And a soft bed at night, 
 And a cozy bench, 
 And a buxom wench 
 To help me fill it, — 
 Is my delight " — ^- 
 
 declaimed a sly little man out of a corner of the 
 ajjartment. 
 
THE GUEST. 
 
 Mr,' 
 
 
 " Stop your clack, you ninny-haTnm^';^^nerl Lo1)g1 
 Schackern, interrupting tlie rhymer, for he had been 
 obliged to laugli at those verses, and that made him 
 cut a piece out of his chin, as he was just at that 
 moment in the act of twitching out before a broken 
 looking-glass some of the hairs of his beard with a 
 pair of scissors. 
 
 The unlucky poet, Israel Possenmacher of Dorz- 
 bach in Franconia, answered promptly: 
 
 "Howl of dogs and tom-cats' din 
 At the gate of Heaven will never get in." 
 "Whereupon, like a marksman, he drew his eyelids 
 down over his (always half-hidden) little gray eyes, 
 took out of his mouth the quid of tobacco which he 
 was chewing and threw it in his reviewer's face, 
 who in return flung at him the scissors, which un- 
 fortunately, however, hit a little maiden, w^ho, hold- 
 ing a violin in her lap, sat cuddled up in a corner. 
 The child screamed, blood ran from her forehead, 
 and Schnauzerle sprang up in a fury, and leaping 
 down from the table away over them all to his little 
 daughter, boiling w^ith rage, he lifted the deathly- 
 pale child with one hand in the air, while with the 
 other he shook his fist at the by-standers, then ho 
 pressed the bleeding face of his child to his lips, and 
 perceiving no longer any breath, he yelled and raved 
 and cursed again aloud, and swore to massacre every 
 one of them. 
 
 " My best child ! my best child ! Wait, Lobel, 
 I'll bite your throat in two with my teeth ! She waa 
 as gentle as a lamb, every farthing she earned by 
 
6 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 singing she brought to me," cried Schnauzerle, and 
 his voice began to quiver. 
 
 Meanwhile several had gone to find an old beggar- 
 woman, called tall Voffel, who came, snatched the 
 child from Schnauzerle's arms, breathed softly three 
 times into the wound on the forehead, the blood 
 ceased running, she took a flask from her pocket, 
 sprinkled a few drops on mouth and temples, the 
 child opened her eyes, Schnauzerle gave a scream of 
 joy and gave Lobel a kick, nobody could tell whether 
 from rapture or revenge; the latter, however, took 
 off his yellow neck-handkerchief and gave it to the 
 old man as a bandage for the child ; he also unfast- 
 ened his little gold ear-rings and put them on to the 
 sleeping child, and to make all good, he gave 
 Schnauzerle his better meat-ticket and took his poor 
 one instead. All at once an altered tone, a certain 
 tenderness of mood, seemed to have come over the 
 whole company; of all the curses and bitter jests 
 there was no longer any sound or sign. The sense 
 of having just escaped a calamity excites even in the 
 most hardened natures a slight shudder of awe, and 
 who can tell how much of pardonable selfishness may 
 not on such occasions be awakened in the soul? 
 Every one could now with undisturbed contentment 
 surrender himself to the pleasure of the coming Sab- 
 bath, a great part of which would have been utterly 
 spoiled if a little corpse had been lying on the boards 
 of the lodging-house. All united in the praise of 
 the little ten-year-old Mattie (Matilda); they ex- 
 tolled her cleverness, her gentle good-nature, and 
 
THE GUESTS. *] 
 
 her talent in singing and violin-playing, and pro- 
 nounced Schnauzerle happy in having such a daugh- 
 ter. The child woke up; all caressed her; she stood 
 smiling before the broken looking-glass and feasted 
 her eyes upon the yellow fillet and the golden ear- 
 rings; the pale face and the delicately formed little 
 mouth seemed as if they had seldom been lighted 
 up with a gleam of pleasure. The child bound the 
 handkerchief more neatly around her forehead, the 
 bandage became an ornament, and with a graceful 
 fling and flourish she skipped out of the door to show 
 her pretty things to the other children. 
 
 "That Schnauzerle is a speculating head," said 
 Elias Rossnitzer, " that child may yet make a rich 
 man of him some day. It doesn't look as if it were 
 your child; I believe you stole her." 
 
 " When you were born they must have fired a salute 
 — you did) lH invent gimpowder,^'^ Ye\:)\ied Schnauzerle; 
 " you can get you a dog to eat your ideas for you. 
 When one hasn't enough for himself, will he go to 
 stealing children for a luxury ? " 
 
 "Some other folks are speculative too," began 
 •Mendel; "if you'll keep still, I'll show a little ar- 
 rangement of mine." 
 
 He pulled a dirty little book out of his pocket, and 
 the curious by-standers formed a ring round him, and 
 thrusting their thumbs on both sides into the arm- 
 holes of their waistcoats, looked at the speaker with 
 distorted features. 
 
 " You know," continued the subject of this honor, 
 "everybody is acquainted with me where two roads 
 
8 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 meet, so I have laid out my brokerage-business on 
 an extensive scale. See here ! On the left hand 
 side of the first page are the fellows, and on the 
 right the girls, of marriageable age ; we'll leave them 
 side by side; I'll introduce to you presently the second 
 set; on these leaves you find the sons and daughters 
 of families; they are marked with only one star, they 
 are of middle standing, say from two to three thou- 
 sand dollars; down below are the honeysweet chil- 
 dren ; I should be sorry to have to choose, if I must 
 choose one of them. But the worst of them are the 
 middling sort, checked off in the margin down here ; 
 they belong neither exactly above nor below — they're 
 too small for the cart and too large for the wagon ; it's 
 a troublesome piece of business till one gets them 
 fairly harnessed in. But now, dear children, look out! 
 here come my goldfish, my pearls, my sugar-plums, 
 my rose-buds ; for two hundred miles round there's not 
 a young lad or lass that I havn't in my sack. Brothers, 
 this runs up high, to the seventh heaven, even to 
 twelve thousand thalers ! higher than that nobody 
 ever got. There is the daughter of Meyer de Castro in 
 Hamburg, only fifteen years old, but a golden child^ 
 eia:hteen carats fine, who looks so fresh and healthv 
 one could almost take a bite of her, and she has a 
 pair of eyes in her head, coal-black and with a fire in 
 them — the great diamond of the King of Portugal 
 (I wish I had it) can't have a brighter lustre; a mouth 
 and a chin, and in fact her whole person — one can't 
 paint anytliing finer; and, brothers, twelve thou- 
 sand thalers! Dear Lord! if I liad twelve thousand 
 
THE GUESTS. 9 
 
 thalers, I'd ask if Breslau were for sale. I 
 should be the greatest merchant in the world; I 
 should be better off than the King of Prussia ! I 
 must say, I pity the young creature; her father has 
 wanted with all his might to get a scholar for his son- 
 in-law. I have ordered such a dried-up little Rabbi 
 from Fiirth; I make a nice bit of money by the op- 
 eration, and while we are talking here, perhaps the 
 match is already concluded. — The double-under- 
 scored one here — that is the daughter of Raphael 
 Lobell of Treves; her name is Taiibchen; she is one 
 of those who find many electors and no purchaser — 
 one of those market-day jades, that everybody has 
 trotted out, inspects them and then goes away ; she is 
 half-and-half new-fashioned ; she parley-vous' High- 
 Gei-man like a countess, and is a somewhat consid- 
 erable pei-son withal, only she has a bit of cock-a- 
 doodle-doo in her head. Na ! Well, before twice 
 twenty-four hours, she's provided for." 
 
 He held up for a moment, and took in with a smile 
 the tribute of approval from the surrounding com- 
 pany, and then proceeded: 
 
 " Brothers, now attend! here on these three leaves 
 I have marked such articles as are spotted, and what 
 one commonly calls Bavel ; * and there is the most 
 profit on them, for the very reason that such things 
 are not what everybody will buy. There is the 
 daughter of Maier Karp of Cologne; she has lost a 
 shoe, because she has served in the cavalry. I've 
 given her father a promise to get her a clever young 
 
 * Damaged or unsalable goods. 
 
10 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 fellow, and if he has nothing but the shirt on hig 
 body, he'll get her, and a thousand dollars, cash 
 down, and a share of the business, besides inheriting 
 some day a handsome little property, and what more 
 can one wish ? There is the daughter of the holy 
 Kabbi, Aaron Eftringen of Strasburg. The daugh- 
 ters of the Eabbis are none of them worth a grosehen ; 
 their parents, from sheer piety, have no time to look 
 after them; she is no more valued than sour beer, 
 but still I've a husband for her already; she gets a 
 cattle-dealer from Speier. — See, here are the hump- 
 backed ones whom one can look at only in front, and 
 next to them those that have a wen on the neck or 
 some such superfluity; here are such as only look at 
 one side-wise; here those whom, like a gift-hoi'se, one 
 must not look in the mouth ; but here at last comes 
 a capital person; this one can do a feat that no one 
 can come within a thousand miles of imitating." 
 
 *' What's that ? " eagerly cried all the bystanders. 
 
 " 'WJiat''8 thatf^'' replied Mendel, smirkhig, while 
 he held his peaked chin in his left hand for some 
 time in silence, "why, she can kiss her elbow, so 
 beautifully are her arms set into her body. Against 
 every married man I mark a star here in my regis- 
 ter; why not? I have been already cursed more 
 times than there are days in the year, but what of 
 that? all I say is: marriages are made in heaven, 
 and it is also written: at the very same hour when 
 one is born, it is proclaimed in heaven: such and 
 such a man gets such and such a woman — how can 
 I help that? — A propos! Don't any one of you 
 
THE GUESTS. 11 
 
 know a widow or a half old maid, — but she must ba 
 baited by all the dogs and have hair on her teeth ;— 
 Veitel Ephraim in Berlin is now happily a widower, 
 and I should be glad to hang another domestic devil 
 on his neck." 
 
 " Mon cher cousin ! " cried Schnauzerle, " this day 
 fortnight I was at my dear cousin's. I'll soon pluck 
 a feather or two out of the gold-pheasant, that'll 
 make him leave off mousing." 
 
 " There, you've got the right pig by the ear," said 
 Elias Rossnitzer; "you see by Veitel how things go 
 when the beggar gets on horseback; he can't carry 
 his crest high enough, but towards whom ? towards 
 us ! — towards the gentry he can bow and duck, as if 
 his joints were all fish-bone. I guess we all know 
 his hens and his geese; his father was not a bit 
 more or less than one of us; he has always taken 
 what has been given him, and what has not been 
 given him. 
 
 " There was his sister Sara that's dead now — the 
 wife of the rich Moses Daniel Kuh near by here, — 
 she hadn't a drop of shabby blood in her veins; that 
 was the best ticket in all Breslau; she was a real 
 lady, such a one as the Thora [Holy Scripture] speaks 
 of: ichoever goes into her hoicse hungry, conies out 
 well-filledr 
 
 "I wish such a woman would die every day," 
 growled David Schmalznudel. "I happened to be 
 here just as she was buried; a good deal of money 
 was distributed among the poor in the good-place 
 [church-yard], every one, I think, got a dollar and 
 
1 2 POE T AND MER CHANT. 
 
 two or three good groschen over; she had had thirty 
 gokl ducats lying with her grave-clothes, witli di- 
 rections that, at her funeral, they should be dis- 
 tributed among the poor." 
 
 **When her last-born in the cradle lay, 
 Did I not sing to the child and say : 
 He must not shed too many tears 
 If sorrow should come in after years. 
 Believe me, brothers, a rarer sport 
 Was never seen at King Arthur's court, 
 Nor finer songs went round the board, 
 Nor ever a nobler wine was poured. 
 But oh, that Veitel, the scape-grace. 
 He always wore a sour face, 
 And yet I do not hate him — oh no ! 
 Only you see I love him so, 
 I wish I had so?nething that would be 
 As good for him as it would for me " — 
 
 declaimed again the sly little man from the corner 
 of the room. 
 
 "What is that youVl like?" all with one voice in- 
 terrupted the happy improvisator of rhymes. 
 "A keg of powder — that would be 
 As good a joke for him as for me." 
 
 " Far too expensive a luxury," remarked Schnau- 
 zerle, yawning, " but, brothers, Mendel has set me 
 upon a speculative track; you shall hear presently 
 what I have in hand." 
 
 At that moment, a blow with a wooden hammer, 
 four times repeated on the house-door, gave the sig- 
 nal that it was time to go to the synagogue. Tlie 
 beggars started, but at the door a Pole encountered 
 them, who was just in the act of making a hasty en- 
 
THE GUESTS. 13 
 
 trance. Schnauzerle turned round and seizing the 
 stranger by the coat, asked liim: 
 
 " Kabbi, can't you get me a copy of the Sixth 
 Book of JNIoses ? A treasure-digger has promised me 
 twenty dollars for one; you shall be paid for your 
 trouble, if you can procure me the Sixth Book of 
 Moses." 
 
 " Are not five enough for you ? " answered the Pole, 
 angrily, and immediately departed, so soon as the 
 matron of the shelter had insured him a night's 
 lodging. 
 
 " You see, Sary," said the matron to her daughter, 
 a girl of eighteen, who had been scouring the room 
 and now stood at the window, her eyes red with 
 weeping, and gazed out into the snow-flurry, — " you 
 see, the proverb says: 
 
 ' 'Twixt guests and servants, bewildrin'. 
 Small chance for the poor children.' 
 
 And now you have heard a proof of its truth." 
 
 Sary turned round and wiped a tear from her eye 
 with her apron. Mattie, the wounded child, came 
 in and played on the violin; the matron took the in- 
 strument out of the child's hands and struck her. 
 " Don't you know it is the Sabbath now, and no 
 music is allowed on the Sabbath ? " said she. The 
 two girls went silently out of the door; the old 
 mother spread white linen on the table, and lighted, 
 praying the while, her seven Sabbath-lights, and 
 spreading out her two hands pronounced a blessing 
 upon the candles. 
 
14 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Quiet and friendly neatness reigned now in the 
 sabbatically-illuminated apartment. 
 
 Scbnauzerle and his comrades, meanwliile, were 
 standing in the synagogue, not far from the entrance; 
 they kept up an incessant chattering during the 
 prayer, criticising the members of the holy congre- 
 gation of Breslau, as, with profound bows and a low 
 murmuring, they betook themselves to their seats. 
 
 " Do you see," said Schnauzerle to Mendel Fel- 
 luhzer, " that tall Meier Lammle dawdling along ? 
 he does well to hide his thievish hands in a fox-skin 
 muff. Couldn't find anything else to steal, so he stole 
 himself away from Warsaw. Ha! that Moses 
 Ganz bends down right bravely; is it your gallows 
 crooks you over so, which is branded upon your 
 back? Sacre noon de iJieu ! there comes Levi 
 Wolf; he steps off as if he had pinchbeck feet, in- 
 stead of four pinchbeck watches in his pocket, which 
 he is going to sell for gold ones; see, out of each 
 pocket hangs a seal: I believe, if ever our Lord 
 God should no longer know what time it is, that Levi 
 Wolf would sell him a watch and gabble Plim into 
 taking pinchbeck for gold eighteen carats fine. The 
 best trade after all is that of a Rabbin; to soldier and 
 pray, that is all a very easy business; it is true Rab- 
 bin Tobias is a fine man, but the devil may thank hira 
 for that; a great art, forsooth, to sit at table all the 
 year round with enough to eat and drink and a hand- 
 some wife! — heart! Avhat more do you want ? If that 
 were my case, I'd be as pious as the prophet Elias 
 himself." 
 
THE GUESTS^^ 15 
 
 " Hold your scurrilous jaw, will >'^i^jotr arc a 
 great hand for sticking nicknames on to every&ody," 
 cried Maier Schmalznudel, and Schnauzerle kept still 
 awhile, for many others as well as the Pole, hissed 
 Silence ! 
 
 The Pole stood aside in a corner, far from the 
 other beggars. The blazing brass lamps, which hung 
 down in long chains from the ceiling of the syna- 
 gogue, but faintly illuminated the form of the singu- 
 lar stranger. He maintained during the whole prayer 
 a bending attitude, keeping the upper part of liis 
 body the while in a steady and measured oscillation. 
 When the schema (Deut. VI, 4-10 and XI, 13—21) 
 was chanted, he raised himself high on his toes, 
 clasped his hands spasmodically over his head, com- 
 pressed his lips tightly, drew down his eyelids, and 
 with a long deep inspiration sought to excite himself 
 to an intense ecstasy. It was as if, challenged by 
 this acknowledgment to the only God, a whole host 
 of thoughts, doubts, sorrows and hopes contended 
 together in a mingling throng upon his face. He 
 stroked himself slowly with his left hand from brow 
 to chin, and a cleared and calm, almost radiant, ex- 
 pression again came to the front upon his counte- 
 nance; he played carelessly with his rich, black beard, 
 which, flowing down in neatly curled locks from the 
 temples, formed a setting to the contour of his fresh 
 and manly face. The small mouth was all enclosed 
 with coal-black hair, which covered even the chin; a 
 finely chiseled aquiline nose, somewhat prominently 
 projecting, imparted to the physiognomy a peculiar 
 
16 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 and characteristic foreign and oriental expression: 
 the dark-glowing eye, shaded with long lashes, and 
 the fine sweep of the rich brows that darkly arched 
 over them, betrayed an intense, but repressed and sul- 
 lenly silent, passion; the broad bonnet sat more on 
 his neck than on his head, and exposed the high lily- 
 white forehead, copiously marked with the scars of 
 thought, to full view; not in open battle, in the face 
 of nations, did these honorable scars seem to have 
 been won; the thorny crown of a solitary and out- 
 lawed warfare had with its shaii? spines torn these 
 wounds. 
 
 The precentor had complacently drawled off his 
 songs, Avhich were an odd compound of sacred mel- 
 odies and street-ballads; he troubled himself very 
 little about the assembled hearers, who, in perpetual 
 motion, trotted to and fro before their desks, and 
 blew into their hands to keep them warm. And 
 now, swinging backward and forward before his 
 pulpit, and with an unrestrained familiarity smooth- 
 ing out his rumpled felt-cap, he sang the closing 
 strain. The congregation meanwhile was already in 
 full motion, only holding in at the door of the syn- 
 agogue to seal the conclusion of the prayer with a 
 general Amen; the children must say the Amen par- 
 ticularly loud, for the Talmud significantly teaches: 
 Upon the Amen of little children the world rests. 
 
 At this moment a large, stout man, leading a boy 
 by the hand, left his place, which was immediately 
 beside that of the precentor, and walked toward the 
 door. All anticipated him with the salutation, " A 
 
THE GUESTS. 1 V 
 
 good Schabbes," (Sabbath) and with a friendly good- 
 will he immediately returned the greeting; at the 
 door there was a great crowding; all reverentially 
 made way for the great man and even the Pole gave 
 him a lowly greeting. 
 
 " Have you already received your invitation ? " 
 the great man said to him. 
 
 " I only arrived this Sabbath, and so have not yet 
 had time," answered the Pole, in bad German, 
 somewhat disfigured with Hebrew phrases. 
 
 " Well ! then come with me," the other replied. 
 " There are no two ways about it, I mean to be a 
 Pole," cried Schnauzerle, when the crowd had melted 
 away; " the goat's beard is sure to get the best crib ! 
 Don't you know him then ? that is the rich Moses 
 Daniel Kuh, who has got him by the halter. I once 
 heard say, that at the creation, our Lord God pickled 
 the leviathan, as a delicacy for the saints in the next 
 world; I believe, if we ever get there, the Poles will 
 contrive to eat the flesh and leave us all the bones." 
 " I would gladly have stopped at Moses Daniel's," 
 said Mendel Felluhzer; " I should then have had a 
 fine chance to intimate to him that I have a grand 
 match for his eldest son." 
 
 The crooked Meierle, w^ho, as sexton, came out last 
 and shut up the synagogue, stirred up still more the 
 envy of the beggars and inwardly feasted himself 
 upon their curses and imprecations which they ex- 
 ploded upon the Poles, as " God's body-guard." 
 
 The Polish tramps had, by specious and real learn- 
 ing and piety, contracted in some measure the aspect; 
 2 
 
18 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 of mendicant monks, and were by their lay-brothers 
 in the German Empire envied and hated in manifold 
 ways. To this was added, that in tlie Jewish district 
 also, a gradation according to nationality of honors 
 had become established; as the more eminent Por- 
 tuguese Jews looked with contempt upon the Ger- 
 mans, the Germans, in turn, held toward the Polish 
 Jews the same attitude. 
 
 Under the common yoke are still the degrees of 
 higher and lower. 
 
 And as, according to the legend, even the damned 
 in hell have rest on the Sabbath, so seemed, at last, 
 the envious and calumnious spirits in the beggars 
 silenced, as they betook themselves to their several 
 homes. 
 
2.— THE SABBATH. 
 
 THE Pole, answering as he went along the usual 
 questions about his adventures and his antece- 
 dents, had gone with his entertainer to the latter's 
 house. The nature of these questions had already- 
 convinced the Pole that he had a layman to deal with; 
 for from the old time when God with his angels 
 came to be a guest to Abraham, the pious principle 
 has continued that not till after the guest has eaten 
 and drunk to his satisfaction, is one allowed to ask 
 his name and lineage; and for these modern times, 
 when miracles have ceased, it is further specially 
 added that one shall exercise benevolence without 
 asking questions, in order that its purity may not be 
 impaired by his knowing whether he is harboring or 
 not an enemy or a transgressor. 
 
 The handsomely built house of Moses Daniel stood 
 close by the so-called fencing-school; the keeping- 
 room was sabbatically adorned ; the savory smell of 
 the viands cooking in the stove-pans, which diffused 
 itself through the whole apartment, might if possible 
 have redoubled the Pole's appetite. 
 
20 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 " Two demons accompany man on Friday evening 
 home from the synagogue. If they find the table 
 spread, the lights burning and all well arranged, 
 then the good demon says: God grant that all may 
 be so again on the next Sabbath; and the evil demon, 
 against his will, has to say Amen to it. But if it is 
 otherwise, then the good demon must in like man- 
 ner say Amen to the wish of the bad one." Such is 
 the teaching of the Talmud. 
 
 Rubbing his hands together complacently, Moses 
 Daniel, with his four sons, paced round the table, and 
 sang to a cheerful and solemn melody the Hebrew 
 prayer of acknowledgment: 
 
 "Welcome, ye Spirits, 
 Sent by your Master, 
 King of all Kings, 
 Lord and Maker of all." 
 
 The Pole sat down on the wooden bench which 
 stood before the hot stove, and hummed, in like man- 
 ner, his prayer to himself in a low tone; and now he 
 had leisure the while to examine attentively his en- 
 vironment. Exactly over the middle of the table 
 hung a brass lamp, provided with many ornamental 
 appendages, and seven lights burned in its circularly 
 projecting sockets; and beside these stood two silver 
 candle-sticks, with lighted wax candles, on the table ; 
 brightly glistened the pewter platters on the red- 
 flower-embroidered linen, and before every plate 
 stood a huge goblet. The Pole observed that no 
 mention was made, in any quarter, of him, nor any 
 preparation for seating him at the table. Already 
 
THE SABBATH. 21 
 
 in silence he began to murmur at the prospect of 
 being left in the background, perliaps of liaving to 
 eat at a side table, or even, according to a new fash- 
 ion fast prevailing, in the kitchen. He knew not 
 that here it was an old hereditary usage of the house 
 every Sabbath to keep two covers open for any 
 friends or poor persons who might happen in. How 
 joyful, therefore, was his astonishment, when, after 
 the washing of hands, he was, by silent gestures (for 
 no one, from this time forward until the blessing was 
 pronounced over the bread and wine, was allowed to 
 speak a profane word) motioned to his place, imme- 
 diately beside tliat of the master of the house. 
 Now all the goblets were filled, each grasped the one 
 set before him and held it in the hollow of his hand, 
 enclosing it with his fingers claw-wise, so as to form 
 a mystical sign. All now solemnly arose; the master 
 of the house pronounced aloud the consecrating bless- 
 ing, which all present in a low tone repeated after 
 him; then they sat down again, and after another 
 blessing each drank some drops out of his goblet. 
 Thereupon the master of the house laid aside the 
 napkin placed before him, and lifted in the air the 
 two uncovered loaves, which were twisted length- 
 wise and strewed with poppy grains; choosing the 
 goodlier one, he cut off a piece of it, once more said 
 a blessing, and broke a bit for himself and one for 
 each of the company. Now, at length, they could 
 speak again and sit down with content. The maid, 
 sitting at the table, rose up to take the soup out of 
 the oven, pour it out into a dish on the w^ooden bench 
 
22 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 and place it smoking on the table, so that the lights 
 in the lamps only dimly glimmered through the as- 
 cending cloud of steam. The master of the house 
 had also stood up to take off his heavy three-cor- 
 nered hat, retaining on his head only the peaked cap, 
 which it had half hidden; the long-skirted, reddish 
 frock coat was exchanged for a quilted waistcoat; 
 the great buckled shoes gave place to green slippers. 
 Now at last one could sit down contentedly at table. 
 Dumpling-soup, sour fishes with almonds and raisins, 
 meat, sausages and sweetly seasoned onions were 
 consumed amidst familiar conversation. The 
 " Schabbes-maid," an old wrinkled Christian woman, 
 had sat cowering behind the stove, eating of the 
 dishes which were brought to her; only sometimes 
 she crept forth from behind the stove and came un- 
 bidden to the table to trim the lights. The meagre, 
 wasted form of the old Crescentia contrasted singu- 
 larly with the comfortable and cheerfully lighted as- 
 pect of the whole surrounding. None present seemed, 
 however, to think of that, for when the dinner was 
 over, washing water was handed round, and the 
 whole family sang several festive songs to old airs; 
 the master of the house forthwith said the long grace 
 with a loud voice, during which he held the goblet 
 up in the hollow of his hand, then drank again of 
 the wine, spake in a low tone one more closing bene- 
 diction, and finally all rose from the table. 
 
 " One must not betray to any out of the fold what 
 a blessedness such a Friday night is. Even if the 
 Christian has everything else," said his host to the 
 
THE SABBATH. 23 
 
 Pole, " even if he wants nothing wliich can make life 
 agreeable this side of Heaven, one thing he lacks, 
 which I would not exchange with him for all his en- 
 joyments, and that one thing is: such a Sabbath and 
 such a Friday evening; when one has fagged himself 
 out the whole week, so that he hardly knows where 
 his head is, then comes Friday evening; all cares and 
 torments are gone, one is an entirely fresh man ; and 
 not only with me is it so: the poor among the poor, 
 who has hardly salt for an ^g^^ who the whole week 
 through has dragged himself round in wind and 
 weather, almost bent double, and must let himself be 
 kicked and spit upon by every boor so that he may 
 earn a couple of farthings, who all the week long has 
 not a warm bit, nothing but dry bread and a glass of 
 schnaps, in a better case only roast potatoes or at 
 the very best a cup of coffee; — how could he stand it 
 without a Sabbath ? But Friday evening comes, and 
 he sits at home in his keeping-room, makes himself 
 comfortable, and refreshes himself again till Sunday 
 morning, then takes his staff in hand, and his bundle 
 on his back, kisses the holy law which is written on 
 the door-posts,* the wife stands on the threshold and 
 prays softly the ' God bless thee and keep thee,' but 
 he goes on his way, takes his prayer-book out of his 
 pocket, hums to himself the pious traveler's-songs, 
 and so enters again upon his painful pilgrimage." 
 
 The Pole shrewdly calculated: "Whoever with 
 such reflecting self-consciousness surveys the neces- 
 
 *The Jews have, attached to all their doors, in little capsules, various pas- 
 sages of Scripture written on parchment 
 
24 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 sity and relations of things, must know a point of 
 view beyond and above them, or j^erhaps have 
 sucli within himself; to him an outlook into a larger 
 life must already have been opened." With cau- 
 tious Hebrew turns he responded how delightful it 
 was to find that the individual man and whole classes 
 always grow into their conditions; at first the shoe 
 often jjinched, but gradually the toes crooked and 
 crippled themselves to it, and in this way one learned 
 by degrees to run well and even to dance. 
 
 The cunning Rabbi had, however, reckoned falsely, 
 for Moses Daniel shook his head with a dissatisfied 
 air, whether because he understood not, or because 
 he disapproved the words, was uncertain. 
 
 " A second soul enters into the body on the Sab- 
 bath, — that is a striking sentence of our wise men," 
 (church fathers) the host resumed. 
 
 The Pole fell in with his assent in a tone of solemn 
 pathos, and remembering his traditionary duty, as 
 learned guest, to speak out of God's word for the 
 edification of the house, he quickly quoted, with a 
 reference to the page, a variety of proof -texts from 
 the Talmud, particularly that memorable saying from 
 the Tractate on the Sabbath, Fol. 73: "If Israel 
 should only hallow one Sabbath with all its observ- 
 ances, the Messiah must needs come." lie ex- 
 plained this to mean, that if men could bring them- 
 selves for a single day to put away all worldly 
 anxiety and all confusion of heart, to be of one mind 
 and to feel themselves purely in God, the Messiah 
 would already have come and must also come out- 
 
THE SABBATH. 25 
 
 "warclly. — Again, however, it was unmistakable tliat 
 the much extolled ingenuity of Talmudic exposition 
 here also missed the mark; he only added further 
 how, according to the interpretation of the wise men 
 the Sabbath was an emblem of, as well as preparation 
 for, the eternal rest in the kingdom of blessedness, 
 and began thereupon to relate some wonderful ex- 
 amples of the inexplicable magic power of the Sab- 
 bath. 
 
 " In Spain the monks had in old times a tribunal 
 called the Inquisition; by which all Jews were com- 
 pelled either to be baptized or to languish for years 
 in prison, and finally to be burned. Once a holy 
 Rabbi was immured in a subterranean hole, where 
 not a ray of light could reach him, so that he knew 
 not when it was day or when it was night. Nothing 
 tormented him so much as the thought that he Avas 
 now hindered from celebrating the Sabbath with 
 song and prayer, as he had been wont to do from his 
 youth up; beside this an almost unconquerable 
 longing for his cigarettes caused him much heart- 
 felt pain. To breathe in and out tobacco smoke was 
 to him almost as necessary as air is to men in gen- 
 eral; he worried and reproached himself that lie 
 could not conquer this passion, when, all at once, he 
 perceived that it suddenly vanished; a voice said 
 within him: ' Now it is Friday evening ! for this was 
 always the hour when my longing for a thing for- 
 bidden at this season regularly left me.' Joyfully he 
 rose up and with loud voice thanked God and blessed 
 the Sabbath day. So it went on from week to week; 
 the longing for tobacco regularly tormented him and 
 
26 . POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 regularly vanished at the coming in of the Sab- 
 bath. — In our days, however, as great miracles hap- 
 pen. I myself knew a miser in Cracow — he is dead 
 now — who all through the week had a heart like 
 Amalek, but on the Sabbath he was mercy and gen- 
 erosity itself." 
 
 " Thank you for nothing ! " cried the boy, named 
 Ephraim, who had been attentively listening, "any- 
 body can be as good as that, for on the Sabbath 
 one is not permitted to give or even bind himself by 
 a promise to give anything to anybody." 
 
 The father reproved the pert boy's forwardness, 
 but the Pole pinched his cheek good-naturedly after 
 the manner of the Rabbins, and after a short pause 
 continued: " In Posen, I have heard tell, there still 
 lives an old woman who, as soon as the Sabbath 
 comes in, and as long as it lasts, can dispute with 
 the Rabbins upon the most mysterious teachings of 
 the Talmud and the Cabbala, but at the expiration 
 of the Sabbath becomes again the simple ignorant 
 woman of yesterday. It is well known that the 
 river Sambatjon, which all the week throws out fiery 
 stones, on the Sabbath is quiet. Having just spoken 
 of Posen reminds me, have you heard yet of the 
 resurrection affair said to have occurred there last 
 atonement day ? " 
 
 " No, what was it ? " 
 
 " You know that v/hen the dead are laid in the 
 grave, they are clad in a white linen death-robe, and 
 the Tallis * spread over the head; for so they must ap- 
 
 * A white woolen prayer-mantle edged at the bottom with blue stripes. 
 
THE SABBATir. 27 
 
 v.- ., J. 
 
 pear before the juclgment seat of GfojJ* ^oa ilic <iay of 
 Atonement we all regard ourselves as (lea<i or dying, 
 and clothed in the same dresses as the dead, we ap- 
 pear before the face of the Lord in the synagogue. 
 ISuch is the custom in all countries. 
 
 "It was atonement eve; the whole congregation 
 of Fosen stood in the synagogue in their grave- 
 clothes, the head veiled with the tallis, ready for 
 prayer and humiliation. Suddenly all felt an inde- 
 scribable squeezing and pushing, they felt as if 
 pressed by demons; the sweat ran down from them 
 in streams, and all their limbs were as if lamed; so 
 crowded, crammed full was the whole synagogue, 
 that a needle could not have dropped to the ground. 
 The synagogue could have held more than thrice the 
 whole population of Posen; this press was inexpli- 
 cable. Many turned to their neighbors to express 
 their astonishment at the thing, but these stood 
 veiled, motionless, speechless. The Rabbi pro- 
 nounced the first prayer, an Amen as if uttered by 
 millions of voices rang through the building; the 
 walls began to tremble, thereupon it was still; all 
 present felt as if throttled. Then there sounded a 
 voice from Heaven: The dead are risen, they stand 
 in the midst of you, to pray with you ! — As if struck 
 by lightning, every one felt that he must sink to the 
 earth, but it was as if invisible hands lifted them 
 up by the hair of the head, and wrung from them 
 the sweat of agony. Xo one dared to lift his eyes or 
 open his mouth, for everyone feared the veiled skel- 
 eton that stood beside him. All was as silent as the 
 
28 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 grave. At last the Rabbi raised himself up and by 
 the ineffable name of the All-merciful conjured the 
 dead to depart thence; a distant Hallelujah was 
 faintly heard, and the congregation stood there 
 again calm and undisturbed." 
 
 " Look, father ! there are three lights in the lamp 
 going out at once ! " cried Ephraim. Moses Daniel 
 was for a moment violently startled, but quickly 
 collected himself and gave the boy a box on tlie ear, 
 because it endangers one's life to look at the extinc- 
 tion of a light, for that is like the decease of a mor- 
 tal and may by being looked upon and " called out " 
 become a premonition. In fact, however, Moses 
 Daniel, besides being agitated by the Pole's narra- 
 tive, had, by the sudden and significant extinction 
 of three lights, been affected with awe. The further 
 explanation of the Pole, that since that occurrence 
 they were no longer permitted in the synagogue of 
 Posen to wear death-robes, he heard with only a di- 
 vided attention; such a thing seemed to him, how- 
 ever, a sin, and he bethought himself now in good 
 time that he must show this pearl of a scholar to 
 the Rabbin who lived in his neighborhood. 
 
 " We must not fail to go over to the Rabbin's," 
 said he, putting on his hat and coat, but his look 
 meanwhile glanced round in a manner that seemed 
 to imply a still further meaning in his words. Old 
 Crescentia behind the stove understood ; quickly she 
 lighted her candle, put it in the lantern and preceded 
 the two men to light their way. A magnificent 
 sight met their eyes on stepping out of the house; 
 
THE SABBATH. 29 
 
 from the lowest story of the Fencing-School nj) to 
 the gable, light glistened from all windowt), and be- 
 hind these windows sat hundreds of happy people, 
 rejoicing in their God and singing their songs of 
 praise. The Pole sighed deeply; without uttering a 
 sound he walked beside his friendly host across the 
 so-called Jew's place. The crying, screaming, 
 crowding and jostling and running to and fro of 
 light-tongued and perpetually moving triflers, which 
 usually filled the place, had vanished ; like a fairy 
 bride the Sabbath had suddenly charmed away all 
 the motley baggage which they had dragged about 
 with them all the week long; not a sound was audi- 
 ble; only the snow creaked under the tread of the 
 late visitors, who turned into Antonia street and 
 stopped before the house of the Rabbin. Old Cre- 
 scentia rang, not from forwardness or politeness, no, 
 she well knew that Herr Moses Daniel was forbidden 
 by an injunction of his religion from touching a bell- 
 cord on the Sabbath. 
 
 The Sabbath is a day of rest for the much tor- 
 mented Rabbi also, for the law expressly commands 
 that on Friday evening one shall not pursue any sol- 
 itary study, because one might easily in his zeal and 
 absence of mind commit the sin of snuffing the light. 
 The old Rabbi, who had just been hearing from his 
 wife the secret affairs of the congregation, received 
 the two visitors cordially, yet with a certain proud 
 self-consciousness. Soon after the first greeting 
 there grew up a dispute, between the two experts in 
 Scripture, about a passage of the Talmud referring 
 
30 POE T AND MER CHANT. 
 
 to the morrow's weekly section. Both were veiy 
 vehement, and it seemed often as if their lively ges- 
 tures must result in actual collision. Moses Daniel 
 sat in a great arm-chair at some distance, following 
 with an eager countenance their mutual objections; 
 even though they relied on arguments which passed 
 his knowledge or his power of reasoning, he well re- 
 membered that it was a holy and meritorious work 
 to be present at a learned conversation, even though 
 one did not comprehend it, if in so doing one only 
 sanctified his will; but to this was added the fur- 
 ther reason, that he was enjoying in silence the 
 thought of being permitted to entertain such a par- 
 agon of erudition at his own table. At a late hour, 
 when the lights in the chandelier had gone out one 
 after another, they took their leave in a friendly 
 manner, for the dispute had turned not upon a dif- 
 ference of principles and purposes; it was a pious 
 fencing exercise; so much the more cordially could 
 the Kabbi accede to the request of the Pole, and al- 
 low him to deliver a pilgrimage sermon at the morn- 
 ing service the next day in the Lissa Synagogue (for 
 there were at that time already several in Breslau), 
 On the following morning there was only one 
 voice among those who left the synagogue respect- 
 ing the distinguished learning and the brilliant wit 
 of the Polish stranger. He had adorned his delivery 
 with all kinds of parables, such as the mass of peo- 
 ple can easily carry away in their pockets. — Moses 
 Dan:iel was not a little proud of taking the Pole 
 home with him (for before the morning service no 
 
THE SABBA TIL 31 
 
 food could pass any one's lips) through the submis- - 
 sively greeting groups. Hardly an hour after they 
 sat down to dinner, where, with slight modifications 
 the usages of tlie previous evening were repeated; 
 the distinguishing feature of this meal was, however, 
 a religious dish of a peculiar kind; namely, a fat 
 pudding, which, as the Polish Kabbi explained, was 
 eaten in memory of the heavenly manna with which 
 God had fed the children of Israel in the wilderness, 
 which tasted like coriander in pure honey, as it is 
 written in the Scripture; and the Rabbinical writings 
 ambiguously add that the heavenly manna tasted to 
 each one as the food which he most fancied and 
 coveted in his private imagination. The Rabbi 
 meanwhile knew how to touch up this interpretation 
 with such colors that to the attentively listening boy 
 it easily grew into a " table-spread-thyself ! " kind of 
 story. 
 
 After the dinner, for the better digestion of the 
 heavenly manna, they drank of the western water oj- 
 strife. The Pole drained at a draught the cup of 
 schnaps which had been set before him. Moses 
 Daniel made a wry face at that, but filled up the 
 glass again, and thereupon commanded his sons, who 
 had previously had to receive the Pole's blessing by 
 imposition of hands, to let him "hear" (^. e. exam- 
 ine) them. With especial complacency did the father 
 listen to the recitation of his son Ephraim; and when 
 the boy had gone out, he said to the Pole : 
 
 " What in my case was neglected through the ne- 
 cessitous circumstances of my parents, I will, since 
 
3 2 POE T AND MERC HA NT. 
 
 God has given me the means, fulfill with my son 
 Ephraim; my other sons I need in my business, but 
 Ephraim, God willing, I will make a Kabbin; I can 
 Bay, with Holy writ: Ephraim is my beloved son 
 {Jer. 31,9), in him is my soul bound up ( Gen. 44, 30). 
 I will gladly close my eyes when I have once seen 
 him honored and exalted among the brethren of our 
 faith. See, here on the first leaf of my Chumesch 
 (Pentateuch) it is recorded, he is now just twelve 
 years old, for he was born in the year 5491 after the 
 creation; am I not right — it is not yet too late to 
 make a clever Rabbi of him ? " the father concluded, 
 relying on an aftirmative answer. The Pole poured 
 himself out w^ith great eloquence and volubility upon 
 the glowing expectations which the acute remarks, 
 the lively genius and the astounding knowledge of 
 the lad justified. 
 
 " All that he has," said Moses, " he has got from 
 his old and recently deceased teacher; the present 
 incumbent is too easy and too conceited. However 
 — I have something to say to you. This evening, 
 after Haf dalah" [the ceremonial separation of the holy 
 Sabbath from the profane week days] " we will con- 
 clude the matter." 
 
 Moses Daniel knew not that the Talmudists ex- 
 pressly allowed the exception that of all commercial 
 transactions the sole and only one that might be set- 
 tled on the Sabbath was a contract with a son's 
 teacher. The Pole, although he perceived Moses 
 Daniel's drift, was nevertheless shrewd enough not 
 to make him aware of his ignorance, but rather to 
 
THE SABBATH. 33 
 
 await till evening the overture of such a welcome 
 proposition; he therefore soon withdrew, as he ob- 
 served that Moses Daniel would fain enjoy his Sab- 
 bath siesta. On the steps he met Mendel Felhihzer, 
 who was on his way to see Moses Daniel. Having 
 gone in, after a short prelude, Mendel said, scratching 
 his left arm: "I get a club foot by you.* I have 
 a splendid match for your daughter, Violet; the man 
 has money and goods and a house fitted up in wid- 
 ower's style." 
 
 "Too late," replied Moses; "ray daughter is be- 
 trothed at Dresden with a grandson of the great 
 Kabbi Moses Isserlein." 
 
 " I am sorry, — I would say, I congratulate you," re- 
 plied Mendel, " but I must still earn a broker's fee 
 with you; my budget is not empty yet. Your oldest 
 son, Cliajem, is a capital tradesman; I could supply 
 him with something quite select, a damsel witli five 
 thousand thalers and three hundred ounces of silver 
 into the bargain, and a dowry which, between broth- 
 ers, is worth its thousand dollars." 
 
 "That's worth thinking of; — where is she from ? " 
 
 " Where from ? she comes of the first family, land 
 in, land out; she is the daughter of the late 3Ioses 
 Lobell of Treves, an only child, and all her mother 
 has she gets after a hundred years, as the saying is, 
 but it can't last a hundred years longer; and figure 
 — a figure, I say, like a princess ! Your daughter, 
 Violet — her enemies cannot dispute it — is a hand- 
 
 * A misfortune which, according to a Jewish proverb, falls upon pimpju 
 
 3 
 
34 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 some maiden, but, don't take it ill of me, before this 
 one she dare not show herself. She has an air about 
 her as if she had lived all her life lon<j: amons: none 
 but dukes and princes. She knows Latin, French, 
 cooking and — in short, there's nothing wanting, you 
 have it all in a lump; and the main thing is: five 
 thousand thalers free from taxes ! And the family ! ! 
 All folks, every one richer than the last, not a poor 
 relation to the hundredth degree." 
 
 Noticeable were the movements of Moses Daniel 
 during this luxuriant description; at the mention of 
 every virtue in the panegyrical catalogue: dowry, 
 family, expectations, he made, with assenting look 
 and friendly smile, a punch with his finger in his left 
 hand; at the portrayal of the person he swayed to and 
 fro as if uncertain; at last a fini?er was a^rain 
 clapped down; but at the mention of mental accom- 
 plishments he was raised above all doubts, these 
 were t.o him decidedly indifferent, if not atsolutely 
 evil; he talked with Mendel for some time, till the 
 latter retired, and he could take his noonday nap. 
 It was a refreshing one, for he saw in dream his son 
 Ephraim, preaching as Rabbi, at Chajem\s marriage 
 with an Empress who was made of pure gold ; to be 
 sure he was troubled about his daughter-in-law's 
 having so many crosses hanging upon her; however, 
 no dream without its nonsense — according to the 
 Talmud, he said to himself as he awoke, and he was 
 gay and happy. 
 
 During the whole Sabbath white linen cloths had 
 always to be spread on the table. The family table 
 
THE SABBATH. 35 
 
 was on the Sabbath peculiarly the altar of the Jew- 
 ish household; it must be kept adorned all the time, 
 and a temple-like frame of mind, joined to a quiet 
 sense of satisfaction, reigned uninterruptedly in the 
 house and all its inmates. 
 
 When at length night fell, the blessing was said 
 over wine and lights, the latter were quenched in 
 wine, which was sprinkled over the table, and every 
 one smelled of dry myrtles held in readiness for this 
 very purpose, to remind themselves of the perfumes 
 of Eden and the lost felicities of Paradise, of which 
 the Sabbath is both after-taste and foretaste. 
 
 Not till now was work-day labor again permitted, 
 but a pious usage enjoins, and promises thereby a 
 blessing on all doings, to begin even at this time 
 with a holy work. 
 
 Moses Daniel had come to an understanding with 
 the Pole that the latter was now to stay with him, 
 and beside good board, clothes, etc., might also count 
 upon a moderate salary and munificent presents. 
 For this he was carefully to instruct the young peo- 
 ple, particularly little Ephraim, and for the Avelfare 
 and prosperity of the house himself to study dili- 
 gently in the sacred books. 
 
 The State, which concerned itself about the civil 
 interests of its Jewish members only in those affairs 
 in which it was important to maintain proper restric- 
 tions, troubled itself still less about any provision 
 for the instruction of the youth. So it came about 
 that full liberty and accountability to himself alone 
 were left to the parent. This gave rise to a variety 
 
36 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 of strongly marked individualities, which in its de- 
 fects manifested itself in the form of a want of dis- 
 cipline, but these were far outweighed by the ad- 
 vantages of originality and independence. 
 
 Into a conservative and orderly house the father 
 had now introduced a tramp as teacher, and it soon 
 began to appear that he would be the instrument of 
 bringing into the house something of the restlessness 
 and instability of a strange and hitherto unknown 
 life. 
 
^) 
 
 3.— RABBI CHANANEL. 
 
 FROM early morning Ephraim sat with the Pole, 
 named Rabbi Chananel, who struck out with his 
 pupil an unusual course of instruction. The common 
 course being to study the natural meaning of the 
 Bible, together with the odd additions of the com- 
 mentators, or, beginning with the Talmud, to deduce 
 its meaning from that, the Pole likewise pursued a 
 method for centuries unused in the Jewish schools, 
 which in our days has been revived under the name 
 of the Hamiltonian system. He did not, however, 
 omit meanwhile, according to the prcedent of the 
 Spanish and Italian Jews, to expound therewith the 
 fundamental rules of grammar. This study was 
 with the Polish-German Jews almost universally in 
 bad repute, for a fine tact had often led the guar- 
 dians of orthodoxy unconsciously to hit the nail on 
 the head: so soon as one learned to dissect and put 
 together again the words and sentences of Holy 
 Scripture according to the rules of grammar, grad- 
 ually the heavenly glory which floated over all, 
 melted away; for after that every word no longer 
 
38 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 contained in itself a hundredfold hidden signifi- 
 cance; the simple and natural sense with its local and 
 temporary applications stood out in full view. 
 
 Rabbi Chananel wrote also an elegant Hebrew; he 
 had, after the manner of the liberals of that day, 
 made divers poetical essays in that language and 
 adapted rhyme and rhythm of the classic forms to the 
 Oriental sj)eech; Ephraim, too, soon succeeded in 
 composing a little Hebrew poem; this artificial 
 poetry could not, however, any more than that which 
 sprang up simultaneously on Christian-German 
 ground, put forth any fresh blossoms from the 
 depths of the soul; one only manufactured artificial 
 flowers on which there rested no enamel of emo- 
 tional life. Without any genuine stir of soul or spirit 
 had these little poems of Ephraim's been written. 
 The w^iole object was, if one may use the expres- 
 sion, to weld together a classic Hebrew. Moses 
 Daniel, indeed, understood nothing of all this, but 
 the new grammatical study, because it was a new 
 one, did not satisfy him, and in his usual practical 
 way, he asked the Pole, What was the use of all 
 that ? 
 
 Kabbi Chananel, who had often availed himself of 
 his rich fund of anecdotes and parables in bringing 
 home to a man bitter truths in the most agreeable 
 and impressive manner, replied with perfect com- 
 posure: 
 
 "There was once a man who had a goat which he 
 would gladly fatten, either to sell, or to slaughter 
 for his own use. So he goes to market and for a few 
 
RABBI GHANA NEL. 39 
 
 pence buys a great head of cabbage, with whicli he 
 hastens to the stall and cuts it up for the goat; he 
 looks on with pleasure to see her devour the rich 
 leaves one after another, and when she swallows, he 
 himself for sympathy seems to swallow, too. Hardly 
 has she got down the last mouthful, when he lays 
 hold of her to see, by feeling of her sides, whether 
 she has grown any fatter." — 
 
 The Pole was silent, and left his hearer to make 
 for himself the inference and application; Moses 
 Daniel understood, and henceforth left the shrewd 
 man undisturbed sway. 
 
 Rabbi Chananel was in fact a remarkable man. 
 From the time of his residence in Berlin he had been 
 member of a secret smoking club; this was no off- 
 shoot of that celebrated Potsdam Tobacco-College 
 of Frederick William I., but a fraternity with inde- 
 pendent principles and objects. Every Sabbath 
 morning after divine service there assembled ten or 
 twelve pious men in the most retired room of a street 
 remote from the synagogue; the prayer-books and 
 prayer-mantles which they brought with them were 
 laid aside, and each one took a pipe in his hand on 
 Avhich were written in Hebrew the words : " Ye 
 shall light no fire in all your dwellings on the Sab- 
 bath day" [JEx. 35, 3), and then each one smoked to 
 his heart's content. This was done from repugnance 
 to the prohibition. One was obliged to have given 
 valid proofs of his free-thinking spirit before being 
 admitted into this club ; one must at least have writ- 
 ten some alphabetical letters on the Sabbath, or have 
 
40 POE T AND MER CHA NT. 
 
 partaken at Easter of leavened bread. Frivolous, 
 witty expositions of the Holy Scriptures, or the 
 reading aloud of the writings of Voltaire (if any one 
 was present who could read German or translate 
 French), were parts of the entertainment at these 
 meetings. While the rest strove to outdo each other 
 in the wordy war of wit, Rabbi Chananel was almost 
 the only one who could not rid himself of a serious, 
 nay, a painful sense of the position. With embit- 
 tered zeal he often expressed his conviction how the 
 all-narrowing religious oversight changed men back 
 again to school-boys, who think it a great thing to be 
 able secretly to transgress restraint and discipline. 
 
 It created, by the quizzical way of putting it, a 
 diverting, and yet, at the same time, an uncomfort- 
 able impression, when Rabbi Chananel on a certain 
 occasion communicated a satirical delineation con- 
 ceived in the spirit of Voltaire, in which, with truly 
 demoniac irony, he depicted a pious Jew, who dies by 
 starvation, because it is made logically conclusive to 
 him that he is forbidden by the Talmud to eat 
 bread, and all sorts of acute reasons were assigned 
 therefor; potatoes must be put under ban and ex- 
 terminated from the earth, for the Bible, which knew 
 and determined everything, had never known them. 
 With exhaustive daring Rabbi Chananel sent his im- 
 agination into tlie last hours of a man who pines 
 with hunger at the table of life till he himself be- 
 comes food for the worms. 
 
 Rabbi Chananel had exhorted his associates to 
 follow out his plan and to introduce these modes of 
 
RABBI CIIANANEL. 41 
 
 exposition in Rabbinical language among their 
 brethren in the faith, but Rabbi Chananel was " un- 
 stable and flighty " in his plans and still more so in 
 his life. 
 
 But now he had found once more a place of rest, 
 and he would not let its opportunities of refreshment 
 escape him. 
 
 Even in the house of Moses Daniel the Rabbi in- 
 dulged himself, though not without great danger, 
 in living up to the rules of his order. When Moses 
 Daniel on the Sabbath noon lay down to his siesta, 
 the Pole under a similar pretext would go to his 
 chamber, carefully lock himself in, disrobe himself, 
 and proceed to smoke his pipe. Not Tuore anxiously 
 beats the heart of the lover, when in the husli of the 
 sequestered bower he hangs on the lips of his SAveet- 
 heart and hears treacherous steps approaching, than 
 Rabbi Chananel trembled, if, during his sinful prac- 
 tice he heard the slightest motion in the neighbor- 
 hood of his chamber; not more anxiously or cau- 
 tiously does the murderer annihilate all traces of his 
 deed around and upon him, than the Pole drove the 
 infernal odor from his garments, and not without a 
 motive did he offer every one who met him on the 
 way to the synagogue a pinch of snuff. 
 
 One Sabbath afternoon, after Ephraimhad recited 
 in the presence of his father and teacher the weekly 
 section from the Bible together with the conmienta- 
 ries, he was sent out by his father into the street to 
 play. 
 
 " I am very well satisfied with you," said Moses 
 
45 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 then with cloudy looks to Rabbi Chananel, " but, — ■ 
 but, many a one has been deceived; the firmest pil- 
 lars of the synagogue, the Polish Rabbins themselves, 
 have been known to totter. The Liberals — may 
 their name be exterminated from the earth — are 
 getting more and more the upperhand, and are pro- 
 moting the downfall of our religion. Such times 
 have never been since the world stood; if things go 
 on so, it w^ill come to such a pass in a hundred years 
 that a Jew will be exhibited in a show-box for a 
 strange monster." — A bitter smile played round the 
 lips of Moses, as he thus spake. 
 
 " If only God, praised be his holy name," he con- 
 tinued, " shall first have called me to Himself before 
 I have lived to see the falling-away of my children." 
 
 The Pole availed himself of a pause. "I see," 
 said he, " that I have been slandered, and that the 
 story of my life has been falsely or only half related 
 to you; I will speak with you openly and undis- 
 guisedly, and you may then decide whether you 
 have reason to resign yourself to any such appre- 
 hensions respecting me." He lifted up his eyes, 
 which had hitherto been devoutly buried in the 
 Bible which lay before him, and with a proud and 
 free glance, continued: "My father was one of the 
 most wealthy and influential Jews in Warsaw. 
 Every means was taken for training me up from 
 early youth to be a learned Talmudist. I was not 
 allowed to take upon me the smallest part of the 
 household or family work, but only to read alter- 
 nately with the Rabbins, and in my chamber in the 
 
RABBI CIIANANEL. 43 
 
 holy books. In my fourteenth year I was married 
 for the first time; my wife died after a cliildless wed- 
 lock of four years; I married a second time and had 
 the good fortune to become the father of two lovely 
 boys. Not long after the birth of my Hillel I found 
 one day a Christian youth asleep on the threshold of 
 my chamber; when I awoke him, he threw himself 
 on his face before me and kissed my feet, as if they 
 were those of an angel or a prophet. It was clear 
 to him now, he said (when I had at length brought 
 him to his senses), why he had so earnestly besought 
 his uncle to let him redeem for him his pledge to 
 my wife; but that he still had the money with him, 
 for the sadly sweet melody of my recitation had, 
 at the very moment of his entrance into the house, 
 seized upon him as with a magic spell. This was a 
 heavenly influence. In his sleep he had dreamed 
 that he had become a Jew, and had read in the holy 
 books, and the angels of heaven had come down to 
 him, and had been just on the point of revealing to 
 him the most secret mysteries of the universe, when 
 he was awakened. — I will not burden you with all 
 our conversations, pro and con ; it availed nothing. 
 Chulicki, that was the name of the young adherent 
 of the oppressed dissenters, came henceforth to see 
 me daily, seated himself in the arm-chair which stood 
 ready for my father, shut his eyes, and then I had 
 to read to him a portion of the Talmud; he under- 
 stood nothing of it, but the wondrous ring of the 
 words, he said, touched him like heavenly music. If 
 from weariness or necessity I left off, he would often 
 
44 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 start up stamping and staggering as out of a dream. 
 Thrice a day at the hour of prayer he went to the 
 synagogue, and seated himself as a penitent on the 
 threshold; his usual diet consisted of fruits and veg- 
 etables, nothing that came from a living creature 
 passed his lips. To me he clung like my very 
 shadow. 
 
 " Long was I in doubt about this incident, still I 
 stoutly withstood the prayers of Chulicki to admit 
 him into our religion, or at least to teach him the 
 holy usages that he might one day practice them; 
 he would submit to all trials; but I resisted, although 
 I must confess I had many a secret feeling of joy 
 over his battlings against his religion. One day 
 after his repeated passionate demands, there fell, as 
 it were, scales from my eyes; I had no longer a 
 doubt: The soul of a truly pious Jew has for some 
 sin been compelled to enter into this Christian 
 body, and now awaits through me a release. I 
 talked the whole matter over with our much experi- 
 enced oldest Rabbi, and he conjured me not to delay 
 a moment to give a soul, which had now been nine- 
 teen years in torment, and could find no peace, save 
 by returning to our holy religion, as soon as possible 
 its deliverance. I will make a short story of it. 
 After some months Chulicki was, by a senate of 
 Rabbis, myself and the old Rabbi among them, at 
 night, after being dipped nine times in fresh spring- 
 water, admitted into our religion. But at length, 
 through the negligence of Chulicki, who delayed his 
 flight, the affair was discovered; Chulicki was ar- 
 
RABBI GHANA NEL. 45 
 
 rested, I was declared an outlaw, and had to forsake 
 father and mother, wife and child, to save my 
 wretched life. Happily I succeeded in crossing the 
 frontier; meanwhile my innocent father and the old 
 Rabbi were thrown into prison; an amount of money 
 beyond the means of the whole congregation was 
 demanded for their ransom, but the Lord delivered 
 them; they soon died, and my whole patrimony Avas 
 confiscated. Of Chulicki nothing more has ever 
 been heard; the story went that he had escaped 
 from prison and traveled to Jerusalem. But the 
 hardest lot was mine, who stood out in the world, 
 as one fallen from heaven. I had never in my life 
 left the Jews' street; I knew nothing about money 
 nor anything else that belongs to life; a crafty fel- 
 low countryman who attached himself to me robbed 
 me at the inn of my kutka, [spencer] in which were 
 sewed three hundred ducats, together with all I had 
 of any money value. Half naked, tormented with 
 cold and hunger, I traveled on. A book might be 
 written about it, so much have I suffered, till at last I 
 reached Berlin, where Rabbi Alexander Sussman 
 took me into his house." 
 
 " There, I was told," said Moses, who had hitherto 
 been a silent and attentive listener, " that you pub- 
 licly indulged in wanton expressions respecting our 
 holy religion, and that you only escaped the Cherem 
 [excommunication] by your remoteness from Berlin." 
 
 The capacious brows of the Pole drew themselves 
 together like dark clouds, beneath which his eyes 
 shot forth fiery glances, yet he soon collected himself 
 again. 
 
46 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 " I certainly, in Berlin, acquired different views 
 of our holy religion," said he, with both liands 
 proudly stroking back his beard; " I should certainly 
 at this time have converted my young dissenter very 
 differently, but my principles are as certainly no less 
 religious and grounded no less in the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. At a public disputation I sought to expose 
 the ignorance of an itinerant Rabbin, which he en- 
 deavored to cover up under an intolerant zeal; I 
 conquered, and now I was a heretic. It is true, I 
 ought to have gone to work with less heat, but how 
 could I dream that I should incur the charge of im- 
 piety? I was a stranger and an outcast; was com- 
 pelled to take my pilgrim's staff, and arrived at your 
 hospitable home. My blood has since grown cooler, 
 I let the mighty rule; the Lord God, praised be His 
 name ! will guide things according to His good pleas- 
 ure, all is in His hands. His counsels it is not for 
 me to forestall. I live in peace and tranquillity, as 
 becomes a Jew, and teach nothing but the pure es- 
 sence of our holy religion, as you will have abundant 
 proofs." 
 
 A better physiognomist than Moses Daniel would 
 easily have observed that these rapidly uttered words 
 accompanied by a twitching of the facial muscles, 
 might well veil something more than the Pole cared 
 distinctly to divulge. But Moses begged of llabbi 
 Chananel, who sat there with his eyes fixed upon the 
 ground, a thousand pardons. 
 
 " Do you not think then," he asked, " that our re- 
 ligion is threatened with imminent destruction ? " 
 
RABBI CIIANANEL. 47 
 
 " I will relate to you fi parable irorn tlie Midrasch," 
 replied the Pole. " Once on a time they were driviuijr 
 through a forest several wagons full of sliaipciKMl 
 axe blades; when the trees saw that^ they all began 
 to howl andlament. Alas ! all cried, alas ! our last 
 day is come, we are all lost; — only a tall oak on the 
 top of the mountain, which had seen its leaves fall 
 and sprout anew more than a hundred times, he alone 
 stood uj) calmly and thoughtfully shook his head. 
 Be quiet and undismayed, he cried with a mighty 
 voice, which subdued all to silence, not all these 
 axe blades can harm you, unless you consent to supply 
 them a liandleP 
 
 The parabolic superiority of Rabbi Chananel again, 
 in this instance, made itself manifest, ambiguous as 
 the meaning of the simile remained, whether by the 
 axes, Voltairianism, by the oak, one or another posi- 
 tive religion, were intended; Moses Daniel fancied he 
 had hit upon the right interpretation, and assured the 
 Rabbi renewedly of his entire confidence. Rabbi 
 Chananel, however, made use of this not in the most 
 suitable manner. 
 
 Ephraim had passed his fourteenth year, and there 
 was already some talk of sending him to the great 
 Talmudic school at Prague, Presburg, or Warsaw. 
 Rabbi Chananel knew his pupil well, who had hardly 
 a will of his own, was easily led, but Avithal of an 
 excitable disposition, and with something of the 
 precocity of a spoiled child of fortune. With in- 
 creasina: confidingness he now devoted himself to his 
 pupil, at first allowing himself to make some light 
 
48 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 jest before him about minute ceremonies; impercep- 
 tibly he slipped a small dose of bitter doubt into the 
 vessel, when he let him drink of the sweet water of 
 the pure heavenly fountain; step by step he paved 
 the way for him to free-thinking, and the boy, at 
 last, stood trembling before his former holy things, 
 which he now regarded with dislike and horror; with 
 tears he unveiled his whole inner being to his teacher. 
 " It is decided," he cried exultingly, while he kissed 
 him on the forehead, " thou must not, canst not, be 
 a Rabbi. See ! thou art my son, in whom I am well 
 pleased; to thee I will make over the possession of my 
 sorrowful life, for thy salvation. It Avas in the eighth 
 year of my life that I went for the first time on the 
 Sabbath into a garden, where flowers in beautifully 
 arranged beds smiled upon me in the full splendor of 
 their hues. I could not comprehend what came over 
 my feelings. I could gladly have kissed all the flowers, 
 and yet I knew that the Talmud forbade touching a 
 flower on the Sabbath, because thereby one might be 
 tempted to commit the sin of plucking it; but I could 
 not resist the impulse, and as I was not observed by 
 my father, I quickly broke off a flower and hid it in 
 my bosom. My longing was appeased, but a painful 
 uneasiness was awakened; I had brought on myself 
 the heavy sin of Sabbath-breaking. After a sleepless 
 night I disclosed, the next morning, my guilt to a 
 comrade; he in his childish zeal devised an atone- 
 ment. The hand which has done the wrong must 
 be cut off, he said, in the words of the Scripture. I 
 was determined to let this expiation take effect in my 
 
RABBI CIIANANEL. 49 
 
 own case. My fellow pupil ran home, took the little 
 knife which his father had brought him as a present 
 from the fair at Frankfort; we stole out to the yard. 
 I laid my hand on the baluster of the steps, and with 
 the customary words at the slaughter of an animal: 
 Praised be Thou, O Lord, our God, who has conse- 
 crated us with Thy precepts, and hast given us the 
 command to slaughter — he cut vigorously into my 
 wrist; I began to scream with pain; he stopped short; 
 the people came running out. Dost thou see," con- 
 tinued the Pole with a bitter smile, while he pulled 
 up his sleeve and showed a scar across the whole 
 upper side of the wrist, " dost thou see ? that is the 
 monument of my youthful zeal for religion. I had 
 not the courage to endure all; now I am cowardly 
 and worn out; who knows what I might have become 
 had I been born under other circumstances; had seen a 
 great career opening before me ; a bright goal forever 
 beckoning me onward; who knows where I might 
 have stood, and where my name might have been 
 named; but all that is gone by. I was doomed to 
 be a Rabbi, but thou — thou shalt not, thou canst not. 
 I tell thee, to be a Rabbi means to keep the soul in a 
 perpetual cramp; there he sits, the holy man, and 
 before him lie the folios with their Babylonian su- 
 perstition, and around him from floor to ceiling but 
 black, smoky book-cases, in which the fresh life of 
 Judaism lies dried up, like a plant torn up by the 
 roots and withered. The chaffering wife or the coii- 
 gregation that adores him cocker tlie Rabbi Avith 
 meat and drink; spring, summer, winter, war, and 
 4 
 
50 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 peace, all may pass by, lie knows nothing of them; 
 he sits in his cell, and the congregation gather around 
 him, to pray with him; he can never go out of the 
 house alone, and only when he conducts a dead body 
 can he come to the door. I knew a Rabbi who ate 
 nothing all his life long but white sugar, and once, 
 when some one asked him where this sweetness came 
 from, he quietly replied, 'Where, then, should it 
 come from ? sugar-loaves grow on trees just as much 
 as onions do.' I knew another, who when one came 
 running to him and said, full of terror. The Turk 
 was at the gate and was trying to get in, replied 
 calmly, 'Well, what of that? Let the Turk live 
 here too.' Being told that there were a good many 
 of them, and that they wanted to destroy the inhab- 
 itants, said he, 'That is easily helped; just shut the 
 great gate and open the little one, and let in one 
 after another and so slaughter them all in succession.' 
 " Oh, that is a life more like death ! Well for those 
 who in harmonious content with themselves and their 
 environment know not how the world outside of 
 them is daily renewing its youth. Well with them ! 
 they live in peace, studying and j^raying, till death 
 shuts their mouths and closes their eyes, and they 
 exchange their cell for a narrower one; but evil to 
 them, who, like me, with discord in their hearts, 
 stirred by a freer impulse are doomed to such life, to 
 such death. I tell thee, I hate and despise all the 
 quiddling of such a ceremonial sanctity, and yet I 
 must cherish and patronize it before the world, be- 
 cause through it alone I can pay our tyrant the stom- 
 
RABBI CITANANEL. 51 
 
 ach his tribute. — But why all this? Because I have 
 not learned to earn my own bread, and now stand 
 here with empty hands. In my travels hither I 
 worked for two days in a mine, but I was more awk- 
 ward and weaker than a boy of six years. I broke 
 a leg, and yet they thrust me out when they discov- 
 ered me to be a Jew. O God! how gladly would I 
 labor, till the blood ran out from under my nails; but 
 I am condemned to live by spiritual deception. — 
 True, it is not absolutely so," he continued after a 
 pause, sophisticating with himself. " I have a right 
 to do as I do ; the people have, indeed, nothing to do 
 with my sentiments, only with my knowledge and 
 my outward deportment; people ask not me, but 
 the books in me which I have studied; I can, in this 
 way, at least save them time and perhaps do them 
 some good, yes, yes, indeed! that I can." — He sank 
 into deep reflection. 
 
 " So, my dear son," he continued, as if waking up, 
 " courage ! there is still helj) for thee. O God ! if at 
 thy age any one had spoken to me so! but if only 
 thou art saved, then I die happy; my life has not 
 been in vain, for I have delivered a young and fresh 
 soul out of the bonds of spiritual distraction. Learn 
 a trade, let no one dissuade thee from it, and if thou 
 feePst a yearning and a calling that way, seek light 
 and truth with the wise men of former times; then 
 shalt thou live happily and shalt not need to die first 
 in order to be blest. But give me thy hand, that 
 thou wilt never betray me, — never — hearest thou ? " 
 
 Ephraim grasped, weeping, the hand of his teacher, 
 
52 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 and laid upon it his burning cheek. The Rahbi 
 drew him close to his heart and he fell asleep on his 
 bosom. 
 
 When a few days after he communicated to his 
 father the resolve which he had formed, the latter 
 was profoundly aifected; he saw the offering which 
 he would have made to God despised; but soon he 
 rose erect again in his strong faith. "God's will be 
 done!" said he. "It is all for the best; the Lord 
 must certainly have meant to deny me this heavenly 
 joy, because I have often been too lax in the fulfill- 
 ment of his commands." 
 
 Whether now we assign hypocrisy or pastoral 
 policy as the basis of liabbi Chananel's character, 
 certain it is that ho wanted uprightness and straight- 
 forwardness; the deep grubbings of doubt had un- 
 dermined no less his faith than his courage; without 
 faith and courage how shall one become a martyr; 
 must he not be a hyj^ocrite ? 
 
 For all that, the burden of his lot weighed more 
 heavily on him than that of his error. 
 
 Joy and pleasure reigned in the house of Moses 
 Daniel, for his eldest son Chajem had, through the 
 mediation of Mendel Felluhzer, been betrothed to 
 Taiibchen Lobell, of Treves, and they were cele- 
 brating the nuptials. Notwithstanding that, accord- 
 ing to the Jewish law, Taiibchen's dowry, as that of a 
 fatherless child, was held as tithed, Moses Daniel 
 did a work of supererogation, and according to the 
 tradition which enjoins to bestow the tenth part of 
 all earnings upon the poor, he caused the correspond- 
 
RABBI CHANANEL. «>a 
 
 ing sum to be distributed on the marriage day in 
 front of the synagogue, and his ah-eady honored 
 name rose yet higher in the public esteem. 
 
 At the wedding-feast Rabbi Chananel sat at a 
 corner of the table on the left of the bride, on whose 
 right sat the bridegroom. The bride was richly and 
 rarely dressed. An eastern turban, wound together 
 of a variegated cloth, and held together in front by 
 a great diamond-studded agraffe, covered her hair, 
 and bordered the lovely forehead, on whose temples 
 blue veins, that pulsed strongly, shone through. A 
 white, finely embroidered veil hung down on both 
 sides of the turban over the whole body. Under the 
 long black lashes the fire of her dark eyes gleamed 
 forth; the dark complexion, the somewhat arched 
 nose, the round chin, all conspired to present in her 
 person the image of a perfect oriental beauty. It 
 struck one unpleasantly that she was always endeav- 
 oring to refresh her finely curved but somewhat pale 
 and dry lips by biting them with her teeth. In her 
 mien and whole manner a conscious self-mastery 
 made itself clearly conspicuous. The pearl necklace, 
 on which hung several gems beside, the bunchy 
 hoop-petticoat figured with large flowers, the white 
 Jewish bride's-girdle, from which hung many silver 
 coins, all that formed a singular mixture of oriental 
 and European-French toilet. 
 
 The bride, who had to go to and fro from one 
 guest to another and thank them for the rich wed- 
 ding presents, understood how, in walking, so to lay 
 her veil that she seemed as in a cloud and was sure 
 of admiring glances. 
 
54 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Then when she went back and sat beside her 
 bridegroom, she outdid herself in railleries, and 
 with a daring sauciness managed often to give him 
 graceful slaps on the mouth. 
 
 In the beginning the Pole seemed to remark with 
 displeasure this want of modesty, but soon the 
 bride contrived to gain over him too by her rail- 
 leries. She called him to her assistance, to make 
 her bridegroom transpose his insipid name of Kali 
 into lluk^ and hardly had she mentioned that Arouet 
 had been changed about into Voltaire^ when the 
 Pole expressed his enthusiasm for the French poet 
 and philosopher. She managed by nods of assent to 
 make the singular Pole still more communicative. 
 Her whole counter-talk was only like the touching 
 of the flask standing before her, from which the 
 Pole at this signal repeatedly filled his bumper and 
 drank more and more recklessly. 
 
 All the while the synagogue-precentor, sitting at 
 the table, sang in the name of each of the company, 
 each time in a different melody, a Hebrew blessing 
 upon the youthful pair, and each time there rang at 
 the conclusion a Hoch! and they drank to each 
 other. 
 
 The Pole had afterward to pronounce the long 
 Hebrew grace, but hardly had he ended it when he 
 again sallied forth against the young bride in the 
 Voltairian play of wit. At that moment he felt 
 some one touch him behind ; he turned round startled; 
 little Ephraim stood behind him. 
 
 " Some one is waiting for you below, Rabbi," he 
 
RABBI GHANA NEL. 65 
 
 paid, "you must come down immediately." The 
 Pole -went down ; before the house stood a Polish 
 car with the so-called hlahe^ spread over it, to which 
 was harnessed a little horse. A plump little lady, 
 with the whip in her hand, sprang down with one 
 leap from the chariot and reached the Pole her left 
 hand, holding the whip in her right. 
 
 " Schalom alechem! " (peace be with you !) " Rabbi 
 Chananel," she cried, " dost thou not remember thy 
 wife? Dost thou see, I have traveled hither alone; 
 to-morrow we go back together. The king has par- 
 doned thy old offense; thou art called as Rabbin by 
 the congregation at Schluzke." 
 
 The Pole stood there pale as a corpse. Without 
 waiting: for an answer his wife unharnessed her 
 horse, led him into the stable, and then went with 
 her husband to join the marriage- guests. 
 
 The next day Rabbi Chananel sat in the little 
 chariot with his wife, without a murmur, without a 
 will of his own. However much pain and sorrow 
 reigned in his soul, he could not give them utter- 
 ance; not even at the moment of bidding farewell to 
 his dear Ephraim. The tears burned in his eyes, 
 but he could not weep. 
 
 * A cloth covering or sail. A word derived from blcihen; to lilow out 
 
4.— ALL FOR THE BEST. 
 
 IT was the autumn of the year 1745. War had, 
 within a year, again invaded the land. Under the 
 pretext of securing to Charles VII. the imperial 
 throne, Frederick II. contended for the second time 
 with Maria Theresa for the possession of Silesia; the 
 Protestant inhabitants of that country awaited for 
 the most part with glad expectation, the Catholics 
 mostly still with anxious distrust, an issue favorable 
 to Frederick. And the Jews ? No one thought of 
 them, and they themselves looked indifferently upon 
 the struggle. Nay, many were glad of it, for in 
 war possession changes and easily passes over into 
 new hands; whether the garrisons wore Austrian 
 bear-skin caps or Prussian tin helmets, could at most 
 exert an influence on the market price of peltry or 
 tin ware. Even the few enlightened ones, and those 
 who were striving for freedom, looked upon a change 
 of government with that indifference with which the 
 pale prisoner, leaning against the bars of his iron 
 grating, stares out into the street where, at the 
 stated hour, they relieve guard. 
 
ALL FOR THE BEST. 57 
 
 In the house of Closes Daniel, however, the new 
 turn of affairs created great distress. Ah-eady, for 
 several days, they had been waiting in vain for the 
 arrival of Veilchen's bridegroom from Dresden, and 
 this evening, it being the holy Feast of Tabernacles, 
 they had most confidently expected his arrival. 
 Notwithstanding that it was beginning to freeze 
 out-of-doors, Moses Daniel had left the comforta- 
 ble quarters of his sitting-room, and sat, with his 
 whole family, in a sort of summer-house of boards, 
 slightly put together, which stood out in the yard; 
 for such is the injunction of Holy Writ: "Seven 
 days shalt thou dwell in booths." {Ex. Ill, 17.) 
 The inner walls of the hut were hung from top to 
 bottom with white linen; the roof, made of twigs of 
 trees, was so transparent that the stars in the sky 
 could be seen glistening through; gilded fruits and 
 variegated paper-cuttings, wdiich were fastened by 
 threads to the twigs, hung down for decorations. 
 Particularly conspicuous among them were two 
 onions, one of which was stuck full of barley-corns, 
 and the other had a cock's feather in it. These 
 might have been mystical signs, like the Pentagram 
 made of golden-rods stuck together, and called the 
 shield of David, in which hung the brazen lamp 
 with the seven lights. Supper was ended; Chajem 
 had gone out with his wife, who had made fun of 
 this Arcadian shepherd's hut. The festal tone of 
 gayety was nowhere discernible. Moses Daniel sat 
 in the great arm-chair, with the broad cheek-pillows; 
 drawing a deep breath, he sought to suppress his 
 
58 POET AND MERCHANT, ' 
 
 sighs, for between his knees stood his little son 
 Ephraim, and beside him sat his fifteen year old 
 daughter Violet, who had clasped his hand and 
 leaned her forehead upon the arm of the chair. 
 
 " Be quiet, child," said Moses. " Ephraim, bring 
 the book of the ' Soul's joy ' and read us something 
 out of it." 
 
 Ephraim did as was commanded him, and read, 
 half -singing, the translation of a Talmudic legend: 
 
 There lived a holy man of yore, 
 
 Whose praise I will endeavor ; 
 The Lord laid on him plagues full sore, 
 
 Yet murmur breathed he never. 
 
 Stone-blind he was — he had no feet — 
 
 Plis skin and flesh were wasted — 
 And nothing he did drink or eat 
 
 To him with relish tasted. 
 
 He said, ^^ A IPs welly O Lord, my God! 
 
 Thy work is naught but kindness ; 
 A blessing blossoms from thy rod, 
 
 Thou sav'st me from soul-blindness. 
 
 •* The body, full of base desires, 
 Thy mercy all hath wasted ; — 
 Eyes that had darted envious fires — 
 Feet that to mischief hasted — 
 
 "The maw, whose greed no bounds doth know, 
 Which belly's slave man calls well ! " 
 So spoke the man each hour, and so 
 They named him : Nahu7n A IPs well. 
 
 Once over land he had to pass, 
 
 To comfort a sick neighbor; 
 He sat himself on his she-ass, 
 
 His crutches rest from labor. 
 
ALL FOR THE BEST. 59 
 
 He also had with him a cock, 
 
 To give him timely warning, 
 That he with God in prayer might talk 
 
 At earliest gleam of morning. 
 
 He reached an inn at close of day, 
 
 But shelter was denied him ; 
 He lit a torch and jogged away 
 
 Within a wood to hide him. 
 
 A puflf of wind his torch out-blew. 
 
 But this nowise dismayed him. 
 Said Rabbi Nahum : "All's well— this too ! '» 
 
 And on the ground he laid him. 
 
 A Fox crept slyly up and stole 
 The cock, and quick retreated ; 
 ** All for the best ! " thus in his soul, 
 The pious saint repeated. 
 
 A Lion came with mighty roar. 
 
 And the she-ass devoured; 
 Spake holy Nahum, as before, 
 
 "All's well ! " and journeyed forward. 
 
 At morn a tale of woe he learned : 
 
 Last night armed men descending. 
 Had sacked the inn, and killed and burned, 
 
 Like beasts their victims rending. 
 
 «*Now see," said Nahum, "what good care 
 The Lord for me hath taken ; 
 All in the dark to leave me there. 
 By Ass and Cock forsaken. 
 
 ** Wind, Fox and Lion, each one came, 
 God's angel, to stand by me. 
 And guard me— blessed be His name ! — 
 That harm might not come nigh me. 
 
60 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 "If at the inn I'd lodged at night, 
 
 A corpse they would have made me. 
 And in the wood the torch's light 
 Would surely have betrayed me. 
 
 "The cock's loud crow, the ass's bray, 
 My death-knell would have sounded ; 
 My God ! I own thy wondrous way, 
 Thy wisdom is unbounded." 
 
 Take pious Nahum, dear young Jew ! 
 
 And make him thy example. 
 Then shalt thou be right blessed, too, 
 
 And build up Zion's temple. 
 
 "Dear children, let that be a lesson for us," said 
 Moses, and laid his hand ujion the head of his daugh- 
 ter, 
 
 " This is where Herr Moses Kuh lives," some one 
 was heard to say outside. The house-door opened; 
 a stranger stood amazed and as if spell-bound on 
 the threshold. It was a small, undersized person; 
 the Prussian military cap on his head ill-assorted 
 with the remaining civil garb; a serene kindness 
 beamed from the features of a face full of youthful 
 beauty, and particularly from the bright blue eye. 
 He looked bewildered as if into a dream-world, so 
 strange and romantic might this whole spectacle to 
 him well be. 
 
 "What is your wish? Walk in," said Moses, 
 rising. The stranger entered with hesitation. At 
 the same time a dealer in old books and broker, 
 known by the name of the Wag, Ileymann Lisse, who 
 had pointed out to the stranger the house of Moses 
 Daniel, entered the door. 
 
ALL FOR THE BEST. 61 
 
 "This strange gentleman here," said he, "brings 
 news from Dresden from the bridegroom." 
 
 "A letter?" asked Moses Daniel and his daugh- 
 ter, simultaneously. 
 
 "An absurd question," answered Heymann; "my 
 father has been dead these ten years, and I have 
 never yet got a letter from him. The bridegroom 
 has only been dead a couple of days, and you want 
 to have a letter from him already." 
 
 A conflict of emotions darted through the hearts 
 of the hearers, and showed itself in their counte- 
 nances. Laughter and tears — one stood almost as 
 near as the other, and who could decide whether, at 
 such a burlesque dressing-up of Job's-messages, he 
 ought first to weep or smile ? Wit has not only its 
 peculiar sharpness as a weapon of attack, but also 
 the power to break or bend the point of a wounding 
 truth. — The stranger, however, seemed to be no 
 friend to this species of weapon, and interrupting 
 the painful stillness, he said, in a soft, almost tremu- 
 lous, tone: "War severs so many a fond tie with its 
 unmerciful sword ! one must needs accept all with 
 composure and pious resignation." 
 
 "Alas! alas! my dream!" cried Violet, sobbing. 
 Her eyes staring wide-open looked widely into va- 
 cancy. Not a tear fell from them. A pause of dumb 
 silence again ensued; only the sobbing of the bride 
 was audible. The stranger could only express him- 
 self in general words. 
 
 "Her dream of love was short," said he, "but— •" 
 
 " What didst thou dream, then ? " said Moses. 
 
62 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 " On atonement day, exhausted with fasting, I laid 
 myself down, to sleep away the remaining time, on 
 the bed. Then I dreamed. I found myself, hand- 
 somely dressed, with Daniel, on a great meadow; 
 more than a thousand fiddles struck up; we began to 
 dance, all alone, more and more merrily. Then sud- 
 denly Daniel let go of me ; I stood as if nailed to the 
 spot, unable to stir a limb, but he kept on dancing, 
 leaped up in the air, and at last sailed away in per- 
 fect freedom, over the ground, till at last I saw him 
 disappear behind a tree on a high mountain. I would 
 fain have screamed, but could not; then, full of 
 anguish, I awoke. It was night ; they went to the 
 table. Now this is the reason why, after a long day 
 of fasting, I have been able to take nothing but a 
 cup of coffee." 
 
 " Sit down and tell me the particulars," said Moses 
 to the stranger ; " when and how did Daniel die ? " 
 
 "It was four days ago, the afternoon of the 6th 
 instant, that his young life was snatched from him." 
 
 "O wonderful coincidence! that was precisely the 
 hour of thy dream, my child," cried Moses. " But 
 say, who are you and what tokens of his death do 
 you bring us ? " 
 
 "My fate has been changed by his; here are the 
 prayer-book, and the golden chain intended for his 
 bride, which he gave me and which I promised him 
 1 would faithfully deliver." 
 
 "Thanks, you are a worthy man; but say on." 
 
 The young man appeared to seek for a setting in 
 which he could present the terrible picture; then he 
 began, at first in a low tone: 
 
ALL FOR TILE BEST. G3 
 
 " I had gone into the war joyfully as secretary of 
 staff to Prince Leopold of Dessau. We were en- 
 camped at Dieskau, when, one morning, a Jew was 
 brought in, who the day before had been proAvling 
 in a suspicious manner around the outposts, and was 
 said to have counted the cannon which had been 
 mounted. 
 
 " ' You are a spy, you damned soul of a Jew ! ' the 
 Field-marshal said to him, 'just confess, you scape- 
 grace ! then I'll see what shall be done with you ; so, 
 out with it freely ! ' The accused answered nothing; 
 he wept like a child, begged and supplicated. ' You 
 infernal scoundrel ! ' cried the General, ' you don't 
 confess? Then we'll make short work with you. 
 Give that mute throat of his a little snugger neck- 
 tie and hang him up on the first tree you come to, 
 that he may have a better view for his spying pur- 
 poses.' At this the young man suddenly assumed a 
 proud bearing; he raised himself from his submissive 
 attitude, and turning to me said: 'Dear sir, here is 
 my pass, can I be sentenced to death ?' I represented 
 to the General how this young man had done 
 nothing more than hundreds of curious persons had 
 done, and how his pass precluded suspicion. 'Is 
 that subordination ? ' cried the General, turning upon 
 me sharply. ' By all the fiends ! the young mili- 
 tary fellows will come to reasoning by-and-by, and 
 when the command is given to liight-about face ! 
 they'll ask, why not Left-about? That's making 
 brotherhood with Jew and Turk; as soon as one 
 gives up saying: Ilender to Ca3sar the things which 
 
64 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 are Caesar's, one has long since given up the Render 
 to God the things that are God's.' He snatched the 
 pass out of my hands. 'What witch's signs are 
 these ? ' he asked the accused. 
 
 " ' It is my name. I cannot Avrite German, and so 
 wrote it in Hebrew,' he answered. 
 
 " ' It is all a lie and a cheat,' cried the General, 
 tearing the paper to pieces: 'You're a spy; wait a 
 moment — I'll have a private message whistled into 
 your ear by a dozen gun-barrels! But no! that is 
 lit only for a soldier; take the halter from some old 
 dead horse and hang him up, between two dogs, on 
 the first tree.' 
 
 "I conjured the General not to condemn an inno- 
 cent man. 
 
 '"Let him be hanged! Right-about! March!' 
 — The superstition reigns among the soldiers that 
 the old Dessauer is bullet-j^roof ; I have exi^erienced 
 the truth of that in another sense. 
 
 " I stood there almost senseless, as if struck with 
 apoplexy, till at last the General, with bitter words, 
 reproached me for my intercession. Without reply- 
 ing, I hurried out and found the hangmen, who, lying 
 around a tree, mocked their victim. The young 
 man lay on his knees, murmuring a low prayer, at 
 every word beating his breast; when he had ended, 
 I stepped up to him and begged him to impart to me 
 his last commissions. Amidst asseverations of his 
 innocence and assurances of his profoundest grati- 
 tude, he gave me those love-tokens which I have 
 handed to you; a few minutes after he breathed hisf 
 last." 
 
ALL FOR THE BEST. 65 
 
 The stranger, with visible emotion, had ended his 
 narrative. All had relapsed into silent meditation, 
 when Violet, who, with sighs, had, during the recital, 
 been playing with the gold chain, broke the silence. 
 
 "Dear father," said she, "I suppose we are to 
 send this chain, and this ring that I have, back to 
 Dresden ? " 
 
 A cold shudder crept over the stranger when he 
 heard these words; scorn and indignation burned 
 upon his naturally mild and lovely face. He had 
 thought to execute a chivalrous service, such as are 
 sung in the lays of the minstrels: to deliver the last 
 greeting and the last token of affection from the 
 dying bridegroom to his bride; only for the sake of 
 alleviating the terrible sorrow of the forlorn one 
 had he attempted to bring the old Dessauer into 
 the foreground and so give to his narration a tragi- 
 comic coloring. But now what did he find ? — A 
 bride who, at the death of her bridegroom, saw only 
 the diamond ring vanish from her finger, and the 
 gold chain from her neck. Nevertheless the indig- 
 nation of the stranger was unjust; Violet had never 
 loved her betrothed; she had only seen him once for 
 a few hours, at a time when, by the agreement of 
 the fathers of both parties, she had long since been 
 made a bride; she lost in him, therefore, only a 
 bestower of costly finery; however nearly his death 
 may have touched her, it was after all merely 
 general compassion, which could not reach the inner- 
 most depth of her soul. 
 
 " All for the best— it is hard, however, to say * all 
 5 
 
66 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 for the best ' " — began Moses Daniel, passing liis 
 hand across his forehead, and then continned: "If 
 one could even have dreamed of such a thing, and 
 the affair had not passed so suddenly; rny brother- 
 in-law in Berlin is as well acquainted with the old 
 Dessauer as if he had been a child in his own house; 
 I have also myself once had business with him; the 
 thing might have been prevented. I see him before 
 me, grasping with both hands the windmill wings 
 of his monstrous mustaches, and thundering and 
 yelling as if he would upset the world; but for all 
 that he is not so bad a man, only somewhat hasty 
 and headstrong. But pray tell me, how did you get 
 away from him ? " 
 
 " When I saw the poor innocent fellow foully mur- 
 dered I rushed back to the General, full of rage, 
 broke my sword and flung it at his feet. The day 
 following I got my leave, and, after I had buried the 
 dead, I took my departure." 
 
 " I should have done the thing differently " — little 
 Ephraim put in the remark here — "I should not 
 have broken my sword; I'd have stabbed the Gen- 
 eral with it, and when I am big enough I'll kill him." 
 
 " You must not suppose," continued the stranger, 
 "that the General executed martial law upon the 
 poor fellow because he was a Jew. Perhaps one^ 
 might say that he manages with his Christianity as 
 he does with his smoking. In the famous Potsdam 
 Tobacco-Parliament of the late king, he was the 
 only one who did not smoke, but he kept all the 
 while a cold pipe in his mouth. There is a singular 
 
ALL FOR THE BEST. 67 
 
 mixture of faith and superstition in bim. For in- 
 stance, he once prayed on the eve of a battle: *L)ear 
 God, graciously assist me to-day, or if it be not Thy 
 will, at least do not help those rascals, the enemy, 
 but just stand off and see how it comes out! ' " 
 
 " Pardon me, dear sir," began Moses Daniel, " you 
 are at present without employment; I know not 
 what your circumstances are; if I can do anything to 
 serve you, I will take your honest face for security 
 till you can repay me. Speak out then, openly and 
 freely." 
 
 "I shall be able to make my own headway well 
 enough, and thank you for your confidence," replied 
 the stranger, blushing, as he rose for fear of being 
 intrusive. 
 
 "No thanks are needed on your part. Another 
 might have kept the chain, and nobody would have 
 been the wiser. Only stay a little longer, I pray 
 you. Tell me at least your name ; perhaps I may one 
 day be able to serve you." 
 
 " My name is William Gleim," he replied, stretch- 
 ing out his hand to Moses Daniel to take leave, and 
 kissing the shy Ephraim on the forehead. "God 
 grant thee a bright future," he said, laying his hand 
 as in benediction on the boy's head; "mayst thou 
 never have to experience injustice and violence, and 
 if thou shouldst, be strong and noble, and then thou 
 art armed for defense and offense." 
 
 With visible emotion Gleim gazed into the dark 
 eye of tlie boy, whose true-hearted look yet rested 
 unsuspectingly on the world around him. He might 
 
68 POET AND MER CHA NT. 
 
 have been constructing before hira with prophetic 
 eye the changeful life and trials of this young soul. 
 He once more kissed Ephraim and then left the hut. 
 
 "All is for the best," said Moses Daniel, with a 
 heavy sigh, when the stranger had departed. 
 " Dear children, let us say. It is all for the best. 
 Who knows, dear daughter, what a misfortune may 
 not have awaited thee if thou hadst wedded Dan- 
 iel Isserlein ? All that God sends is good. Let us 
 keep the feast in peace and joy." 
 
 The celebration of a feast ordained by religion 
 has a peculiarly controlling power. The Law not 
 only enjoins to subdue sorrow, but also, what is yet 
 far harder, to awaken gladness; and such a joy 
 awakened by piety becomes an inwardly growing 
 one, just as the dew and rain from heaven stream 
 through stem and twig a quickening juice of life. 
 
 Moses Daniel was able to maintain the festive 
 spirit, and on the morrow in the synagogue he 
 waved xx^ and down, all the more fervently, the south- 
 ern palm-branch, on whose lower end were woven 
 myrtle and willow twigs, with the paradise-apple rest- 
 ing upon it, praying meanwhile toward all the four 
 quarters of the heavens. He himself seemed like a 
 broken-off twig in the hand of God, swaying and yet 
 steadfast, turned up and down, to and fro, in every 
 direction. And there, in the booth, Moses Daniel 
 sat and reflected, not with sadness, but with glad 
 I'esignation, that the children of Israel dwell in tents 
 as exiles and fugitives till the Lord shall one day 
 grant them again a settled abode in the land of 
 Canaan. 
 
ALL FOR THE BEST. C9 
 
 To little Ephraini the four clays' half-holiday, 
 which came in the middle of the eight days' feast, 
 had been usually a special joy, as one could carry 
 on all the occupations of week-day life; and yet it 
 was a festival; the youthful spirit was not restrained 
 by a thousand little prohibitions; but this time he 
 could not drive his sorrow for the dead man out of 
 his thoughts, and he was angry with every one who 
 forgot him. 
 
 There are natures which are suddenly and vio- 
 lently wrenched by a sorrow out of the self-forget- 
 fulness of a life that drifts on aimlessly, and to which 
 all becomes thenceforth a painful enigma. As if he 
 were going through them for the first time, Ephraim 
 fulfilled the singular usages which the last days of 
 the feast brought with them. Judaism has its em- 
 blematic works, which must be carried out into the 
 most minute particulars. One must cut willow twigs 
 by the water-side, bind them in bunches and strip 
 off the leaves, praying meanwhile, in the synagogue. 
 They did not wait till autumn plucked off the yel- 
 low leaves, they tore them off with violence, while 
 they were yet green. And on New Year's Day they 
 had gone out to the running water, shaken out their 
 garments, and at the same time said a prayer, that 
 God would bury the sins which each had commit- 
 ted in the depths of the flood. On the last day of 
 the Feast of Tabernacles, called the "Joy of the 
 Law," they danced round in the synagogue amidst 
 songs of gladness, with the parchment rolls of the 
 Law in their arms. In this they often alternated 
 
70 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 with each other, and Ephraim was permitted to take 
 the roll of the Law, engrossed by his family, and or- 
 namented with golden crown, and golden shield and 
 hidex, and carry it three times round the syna- 
 gogue. 
 
 The load was heavy, but a three times heavier 
 one lay on Ephraim's heart. 
 
 A profound sadness, a nervous anxiety, coupled 
 with a silent grudge against the outward world, 
 planted itself in the heart of the boy, now awak- 
 ing into youth. At night the spectre of his mur- 
 dered brother-in-law intruded into his dreams, and if 
 he went along the street by day he saw himself 
 derided by his Christian townsfellows and pelted 
 with dung. He always purposed to run through 
 the very first one who should touch him again ; nay, 
 he even carried a knife with him, but he never dared 
 to use it, but fled when he saw ever so far off a 
 Christian boy coming in his direction. 
 
 There are natures which, aroused to consciousness 
 in the full tide of life's energies, can hardly contain 
 all the joy and jubilation, all the pomp and din and 
 splendor which the wide world on all sides opens 
 before them. How different is it with a nature 
 which, awakened by a cry of grief, another's and its 
 own, becomes for the first time conscious of an in- 
 curable imperfection. It points to a mournful trail- 
 ing along through life on crutches, and melancholy 
 or frivolous mockery of the world forms the escort. 
 
 Upon the first bloom of Ephraim's spirit fell an 
 autumnal frost. Young's Night-Thoughts came into 
 
ALL FOR TLLE BEST. 71 
 
 his hands. If, as often happens, a fruit-tree is 
 found in tlie midst of a forest, we say, a bird must 
 have carried the seed there. Still more strongly 
 are the products of the spirit transplanted this way 
 and that. 
 
 Often did Ephraim venture to ask of his inner 
 man how he had deserved this fate, why the world 
 should be his enemy; he questioned the Eternal Jus- 
 tice, a nameless agony came over him, burning tears 
 rolled down his cheeks, he accused the Kabbi as his 
 seducer, he denounced himself as a God-forsakea 
 reprobate — and then he ventured a decisive step. 
 
 One evening, it was in December, he left his 
 father's house under the pretext of intending to go 
 to the synagogue; he looked back upon it sadly, but 
 soon gathered uj? his courage, ran boldly through 
 the streets beyond the walls and out before the gate, 
 for it was there he proposed to accomplish the act. 
 He had once happened to hear that death by freez- 
 ing was the least painful method; in the darkness of 
 the night, stretched out on the white sheet of snow, 
 he would sink to sleep, to awake on the morning of 
 redemption free from all the racking pains of life and 
 thought. He had hurried across the fields and laid 
 himself down in a ditch, and there he lay with his 
 face fixed upon the stars, that glistened from be- 
 tween torn clouds; already it seemed to him as if 
 he caught a distant chime of bells, a confused hum 
 and murmur; all was still and lifeless around him; 
 his whole past life, his purpose, the sorrow of his 
 father, all swept in a wdiirl through his brain; his 
 
72 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 forehead burned with a fever-heat, he rolled over 
 in the snow, but he could not quench the fiery glow 
 within him. All rigid he raised himself up; his eyes 
 rolled like those of a madman; he was on the point 
 of jumping up and flying from his evil demon. 
 " Coward ! " he cried out to himself, " thou hast not 
 the courage to die." He tore the clothes from his 
 breast, threw himself down again upon the ground, 
 closed his eyes and fell asleep. He could hardly 
 have slept but a few minutes when he heard foot- 
 steps approaching; involuntarily he raised himself 
 up; a little burly figure stood not far from him; it 
 aimed a murderous weapon directly at him with the 
 challenge: "Who's there? answer, or I shoot thee 
 dead ! " 
 
 " For God's sake, don't shoot me ! " cried Ephraim, 
 with all his might. The little figure drew nearer to 
 him and emitted a peal of laughter. It was our old 
 acquaintance, Heymann Lisse, a little man of a 
 rotund figure, who distorted his naturally friendly 
 face into an almost gnomish expression, and con- 
 tinued to hold his great Spanish cane, with its 
 broad shaggy tassels, as if in readiness. 
 
 " Ha ! is it thou ? " cried Heymann, raising the 
 half -stiffened Ephraim. "I really believe thou 
 wouldst fain have gone rumbling into the next world 
 as a dead-head; or hast thou not yet learned of thy 
 father to sort wool well enough, but that thou must 
 take a field of snow for a wool-magazine ? Seest 
 thou? that is true mortling,* but one can't get it 
 to the fair." 
 
 * Or inoiiing: wool taken from a dead sheep. 
 
ALL FOR THE BEST. 73 
 
 After Ephraim had dnink a sw^'allow of brandy 
 out of the little flask which Ileymaiui oarrlud Avith 
 him, he was able to go forward again on his way. 
 He now related how an inexplicable impulse had 
 driven him forth into the open air; by degrees the 
 idea grcAV under his narration to an incarnate demon, 
 who threw him down half suffocated into the snow 
 and lamed all his limbs; the incidents grew ever 
 more and more romantic and ghostly; the simple 
 matter of fact withdrew more and more into the 
 background. — Ephraim certainly manifested in this a 
 shaping and coloring fancy, which even verged upon 
 the poetic, but it was not that childish sort of fiction 
 which reaches out into the infinite and believes in 
 the shapes that rise up. The Talmudic dialectics 
 and the modern liberalism of the Rabbi had stripped 
 off from him all the mysteriously magical; his pres- 
 ent narrative had grown out of their combination 
 and had had for its design the palliation of his pur- 
 pose. — At this moment when Ephraim had become 
 conscious of a deliberate lie, an irreconcilable breach 
 took place in his soul. The curtain before hu- 
 manity's holy of holies was at this hour from top 
 to bottom rent bleeding in twain. The oneness 
 and innocence of the young soul was sacrificed to 
 the world, the bodily suicide was averted, but 
 another seemed accomplished. 
 
 He never could struggle througli to that lowly 
 and pious state of resignation in which, like his 
 father, always expecting the bitterest afflictions, he 
 could still say, under every blow of destiny, " It is 
 
14 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 all for the best," but his once having dared to at- 
 temj^t self-murder put into Ephraim's hands, under 
 all wrongs with which his later lot encompassed him, 
 a two-edged weapon, namely — the thought of taking 
 vengeance upon his adversaries, and then throwing 
 himself into the arms of death as the only deliverer. 
 Or is there a life which may be called a long-con- 
 tinued suicide ? Is the inability to achieve a unity 
 of life such ? 
 
 It is impossible to fathom the hidden ways of 
 thought which may wind themselves together in a 
 youthful soul so as to lead it to the purpose of sui- 
 cide. One thing, however, may be regarded as 
 settled: it is, for many, a wholesome thing to be 
 shut up into a system of life which takes away the 
 power of self-determination. 
 
 The disposition of Ephraim's spirit to prey upon 
 itself gave way again to the readiness to let men 
 and circumstances dispose of him, and obedience be- 
 came to him a conscious bliss. 
 
 He who had proposed to lly from life itself must 
 now — learn to write German. 
 
 The exclusion of the Jews from the busy stir of 
 public life had generated legitimately in them an 
 exclusiveness which grew to obstinacy and received 
 from ecclesiastical orthodoxy a religious stamp. 
 Whoever sought to speak good German was an 
 " innovator," a reprobate. The Jewisli jargon was, so 
 to speak, the spiritual dietetic-law, according to which 
 only one could take or give thoughts; but an un- 
 conscious stir of awaking mind, which fortunately 
 
 I 
 
ALL FOR THE BEST. 75 
 
 linked itself in \^ath the claims of business life, broke 
 through, here also, the bounds of custom. Moses 
 Daniel could venture, though still timidly, yet with- 
 out scruples of conscience and without endangering 
 his reputation with the congregation to have his son 
 — regularly taught German. 
 
5.— THE CALIGRAPHER. 
 
 HERR PETZHOLD was at sword's points with 
 everybody, because he took for granted that 
 every one he met valued Writing not as an art, 
 but only as a knack; and he had the usual vanity of 
 all those who apply themselves to a kind of activity 
 hovering between art and trade. 
 
 While, therefore, he shaved off with the back edge 
 of his knife the curling flakes from the barrel of his 
 quill, he began to say to his new pupil: 
 
 "What is man without the art of writing? A 
 featherless* biped in the nakedest sense of the word; 
 only through the art of writing does he become 
 feathered, and his proper manhood fledged. The 
 entire intellectual world is drawn with hair-lines and 
 heavy strokes, and in the letters of the alpliabet lie 
 the abstract forms for conceiving the infinitude of 
 the mind's ideas. The art of writing stands higli up 
 among the plastic arts as philosophic painting; for 
 not only do the forms of writing do most to shape 
 the human character, it is also most clearly revealed 
 
 * Feder (feather) means pen in German. 
 
THE CALIGRAPHER. W 
 
 by them; tlic written lines are the facial lines or 
 lineaments of every human soul, and not without 
 signilicance are written signs called characters. I 
 will decipher you the temperament, disposition, liis- 
 tory and circumstances in life, yes, even the bodily 
 Hgure of a man, from the lines of his handwriting." 
 And while with a sure hand he cut the quill, and 
 gave it the proper split, and shaved off the beard, he 
 continued, speaking considerately; 
 
 " As touching the history of the chirographic art, 
 it has been cherished with equal veneration by 
 Egyptians and Jews, Greeks and liomans, and in 
 hoary antiquity the scribes stood side by side with 
 prophets and kings. But the art of writing cele- 
 brated its most brilliant apotheosis in the cloisters of 
 the Middle Ages; in which matter there are great 
 mysteries yet to be explored, for it was in the hands 
 of a family guild. Those saints, such as a Hierony- 
 mus de Scala, who could write the Lord's Prayer in 
 Greek or Latin in the space of half a farthing; or 
 that heroic conqueror, Bernhardus de Santa Fide, who 
 founded the majestic realm of the German Text, 
 whose citizens, like the Roman senators, may be 
 likened to a people of kings; or that noble monk 
 (whose name is unhappily forgotten) who mortified 
 himself two months till he could draw the U in the 
 shape of a dove; — what, in comparison with them, 
 is a Cato or an Epaminondas ? True, since the in- 
 vention of the art of printing, the glory of the art 
 of writing has been somewhat shorn of its lustre, but 
 its holy memory still endures. So long as the world 
 
78 POE T A ND MER CHA NT. 
 
 stands, men will say of the word of God: 'It is 
 WKiiTEX,' — never: 'It is prhdecV Upon the in- 
 ventors of the chirographic art, let me to-day be 
 silent. I could not to-day for vexation draw an ob- 
 lique hair-line without a tremble, if I brought up 
 vividly before me the fact that the Chinese still con- 
 tinue to be ignored as its original authors — here you 
 have three well-made pens." 
 
 So said Ilerr Petzhold, concluding his discourse as 
 he now nibbed the pens on the thickly scarred nail 
 of his left hand, drew them through his mouth, and 
 then, according to his custom, took with three fingers 
 a pinch of snuff. Ephraim had been sitting before 
 him at the table, uneasy and only half-attentive, hav- 
 ing before him a sheet of white paper. He thought 
 he must now, as he did with the Pole, at every lect- 
 ure, as a proof of attention, put in an objection. 
 
 " In the Second Book of Moses it is said of the Ten 
 Commandments that they were written by the finger 
 of God," said his pupil. Ephraim had forgotten 
 that his teacher was deaf, and had therefore a double 
 love for the written word. He had now to learn how 
 one must lay the right arm on the table, how one 
 must move the wrist freely, and must let the pen 
 play freely between the three fingers. The first 
 strokes would not come quite right, and the teacher, 
 according to his wont, plucked him angrily by the 
 eyebrows, and he had to hear many a scolding lecture 
 upon his clumsiness. 
 
 " You Jews are the most incorrigible fellows so far 
 as writing goes; that comes of the good-for-nothing 
 
THE CALIGRAPIIER. "79 
 
 Hebrew way of writing from right to loft; you al- 
 ways have the world upside down. In that way the 
 right hand is forever writing to the left, so that no 
 one standing by may find out anything, and all may 
 be kept nice and snug among *our folks.' Until 
 you are forbidden, on pain of losing the right hand, 
 to write Hebrew, there is nothing to be done witli 
 you. And then there is absolutely no accustoming 
 you to rule and order, since in your gypsy speech 
 the letters stand as in a Jewish school; one stretches 
 his legs before him, another yawns, a third lies down 
 on the other, and the fourth turns a somersault. In 
 the German script the word is. Attention! there the 
 letters stand in rank and file, not one of them can 
 say a word; like the soldiers at Potsdam on drill- 
 parade." 
 
 By degrees, however, Ephraim succeeded in win- 
 ning his teacher's approval. One day he brought 
 him an English copy — he stared at it for some sec- 
 onds. 
 
 "Who did that?" asked the teacher, sharply. 
 
 "Pardon me. I — I certainly cannot do any bet- 
 ter." 
 
 The teacher turned aside and with vehement 
 gestures, imitating the lines of the writing in the air, 
 he cried: "Is it possible? Those boldly sweeping 
 strokes, that audacious boldness of concatenation, 
 that rounding and fullness, every stroke flowing from 
 the pen like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, like 
 Venus gliding forth out of the foam at once and in 
 all the fullness of immaculate beauty, and above all, 
 
80 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 this Iiciglit of Chinese security and repose ! Such 
 a tiling has for me been scarcely possible in the 
 happiest hours of poetic inspiration. One could 
 hardly dare attempt that even with tlie graver. Oh 
 unhappy me! " he cried, letting the paper slip from 
 his hands and seizing himself by his two eyebrows, 
 " the curse of the Atrides weighs like the Himalaya 
 upon my soul, my own flesh and blood are in rebel- 
 lion against me; but she shall atone for it." He 
 stormed out of the door, a distant scream was heard, 
 it drew nearer, the teacher returned jerking along a 
 sobbing maiden of slender stature, who was hiding 
 her face and drying her eyes with her apron. 
 
 " Sit down here, Rosa," said the teacher. " Write 
 your A B C f or her, Mr. Kuh. She shall sit by at 
 every lesson and learn to write. Art thou not 
 ashamed, my own child ? Thou wilt be next w^eek 
 fourteen years old, and makest letters that crawl 
 about among one another like a sw^arm of ants! 
 See! the young gentleman has only been learning to 
 write with me for six months, and this is his writing; 
 he might place himself beside the cabinet secretaries 
 of the Empress Maria Theresa. Once more then for 
 the A B C." 
 
 Ephraim was now promoted to be law-giver, for 
 he had to set his newly-gained' fellow-pupil a " copy," 
 as Herr Petzhold called it. Often, during this occu- 
 pation, w^ould he look up and contemplate liosa, who, 
 with her chin resting on her hand, looked defiantly 
 on the ground, the lips of her little mouth angrily 
 or pensively compressed, her full cheeks kindled with 
 
THE CALIGRAPTTER. gi 
 
 an intense glow, while in her eye-lashes a tear hnng 
 trembling. Ephraini felt the disagreeableness of be- 
 ing compelled to assist in this way in a severe admin- 
 istration of discipline. What sweet and heavenly 
 words of excuse and encouragement could he have 
 composed out of these letters, which he was now in- 
 differently and inexpressively placing beside eacli 
 other, and when he had now regularly shaped his L, 
 he could hardly resist the temptation to make the 
 word Love. lie raised his eyes, liis look met Rosa's, 
 which rested upon him sadly and reprovingly, lie 
 considered what he should say to her; the teacher 
 certainly could not hear him; but anything seemed 
 to him too poor and feeble. He kept on and finally 
 ended with Z. With the words: "Do me the kind- 
 ness to write, please," he handed her the paper. 
 Rosa laughed. 
 
 Far happier was he two days after, for now he 
 had to prepare a copy in words for Rosa. Ilerr 
 Petzhold handed him his favorite book from which 
 to write out something for this purpose; it was 
 " The Sententious Heroids of Mr. Christian Hoffmann 
 of Hoffmannswaldau, with other elegant poems." 
 Ephraim opened the book, and took it as a good 
 omen that his eyes fell upon the following lines, 
 which he now wrote off in a handsome hand: 
 
 Hard shell-walls must he unclose 
 
 Who the precious pearl desires ; 
 He that seeks the glowing rose, 
 
 Finds her girt with prickly briers. 
 Without bees no honey hast thou ; 
 
 Would'st in Canaan find thy home, 
 6 
 
82 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 First he slave in Egypt must thou, 
 And through sea and desert roam. 
 
 He handed Rosa tlie book and tlie writing, saying 
 at the same time that he would ghidly have copied 
 the verse tliat followed, but dared not; she must 
 read it. Rosa obeyed the advice, and read shyly : 
 
 Written in my heart I cover 
 
 This true maxim well and deep : 
 Glow of fire and pangs of lover 
 
 Sacred hands must watchful keep. 
 
 Rosa, shamefaced and silent, closed the book. 
 
 Herr Petzhold at this moment left the room for 
 several minutes. Ephraim knew not how it hap- 
 pened; he had clasped Rosa, he hung on her neck, 
 he clung to her lips; but soon a black demon dis- 
 turbed their childish bliss; they heard something 
 fall on the floor, the inkstand lay broken, and " the 
 many-armed flood of black fate coiled itself roimd 
 their feet." Both were still standing there bewil- 
 dered, and looking at each other with amazement, 
 when the avenger appeared. 
 
 " Who did that ? " asked Herr Petzhold, and im- 
 mediately seized his daughter by her lovely eye- 
 brows. Weeping and trembling, Ephraim snatched 
 away the father's arm, and cried with all his lungs: 
 "For God's sake! she is innocent — it is I — I — tear 
 my eyes out ! " 
 
 How sweet to him was the thought of being per- 
 mitted to suffer for Rosa. Raising his eyes to her, 
 he would gladly have seen deatli and niglit come 
 upon him, but Herr Petzhold denied him the pleas- 
 
• THE CALIGRAPHER. 83 
 
 lire of martyrdom; he Avas obliged to go home with- 
 out having endured any punishment. 
 
 Rosa threw, one day, a little slip of paper on his 
 w^riting-desk, on which she liad written only her 
 name, Rosa Matilda Marie, and that of Ephraim 
 under it. What more was needed ? In those words 
 lay indeed the most glowing revelation of a secret 
 w^hich still labored shyly to veil itself. For hours 
 now did Ephraim sit lonely in his chamber conjuring 
 upon paper the rapture and wretchedness of his 
 agitated heart. It was not poems he wrote doAvn, in 
 which his love poured itself out; where could he find 
 the right words and how could he put them together ? 
 he had only just learned to shape handsome letters. 
 So there now he sat and wrote innumerable times 
 over the name of his Rosa; in black-letter, German, 
 English and Hebrew, in all positions and connections. 
 How happy he was ! The handsomest letters of the 
 alphabet had united to rej^resent the most glorious 
 thing on earth. He made the ground-strokes of 
 pierced work, and hi the vacant space he wrote with 
 a raven's quill his ow^n name; every letter, again, 
 formed a special frame for a new symbol; now he 
 chased a flying arrow through each letter, now he 
 nestled down contentedly therein with his full name; 
 his hand never once trembled, even in the dangerous 
 attempts. Then in a hundredfold love-nets he im- 
 prisoned her name; numberless wreaths he wove 
 round it; this bold oval flourish wdth which he en- 
 closed it and w^hich ended in a loop, that fluttered 
 far away, this was the most blissful embrace. These 
 
84 POET AND MERCHANT, • 
 
 arrows, Tvith vines twined around them, which he ar- 
 ranged as an impenetrable Avail about lier name, 
 were they not heralds of his exulting soul ? These 
 softly upsoaring, lightly and tremulously dotted 
 twirls, that swept in spirals about her name, and would 
 fain hover away beyond the narrow rim of the 
 paper, were they the tones of the lark, on which she 
 climbs to heaven ? 
 
 Others might celebrate their beloved in well- 
 turned songs and sonnets, in pictures crowned with 
 the glory of perfection, in battles fought for her 
 honor; Ephraim could justly say that never was the 
 name of a maiden more beautifully delineated than 
 that of Rosa. 
 
 To the walls of his chamber, and to the sand in 
 the garden, nay, even to the table, he entrusted the 
 sacred letters. Since he had begun to practice the 
 fine art of caligraphy, he had contracted the bad 
 habit, whenever he sat before a newly scoured table, 
 of scratching upon it, with his nails, the word Rosa; 
 to be sure he had done this, as by prophetic inspira- 
 tion, long before he knew and loved Rosa Petzhold; 
 but he then immediately wiped this name out again, 
 for he might otherwise easily betray himself in this 
 way. 
 
 One Sabbath noon he stood thoughtfully at the 
 window. Without knowing it he had breathed on 
 the panes and written the name Rosa innumerable 
 times over and over. Just then a hand grasped him 
 by the neck. " Impious boy, what art thou doing 
 there!" cried his enraged father, "dost thou know 
 that to-day is the Sabbath, and one must not write ? " 
 
THE CALIGRAPJIER. 85 
 
 Ephraim quickly rubbed out jigfitilt^^th^Ws- hnnd 
 whajt he had written; he was glad his fatTiel* had not 
 noticed the precise word, and endeavored now to 
 prove to him, out of the laws of the Rabbins, that 
 one might write a writing which was not permanent, 
 even on the Sabbath. Now, for the first time, at 
 this trifling circumstance of Ids having called the 
 name of Rosa a transient thing, and placed it in 
 connection with the law of the Rabbins, suddenly 
 the consciousness of the self-contradiction into which 
 he had fallen awoke in his soul. One might have 
 said of him with Holfmannswaldau: in the rose- 
 colored robe of his life's happiness, "snapped the 
 thread of times in twain." Ephraim was sorely 
 troubled, his father no less so, but for quite different 
 reasons. 
 
 Hardly had Ephraim himself learned to read and 
 write German, when he had, in turn, to teach it; 
 Violet, his sister, begged him incessantly to give her 
 instruction, and nights, when all in the house were 
 asleep, the seventeen-year-old damsel sat with her 
 brother and had him teach her the signs in which 
 the world's children write down their thoughts and 
 experiences; those lips, ripe for kissing, labored stam- 
 meringly to spell; Lessing's comedy, "The Jews," 
 which Ephraim had bought, with the consent of his 
 father, served as A B O book. With astonishing 
 rapidity Violet learned to read and write German. 
 But the farther she pressed on in the coveted 
 Eldorado of the new knowledge, the more unhappy 
 she became; everything cramped, crooked and rude 
 
86 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 that she saw appeared to her Jewish; everything 
 free, natural, joyous and tender, that she read ^nd 
 imagined was to her Christian; she envied the poor- 
 est Christian girl, and when she imparted to Epliraim 
 her sorrow, the latter scolded at her, perhaps because 
 he himself was ailing with the same malady. Moses 
 Daniel had to-day, on the holy Sabbath, found Violet 
 weeping over a German book. Despite all threats 
 Violet asserted that she had taught herself the use- 
 less and reprobate stuff. This is why Moses Daniel 
 was to-day sorely troubled. 
 
 The whole subsequent unhappiness of Violet's life 
 finds its origin in the innocent circumstance that she 
 learned to read and write German. 
 
6._B00K-KEEPING BY DOUBLE ENTRY 
 AND JOSEPH IN EGYPT. 
 
 EPIIRAEVI was now a finished caligrapher, and 
 passed in all the congregation of Breslau for " a 
 good German," a phrase in which the German Jews 
 comprehended the mastery of all profane learning. 
 Ephraim's entrance upon counting-house life coinci- 
 ded with the date of a great revolution in commer- 
 cial history. The Frenchman, De la Porte, had been 
 the first to base the arrangements of mercantile bus- 
 iness on principles, to reduce it to a system, and raise 
 it to a science. Herr Petzhold was an inspired an- 
 nunciator of the new doctrine of salvation. He 
 was also Ephraim's master. Poor Rosa was almost 
 entirely forgotten. Her father had sent her to an 
 old aunt who lived at Brieg. She had left Ephraim 
 without leave-taking, nay, without even giving him 
 the slightest intimation of her departure. The 
 youth, daily growing more practical, looked upon it 
 as a fortunate turn of destiny, thus to be set free at 
 once from all internal discord; he endeavored to 
 bring himself to the point of regarding their whole 
 
88 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 relation as a piece of cliildish thonglitlessness — the 
 first entry in his Ledger was a Bankrnptcy. 
 
 Many a time, indeed, there still came over him a 
 frightfnl sense of his Deficit; he felt himself impov- 
 erished and forsaken; but in this period of gi-o\vth 
 in knowledge and strength, at which Ephraim had 
 now arrived, a new book, a new realm of knowledge 
 lifts one suddenly into quite another atmosphere, 
 till life's joy and sorrow almost entirely disappear. 
 The learned by profession remain in some measure 
 forever at that stage of scholasticism, and because 
 their existence is exclusively learning and not action, 
 they are in view of life children, calm indifferent- 
 ists, or what one commonly calls happy men. 
 
 Of foreign languages Ephraim knew only the two 
 great words: Debit and Credit. Hardly could he 
 yet, in his mother-tongue, express himself fluently 
 on paper, when he began already to learn French 
 also. Only he who was a fond in French was ac- 
 credited with the great world, for from France was 
 imported the fitting out of the Esprit. Ephraim 
 learned not only the mercantile active and passive 
 (assets and debts), but the grammatical also. 
 
 A true learning-fever took possession of him, such 
 as is found only with self-taught men who have not 
 been methodically schooled. In a few years he 
 learned French, English and Italian; he could, also, 
 on a pinch, read a Latin author. With the knowl- 
 edge of languages and their forms, were unlocked 
 to him also, by degrees, the treasures of art and 
 science which the minds of past times have brought 
 
BOOK-KEEPING BY DOUBLE EJSFTR Y. 89 
 
 to liglit. The heroes of aiitiquit^^ lie first learned to 
 know, it is true, under the ehissic powder of Louis 
 XIV.; the free, natural life of the Greeks Avas com- 
 pressed into little strait-laced French bodies; the 
 naked beauty of form was over-spun with delicate 
 silk, and breathed over with lascivious veils, as we 
 see it most strikingly in the paintings of that day. 
 All this troubled the youth very little. That world 
 was so fresh and joyous, so full of glowing life; it 
 was so remote from all that surrounded him, from 
 that petty religious slavery in which life does not 
 begin till after death ; it was so exalted above all the 
 chase after gain, all the weighing and counting and 
 calculating, that he looked upon his whole environ- 
 ment with pain and contempt. He was a stranger 
 in his own parental home. 
 
 Again, on a still higher plane, he reproached the 
 fate by which he had been born a Jew. The peo- 
 ple outside, he deemed, were the heirs of that bril- 
 liant life as it stood delineated there in the books. 
 The life of the peasant seemed to him as yet that 
 peaceful idyl, in which one scatters the seed in the 
 furrow, singing and shouting, and where nothing 
 but peace and pleasure dwells under the straw-built 
 roof; in every officer, nay, in every soldier, he seemed 
 to see an Epaminondas, a Cresar. Such illusions, 
 however, could not last long, for a walk through his 
 father's wool-store taught him how the boors, who 
 came to sell their wool there, scattered to the winds 
 his dreamed ideal of simplicity of manners; a walk 
 to the counting-room, where the officers raised loans 
 
90 POE T AND MER CIIA NT. 
 
 on their monthly wages, taugWt him that under the 
 wadded collars throbbed no Caesars' hearts. 
 
 "Ideals and reality must be kept distinct; once in 
 distant days things were otherwise, and at some dis- 
 tant day they may be so again," thought Ephraim, 
 and this saddest of all half-true experiences gave 
 him confidence and peace. When he had been all 
 day long entering in his day-book or ledger, as his- 
 torian and prosaist, the current incidents of the day, 
 had received and answered business letters of every 
 kind, then in the evening he would receive, postage- 
 free, in his still chamber, the poetic epistles of remote 
 and. yet related spirits; he accepted, prima vista, the 
 intellectual exchanges which the classics of antiquity 
 or the modern author drew upon him; then he bade 
 adieu to double and single book-keeping, and applied 
 the treasures of others at high rates of interest in 
 carrying on his mental operations. 
 
 Thus he lived a happy life, for it was the time 
 when one's leisure hours play with redoubled colors. 
 
 It is worth remarking that Ephraim, with peculiar 
 predilection, transported himself into the life of 
 idyllic poetry; for the very reason that in the purely 
 ideal character which his imagination lent it, it lay 
 so far from his whole outward life, did he love all 
 the more to enjoy in it an undisturbed refreshment. 
 Those nations whose knowledge of divine things has 
 been handed down in books, are removed from the 
 free life of nature. The Jews in particular, whose 
 life in the west resembled a vegetation creeping out 
 from among ruins, knew absolutely nothing of that 
 
BOOK-KEEPING B V DOUBLE ENTR Y. 9 \ 
 
 joyous growth and bloom, and so a double enchant- 
 ment irradiated all to Epliruim's youthful fancy. 
 The vicissitudes of seasons and weather, all that in 
 the business life and courtings of the Jews passed 
 almost unnoticed, formed now often the focus of his 
 existence. 
 
 One day he sat in the wool-store, on a great bale, 
 with the invoice-book in his hand, to "control"* ac- 
 curately the quantity and quality of the newly ar- 
 rived wool. It was a tedious operation, and Ephra- 
 im's fancy soon set itself to work replacing all this 
 array of wool upon the backs of the sheep, and 
 making them leap and dance gayly on the green 
 meadow, Ephraim himself being the shepherd who 
 blew the Syrinx and woke the babbling echo, while 
 the lovely Chloe, who came with winged step, was 
 Rosa bringing him goat's milk and honey, and her 
 kisses were still swxeter than honey, and her words 
 more refreshing than the milk of goats — 
 
 "God-a-mercy! if there isn't the young one lying 
 asleep! Thou shouldst have been a Rabbin, for thou 
 dost not properly understand anything about busi- 
 ness." So spake Moses Daniel, shaking his son, who 
 rubbed his eyes with staring astonishment, and had 
 to hear a mild castigating sermon from his father. 
 
 " When I have turned for the second time the key 
 of my counting-room door, I am quite another be- 
 ing," he had only yesterday boasted to his sister- 
 in-law, and explained to her how he had found a way 
 to separate the higher and the every-day life, and 
 
 * Check off and verify. 
 
92 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 now, to-day, was this proud maxim of the practical 
 reason melted to nothing. 
 
 Tiiubchen, or, as she liked better to be called, Theo- 
 doliuda, was Ephraim's only confidential friend. He 
 fancied himself to stand with her in a kind of broth- 
 erly and sisterly relation, and to her he unveiled his 
 whole inner being. Ephraim was still at that first 
 stage of the pleasure of communicating when we 
 fancy ourselves understood and comprehended by 
 every one in the very innermost core of our being 
 and made one with them, because they listen to us 
 attentively, reciprocate our confidence, and often 
 only give back to us the same thing that, a few min- 
 utes before, we had ourselves expressed; the discov- 
 ery, following sooner or later, that we have been 
 looking upon the image in the glass as a real form, 
 is as bitter as it is inevitable. Ephraim imparted to 
 his sister-in-law all that he read, felt or thought, in 
 its freshest impression ; as by this impression before 
 her he first clearly recognized what had gone on with 
 him; he fancied that through her he had come to the 
 understanding of himself. Doubly painful was it, 
 therefore, to him when he discovered that he was not 
 really understood by her. 
 
 One day he spoke to her in enthusiastic terms of 
 the exalted beauties that revealed themselves in the 
 Iphigenie of Racine, and told how the profound 
 tragedy of this subject had filled his whole soul. 
 
 "Yes, it is a beautiful book; it has given me great 
 pleasure, also," she answered, with a gay smile. She 
 thought she liad made a profound observation, and 
 
BOOK-KEEPING B Y DOUBLE ENTR V. 93 
 
 one that harmonized perfectly with the views of her 
 learned brother-in-law; but the latter suddenly re- 
 coiled when he felt that he had been squandering a 
 treasure of unrecij^rocatcd feelings, that had sprung 
 up out of his most glowing time of youth, upon an 
 unworthy object. His former respect for her 
 changed almost into contempt; what he had read 
 with anxiously-beating heart and tearful eyes, all 
 that agonizing sorrow which lies in the unhappy en- 
 tanglements of life's relations, as the poet nakedly 
 and with severe truth had represented — all this was 
 to her only an amusing play — a mere pastime! From 
 day to day he grew colder towards her; but she, 
 without suspecting what repelled him from her, per- 
 secuted the fair and well-formed youth with more 
 and more ardent looks and sweeter words. 
 
 Taiibchen, or, as we too will now call her, Theo- 
 dolinda, had been, accidentally, in her childhood, en- 
 ticed into a sphere of knowledge which then lay out- 
 side of the Jewish circle. Her predominantly sen- 
 suous nature, had permitted her to recognize only 
 the outward necessity of these elements of culture. 
 She read the books and spiced her conversation with 
 French phrases, just as she imitated Christian women 
 in her costume, and even went beyond them in the 
 brilliancy of her colors and the extravagance of 
 make and material. She had never loved, not even 
 her husband; she had only married him, and was by 
 him submissively respected. He liked to hear people 
 say he was not worthy of so handsome and culti- 
 vated a lady. " But she is mine for all that," his 
 
94 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 smirking looks seemed to say, and then he would 
 give her tender cheek such a pinch that she often, 
 half in earnest, called him a nasty, vulgar man. 
 While every other Jewish house for the most part 
 was so far an open one that every one of the congre- 
 gation came and went at pleasure, and without ex- 
 cuse, Theodolinda had established the innovation of 
 having visitors announced; many were denied and 
 others stayed away of themselves. 
 
 Chajem was not a little proud of this distinction 
 of his house, and there was much ridicule of Theo- 
 dolinda in the congregation. The chief wag, Iley- 
 mann Lisse, said of her: "Her whole accomplishment 
 consists in nothing more than her wearing a brace- 
 let as savages do a nose-ring." This remark quickly 
 spread abroad, for it was no less happy than mali- 
 cious, and a saying of the church wit was indelible. 
 Theodolinda had also achieved through the submis- 
 siveness of her husband, deviations from Jewish 
 usage; she went out of the house without an apron, 
 yes, even into the synagogue, and in the chambers 
 of her house hung colored pictures; an unusual inno- 
 vation, for it is written: "Thou shalt not make 
 unto thee any graven image" (Exodus.) Old INIoses 
 Daniel shook his head dubiously at these new fash- 
 ions, but he would not disturb the exceedingly happy 
 marriage of his eldest son, and he remained silent. 
 
 In the little chamber, with the colored engravings, 
 Ephraim communing sat and spoke of the joys of his 
 Boul; the eye of his listener darted unsteady flames; 
 Ephraim enjoyed these signs of attention. Theodo- 
 
BOOK-KEEPING BY DOUBLE ENTR V. 95 
 
 liiida allowed herself with her youngest brother-in- 
 law all the light familiarities of relationship; she 
 scolded at his threadbare attire, smoothed back the 
 locks from his forehead, she tied his cravat in a 
 more graceful knot, she lifted up his chin and tauglit 
 him an erect posture; Ephraim stood there with un- 
 moved coldness, as if he must let all this be done 
 to him, while Theodolinda often fixed upon him her 
 glowing eyes; often, as in silent sorroAV, drooped her 
 lashes and bowed her head. This youth had been 
 the first to open her eyes to the infinite, glimmering 
 realm of poetic fantasy; through him she might have 
 been transplanted into a life borne onward by higher 
 washes and hopes, and once when, as Ephraim sat 
 before her, she had clasped his temples with both 
 hands, seemingly to put his locks in order, she im- 
 printed a kiss upon his forehead; the youth trembled, 
 his forehead grew red, he cast down his eyes; she 
 raised his head, when suddenly his eye caught siglit 
 of a picture which hung above him, — it had been an 
 awkward thing in Theodolinda hanging it there — for 
 it was the story of Joseph and Potiphar. As wath 
 heavenly power the pious feelings of his childhood 
 awoke within him; full of shame, he covered his 
 eyes, tore himself away from Theodolinda and 
 rushed out of the chamber. He fancied he heard 
 laugliter as he shut the door behind him. 
 
 Theodolinda soon contrived, however, to restore 
 the former harmlessness of her relations with her 
 brother-in-law, and even to strengthen them. She 
 had the wit to represent herself as a misunderstood 
 
96 POE T AND MER CHANT. 
 
 nature, and displayed all sorts of sentimental con- 
 ceits and fancies. Ephraim felt a satisfaction in be- 
 ing able to give her a j^artial guidance, and only 
 once did he come upon a reminder of the otlierwise 
 forgotten entanglement, when she called him her 
 "di'eam-interpreter Joseph." 
 
7.— EXODUS FROM EGYPT. 
 
 A YEAR hence — in Jerusalem ! " Such was the 
 l\ exclamation of Moses Daniel, as he raised 
 himself up from his oriental couch, and lifted on 
 high the full beaker, as if he drank to the invisible 
 spirit of God. Ephraim contemplated in thought- 
 ful silence the arabesques on his golden goblet. 
 
 It was the first evening of the Passover. Since 
 the going down of the sun, Moses Daniel had sat, or 
 rather reclined, singing and chatting, on the gold- 
 brocade-lined pillow of the ottoman that stood be- 
 hind the richly spread table. Before him lay, piled 
 up in white napkins, three cakes of that " Bread of 
 Poverty" {Deut. XVI, 3,) which the children of Israel 
 had eaten at their exodus out of their Egyptian 
 house of bondage, as well as a piece of flesh roasted 
 on the naked coals, in memory of the Passover Lamb. 
 It was a symbolic supper; raw horseradish was eaten, 
 in remembrance of the bitterness which the Children 
 of Israel had to swallow in Egypt; they feasted on 
 raw parsley dipped in yellowish electuary, in remem- 
 brance of the clay which the Children of Israel had 
 1 
 
98 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 in Egypt to stamp. Next after the many prescribed 
 prayers and recitals, there was also much conversa- 
 tion upon the history of the exodus from Kgypt, 
 and Moses Daniel enjoyed it all, according to the 
 prescript of the Rabbi, as profoundly as if he himself 
 had come out from Egypt. 
 
 On Passover-eve every Jewish father of a family 
 is an oriental king, and so, too, was Moses Daniel. 
 He rose not from his divan to wash his hands when 
 the viands were served up; he had the silver wash- 
 basin brought before him, and hardly raised himself 
 from his proud seat. In order, however, not to fall 
 into presumptuous sin, Moses Daniel had, after the 
 manner of the Chasidim (Jewish priests), put on his 
 full-flowing white death-robe; such contrasts were 
 agreeable to the Jewish sentiment. Ready to fol- 
 low the call of the Messiah, like his forefathers in 
 Egypt, " his loins girt about, sandals on his feet and 
 staff in his hand," (E.md. XII, 11,) so, too, was 
 Moses Daniel prepared for the breaking-up. It 
 mio'ht well have caused a shudder of awe when one 
 saw his bony hand, with its swollen veins, reach 
 forth from the Talar to grasp the full beaker; but 
 such a feeling came into the mind of no one who sat 
 at the table. Beside Ephraim, his three brothers and 
 his sister, there sat also at the table two Poles, 
 dressed in black silk kaftans, with curling locks on 
 their temples, and our already well-known friend 
 Schnauzerle, with his wife and children; nor was the 
 maid of the house absent. This last related during 
 the meal, that so late as since last evening the son of 
 
EXODUS FROM EGYPT. 99 
 
 a rich Christian citizen had disappeared utterly; he 
 had gone out of liis house at night, after tlie gates 
 of tlie fortifications had been ah*eady closed, and no 
 trace of him had since been found. 
 
 "God be praised and blessed," said Moses Daniel; 
 " aforetime such a history would have cost the goods 
 and blood of thousands of Jehudim.* God be 
 praised! He has made the yoke of exile much 
 lighter for us." 
 
 "Yoke is yoke still," answered Ephraim. " I can- 
 not say, thank God for it, that on all walks and ways 
 manacles and man-traps are set for us." 
 
 " If thou art not still, thou may'st soon get a gag, 
 too! For what then should we be in exile and 
 hoping for the Messiah, if we were not oppressed? 
 God forgive me, the boy disturbs even my holy feast- 
 days." 
 
 The entrance of the Christian shop-boy interrupted 
 the holy discoursings of Moses Daniel and the dep- 
 recations of the Poles. 
 
 " They have just brought a sack of wool and un- 
 loaded it down below in the yard," explained the 
 boy. " The teamster said he would settle with the 
 master right after the holidays." 
 
 " I wish I could stuif the sack of wool down thy 
 throat and choke thee," cried Moses Daniel, spring- 
 ing up and clenching his fists. " Haven't I told thee 
 ninety and nine times, never to admit anything 
 Saturdays or feast-days that had relation to busi- 
 ness ? It seems as if all the infernal spirits had got 
 
 * The expression by which the Jews designate themselves. 
 
100 POE T A ND MER CHA NT. 
 
 into my house, and would turn everything topsy 
 turvy. Even Sambatjon has rest on Saturdays and 
 holidays; I have no longer a holiday nor a Sabbath, 
 and my children, especially my respected High Ger- 
 man son" — 
 
 "Dear father! but thou art really too irritable to- 
 day," said Violet, and sought to withdraw the wine 
 from her father, who had now grown more calm. 
 
 " It is true, I am so out of temper this evening, 
 and it ought not to be so; it must be the effect of 
 the wine," said Moses Daniel, quietly resuming his 
 seat. 
 
 As the Law prescribes, each one at the table had 
 already emptied three beakers of red wine. Only 
 from a tall gilded cup, which stood beside the father 
 of the family, no one had yet drunk a drop, and yet 
 every time the other goblets were filled, some had 
 been poured into this cup likewise. The legend 
 names this beaker that of the Prophet Elias, since 
 that personage, who must precede the coming Mes- 
 siah, always joins invisibly in the celebration of the 
 Feast of Redemption; hence in the hovel of the 
 poorest Jew on this evening a goblet of wine stands 
 ready for the Prophet. 
 
 After the grace the beakers were again filled; all 
 rose. 
 
 "A year from this — in Jerusalem! " cried ]\[oses 
 Daniel, raising himself up from his oriental couch, 
 and lifting on high the brimming beaker, as if he 
 drank to the invisible spirit of God. 
 
 After that exclamation Moses Daniel paused, and 
 
EXOD US FROM EG YPT. 101 
 
 listened with bntecl breath, as if to hear whether the 
 heavens would not send down the air-shattering 
 trumpet-blast of the Redeemer, who should make 
 the earth quake with joy and terror, like a bride 
 who hears the ringing and singing which announces 
 the coming of the bridegroom who is to lead her to 
 the altar; he listened with hushed breath, as if he 
 expected to hear the summons that should gather to- 
 gether . all Israel from all the four quarters of the 
 world; all was still, not a breath was audible; only 
 from the fencing-school over the way came con- 
 fused sounds of singing and gabbling, then a horn 
 sounded — Ephraim could not forbear a bitter smile ; 
 it was the night-watchman. 
 
 Moses Daniel pressed his left hand against his 
 eyebrows and bowed his face over the full beaker, 
 his image looked up at him out of it. It was no dead 
 man's grimace that stared at him there, and by this 
 unmistakable sign, so the cabalistic tradition teaches, 
 he had the assurance that he should not die this year, 
 and might still tarry into the next year to the com- 
 ing of the Messiah. Moses Daniel was just in the 
 act of sitting down quietly, to drain in composure 
 the last prescribed goblet, when they heard the win- 
 dow panes of the fencing-school rattle, uproar and 
 alarming cries in the streets and howling in the 
 houses. "Down with the Jews! We'll give them 
 their own blood to drink! Death to Moses Daniel, 
 who has made away with Fritz Posch!" Stones rat- 
 tled against the window shutters of the apartment in 
 which the peaceful family were assembled. All 
 
102 POET AiVD MERCHANT. 
 
 quaked and quailed and thought only of saving 
 tliemselves from the approaching danger, when 
 Moses Daniel raised his head, his eye flamed, his 
 lofty forehead was irradiated as with a flood of 
 light. 
 
 "Peace ! " he said, and his lips shaped themselves 
 as if for a serene smile, "as God will; if it be His 
 will that we should die, let us die like pious Jews, 
 in God, with God; Hallelujah ! Hallelujah ! Hallelu 
 El ! " Like a prophet stood Moses Daniel there in 
 his white talar, his hands raised aloft to God, sing- 
 ing the Psalm. All were seized with a holy awe and 
 involuntarily joined in the song; even Schnauzerle 
 who, at the first tumult, had crept with his silver 
 knife and fork under the table, came forth again 
 softly and cut a wry smile as he struck into the 
 chorus. 
 
 The house-door was burst open; a mass of men 
 was heard thumping up the stairs; the room-door 
 flew open; Moses Daniel went on uninterruptedly 
 singing the Psalm, and, as if spell-bound, there stood 
 the rough intruders. No one dared to set foot over 
 the threshold. Only a few moments were these rude 
 spirits awed by the omnipotence of the Holy. " I 
 believe the fellow has a stolen priest's robe on his 
 mangy Jewisli hide," cried one of those who had 
 been crowded back, and pinched his front-man's car 
 so that he gave a loud scream. A peal of laugliter 
 broke forth, and all reverence for the holy presence 
 had vanished away. 
 
 " See," said the ringleadei', as he pressed forward 
 
EXODUS FROM EGYPT, 103 
 
 upon the singing group; "sec, each one has a goblet 
 in his hand; here stands a big one which is not for 
 anybody at the table, for that contains the blood of 
 martyrdom, which they have drawn from Fritz. 
 There, wash yourself with it, you accursed Judas!" 
 He took the great cup and splashed the wine in 
 Moses Daniel's face, so that he fell back on the otto- 
 man, his white dress running all over, as if with 
 blood. 
 
 "Life for life! " cried Ephraim, and seized the vil- 
 lain by the throat; "follow me, my brothers! The 
 times are gone by when we let ourselves be hewed 
 down without resistance. If we must die, these 
 bloodhounds shall lead the way ! " 
 
 A frightful wrestling and fighting, screaming and 
 wailing ensued in the room. Violet clung weeping 
 to the knees of her half -senseless father. 
 
 "Hold!" cried Moses Daniel, suddenly w^aking 
 up. "Hold there! Ephraim! Ephraim! wilt thou be 
 the death of us all ? Thy hand may grow up out 
 of thy grave, the knife run through thy heart, if 
 thou dost not abstain from the sin of resisting evil 
 with armed violence. Christians, here I am, bind 
 me, take me prisoner, kill me; I will not ask you 
 why you do so! I am a Jew — only spare my chil- 
 dren; they are young, they would fain live longer." 
 
 Ephraim heard his father weep; the knife fell 
 from his hands; he wept too. They heard the patrol 
 down at the door; the rioters took advantage of the 
 moment and thrust whatever of value they could 
 lay hold of into their pockets. Violet was almost 
 
104 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 strangled by an impudent fellow, wlio tore from her 
 throat the coral necklace. 
 
 " Property without an owner, it is no harm for me 
 to take either," thought Schnauzerle, thrusting into 
 his pocket a gilded cup, and the knife which Ephra- 
 im had let fall. " That is a good weapon," thought 
 Schnauzerle, " especially as it has a silver handle." 
 
 Again there arose a confused uproar, then all was 
 suddenly still again, and the patrol came in. 
 
 Moses Daniel was dragged rather than led away 
 by the mob, till, in the yard below, they halted, and 
 there the ringleader stepped forth with a knife 
 and cut open the bag of wool that lay there. There 
 lay wrapped up in the wool the dead body of the 
 missing Fritz Posch, with three deep dagger wounds 
 in his head. The severed arteries and gashed 
 temples showed that he had died an agonizing death. 
 
 " You have drawn the blood of a martyr for your 
 Passover, you Judas," cried all, and struck and 
 kicked the old man, who bore all without answering 
 a word; still dressed in his grave-clothes, he was 
 thrown into prison as a murderer. 
 
 Summer had come and gone; autumnal mists lay 
 silently brooding over the earth; from the prison 
 walls oozed out drops like tears. Moses Daniel sat 
 cowering in silence in his dungeon. He had no 
 tears left, no thoughts to cling to; all swam round 
 within in a confused and chaotic whirl. Only at 
 times his lips moved as for a low prayer; he peered 
 out of his little window only to note the solstice, 
 and then utter the customary prayer. All the mis- 
 
EXOD US FROM EG YPT. \ 05 
 
 eries of a prison life and a criminal trial had he en- 
 dured; even the horrors of the rack had come near 
 him; true, Frederick II. had, soon after entering on 
 his administration, abolished that media3val bar- 
 barity, but it was done in a secret cabinet-order to 
 the magistrates; the people learned nothing of it; the 
 threat of torture might still serve a good purpose 
 for a scarecrow. With Moses Daniel, however, it 
 was in vain, since whatever pangs might await him, 
 not the remotest chance was there of a confession. 
 He had taken the Jewish oath, bristling with awful 
 curses, in which, according to usage, he must lay 
 open his breast, and stand barefoot upon a hog-skin, 
 but still he could confess nothing, and so the inquisi- 
 tion dragged along. 
 
 Moses Daniel had a brother named Abraham, a 
 man of great cleverness and worldly experience. 
 *' Gold will stop the mouth of ever so great a split- 
 throat, and if one rings with ducats the dumb will 
 come to confession," he used to say, and his rule of 
 life in the present case proved its wisdom. He suc- 
 ceeded by degrees in procuring for his brother all 
 possible comforts, nay, he would even have secured his 
 liberation if the judges had not feared the disgrace 
 of palpable bribery. Abraham, therefore, publicly 
 offered a great sum of money to any one who would 
 give the least clew to the murder of Fritz Posch. 
 
 One evening an old beggar, enveloped in a torn 
 soldier's-mantle, came in to Abraham and demanded 
 a secret interview. Abraham regarded the beggar 
 with searching glances; on his head he wore a parti- 
 
106 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 colored peaked cap, which he woidd not take off be- 
 cause his hairless skull teas disfigured icitlt scars y a 
 great white beard covered ahnost all the lower part 
 of his face; with all this the fresh blue eyes with 
 tlieir bright pupils formed a singular contrast. 
 Abraham, however, commanded his wife and his two 
 children to go out. After many promises and assur- 
 ances, the beggar now, with wheezing voice and la- 
 boring breath, told the following story: The mur- 
 derer of Fritz Posch was the linen-weaver Leneke, 
 in the liear-houses, who for some time had been en- 
 rolled among the pious ones, the Quietists or " Quak- 
 ers," the people who were " at rest in the land; " that 
 Fritz had been " honorably " the lover of Leneke's 
 wife, but in a fit of jealousy Leneke had stabbed 
 him and smuggled the body into the house of the 
 Jew. Leneke had then " honorably " availed himself 
 of the King's Dispensation and got a divorce from 
 his wife. Abraham asked whether the beggar, as he 
 absolutely refused to give any personal testimony, 
 had not then any sign or decisive mark; upon that 
 the beggar gave him a silver ring with the words: 
 " After this he certainly will not be able to deny 
 it." 
 
 Abraham stepped into the next room and was 
 heard to speak softly. The beggar quickly rose and 
 hearkened. Abraham came out with a great bag of 
 money and counted down several hundred dollars on 
 the table. The beggar stretched out an exceedingly 
 small hand from his cloak to scrape up the shining 
 coin. Abraham walked up and down the room with 
 
EXOD US FROM EGYPT. i Q 7 
 
 v^isiblo impatience, placed himself siclewise at the 
 window and looked toward the street, still keeping 
 an eye on the beggar; the latter had put up the 
 money and was just on the point of going when 
 Abraham sprang forward, drew a pistol from his 
 pocket, and grasped the beggar by the throat. A 
 scream died on the beggar's tongue; trembling he 
 struggled under Abraham's hands. At that moment 
 the door opened. "Jesu Maria! the police! " cried 
 the beggar, but with the shriek of a female voice. 
 Abraham tore off the cap from the head of the 
 masked figure, and fair blonde locks fell down; he 
 tore the mustaches from the lips, a fair female form 
 disclosed itself. The officers of justice recognized 
 her as Frau Leneke, who since her divorce had gone 
 round as a player in the neighboring towns. She 
 was arrested, as well as her late husband, who soon 
 confessed his crime; he was condemned to death. 
 Frau Leneke, after several months' imprisonment, 
 was banished the country; Moses Daniel was set at 
 liberty. 
 
 " All for the best," said Moses Daniel, with a heavy 
 sigh, as he sat again, for the first time, in his arm- 
 chair, and had his family gathered around him. 
 " Children, let us too say. All is for the best. It 
 might, indeed, have gone much worse with us. The 
 Lord lets me expiate my sins here below that I may 
 up yonder partake so much the more largely of tho 
 heavenly felicity. Thanks be to Ilim, and praise, 
 that He has restored me to quietness and freedom." 
 
 Moses Daniel enjoyed his freedom — if one may 
 
108 POET AiVD MERCHANT. 
 
 apply that sacred name to the defenseless condition 
 of a Jew-protege of the police — but a short time. On 
 the first Sabbath he had his sons lead him to the 
 synagogue, and there before the assembled congre- 
 gation, he pronounced the blessing upon the Thorali, 
 and all who heard it wept for emotion ; and as he 
 himself sobbed, there came here and there an answer- 
 ing sob from the congregation, when Moses Daniel, 
 tliereuj^on, uttered the customary prayer of thanks- 
 giving to God for deliverance from impending death. 
 But more than all did Ephraim weep ; he felt now, for 
 the first time fully, what death is, and he looked upon 
 his father as one risen from the dead, and kissed his 
 hands as he went back to his pew. 
 
 Yet another incident a short time after deeply 
 moved our Ephraim's heart. It was the day on which 
 master-weaver Leneke was executed. In the house 
 of Moses Daniel there was, on that day, a shuddering 
 and a silent sorrow; it was as if one heard the death- 
 sword whistle, which had been swung over the head 
 of the family, but which the divine justice had 
 averted, w^hich, however, still cried for a living victim. 
 It was as if there had been renewed in the house the 
 wonderful dispensation in Egypt, when the avenging 
 angel passed over and si:>ared the dwellings that were 
 mai-kcd with the sign of the blood of the Passover- 
 lamb. Moses Daniel fasted from morning till even- 
 ing, and murmured to himself unceasingly the 
 prayer appointed for the Day of Atonement. 
 
 No one was permitted to leave the house, and 
 Ephraim was j^rof oundly affected by the remark of 
 
EXOD US FROM EG YPT. i OO 
 
 the Christian serving-raaid, that the head of Leneke 
 was tlie hundredth head that had been cut off by 
 the sword of justice, and that now the executioner 
 must give it eternal rest. 
 
 Moses Daniel did not leave his bed a^ain for the 
 whole winter; Ephraini had, at every leisure hour, 
 to read to hira out of the sacred books, and if, at any 
 time, the old man fell asleep from weariness, Ephra- 
 im would quickly draw a profane book out of his 
 pocket and read on for himself; at such moments 
 the love-stories of Boccacio or Ariosto would lie on 
 the open pages of the Talmud, and the rattling in 
 the throat and talking in sleep of the sick man seemed 
 often like a demoniac protest against such compan- 
 ionship, till Ephraim recoiled with a shudder and 
 closed the book; but soon he opened it again, smiling, 
 and quickly read on. A consuming fever gradually 
 wore away Moses Daniel's life. 
 
 The first Passover-evening had come round again, 
 the table was richly spread, numerous lamps diffused 
 a festal brightness. Moses Daniel commanded that 
 they should put on his grave-clothes and carry him 
 to the gold-brocade ottoman; he would sit once 
 more on the throne as king in his own house. The 
 usual songs were sung; Moses Daniel lay on his otto- 
 man and joined in with a low murmur: it was to-day 
 no oriental kingly pride that forbade his rising, he 
 had not the strength for it; but after the grace he 
 rallied all his energies, and, supported by Ephraim and 
 Nathan, he succeeded in raising himself. He grasped 
 the beaker, lifted it on high, as if he drank to thc; 
 
1 lO POE T A ND MER CHANT. 
 
 spirit of the invisible God: "A year hence in Jeru- 
 salem! " he cried, with a mighty voice; he rested his 
 brow on his hand and looked into the beaker; the 
 beaker fell from his hands. 
 
 Once more was the death-robe reddened with wine, 
 once more he sank back lifeless on the ottoman, as 
 he had done the year before at the same hour. But 
 this time he did not wake again. After a few hours 
 the mourning was now only for the dead Moses 
 Daniel. 
 
8.— DIVISION AND DISPERSION. 
 
 A FEW weeks after the interment of Moses Dan- 
 iel the whole family were sitting in the parental 
 house. The division was over, the strangei"s had de- 
 parted; only the four brothers, their sisters and Taiib- 
 chen-Theodolinda sat there; they each had golden 
 goblets, jewelry and the like lying before them; 
 for Moses Daniel had almost a third of his property 
 in jiersonal goods and chattels, as he, sincerely and 
 faithfully expecting the coming of the Messiah, meant 
 to be always in marching order; for which reason, 
 also, he had left no will. 
 
 Twilight threw its shadows into the apartment; a 
 soft spring breeze streamed through the open win- 
 dow; all was still. 
 
 " Brothers," began Ephraira, " the division is com- 
 pleted, but we will not divide." 
 
 " That is my mind, too, that we continue the busi- 
 ness under a common firm," observed Chajem. 
 
 "I was not speaking of business," continued 
 Ephraim; " the father, wlio hitlierto has had us all 
 about him, is no more. Shall we now break up and 
 
112 POE T AND MERCHANT. 
 
 each go bis own way, and no meeting-place make ns 
 one any longer ? What is man, the Jew especially, 
 — who is excluded from all civil and public life — 
 without the blessings of the family ? Let us then 
 be one heart and one soul; every year, on the even- 
 ing of our father's death, we will assemble here 
 with our wives and children, and no shadow of ill- 
 will shall arise amono- us. The relisfious festivals 
 have lost their sanctity with many; we will regain 
 it through the family festivals." 
 
 The brothers pressed each others' hands warmly 
 without saying a word. Violet fell on her brother 
 Ephraim's neck, kissed him and wept. 
 
 A pause ensued; no sound was audible, but in his 
 innermost soul each exchanged with the others words 
 and signs of plighted affection. Such scenes cannot, 
 save on the highest or the lowest grade of cultiva- 
 tion, last over many minutes ; in the middle class re- 
 flection presently comes in, and then the words of 
 Scripture are verified : " And they saw that they were 
 naked, and they hid themselves." Not seldom one is 
 ashamed of his soul's nakedness, and so it comes 
 about, that often the most touching moments pass 
 over into their opposites. 
 
 "The fairest jewel," began Ephraim again, "the 
 talisman which shed beauty in his eyes on all the 
 evils of life, no one of us, unhappily, has inherited 
 from our dear, departed father — I mean his motto : 
 * All is for the best.'" 
 
 " This optical view of life must, however, be classed 
 among the rayons of prejuge^^'' remarked Taiibchen- 
 Theodolinda, with an intellectual smile. 
 
DIVISION AND DISPERSION. 113 
 
 "You meant to say optimistic'' observed Nathan, 
 •* nor am I in favor of a grateful submission to our 
 Btern Lord God, and I often ask: Why these fright- 
 ful afflictions ? " 
 
 " That we may keep alive in us the sense of our 
 need of redemption," answered Ephraim, " and wait 
 patiently for the Messianic times, when Reason and 
 Humanity shall reign." 
 
 " But I do not see at all why we should be the 
 mortars of Judaism," observed Chajem. A laugh- 
 ter ensued, which- Nathan sought to allay with the 
 words: 
 
 "Thou wouldst have said martyrs., and hast in 
 some measure the right of it. What obliges me, 
 nay, I go still farther, and ask, what gives me the 
 right to sacrifice my inborn claims to the enjoyment 
 and the pleasures of life, to a free activity and resig- 
 nation, for the sake of appeasing the restless ghost 
 of an antiquated faith? Is it not my right, nay, 
 even my duty, to free myself from these fetters, — 
 bend or break ? I am in the world to enjoy it. lle- 
 ligion is made for me, not I for it; in order to be 
 able really to enjoy life, one must therefore go over 
 to the ruling church." 
 
 "The ruling one," cried Ephraim; "that is the 
 true word, thou art honest enough after all to speak 
 it out plainly. To rule! that is to egotists the only 
 saving power of the Church. I should have to de- 
 spise myself, I should do despite to my innermost 
 thought and being, if I ceased to be a Jew, if I gave 
 in my adherence to another confession in which I did 
 8 
 
1 1 4 POE T A ND MER CIIA NT. 
 
 j not believe; if I should let the holy organ-clang of 
 j the churches be turned for me into dancing-music, 
 I to dance by it a gay, life-long minuet. And yet, 
 the very hour I discovered that Judaism hindered 
 : my fulhlling any human or civil duty, I would has- 
 ten to the church, and not close my mouth nor rise 
 from my knees, till I had found salvation; but, as it 
 is, Judaism can insure me all the virtues of a man 
 and a citizen as well as any other religion, and it has 
 for thousands of years poured out upon us even the 
 rare power of endurance; only human doctrines, set 
 up within it and against it, have obstructed its fresh 
 and sunny plan of life. I am proud to be a Jew, 
 one of the oppressed, I love Judaism — " 
 
 " But you will not surely call this Jewish pride a 
 virtue ? " said Nathan. " This eternal self-complacent 
 endurance and compassionating one's self is nothing 
 more than vanity and love of approbation, as I once 
 knew" a beauty to whom mourning was very becom- 
 ing, and who, therefore, wore it all her life long to 
 show her grief for her brother, whom she had never 
 so much as loved. Thou lovest Judaism? Why? 
 Didst thou love our old teacher, who gave us whip- 
 pings whether we had learned our Pensum [task] 
 or not ? On the whole thou hast a singular kind of 
 tactics; thou turnest thy back upon thy adversary 
 and aimest thy blows in another direction where 
 there is only an adversary of straw. What I really 
 said was — " 
 
 " Neither wouldst thou let me finish my talk," in- 
 terrupted Ephraim. " I am certainly no Jew in the 
 
DIVISION AND DISPERSION. \ \ 5 
 
 sense of believing the superstitious legends or even of 
 regarding them as beautiful, just as hundreds of 
 thousands of Christians are in this sense no Chris- 
 tians; I can and will, however, abide in Judaism, 
 because within its limits, also, the possibility and 
 opportunity are offered of a preparation for the true 
 and universal Messianic kingdom of the Religion of | 
 Reason. Before this — " j 
 
 "The Religion of Reason!" said Nathan, laugh- 
 ing, " art thou too, one of the alchemists, who will 
 be dabbling in Nature's handiwork ? Religion of 
 Reason! There is no more a Rational Religion than 
 a Rational Love. Wast thou ever in love ? One 
 falls in love without knowing how or why; and so it 
 is with the religious man; he believes without know- 
 ing how or why he does so. So soon as the one or 
 the other inquires into the why or wherefore, the one 
 is no longer a lover nor the other a believer. Relig- 
 ion establishes itself a conto suo [on its own account] 
 and not on the account of Reason. Supposing, how- 
 ever, one could light fire with water, that is, that 
 there were a Religion of Reason, or a Religion in 
 harmony with Reason, — as, to be sure, one may fall 
 in love with a rich and handsome maiden as well as 
 with a poor and ugly one. This new religion, with 
 its book-keeping by doubly entry is, nevertheless, not 
 yet in existence. I know very well the Liberals say: 
 With us every one can sometime or other make a 
 Religion for himself. But I say, every one is not a 
 tailor, and every one cannot dress himself according 
 to his own sartorial ideas just as he pleases; there- 
 
116 POE T AND MERCHANT. 
 
 fore, one bespeaks his clothes as the fashion is, with 
 a man who carries on that special business, and just 
 so it is with Religion." 
 
 " Thou art right," said Ephraim, smiling; " with the 
 common people the costume [or custom] and with 
 the cultivated the style emanating from the leaders 
 of fashion, makes up for the want of individual 
 'taste, and in the province of faith for that of indi- 
 vidual conviction." 
 
 " Thou huntest my simile to death," * rejoined 
 Nathan, with a rej^udiating gesture. " I repeat in 
 other words: If I am a bondsman and can be free, 
 shall I not accept the chance, because I will wait till, in 
 a thousand years, perhaps, a Kepublic may come 
 into existence ? I would, if I were a Catholic, become 
 without hesitation a Protestant, because I hold it to 
 be freer and more serviceable, though not the most 
 so; upon the same principle, I may, if I am a Jew — " 
 
 "I pray thee for God's sake do not speak it out," 
 screamed Ephraim. " So then, thou boldest it to be 
 no sin to make confession of something in which 
 thou dost not believe?" 
 
 " If I choose to do it, and harm no one by it, I 
 commit no sin thereby. I know I fall five and 
 twenty per cent, if I become a Christian; if I wish 
 to marry to-day, I am, among the Jews, one of the 
 first in point of respectability; among the Christians 
 I have a long job of it before I can attain a mid- 
 dling position; but, nevertheless, what are fame and 
 
 * Or, "run it into the ground," as we say. 
 
DIVISION AND DISPERSION. \\>i 
 
 money to me, so tliat I can once get out of the Jews' 
 street ? " 
 
 " Je vous assure, I have decouvert this view to my 
 husband long since; is it not so, Mousy ? " So spake 
 Taiibchen-Theodolinda, as with her left hand she 
 flatteringly stroked the chin of her husband, who 
 w as quite put out of humor by the laughter which 
 he had just before provoked; in the other hand she 
 held an exceedingly rich pearl ornament Avhich had 
 come to her from the effects of Moses Daniel. " You 
 are a coulcmt man of the world, and have an esprit 
 that sends up rackets," [meaning rockets] she con- 
 tinued ; " one cannot live in this world but once, 
 wdiy shall not one enjoy it? I ahvays say: E>}fin, 
 wiiat do we get with all our gains ? I wear hand- 
 somer blond-caps than the wife of Maier Lippmann. 
 I am certainly not a fine figure, but we have money 
 and culture, we can and dare make our appearance 
 in society and move in different cercles. This beau- 
 tiful pearl-tedeum — " 
 
 An explosion of laughter interrupted Taiibchen- 
 Theodolinda, who looked around with amazement 
 and compressed her lips more emphatically than us- 
 ual; her eyes rested inquiringly on her youngest 
 brother-in-law. 
 
 "What did you call that ornament?" asked he, 
 waggishly. 
 
 "Well, pearl-tedetim^'' Avas the reply, which was 
 received with still louder laughter. Taiibchen rose, 
 put the ^Q^kxVdiadem in her pocket, and with her 
 husband took a hasty French leave. 
 
118 POE T AND MER CHANT. 
 
 "Let her go," said Nathan, "the Tree of Knowl- 
 edge of which she has eaten is a clothes-tree ; she 
 only wants to display her gibberish wardrobe before 
 the court-councillor's lady and Mrs. Major." 
 
 " I see not," replied Ephraim, " what right one 
 would have to laugh at that; the material makes no 
 difference; it is all the same whether it is this kind of 
 thing or a routine of life contracted by foreign tour, 
 that one seeks to have stamped with the seal of gen- 
 eral recognition." 
 
 " I am not so studied as thou, nevertheless, I can 
 tell thee something," replied Nathan, and drawing 
 his watch from his pocket, held it in his hand as he 
 continued: "Seest thou? whatever time the hands 
 point out on this dial-plate is to the very second the 
 time at this moment on the town-clock of the Eliza- 
 beth church. Why? Because I regulate mine by 
 that. But perhaps my pocket-Avatch goes more cor- 
 rectly than the town-clock? May be so; but when 
 other people have noon, I too will have noon. I 
 know well the Liberals say: Judaism rightly under- 
 stood is far in advance of Christianity; but I can- 
 not do with a watch that gains time any better than 
 with one that loses." 
 
 " I understand thy longing to be in harmony with 
 the world," supplemented Ephraim, " and in the striv- 
 iu<2j after external recocjnition lies also the o-reat and 
 
 'Tt <:i G 
 
 sublime consciousness of feeling one's self contained 
 within the creative spirit of History, of being ab- 
 sorbed into one with that innumerable multitude of 
 aspiring spirits, of working and sharing with them 
 their homes and their hours of festive recreation — " 
 
DIVISION AND DISPERSION. HO 
 
 " Yes, I had the same feeling once," said Violet, 
 who, with her brother Maier, had, till now, been 
 listening with mute attention to the unwonted dia- 
 logue, — "when two years ago at Whitsuntide I 
 journeyed to Glogau to the funeral of our deceased 
 aunt. It was Sunday morning. Not far from Glo- 
 gau we came upon a rising ground; such a glorious, 
 freshly-breathing balmy morn I had never before 
 enjoyed. The sun stood in full splendor in the blue 
 heavens, not a cloud was to be seen, all around glis- 
 tened and sparkled, a solemn stillness brooded over 
 the endless expanse with its meadows, woods and vil- 
 lages, and here and there a lark climbed upwards on 
 her tones, till she was lost to sight, as if a magic 
 breath had drawn her up to heaven. Suddenly the 
 morning-bell pealed out from the church tower of a 
 neighboring village, a second, a third, replied, ten, 
 twenty, from all quarters, from far and near, chimed 
 in; the drops of tones floated together over the 
 whole plain into one holy stream; it was as if mil- 
 lions of peace-angels rocked upon these tones, and 
 spread peace and joy and tranquillity over the Avhole 
 earth; all was so holy, no wheel rattled, no bearer 
 of burdens wheezed under his load, everywhere was 
 music and light and splendor; as with a low whis- 
 pering the flowers bowed their heads and prayed; 
 a holy awe crept through my whole being. Ah, my 
 heart, weeping, said within me. The happy Chris- 
 tians ! Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven, for they 
 have heaven on earth ; such a festival, which the 
 whole earth conspires to celebrate, when the holy 
 
120 POE T AND MERCHANT. 
 
 stillness of the streets, the glad faces of released and 
 gayly-dressed peoj^le proclaim: To-day is Sunday! — 
 how blissful it must be! A Jewish festival, spent 
 by the men only within the damp walls of the syna- 
 gogue and by the women only in their kitchens, how 
 close and depressing that is! O, how happy were I 
 had I been born a Christian woman! We came 
 through the village; gayly-dressed, each with a 
 fresh nosegay in her bosom and a prayer-book in her 
 hand, the country lasses tripped along joyously to 
 church. With what magic chords did the tones of 
 the organ draw me to the church; they rang, roared 
 and quivered through all my veins and filled me 
 with a nameless tremor. I did not feel the glow of 
 my cheeks till I wiped from them the tears. O God! 
 why hast thou given me no church, in which I might 
 adore thee in deep contrition and lift myself to Thee ? 
 What care I for the ordinances of the priests; why hast 
 Thou shut against me the gates of Thine own Syna- 
 gogue ? Thus I prayed and yearned, and since then 
 I have never been able to go by a church, but that 
 the swelling tones of the organ wrung from me sighs 
 and tears. When on Sunday I see a Christian 
 maiden come out of church, her black-bound prayer- 
 book, with a neatly folded white handkerchief lying 
 upon it, pressed to her bosom, and mark how quietly 
 and contentedly she walks along — ah God! I am so 
 wicked then, that I almost feel envious. — How beau- 
 tiful it is 'when all keep a festival together, as we 
 saw last' Whitsuntide, w^hen our holidays and those 
 of the Christians coincided; I persuaded myself the 
 bells rang for us also, all was so lovely ! "-' 
 
DIVISION AND DISPERSION. 121 
 
 " Woe! woe! that our father is dead! " cried Maier, 
 rising up, deadly pale and trembling. " Alas! if thou 
 wert not dead, venerable old father, thou wouldst 
 die now for grief, or wouldst tear the tongues of 
 thy recreant and apostate children from their throats! 
 I have suffered you all to speak out and speak on; I 
 cannot dispute with you; you have read many God-ac- 
 cursed books ! " He seized a knife that lay on the table 
 and brandished it as if to make an attack; all shrank 
 and shuddered. " If I knew that a drop of your veins, 
 a word of your thoughts clung to me, I would cut 
 them out with this knife and bury them like spoiled 
 flesh; I dispute not with you, you know more than 
 I, but this much I know, that we live in a frightful 
 time, else God, the Lord, must needs command his 
 earth to open its jaws and swallow you up like Korah 
 and his cursed crew. Who has made you men mas- 
 ters and judges {Ex,. II., 14.) over the Jewish Relig- 
 ion ? Can such speeches be made in this room, and 
 fear you not the shade of your dead sire ? I repeat 
 still his own motto: All is for the best. Praise to 
 Thee, O God, Lord of the world, that Thou hast 
 taken our father so speedily to Thyself, that he might 
 not live to see the falling-away of his children! I 
 am going to the synagogue to evening prayer, to say 
 the Kadiscli * for our father." 
 
 Maier's voice trembled, he left the room; the 
 three brothers and sisters sat in the dark, face to face 
 in silence. 
 
 "Light! light! Violet let a light be brought!" 
 
 * A kind of mass for the souL 
 
122 POE T A ND MERC HA NT. 
 
 cried Nathan, at last, " I suffer not my head to be 
 turned by such stories. The saddest thing about 
 conversion always is, that, as at the exodus out of 
 Egypt, the converts have in a two-fold regard to die 
 first in the wilderness and not arrive at the promised 
 land; only to the second generation is this privilege 
 reall}^ granted." 
 
 No one made any reply. Ephraim rose and strode 
 several times up and down the room. 
 
 " I should only like to know," said he, " how we 
 ever fell into this conversation and how we ever car- 
 ried it to such a point. It began so peacefully and 
 had such a hostile end." 
 
 He too left the apartment; soon after Nathan also 
 departed, only Violet remained alone and wept. 
 
 The brothers and sisters were all very much out 
 of tune and temper. Ephraim and Nathan had, in 
 their quarrel, risen to a height beyond their usual 
 energy — as indeed one will always find that in a con- 
 test, whether physical or mental, his forces rise and 
 are redoubled ; — nevertheless, both felt that they had 
 not mutually maintained and sustained at all points 
 their several views; all had been only half said, and 
 yet discord had grown out of it. The feeling was 
 of the most tormenting kind. Clmjem and Maier 
 were each in his way injured and affronted. Violet 
 conceived that she had once more revealed her in- 
 nermost soul and self, without being understood. 
 
 No Passover-evening ever again assembled the 
 brothers and sisters around one table; the bond 
 which E})hraim would fain have wound around 
 them was soon snapped asunder. 
 
9._]srEW ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 IN the Brody Synagogue the seat of Moses Daniel 
 had for thirty days been turned top downward; 
 no one could occupy the place, for the Kabbala 
 teaches: For thirty days from the hour of death 
 the soul of the departed continues to come, morning, 
 evening and night, when the congregation is assem- 
 bled, into the synagogue, takes its customary place, 
 and joins in the devotions. — Tlie second sign of the 
 death of Moses Daniel was a wax-candle, prepared 
 by pious women, which burned before the lioly ark; 
 every time that one wax-candle was on the eve of 
 burning down, the next was lighted, and so they 
 kept up this " soul's light " during the whole mourn- 
 ing-year. 
 
 It was on the Friday evening after this first thirty 
 days of mourning, that Ephraim, Chajem and 
 Nathan walked into the Synagogue, with an attire 
 which these walls had never before witnessed. 
 Maier was in another synagogue; they stationed 
 themselves in their father's place; a buzzing and 
 hissing arose among the assembled multitude, foi 
 
124 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 the three brothers wore — queues, and whoever wore 
 a queue was a " new-fnsliioned " i)erson, which was 
 synonymous with apostate, free-thinker and bias- 
 plienier. During the low prayer, in which all the 
 assembly stood facing the East, where the holy ark 
 is, the torches burning there were heard to snap and 
 crackle with unwonted liveliness; a low murmur 
 arose, the whole assembly pointed to the three 
 brothers. Nathan stood smiling, Chajem looked 
 out with a dull stare; only from Ephraim's looks 
 there spoke thoughtfulness and inward commotion; 
 because a bold orthodoxy manifested itself here in 
 a mythical way, he willingly supposed himself to be 
 impressed by it, he willingly made himself believe 
 that the " soul's light " of his father protested against 
 the fashionable innovations of the children. This 
 belief had really so much of magic beauty for him, 
 he would gladly have taken his queue from his head, 
 and made an oifering of it, had he not been ashamed 
 of such repentance; here, for the first time, he felt 
 the embarrassment which the consistency of a con- 
 scientious course of action brings with it, and which 
 involves the less strong characters in internal dis- 
 cord. 
 
 When, at length, the congregation broke up, a 
 universal murmur encompassed the brothers Kuh; 
 no one returned their greeting; suddenly a voice 
 was heard calling after them derisively: cow-tail! 
 [Kuh-schwanz !] it was the voice of Ileymann Lisse, 
 who, though himself inclined to free-thinking, had 
 not the courage to carry out his ideas, and could not 
 
NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 125 
 
 suppress a witticism against his own party. Hardly 
 had the crowd caught the hostile watchword, when 
 all, laughing and jeering, cried out after *the three 
 brothers: " Cow-tail ! cow-tail ! " The victims of this 
 persecution were saved by their wealth from actual 
 violence; they took refuge from the popular scorn 
 in their near home. 
 
 The Sunday after the three brothers of the queue 
 were summoned before the Rabbin, but despite all 
 exhortation, they stuck to their frisure; the Kabbin 
 was too tolerant to visit them for that with an 
 ecclesiastical penalty, but the first public step, which 
 separated the brothers from the manners and cus- 
 toms of the congregation, had now been taken. It 
 might, perhaps, seem strange that Jewish orthodoxy 
 should prescribe not only diet but dress, but for 
 the consistent coherence of the ghostly authority, 
 Jewish or Christian, nothing is too small to come 
 within the sweep of its net; the Polish-German 
 orthodoxy had a rule by which it forbade many 
 things, not because they were of themselves con- 
 trary to the law, but because they were the fashion 
 of the non-Jewish nations, by the adoption of which 
 their rigid exclusiveness might be broken down, and 
 the way prepared for an alliance with them. Among 
 these outposts, which covered the camp proper, one 
 was the regulation of dress. If once the fashion 
 and the way of the world were allowed the least in- 
 fluence, the moment one sought by dress and external 
 usage to associate himself with the nations among 
 which they lived, that moment the Jew lost his iso- 
 
126 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 lated position, and there was no calculating liow far 
 the spirit of innovation might extend. 
 
 Ephraim, meanwhile, sought not merely to con- 
 form to the outward conditions of worldly culture, 
 he strove for the inner and intellectual; an original 
 passion was hereby developed within him. So long 
 as Moses Daniel lived, Ephraim had been allowed to 
 buy only a few books that related to business; but 
 now in the free possession of a large property, his 
 first thought was to procure himself a choice library. 
 With a true greed he sought to caiTy out this plan, 
 so that among the Breslau Jews the witty saying 
 circulated, started by Ileymann Lisse, that Ephraim 
 had left sheep's-wool and taken to hog's-skin. 
 
 Seldom did it occur among the Jews that a man 
 of property had any special fancy upon which he 
 spent considerable sums of money; the prevailing 
 practical spirit, the want of that leisure and freedom, 
 which comes only with inherited, not acquired 
 wealth, are the chief reasons of this. Since they 
 had ceased to be a nation, the Jews had not been 
 able to trace back an uninterrupted possession be- 
 yond three generations; but he who has gained his 
 wealth has seldom the inner capacity and outward 
 opportunity to enjoy it freely. 
 
 Ephraim's passion for books gave rise to much 
 gossip among the Jews of Breslau; they generally 
 set it down as a crazy extravagance, and the fathers 
 and mothers were no longer eager to get the rich 
 youth as a son-in-law, for now, when a war had 
 broken out that threatened to be of long continu- 
 ance, hard cash had a double value. 
 
NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 127 
 
 Ephr.iim was at a great book-auction; he had 
 already laid out over a hundred dollars. " Martialis 
 Epigrammata^'' cried the auctioneer, and praised 
 the manuscript annotations of the learned testator, 
 from whom the copy came. 
 
 "Six dollars," answered carelessly a young man 
 who was chatting with Heymann Lisse. 
 
 Ephraim observed the man more narrowly; his 
 whole exterior, despite the semi-military dress, be- 
 trayed a certain genial freedom; over the clear blue 
 eye with its unfathomable mildness, wandering ignes- 
 fatui seemed to shoot occasionally, and over-mas- 
 tering asj^iration and discontent quivered in the 
 muscles of his face, which were now unusually ani- 
 mated and anon relapsed into languor; only about 
 the corners of his mouth seemed to be the eternal 
 seat of gay genii; that smile was the smile of a deep 
 and loving soul. Ephraim knew not how it was that 
 the face of the stranger, which struck one as by a 
 peculiar transparency, should not sooner have at- 
 tracted his notice; the stranger, also, fixed his pene- 
 trating look upon Ephraim, and the latter thought 
 to manifest a kind of secret recognition by continu- 
 ally bidding more and more for the book. 
 
 "That is, literally, a martial book, Mr. Secretary," 
 said Ileymann Lisse; "is it for his Excellency, the 
 commandant, and does it relate to the war ? " 
 
 " No. I want to secure it as a recruit for my regi- 
 ment. There is a bold sharp-shooter inside there," 
 replied the Secretary; "last night in the battle at 
 Faro^ I took over a hundred Prussian prisoners, a 
 
128 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 mere hap-hazard pack of fellows, mostly copper, but 
 boiled wliite, in good uniform. Money is growing 
 worse every day, and on the whole, what could I do 
 Avith tlie money, if I didn't buy books ?" 
 
 "Well, I always say: one of these poets is a very 
 dijfferent man from other folk," concluded Heymann, 
 and, as he always did in speaking, kept his head and 
 hands moving up and down, and then looked away 
 over his glasses, with open mouth, up at the Secre- 
 tary, for his trick had succeeded; Avhile he chatted 
 with the Secretary, the book had been knocked off 
 to Ephraim for sixteen dollars. 
 
 Ephraim now committed a somewhat awkward 
 mistake, while only meaning to show his politeness, 
 for he offered the stranger the free use of the vol- 
 ume; the latter seemed to notice the faux pas and 
 asked Heymann who the gentleman was. 
 
 "A namesake of yours," replied Heymann; "that 
 is Ephraim Kuh, a book-A;eeper, as you see, for he 
 holds a book in his hand." 
 
 "Ah," said the stranger, "you are the person 
 through whom I received the seventh scolding letter 
 from Mendelssohn; will you visit me sometime, then 
 we will talk about Martial ? I have hunted up a Sile- 
 sian rival, whom I will edit, in connection with 
 Uamler; we possess in him alone a IMartial, a Catul- 
 lus and a Dionysius Cato. Do you know Logau?" 
 
 "No. — Where shall I call upon you?" 
 
 "I live in tlie Junkerstrasse with the comman- 
 dant. General Tauenzien, and I am Secretary Lessing." 
 
 Violet trembled with a melancholy pleasure when 
 
NEW ACQUAINTAN&Ey-, 129 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 Ephraim came home and told her mli^J^mA^ 
 had to-day spoken. A man who had written'a'bbak 
 seemed to her a demigod, a saint, who did not live 
 at all like other men, — and this man, too ! the one 
 who had first labored to appease the sorrows of her 
 kindred in the faith, whom she loved with the holiest 
 veneration, whose words she had first learned to lisp 
 with stammering tongue; — her cheek glowed, she 
 kissed her brother on the mouth, for this mouth had 
 spoken to him words of intelligence. Violet begged 
 her brother, when he went away, to carry her re- 
 spects to the poet, but hardly had he gone when 
 she hurried down the steps after him, and begged 
 him to do no such thing. 
 
 Ephraim found Lessing at home. 
 
 "In good time," said the latter, after the first 
 greetings. " Here is a letter for you to read from my 
 Moses, but it was said long ago in the Bible: When 
 Moses came to Egypt and wanted to deliver the 
 slaves by King Pharaoh, or King Faro^ they heark- 
 ened not unto him, for short breath and hard labor." 
 
 Ephraim read that memorable dedication of Men- 
 delssohn's minor philosophical writings "to an ex- 
 traordinary man" [Lessing], only a few copies of 
 w^iich had been printed, and which closed with those 
 words of Lichtwer: 
 
 "If he don't hear, nor see, nor speak, nor feel, then, pray, 
 What does he do? what does he do? why, play! " 
 
 " lie plays," repeated Lessing, smiling, as he walked 
 up and down the room. " Good, I will write the Fhil- 
 9 
 
1 3 POE T A lYD MER CHA NT. 
 
 osophy of Gaming so clearly and concisely that 
 men shall speak in future of the four Holy Kings; 
 Cross, Spade, Heart, Diamond, are symbols of 
 the four elements of the spiritual and material 
 worlds; my French adventurer is not without mean- 
 ing reported to say: Tous les gens cf esprit aiment le 
 jeu a lafureur. Say, if you will, that the first re- 
 mark about gaming should be: one must not play at 
 all, and think of it, perhaps, still less. Play com- 
 bines the excitements of chase, battle and fireside; 
 these people do not know that they sit and show 
 their very soul, also, on the card before me; I see all 
 its quiverings. If I would not stagnate I must play, 
 that sets the waves of life in motion. Do you play, 
 too ? " These last words were addressed to Ephraim, 
 the rest had been half in soliloquy. 
 
 " I am played,''"' replied Ephraim. " My name is 
 .Cross-seven, because I have many crosses on my 
 back, or Seven of Diamonds, because I am always 
 hitting against something or somebody with my 
 'sharp corners." 
 
 "Witty, too," said Lessing, "exactly like Hey- 
 mann, but with a mixture of bitterness. That is not 
 good. One must swallow pills and not chew them. 
 It is a matter of serious question, too, whether an 
 unhappy man can be quite an innocent one. I think 
 not. He has either been wanting in wisdom, or con- 
 tinues to be so, as he does not rally himself." 
 
 Ephraim was startled at this challenge, but in a 
 ])(;culiar way of his own, he strongly em})hasized in 
 his reply his repudiation of any comparison of him- 
 self with Heymann. 
 
NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 131 
 
 Ei)hraim shared in this unseemliness of so many- 
 people who begin their intercourse with a new ac- 
 quaintance by immediately talking of some old 
 acquaintance of both parties, and in fact censuring 
 him; Lessing observed this, and did not immediately 
 reply; he wanted to allow Ephraim time to find a 
 milder transition. 
 
 "I like to see Heymann sometimes at my quarters; 
 he is not only accomplished in the tactics of chess- 
 playing, he is also a clear head generally," said he, 
 at last. 
 
 "I cannot help wondering," said Ephraim, "that 
 a man like you can keep up an intimacy Avith such 
 people without either bearing the sole expense of 
 entertaining them or else of being bored." 
 
 " I am never bored by anything or anybody," said 
 Lessing, and a gleam of displeasure stole over his 
 countenance, " else, in my busy times, I must have 
 died of inner dryness, if I had not for two days had 
 either a scientific or a poetic work in my hands, or 
 been much engaged upon one. Now, when I look 
 around me into the Library of Life, I find no book 
 so stupid that it may not at least be the occasion of 
 some sensible thought. The contrast keeps me 
 active. I have long had a desire to edit a journal, 
 that should bear the title: The Best things out of 
 poor Books. When I liave reached the point with 
 any man where his individuality promises me noth- 
 ing more, or even repels me, I instantly place myself 
 on a higher, I might say, artistic point of view with 
 regard to him; he becomes to me a study of charac- 
 
132 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 ter; I contemplate him as a special and original 
 formation of the one eternal primitive Human; I 
 trace out the logical sequences in his nature, throw 
 all abstract categories aside, and search after the 
 natural right and natural law of each. I demand 
 not of any bird in the world one single feather other 
 tlian he has. As the landscape painter on the bar- 
 renest heath can still make studies of the clouds and 
 atmospheric tints and tones, so, too, can he who would 
 sharpen his eye for the conformations of the spirit, 
 find everywhere studies a plenty." 
 
 " But does not such study, as an egoistic one, ex- 
 clude love ? " asked Ephraim, half aloud. 
 
 " You understand Latin ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then you must be aware that study here means 
 originally love^ — without love one can never become 
 acquainted with anything truly; I love the universal 
 human in each, in the very fact that I strive to know 
 him. Only he who loves men with pure good-will, 
 who unites himself with them by sympathy, by that 
 very act gains their soul. I mean the inward knowl- 
 edge of it. How delighted would my Dervisli Hey- 
 mann Lisse be," Lessing concluded abruptly, " if he 
 knew how we had raised ourselves on his back to a 
 subtle discussion." 
 
 A pause ensued; the first nearer acquaintance of 
 Ephraim seemed not very encouraging. 
 
 " Here is the Martial which I have brought you," 
 said Ephraim, at length; "it was a Avhim of mine to 
 want to possess all the editions of my prototype." 
 
 " Your prototype ? You are a brother in Apollo ? " 
 
NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 133 
 
 Ephraim handed him shyly and with downcast 
 eyes, a handsomely-written paper. 
 
 "Bravo !" said Lessing, as he read, "cutting wit, 
 not yet perfectly sharpened and polislied." 
 
 " Do you think rh^me indispensable ? " 
 
 "In this, as in ^A things, I am for republican 
 freedom, but it is a merit not to let one's self be 
 carried away by rhyme, but by skillful turns to give 
 it the stamp of necessity. You also show me that 
 Wernike is wrong, in the opinion that the German 
 language, on account of its many circumlocutions is 
 not adapted to this species of poem. Ramler and I 
 have changed even Logau somewhat, without mod- 
 ernizing him in the least. The reader is nowhere 
 so unpleasantly rebuffed as in an epigram which is 
 quite too short to permit one to overlook its uneven- 
 ness. Logau will, perhaps, in every respect, give 
 even you more freedom of mood and movement." 
 
 Ephraim was enraptured. He now related how, in 
 his leisure hours, he had been in the habit of giving 
 vent to his disgust at the world and its perversities; 
 he had lately begun to learn Latin, and in fact with 
 Martial; he had ventured to imitate him; and now 
 life had grown lighter with him, since he had found a 
 weapon against it, else he should have wept and wail- 
 ed; but now he could not compose a jeremiad ; all day 
 long he might be full of mourning and melancholy, 
 but when at evening he walked up and down his 
 chamber, he often had to laugh out loud at the wit- 
 ticisms that shot through his head; he would then 
 jump up and in the fullness of his exultation and joy 
 
134 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 of life leap over chair and bencli, then sit down and 
 wliittle out ail epigram, and then he would feel as 
 light and happy as if his whole being had gained 
 wings. 
 
 Lessing reflected upon the psychological phenome- 
 non, that the men who are in life the most tender- 
 hearted, when they begin to write are often the bit- 
 terest and most overbearing, and vice versa. 
 
 " You know I do not generalize," he said at last, 
 " and make every Jew I come across a type of the 
 entire confession, but still I think the Jews, by their 
 l)osition, have a vocation for wit, satire and epi- 
 gram. Wit, like salt, is not satisfying nourishment, 
 but it seasons food and keeps it from corruption. 
 Have not you, too, been struck with the fact that 
 wit, in your nation, is more the small change, but 
 that your great minds are rather pathetic, or subtle 
 logicians ? For instance Spinoza, Mendelssohn. 
 Does this, perhaps, lie in the contrast which — " 
 
 " Wit is often only the ape that squats upon the 
 back of the camel and makes faces," said Ephraim, 
 unfitly interrupting the speaker, " but what cares the 
 great world, the camel, what the ape carries on up 
 there ? " 
 
 " You, perhaps, support yourself in this deprecia- 
 tion of wit by the Swiss clown, Bodmer, who calls wit 
 the itch of the human mind; but wit is in the men- 
 tal life what lightning is in the life of outward nat- 
 ure; it cleanses the air, it arises, as lightning does, 
 from the conflict of two electricities." — 
 
 Kphraiin had a bad habit of seldom letting any one 
 
NEW ACQUAINTANCE. 135 
 
 say out his say. Lessing would have gone on to 
 show how scarcely ever happy nations or persons 
 are at the same time the witty ones, the Athenians 
 being the only exception to the rule. 
 
 "Now I understand," said Ephraim, " why my 
 sister Violet (who, by the way, is an enthusiastic ad- 
 mirer of yours,) has an equal dread of wit and 
 lightning both; if a tempest comes up, she, who is 
 otherwise so courageous, shuts herself in a solitary 
 chamber and closes her eyes that she may not see 
 the flash; but she has often complained to me that 
 every time it lightens she involuntarily opens her 
 eyes; whenever one undertakes by a flash of wit to 
 set any of her superstitious feelings in the right 
 light she begins to weep or leaves the room." 
 
 Lessing begged to hear more about Violet, and 
 Ephraim told him among other things: "My sister 
 was a singular child; as early as her sixth year she 
 was in love, — and with whom, think you? — with 
 none less than God Himself; when she felt so very 
 happy, she would raise herself on her toes, stretch 
 her little head forward, make up her mouth and kiss 
 into the empty air. Once when I asked her what 
 she did, she said: *I was kissing the dear God.'" 
 
 Lessing grew more and more pensive. "I will 
 visit you next time," he said to Ephraim, as the lat- 
 ter took his leave. 
 
10._YIOLET. 
 
 THE house of Hoses Daniel had worn since his 
 death a peculiarly free, one might say, bare as- 
 pect. While the father lived, his own strict order 
 reigned even in his absence; but now the children, 
 who had grown up to independence, knew no longer 
 any limitation. 
 
 As Lessing entered this house for the first time, 
 his glance wandered and it seemed to him always as 
 if he must ask for father and mother, though Vio- 
 let's fine sense of order gave all an air of neatness 
 and comfort. 
 
 Ephraim had introduced Secretary Lessing to his 
 sister as his " namesake and brother in Apollo," Lay- 
 ing his hand familiarly the while on Lessing's shoul- 
 der. 
 
 Ephraim knew only two forms of intercourse: 
 either to be stiff and reserved, or to be thorouglily 
 familiar. This fault will be found among most men 
 who live in narrow circles, and particularly with 
 most Jews, on their first entrance into a wider range 
 of life; partly, their hot blood and lively mobility 
 
VIOLET. 137 
 
 lead them, as soon as the first barriers of social man- 
 ners are down, to leap over to the other extreme of 
 familiarity; partly, custom brings this about, be- 
 cause their former social intercourse was confined to 
 Jews only, with w^hom they were on terms of inti- 
 mate familiarity, and had no forms to observe; and, 
 as a final reason, may be assigned, that a certain 
 kindly cordiality which knows no formal limitation 
 is a fundamental trait of the Jewish character. 
 That higher third step, at which, within the sphere 
 of social laws the unrestrained force of thought and 
 love can freely unfold itself, can be the product only 
 of a higher social life. 
 
 Violet, however, was the precise opposite of her 
 brother; she was shy and timid, and hardly dared 
 to lift her long lashes when Lessing spoke to her; 
 only when she thought he was not observing her, 
 her looks w^ould linger with silent satisfaction on his 
 noble features. But Lessing could well feel at such 
 times that Violet was looking at him, for in the look 
 of friendly partiality lies a peculiar magnetic power, 
 and mthout our seeing it, we feel when a look of 
 affection is fixed upon us. 
 
 Lessing could not avoid confessing that he missed 
 here the father and mother of the home, and he asked 
 Violet about their life and death. Violet recognized 
 in this inquiry the tender consideration of the newly- 
 introduced guest, who w^ould, by a kind of appeal to 
 the sainted ones, surround her, the unprotected and 
 unguarded, with their shielding spirits, and conjure 
 them to be the witnesses of his intercourse with her. 
 
138 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 With the whole sincerity of her filial love, Violet 
 now related the history of her father and mother, 
 and i)articiilarly did she dwell on the former and 
 called it a loss both for him and the guest that they 
 had not known each other. 
 
 Lessing had a peculiarly happy way of listening, 
 which encourages the speaker, and, as it were, re- 
 leases every word from his lips. — Thus was their 
 first meeting on hoth sides a refreshing one, and one 
 w^hich had the interest of a long-wonted and only re- 
 newed relation. 
 
 It may appear, to be sure, only as a relic of orient- 
 al usage, at all events it struck Lessing very agree- 
 ably, that on his oft-repeated visits he was always 
 entertained with something to eat and drink. This 
 hospitality gave at once the feeling of homely w^el- 
 come. Once when Lessing spoke his mind playfully 
 about this, and remarked how sensible and kindly it 
 w^as to entertain each other not merely with 
 words, but also to quicken life with bodily nourish- 
 ment, and how to this naturally associated itself 
 the symbol of the love-feast, Violet said, with a face 
 beaming and streaming with joy: 
 
 " How glad I am that you do not decline with the 
 usual excuses. But the poets have, to be sure, the 
 liappy mission to accept with new recognition and 
 love what is done involuntarily or from habit, and 
 teach us to do it in a Jew's spirit." 
 
 Lessing was once alone with Violet; they talked 
 of the prejudices, favorable or unfavorable, which 
 the first impression ou meeting with strangers left 
 
VIOLET. 109 
 
 behind it. Violet maintained that one had, as a child, 
 the true feeling in this matter; that we knew at once 
 who loved us and who not; and that one might keep 
 this childish tact for after life; that the last resort, 
 the feeling, from which there was no longer any ap- 
 peal, had in this case become the first, and that it 
 w^as a fine victory of feeling, that with a healthy 
 glance it discerned more than reason with all its 
 microscopes and spy-glasses. 
 
 An ambiguous smile hovered round Lessing's lips 
 as he answered: "You peel off for yourself the 
 bright red side of the fruit of the tree of life, for- 
 getting that there is also another dark side. Were 
 the prepossessions of the first impression always fa- 
 vorable, one might perhaps venture to let it have its 
 course; but consider those capricious prejudices 
 w^hich often attach themselves to the merest trifles; 
 our momentary ill-humors, which we often lay at the 
 door of the stranger's appearing, and again, a secret 
 embarrassment, unconscious, perhaps, even on the 
 stranger's part, which shuts him up within himself 
 and prevents his revealing himself freely. My way 
 is, in this matter, when a new phenomenon, which 
 comes into the circle of my acquaintance, inspires 
 me with a so-called idiosyncrasy or inexplicable re- 
 pugnance, to take all possible pains to be toward 
 this stranger all the more polite and amiable; he 
 will thereby turn to me his better side, which is 
 never wanting, and I have, by my own power of 
 will, and not by undetermined feeling, gained a new 
 human being to love." 
 
140 POE T AND MER CHA NT. 
 
 "Ah! you are, to be sure, a dear, heavenly-good 
 soul," said Violet, and pressed her lips together, just 
 as if she would recall the hastily- escaped word and 
 ref asten it to its source. 
 
 So long as the Jews have not risen into general, 
 social life, every conversation of a more general kind 
 which is carried on with them may very easily take 
 a turn and reference to Jewish relations, as they can 
 seldom let this point of view pass out of their sight. 
 In part involuntarily, but partly also with the design 
 of giving her unguarded words another connection, 
 Violet mentioned that she had learned to read Ger- 
 man out of Lessing's Comedy of " The Jews," and 
 she closed with the question: " You never had any 
 j^rejudice against the Jews?" 
 
 "O yes, indeed," answered Lessing, "not one of 
 those prejudices against the Jews with which we are 
 inoculated by education and history has been a 
 stranger to me. I do not generally care to speak of 
 my own things, I have long since put them away, 
 and I see their faults better than any one can; but 
 to you I may explain myself. I endeavored, first of 
 all, to emancipate myself from the limitations of my 
 class, and that I have attempted after my own fash- 
 ion in the comedy of the * Savant.' I went on far- 
 ther, to free myself also from the limitations of my 
 Confession, and to show that the highest virtue is 
 independent of every positive creed, and hence arose 
 the comedy called ' The Jews.' What we do honestly, 
 and though the immediate occasion related only to 
 ourselves, becomes also a blessing to others. That 
 
VIOLET. 141 
 
 maxim which I named to you in connection with 
 freedom from prejudice, api)roved itself to me most 
 strikingly in my acquaintance with the Jews; I am 
 persuaded that all Jew-haters, if they knew the Jews, 
 if they would regard with undiseased eyes their his- 
 tory and present state, would love and respect them 
 as they do other human beings. The Jcavs have one 
 virtue which they practice with enduring constancy; 
 they are grateful for every kindness, every favor 
 from a Christian, and never forget it. I learn to 
 copy them! I have already been repaid manifold 
 for my striving after freedom," continued Lessing. 
 He grasped the hand of Violet; it trembled in his, 
 but she dared not draw it back. " Without this 
 freedom it would never have been my lot to gain so 
 sweet and estimable a friend." 
 
 Violet cast down her eyes and Lessing imprinted 
 on her lips, which did not resist it, a hearty kiss. 
 Violet shrank and shuddered, she covered her eyes 
 mth her left hand, her right still lay in that of Less- 
 ing, which held it fast; no sound was audible. 
 
 " Do you love me then ? " Violet at last whispered 
 softly, keeping her face still covered. Suddenly the 
 consciousness awoke in Lessing of what had here 
 taken place; he saw the flame which he had kindled; 
 to play with the highest and holiest feeling of love, 
 to degrade it to mere toying, or to make it a lever 
 of ignoble wishes, — that was far and foreign from 
 so noble a spirit as Lessing. He stood there in a 
 painfully dumb pause; gladly would he have let 
 go the hand of Violet, if it might/ be. She may have 
 
142 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 felt that, and softly witlidrew her hand. A half- 
 rhetorical expression came at last to Lessing's aid. 
 
 " I love beauty, but also truth," said he at length, 
 " and so I must confess to you — " 
 
 "O! you are a glorious man," Violet broke in, 
 " this free confession that you do not love me makes 
 me, compels me, — if possible — to love you the more. 
 Fear not! fear not for me! it is quite another person 
 who says that to you. It is not I; the Christian 
 countess says it to you. My only wish is, I might 
 be double on earth, — on the one hand, — let it be, for 
 so indeed it must — trodden down, miserable, full of 
 endless yearning, immured, in one word: a Jewess; 
 and then on the other hand, a Christian countess, 
 free, bold and brilliant, full of joyous life and refined 
 culture, that I might fill your whole soul. How 
 would I sit beside you on horseback and sweep 
 through wood and pasture, how proudly would I 
 enter with you the sparkling hall, I would sit with 
 you beside the still fireside, but a look should tell 
 you that my soul was rooted in yours, firmly, deeply, 
 eternally. Ah! I cannot say what I would, I am al- 
 ready talking too much; but one thing I know: 
 only my heart would I fain have in the other guise; 
 I would bless you as never man was blest, I would 
 love you as God loves — but God loves us not. He 
 wills not that on earth a creature should be en- 
 tirely happy — " 
 
 Violet sank exhausted into herself, she pressed her 
 hand to her forehead and sobbed aloud. 
 
 " Dear friend," said Lessing, with a voice of ten- 
 
VIOLET. 143 
 
 der emotion, "what I feel I need not tell you; here, 
 where we now stand, there needs no word more of 
 union, only of tender mutual intelligence." 
 
 "Not even that," cried Violet, rising erect; her 
 countenance was transfigured, a tear hung like a 
 dew-drop upon the lashes, but her eye beamed bright 
 and clear, like the sun after a tempest; she spread 
 out her arms and embraced Lessing and kissed his 
 eyes and lips; "Farewell, forever farewell! " she sob- 
 bed out, and tore herself away from him. 
 
 For a few moments the two stood face to face 
 with each other; from the man's eye also there stole 
 a tear. 
 
 There was a knock; Tatibchen-Theodolinda en- 
 tered. Violet stood motionless, only her bosom 
 heaved and sank more violently. Lessing turned 
 aside and pressed the tear from his eye; it pained 
 him anew that this tender soul could not have even 
 the sweet sadness of farewell and renunciation pure 
 and undisturbed. Violet, meanwhile, quickly col- 
 lected herself, she took off her sister-in-law's shawl, 
 admired her beautiful toilet, her fine appearance, 
 asked after the health of her neighbor, her present 
 reading — all in one breath. Taiibchen absolutely 
 could not recover her senses; she looked, however, 
 upon Lessing, who, gazing down on the ground before 
 him, admired and compassionated Violet's ready 
 presence of mind. 
 
 He saw all the inward struggle of her soul, and 
 Violet rumpled up the ribbon of her apron, and 
 finally tore it in two with a gnashing of the teeth, 
 out quickly said, smiling: 
 
144 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 "Ah, dear sister, I must certainly have a lover, 
 and one, too, who thinks of me, for my apron string 
 has just snapped asunder; is not that an unfailing 
 sign?" 
 
 Tying up her apron again, she introduced Lessing 
 to her kinswoman; the latter was highly delighted 
 to become acquainted with the celebrated auteur and 
 praised his writings. 
 
 What to Lessing was noAv all literature and all 
 his own creative effort, here, where, not by free, 
 poetic combination, but immediately and almost 
 against his will, he had drawn a soul into a conflict 
 which approached the verge of frenzy ? 
 
 "There are moments," said Lessing, "when I 
 would joyfully sacrifice all I have produced, if I 
 could secure to a soul forever dear to me peace and 
 tranquillity." 
 
 A look of Violet's expressed to him inmost thanks, 
 and Tatibchen-Theodolinda succeeded, unconsciously, 
 in making a witticism when she called this speech 
 " the calumniation-^omt of all modesty." 
 
 So soon as propriety permitted, Lessing withdrew; 
 he would gladly have stayed still longer, for he had 
 said to himself in spirit that he could never more 
 return to these scenes, but the presence of Taiibchen 
 was uncomfortable to bear; with a simple farewell 
 he took leave of Violet, they gazed into each other's 
 eyes, they never met again 
 
 Thoughtfully, with his eyes fixed upon the 
 ground, Lessing was crossing the Jews' place, 
 when he heard a repeated call from behind him: 
 
VIOLET. Vvt- 143 
 
 " Mr. Secretary ! " lie turned roiindr— the mint- 
 farmer, Veitel-Epliraiiii, from ]3erlin, Violet's uncle, 
 stood before him. Lean and flabby, shook the 
 wrinkled skin of his tawny, pock-marked, and as 
 if worm-eaten visage, his eyes seemed as if they had 
 been pushed far out of their sockets by insatiable 
 greed, the receding high forehead, the pouting blu- 
 ish lips, seemed to betray cuiniing and slavish sub- 
 missiveness; the fine three-cornered liat, whose front 
 peak stood up in the air like an open bill, sat low 
 down on his neck and rested on the white neck-cloth ; 
 a fur-lined brow^n coat with long skirts encased his 
 middling-sized form; his hands thrust into his side- 
 pockets, jingling his money, stretching forward the 
 lower part of his body, rocking himself jjroudly to 
 and fro on his widely-parted legs, so stood Veitel- 
 Ephraim there, an incarnate calculating-machine, 
 whose dial-plate, the face, showed only the per cents, 
 gained. Lessing found a moment's pleasure, for the 
 sake of the contrast of his own present mood, in 
 observing this face more closely; he therefore listened 
 calmly to the inquiries of Veitel touching the senti- 
 ments of General Tauenzien as to the proposed re- 
 newal of the mint-contract, and finally, instead of 
 giving an explicit answer, passed his hand across his 
 forehead. "To-morrow, to-morrow," said he, "I 
 will tell you all about it, I cannot now," and quickly 
 ran away from him and out into the open air. 
 
 " An unpractical fellow, who never will come to 
 anything and I would gladly have put him in the 
 way of earning something," said Veitel to himself 
 10 
 
146 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 and looked compassionately and contemptuously, but 
 in fact angrily, too, after Lessing, for Lessing had 
 never let himself be prevailed on to lend the mint- 
 farmers any aid in their dealings with General 
 Tauenzien, who was at the same time General Mint- 
 Director. 
 
 Veitel now turned back and went to visit the 
 children of his deceased sister. 
 
 After Lessing's departure, Yiolet had sat awhile 
 in silence with her sister-in-law; she rubbed her 
 forehead with eau de Levante in order not to have 
 to say the few words that she had a headache. 
 
 " Entre nous soit dit^'' said Theodolinda, " I fancy 
 thou art in love with the Secretary; he has certainly 
 an entertaining a/r." 
 
 Violet smiled. "IIow canst thou think that a 
 Christian — " 
 
 ^'- Pourquoi 2^cis f '''' said Theodolinda. "I tell thee, 
 in thy j^ositio^i I would not hesiter a moment to be- 
 come a Christian ; thou canst then marry an officer, 
 and, only think ! to be a Mrs. Captain or Mrs. 
 Major, ah ! I should be in exilmm [elysium] for joy! 
 I'll tell thee whom thou must marry: the handsome 
 captain of Hussars, with the coal-black mustache. 
 How politely he saluted us last Sunday evening as 
 we went out of the Nicolai-gate; what eyes that 
 man has ! So full of enthusiasm, and with what 
 grace he sits on horseback, what a fine figure, how 
 splendid ! " 
 
 Without any preparatory knock, the door opened; 
 Violet sprang to meet her uncle Veitel with a " Wei- 
 
VIOLET. 147 
 
 come-in-God's name ! " she was glad to be released 
 from the talk of her sister-in-law. 
 
 " Since thou art so apart friendly to-day, Violet," 
 said Veitel soon after the first greetings, "I have 
 brought thee a pretty present; what shouldst thou 
 say to a diamond set in gold, that one might wind 
 round one's finger ? " 
 
 " Please, give me the ring ! " said Violet to her 
 uncle, who teasingly kept his hand in his pocket, 
 and at last replied: 
 
 " It is a thing, 'tis not a ring, yet has a ring." 
 
 " A chain, then, do give it me ! " 
 
 "'Tis not a chain, for it is not drawn, it goes 
 alone." 
 
 " A watch, then ? Ah ! please, do not torment me 
 any longer ! " 
 
 " It is not a watch, for a watch is wound up every 
 day, and this thing is put on every day." 
 
 Violet sat down again, displeased and silent; 
 Veitel stepped up to her smirking and laid his hand 
 upon lier smoothly parted hair: 
 
 " Na ! ninny ! " said he, " must one give thee a 
 hroad hint, then, with the poker ? It is a bridegroom 
 that I have brought thee; he gives thee ring and 
 chain and watches, and all thy heart can wish ! 
 But aprojws, I presume thou canst write and read 
 German well ? " 
 
 "Yes, indeed. Shall I read you a business let- 
 ter?" 
 
 " No, not this time, but I congratulate thee, for 
 now the thing is as well liquidated as a tlirice se- 
 
 ^^ 
 
148 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 cured mortgage. Th y bridegroom must have partout 
 a girl who can read and write German; for the very 
 reason that he himself understands nothing of it, he 
 wants a wife to look after the business letters; he 
 could have girls with tliree times as much money as 
 thou hast, for it is Herz Moses Helft, whose uncle, 
 Levi Gumperz, was, under our former King, the 
 greatest man. Thou needst not long to consider, 
 thou hast a quarter of a century on thy back, and 
 every year thou remainest single and growest older 
 thou depreciatest fifty per cent." 
 
 Violet made no reply, and when, at last, Yeitel 
 had departed, Taiibchen cried: ^^ Aide-toi et Dieu f 
 aidera! Thou canst escape this calcul by a coup; go 
 with me and my husband to church." 
 
 Violet thanked her sister-in-law and begged to be 
 left alone; she betook herself to her chamber and 
 threw herself with a loud cry upon her bed. Her 
 whole previous life passed by before her like a 
 cloudy dream; she had hovered between longing and 
 mourning ever since she had come to consciousness, 
 and when her recollection brought before her the 
 last hours, then, for the first time, she began to 
 weep. 
 
 « Farewell ! " she repeated, " farewell ! " She kissed 
 the bed-quilt, in which she had hid her face, shut 
 her eyes tight, and in her innermost soul beholding 
 his image, she smiled a still and blissful smile. It 
 had become evening, the moon shed her pale light 
 through the casement and transfigured the reposing 
 maiden as with a tender glory. 
 
VIOLET. 149 
 
 "I was created for renunciation," she said to her- 
 self. "Were I permitted to live alone with my sor- 
 row, it were well for me; could I die, it were better 
 for me. Had I never dreamed that there is a fairer 
 life, I were happy. No, I had never found him, 
 and without him never this hour, which outweighs 
 a thousand lives — him, who never can be mine; fare- 
 well, bliss of love ! But is not this love for him a 
 spoken, a settled thing ? No, no ! God ! no ! Since 
 he is not to be mine, I will spend my days in lowli- 
 ness and renunciation. God ! Fatlier, good, Heav- 
 enly Father, take me now to Thyself; send Tliy 
 Death-angel and release me; All-gracious One, take 
 pity on me ! " 
 
 She threw herself on the bed, on her knees, she 
 buried her head in the pillows, sobbed and wept and 
 prayed a long time. 
 
 All night and the whole day following Violet lay 
 in bed, weeping and wringing her hands; she scarcely 
 knew any longer that the tears ran down her cheeks, 
 she neither ate nor drank, and hardly answered a 
 question. At last, on the second evening, she sank 
 to sleep from exhaustion, and the next morning 
 awoke, as one renewed in strength. Her relations 
 besieged her more and more, entreating her to decide 
 upon Herz Helf t, and begged so fervently and repre- 
 sented to her that their only care was for her wel- 
 fare, that she was touched in her inmost soul by this 
 sympathy, and wished with all her heart she might 
 be able to live acceptably to these good friends. 
 Had she known that the chief reason why her rela- 
 
150 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 tives beset her so was tlieir having observed that 
 the suitor was not disinclined to Aved the daughter 
 of the rich Barmann Frankel, who would have piit no 
 constraint upon her feelings. How could she ever 
 have given a moment's tliought to a man to whom 
 it was all one whether he possessed this or that 
 woman as wife, who at this hour followed one, and 
 the next another, marriage-broker ? 
 
 Ephraim also urged his sister; at the same time 
 conjuring her by no means to suppress her feelings, 
 but she should only see the new suitor and become 
 acquainted with him, that she might have no re- 
 proaches to suffer from herself or others. Violet 
 consented. 
 
 How her heart beat, when, sitting at her work- 
 table, she saw her Uncle Veitel enter with the 
 stranger; with downcast look she returned his greet- 
 ing. She dared not raise her eyes. By degrees she 
 peeped up from her needle-work and confessed, to 
 herself, that she had fancied the stranger much 
 worse-looking; she could not help smiling at herself. 
 Veitel fancied that referred to the rough jokes with 
 which he had introduced the interview. Soon, liow- 
 ever, the sly old fox betook himself with liis two 
 nephews to the adjoining chamber f Violet trembled 
 through her whole frame when she saw lierself alone 
 witli the stranger. Tlie latter drew near lier and 
 spoke of the piece of muslin which she had just been 
 liemming; he went on to talk of Berlin, and how 
 much larger that city was than Breslau. Violet 
 plucked up courage and asked after his parents and 
 
VIOLET. 151 
 
 brothers and sisters. The stranger spoke with touch- 
 ing tenderness of his good mother. Violet breathed 
 easier. He who is capable of such filial love must 
 be a good man, she thought, and let herself be 
 drawn unreservedly into the strange windings of the 
 conversation. 
 
 Truly, w^asting sorrow and self-sacrifice have their 
 aberrations no less than a reckless flying-out at 
 others; only it is harder, in the former case, from 
 sympathy and mild forbearance, to exercise justice. 
 
 Who knows whether Violet in her renunciation 
 and subjugation of her heart's wishes was not glad 
 to set these wholly aside, and assume the right to 
 sorrow and its burden by the imposition upon herself 
 of a new duty ? 
 
 Violet in listening to the fervent words of her 
 suitor was conscious of only one thing, that the 
 world was not so dark and utterly dead as it had 
 seemed to her; there were still human beings who 
 pitied her desolate condition ; she opened her eyes to 
 light and life. 
 
 Violet shuddered inwardly, when, for the first 
 time, her bridegroom kissed her, and that as uncere- 
 moniously as if he had a year-old right to do so; she 
 now for the first time recognized what she had done. 
 
 Three days later Violet was the bride of Ilerz 
 Helft; she had freely confessed to him that she did 
 not love him, but that she would try with all her 
 heart to live in harmony with him and be true to her 
 plighted faith; without making any reply to that, he 
 smiled and hung on her neck a beautiful gold chain. 
 
152 POE T A ND MER CIIA NT. 
 
 The saddest was, that after Violet had become a 
 bride, the good people in Breslau heartily pitied her; 
 those who knew her and those who did not, praised 
 her goodness, her gentleness, and her tender soul, 
 and were sorry that she had not found a better lot — 
 to the dead the good people are always just, nay, 
 even merciful. 
 
 Violet had cause to be very unhappy. 
 
 The same day on which Violet had become a bride, 
 Chajem and Tatibchen had, in a village near Breslau, 
 very quietly gone over to the Christian Church; 
 Chajem received the name of Christian Achilles 
 Gottfried, and Taiibchen that of Marie Christine 
 Theodolinda. 
 
 The dream of Moses Daniel had, in a peculiar 
 manner, been fulfilled. 
 
11. —WOMAN'S LIFE. 
 
 VIOLET was born for a life of still contemplation, 
 almost for that of a mm, and she was to be a 
 Jewish trades-woman. Nothing strips off the magic 
 flower-enamel from the womanly nature like bustling 
 behind a shop-counter, or in the bar-room of an inn; 
 this haggling, chaffering kind of life and this being 
 on familiar terms with everybody, and having a 
 constant eye for bargains and profits, all this is so 
 opposed to the true womanly sentiment that it needs 
 a profound character of native delicacy or a quick- 
 witted gayety of disposition, not to fritter away the 
 inborn nobility of one's nature and toss it into the 
 scales of trade. What a long way from the trades- 
 woman to the nun! 
 
 When Violet, however, on her wedding-day was 
 dressed by the women, it struck her that this cere- 
 mony resembled the arraying of a nun. She had 
 to put on her grave-gown with the black lace cuffs; 
 her fairest ornament, her rich brown head of hair, 
 with the softly flowing locks, was mercilessly cut off, 
 and the ends bound with a white ribbon; a rich 
 
154 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 blond lace cap was drawn over her head; and as in 
 the case of the nun, not a hair of her head must any 
 longer be visible, for " dressed hair is immodest in 
 a woman," say the Babylonian Talmudists. A tear 
 swam in the eye of Violet, when she saw her face, so 
 changed, in the glass: had she known how her bride- 
 groom at the same moment in another chamber was 
 quarreling with her uncle about the not yet com- 
 pleted payment of the dowry, she would have wept 
 still more. 
 
 Violet had, in a twofold manner, been implicated 
 in the paragraphs of a business contract; Veitel 
 sought to supplant his rivals in the matter of the 
 mint-agency, the Itzig company; while he now alien- 
 ated from them a mainstay, Ilerz Ilelft, he sought 
 also to hold him fast to his side by family ties. 
 
 Violet's wedding took j^lace in Deutschlissa, a 
 small town only a few leagues distant from Breslau; 
 Veitel had arranged to have the wedding-feast held 
 there in the saloon of a Christian inn. They were 
 just drinking, after dinner, the black coffee (for the 
 Jews are forbidden, after eating animal food, .to 
 drink milk in their coffee), when the cat-gut-scraper, 
 whom the reader cannot have forgotten, Jissroele 
 Possenmacher, entered, placed himself in a chair 
 with his fiddle in readiness, began to cut his grim- 
 aces, and begged in Jewish-German doggerel a theme 
 for his improvisations. 
 
 " Coffee," cried Ephraira, and immediately the 
 scraper drew his fiddle-bow, and rhymed the while, 
 to the effect that the coffee was the man, the sutrar 
 
WOMAN'S LIFE. 155 
 
 the wonmn; one first took the woman with tlie silver 
 tongs, hut then afterwards one seized liold with his 
 hands; many a one made a mistake and took salt 
 instead of sugar, etc. These fooleries delivered in 
 Jew-gibherish greatly enlivened the company. Vei- 
 tel listened, leaning back in his chair and picking his 
 teeth; the hostess, a round, robust figure, came in; 
 Veitel arose and went to meet her; there followed 
 the hostess shyly a poorly-clad wife, as she seemed, 
 in her best years, Avith a homely face, on which care 
 and sorrow had left their traces. Veitel, with a jin- 
 gle, took a i^iece of money from his pocket, for he 
 loved to exercise benevolence before many witnesses; 
 the landlady signed to him confidentially with a 
 wink of the eye; Veitel put his counterfeit fippenny 
 back into his pocket. 
 
 "Na! Frau Annelisa," said the hostess to her fol- 
 lower, " the people have had their fill and won't eat 
 her up; she needn't make a face like a cat, when it 
 thunders; just put on a brave face and make two or 
 three nice verses on the pretty young lady bride and 
 the handsome gentleman bridegroom, then she, too, 
 mil get a douceur." 
 
 The bashful female, thus rallied, opened her eyes; 
 a bright gleam flashed out from them, and turning 
 to the bride she said: 
 
 "Little bride, so wondrous fair, 
 Pray, to me thy name declare." 
 
 "Violet." 
 
 Turning to the bridegroom she went on: 
 
156 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 ** Bridegroom, who for her dost burn, 
 Thy name also let me learn." 
 
 "Herz Moses Helft." 
 
 The rhymer pressed her sun-browned and toil 
 hardened hand tightly over her eyes, and when she 
 drew it away again, her whole face seemed transfig- 
 ured, and she began: 
 
 " Rose's red and lily's whiteness 
 
 On lip, cheek, brow, are all vain show, 
 And eyes that shine with noontide's sunny brightness 
 Give but a faint and short-lived glow ; 
 
 ** But heavenly Violet, gentle creature, 
 Born to be loved of all thou art ! 
 Nature has written on thy every feature 
 How sweet the graces of the heart ! " * 
 
 A loud " Ah! " and "Brava! " crowned the singer; 
 even Possenmacher executed a flourish on his fiddle 
 that made all the strings snap, cutting grimaces at 
 the same time. Ephraim took a platter, laid a ducat 
 in it, and collected contributions from the rest; Vio- 
 let tore a keepsake from her bridal girdle, and j^laced 
 it in the j^late; her spouse made a sour-sweet face at 
 it. When Ephraim came to Veitel, he said: 
 " Well, was not that magnificent. Uncle ? " 
 " This is paying too dear for the fay on," replied 
 Yeitel, rummaging about in his pocket for several 
 small coins, in order to make a great clatter on the 
 plate, " as I was saying, it's paying too dear for the 
 fayon, as if it were in pierced silver-work; if you 
 melt down what the woman has said, and deduct the 
 rhyming style, the net proceeds will not amount to 
 
 * The bridegroom's name, Herz, means Heart. 
 
WOMAN'S LIFE. I57 
 
 much. I hear thou, too, makest verses. Shall I tell 
 thee how verses strike me ? " 
 
 "Well, how?" 
 
 " Where we live, in Prenzlau, a horse went by one 
 day with a man on him. * Where you going 
 Mousey ? ' * all called after him. * How do I know ? 
 the horse knows ' — was his answer. Say now: isn't 
 it just so with verse and rhyme? Must not the 
 thoughts of people who make verses go whither the 
 rhyme will carry them ? " f 
 
 " You are a great critic," said Ephraim, smiling, 
 and brought the donations to the poetess with the 
 words: 
 
 "Take thou, we pray, 
 The gift we bring : 
 No hireh'ng's pay — 
 But grateful offering." 
 
 "That's right," cried Yeitel, "she began with 
 Thou, and thou must pay off the balance in full; 
 whatever one shouts into the wood is shouted back 
 again — says the proverb." 
 
 A quiver round the corners of the poetess's mouth 
 betrayed that she was on the point of again express- 
 ing her thanks in verse, but a correct feeling told 
 her that this would now be improper, and with a 
 polite courtesy she retired. 
 
 Ephraim stole after her as soon as was practica- 
 ble; he found her in a corner of the lower room of 
 the inn, with greedy appetite devouring a loaf of 
 
 * Or Smouch — nickname for a Jew. 
 t " Rhymes the rudders are of verses." 
 
158 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 bread and taking at intervals a swallow of beer. 
 When she saw him, a flush suffused her cheek. He 
 sat down confidentially beside her, and soon they 
 were engaged in a close conversation, as if they had 
 been two old acquaintances. The stranger told all 
 about her youth, how she had tended cows all the 
 summer long — 
 
 "Ah! " cried Ephraim, "it must have been pleas- 
 ant for you despite all the hardships, to live undis- 
 turbed and be able to dream on the sunny mountain- 
 meadows — " 
 
 " Yes, in thought that is more beautiful, but I had 
 to look after my cows and knit my stockings the 
 while, and if I came home and had forgotten my 
 knitting over a book, then I had more scoldings or 
 even blows than potatoes to eat; but still out-of- 
 doors there I was always gay and merry; I sang to 
 the valley down below the songs out of our hymn- 
 book, almost all of which I knew by heart; and then 
 all became so fre^h and fragrant and lovely again; 
 I ventured to make a new verse to the church-song 
 and finally to compose a new hymn myself. God 
 will forgive me, I am no longer as pious as once, for 
 often the tempter asks me: Wert thou not happier 
 as a stupid peasant-girl? Are not the songs that 
 live in thee thy torment ? But no, without this heav- 
 enly faculty, I should long ago have broken down, 
 for my cross is heavy — I hope my Saviour will appear; 
 only I would sing once, with free voice, the praise 
 of our immortal hero, the great Frederick — " 
 
 " Wliat has the great king done for you ? " asked 
 Ephraim. 
 
WOMAN'S LIFE. I59 
 
 " For mc ? " asked the poetess, and a flush shot 
 through her face, " for me has this earthly god per- 
 formed his exploits, greater than all miracles of 
 old time, so that I am astonished at them and adore 
 him. Hail to the hero, who against a world of infu- 
 riate enemies stands immovable! hail to us that over 
 him and us the same sun shines! " 
 
 Ephraim looked thoughtfully and with shame to 
 the ground ; he reproached himself with his selfish- 
 ness, and yet he could not love this " great Freder- 
 ick; " to this woman he was a hero of the faith, for 
 she was a Protestant. He compared his course of 
 training with that of the poetess, and here the new 
 position in which he stood, revealed to him again its 
 new trial; doubt forced its way into the very holiest 
 of holies within him; the fount of the Muses, from 
 which he had hitherto drunk, appeared to him as a 
 cistern in the desert, which might easily dry up and 
 waste away: here he found a live, bubbling spring 
 which meandered away in shady valley-grounds, 
 through the flowers. Even the poor solace of being 
 exalted in hours of devotion above his fate and his 
 circumstances, seemed to him hereby still more im- 
 poverished. By a singular chain of ideas he sud- 
 denly saw how four rivers had poured forth from 
 the Paradise of poetic inspiration: God, Freedom, 
 Fatherland and Love. He was no longer younof, and 
 not yet old enough to sing of God alone; Freedom 
 and Fatherland he knew not, and Love had hitherto 
 hovered before him only in formless longing. 
 
 " Is it not love that has taught you to compose 
 
160 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 such beautiful poetry ? " he asked the stranger, and 
 she replied : 
 
 "Without love, which I describe so often. 
 With no tender tie my heart to soften, 
 
 I became a wife — a mother, too ! 
 What can maidens know of Love's sweet bhsses. 
 Whom a rude and daring soldier kisses, 
 
 Who in war a city's wall breaks through ? 
 
 *' When Love's songs to loving hearts I render. 
 Then I think of him, the man most tender, 
 
 Whom I ever longed for — vainly sought; 
 Bride ne'er kissed with holier desire, 
 Than my soul, in Sappho's tender fire, 
 
 Kissed the lips I felt not but in thought." 
 
 The dusk which had gradually stolen in saved 
 the blushes, which she unnecessarily covered with 
 her apron, from being recognized. 
 
 She related simply that she had been twice wed- 
 ded; her first husband had divorced himself from 
 her, and now she was married to a tailor named 
 Karsch, and lived in a village not far off. Her 
 voice trembled more vehemently as she mentioned 
 her present condition. They continued for some 
 time longer to converse confidentially, and Ephraim 
 rejoiced, " to-day, wlien his sister in the fiesli was 
 separated from him, to have found a sister in 
 Apollo." 
 
 " And let this be a brother of ours," said the poet- 
 ess, drawing from her bosom a loose sheet. It was 
 the first " Songs of a Prussian Grenadier," whose au- 
 thor was then not yet known. 
 
 She took a little bundle with some bread and 
 
WOMAN'S LIFE. 161 
 
 meal under her arm, extended her hand to Ephraim 
 witli the words: "Remember sometimes the unhappy 
 Fran Karsch," and left the room. 
 
 Ephraim went out into the garden behind tlie 
 house; it was a fine autumn evening and a moon- 
 light night lay upon the earth. From the kitchen 
 was heard the jesting of the servants and carriers 
 with the maids; he went on to where no human 
 voice could reach him, he looked up to the eternal 
 stars, he looked down into the deepest recesses of 
 his soul, where the waves of his spirit moved to and 
 fro in their crystal bed. Suddenly sounded from the 
 silent town the evening bell for prayer. Ephraim 
 almost involuntarily took off his hat; he spake to 
 that Being who dwells above the stars and down in 
 the depths of the human breast: "Lord God, there 
 is much sin and sorrow on this fair earth ; I too am 
 sinful; Lord God, let me find her in whom I shall 
 find life and love; lo! my heart is full of love; give 
 me the spouse whom thou hast created for me, be- 
 fore I seek her in erring ways and am lost! " 
 
 He stood there leaning calmly against a tree; his 
 glance swept away into the distance, into the infinite, 
 and already the doubt like a green lizard rustled 
 with bright eyes through the flowers of his faith 
 and his love: What has Love to do on this earth, 
 where all turns upon its own axis, selfishness? And 
 the stars overhead there, they march on in their 
 measured course, whether we in joy or sorrow, war 
 or peace, creep round on this earth. 
 
 Suddenly it seemed to him as if he heard behind 
 13 
 
162 rOET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 him the voice of an angel calling his name; he 
 passed his hand across his forehead, as if he would 
 scare away the dream, but the call was again and 
 again repeated, and nearer and nearer and more and 
 more sweetly. At length Philippina, his uncle Abra- 
 ham's little child of thirteen years, stood before him 
 and told him how she had seen him go into this gar- 
 den. He must come now, for the carriage was har- 
 nessed, and they must reach home before the gates 
 were shut. 
 
 Ephraim laid his hand upon the head of the child, 
 whose black locks fell to her shoulders; with a pen- 
 itent look of thanks he glanced upAvard, then bent 
 down to the child, who gazed up at him gayly and 
 innocently with her clear brown eyes, in which 
 scarcely the least white could be noticed; he im- 
 printed a kiss on the smooth white forehead, over 
 which no care or compunction had ever passed. 
 
 "Wilt thou be my little bride?" he asked the 
 child, and she replied: 
 
 " Shall I too get such a fine chain and such good 
 sweet things, as thy Violet has from her bride- 
 groom ? " 
 
 " Yes, and a thousand times prettier and sweeter," 
 said he, and offered to kiss the child again; but as 
 if from some mysterious feeling she resisted with 
 all her might. So Ephniim took the little maiden 
 by the hand, and went with her to the house. Phil- 
 ippina skipped and danced merrily along by the hand 
 of her musing cousin, for her inward liveliness never 
 let her walk quietly and with measured steps. 
 
WOMAN'S LIFE 1G3 
 
 Ephraim asked his uncle Abraliam, the father of 
 his young elect lady, where then was his sister Vio- 
 let ? He learned that she had gone off secretly 
 and without taking leave of any one. Ephraim was 
 sad; now, when she was taken from him, he felt all 
 at once what he might have been to this sister, who 
 had so deeply loved and understood him, and whom 
 he had so often thrust from him. 
 
 Ephraim knew not fully the unfathomable sorrow 
 of this lost soul. Since the hour of her betrothal, 
 when she felt she must obey an unchangeable neces- 
 sity, Violet had yielded without a will of her own 
 to all the consequences of that moment; nay, she 
 took pleasure in this martyrdom; but still the con- 
 sciousness of her fall from her own better self stir- 
 red within her; she feared an unguarded word 
 might betray it, and therefore she thanked her hus- 
 band with tears in her eyes when he complied with 
 her first request, and secretly went off with her on a 
 journey. 
 
 Peace and rest to their extinguished life! 
 
 The wedding guests all made ready to return 
 home, only Veitel remained behind. 
 
 Ephraim was sitting in the carriage with his uncle 
 Abraham and wife and little Philippina. 
 
 " It will soon be time for thee to look about for a 
 spouse," said Abraham to his nephew. 
 
 "I have done so already, and here she sits," said 
 Ephraim, pointing to Philippina. Abraham smiled, 
 for he took it as a joke; but his shrewd wife silently 
 calculated that Philippina in three years would be 
 sixteen, exactly the age at which she was married. 
 
164 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 It might have been regarded as prefigurative, that 
 Philippina during this longer conversation had al- 
 ready dropped to sleep; her gay childhood could not 
 guess what preparations were going on around her, 
 and when she awoke to conscious life, Ephraim 
 would fain clasp her in his arms. 
 
 It may in manifold ways be regarded as a sign 
 of one's having morally or physically outlived him- 
 self when mature youths or men take their wives 
 from the nursery. It is a new charm to the biases, 
 a safe security for the deceived and disappointed; 
 very seldom is it a consequence of original and un- 
 touched purity; disguised cowardice or self-compla- 
 cency lies very often in the background. One is 
 here so certain of his victory; the striving after di- 
 rect overmastery, built upon an accustomed relation 
 of dependence, is not seldom the secret motive of 
 those child-loving men. Only two equally devel- 
 oped spirits, at a corresponding stage of maturity, 
 can clasp each other in genuine and enduring love; 
 but that that higher similarity, which is at the same 
 time the true unity, must rule in love as in marriage, 
 this is a point to which but few men can attain. 
 
 Ephraim, in his continued attachment to I*hilip- 
 pina, was conscious of the noblest motives: he would 
 educate for himself a wife, pure, free and full of 
 fresh life, he would early open her eye and heart to 
 life's finest meanings; he would lead her youth con- 
 sciously into riper age; he would bend back before 
 her the branches which hit us in the face when, in 
 the woods of error, we seek the tree of truth and 
 
WOMAN'S LIFE. 165 
 
 knowledge; with the nohlcst and purest sentiments 
 of his own life he would nourish her virtue; but 
 above all, he would let her feelings and hopes, her 
 love and longing, ere yet the breath of a stranger 
 had touched or a passing cloud brooded over them, 
 find in his spirit a resting-place and an echo. 
 
 Great and incessant, however, as were the pains 
 Ephraim took in the training and teaching of Phil- 
 ippina, nevertheless he could not succeed in keeping 
 in his hands the bridle of her spirit and guiding it 
 at his will. The coy and wayward nature of Phil- 
 ippina often threw suddenly his artistically modeled 
 ideals topsy-turvy; the elasticity of her spirits caused 
 his exhortations at such times to bound off without 
 a trace. The natural tact of children often makes 
 them the quickest to discern the faults and whims of 
 those around them, especially their teachers. Phil- 
 ippina had soon observed that her master, who led 
 her through the story of Telemachus, took jDleasure in 
 the dissection of feeling, in coquetting with sorroAV. 
 The headstrongness and the overflowing raillery of 
 Philippina;, whose mind rapidly developed, often 
 brought Ephraim to the brink of despair, for he was 
 at this time doubly sensitive and susceptible. 
 
 In a life wherein every new morning offers new 
 strife and struggle, when one feels himself not un- 
 consciously nor heedlessly borne along by the stream 
 of universal excitement, there will be formed a 
 steady observation, adjustment, and in a certain 
 sense, a book-keeping of one's own nature, w^hich 
 may lead to self -education, but at the same time to 
 self-torment. 
 
166 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Though nearly thirty years okl, Ephraim still be- 
 lieved he had mistaken his position in life; the occu- 
 pation of a merchant seemed to him to contradict 
 his inner nature; he deemed himself born to be a 
 litterateur; a born poet he no longer held himself to 
 be, for he very seldom succeeded in " flying to the 
 land of Poesy." He consoled himself with thinking 
 that he had enough sense of poetry and its tenderer 
 stirrings to enable him to enjoy life and love in their 
 deepest felicities; the consciousness of neglect, the 
 still mourning over the disorders of life, should find 
 in love their expiation and exaltation. Born of 
 resignation, love should nevertheless open to him 
 her inexhaustible fullness; and hence he became 
 chagrined and sad Avhen he fancied Philippina in- 
 diiferent to the tenderer aspirations of the genial 
 life; he had been compelled to give up general soci- 
 ety and poetic creativeness, and noAV he must re- 
 nounce love also. 
 
 If Ephraim's vision had not been vi^rapped in mani- 
 fold mists, he could not have failed to recognize the 
 true nature of Philippina and to appreciate her heal- 
 ing-power for his sickly inner condition. A disposi- 
 tion like that of his sister Violet, in whom his mel- 
 ancholy and his wailing had found only an answering 
 echo, would only have aggravated his morbid ten- 
 dencies, not appeased them; here in Philijjpina was 
 youthful buoyancy and vigor of life; what cared she 
 for Judaism or Christianity ? The sun was bright, 
 the flowers fragrant, her songs rang out clearly, and 
 sky-blue became her right well. 
 
WOMAN'S LIFE. IG'7 
 
 The Italian songs which Philippina, with fresh 
 and sprightly voice, sang to the lute, had now be- 
 come almost the only thing that made his inter- 
 course with her cheering to Ephraim; they were 
 mostly of a sportive, bantering character, and 
 Ephraim silently made the observation that even the 
 bird in the cage can dream himself away on the 
 wing of his song into the free, murmuring wood, 
 and rock himself there in the branches. If Philip- 
 pina remarked his being out of humor, she imper- 
 ceptibly struck a minor key, and sang a love-song 
 full of melting fervor; stealing the while sly and 
 roguish glances at him, she would see how his eye 
 lighted up and his whole being became animated, 
 for where such tones issue from the soul, there 
 must, he said to himself, be a deeper recognition; 
 but suddenly the spirit of wantonness got the upper 
 hand, and she not seldom j^arodied what she had 
 just sung. 
 
 When Ephraim delivered his ideas and informa- 
 tion with all earnestness, Philippina would often 
 take pains to misunderstand him; when in the course 
 of conversation he would unfold to her a new view, 
 she would glide over it without attention. 
 
 Once, as Ephraim was analyzing to Philippina 
 in inspired words the loftiness of the productions of 
 Racine and Corneille, she seemed to be listening at- 
 tentively, but said at length: "I do not know 
 whether these heroes can eat soup and meat and 
 wear stockings. I cannot imagine what they have 
 to occupy themselves with in life." 
 
168 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 A profound grief gnawed at Ephraim's soul. 
 When he was at home, he used, in the spirit, to con- 
 verse by the hour with Philippina; the roundness 
 and freshness of her nature grew more and more 
 clear to him; with heart beating high he went day 
 after day to her house, and left it again, silent, self- 
 absorbed and desolate, to pursue again the same 
 path the next day with the same hopes and disap- 
 pointments. 
 
 Nothing is easier for a man of some intellectual 
 ability, but nothing more dangerous, than in a lim- 
 ited sphere of life, and one devoted to the gaining 
 of a livelihood, to make himself felt as a superior 
 mind, a genius, and to appropriate to himself the 
 social and royal prerogatives of such majesty. 
 Hardly had Ephraim in the silent consciousness of 
 his higher aspirings overcome the incipient jeers at 
 his unpractical crotchets, when he already began to 
 take pleasure in this antagonism to his circum- 
 stances, and to take pains to bring it out in sharper 
 relief; he was even gratified at times to be called 
 un practicable, transcendental and enthusiastic; he 
 would then smile silently, for he saw therein only 
 the confirmation of what he ascribed to himself as a 
 just pride. Often he would go into Philippina's 
 room, hastily throw off his hat and cloak, seat him- 
 self musingly in a corner, or stride up and down the 
 room, raking his hair with his hands; then when 
 Pliilippina modestly asked the cause of this, he gen- 
 erally said: "Let me be, I am excited, it will soon 
 die out, of itself." 
 
WOMAN'S LIFE. 169 
 
 Once, when at twilight he had entered her room 
 in this style, Philippina stole softly to the chair, 
 took his cloak, wrapped herself up in it, and storm- 
 ing up and down the chamber, tearing through her 
 locks with her hands, she cried : " Leave me, I am 
 excited, my name is Narr* — cissus, Narr — cissus!" 
 She swung herself about with such inexpressible 
 grace, her perfectly developed form moved so har- 
 moniously and freely, on her arch face lay such a 
 lovely smile, that any other would have clasped her 
 Avith rapture; only Ephraim sat there cold and 
 grum. Philippina quietly took the cloak off again, 
 and from that hour there was a gulf between her 
 and Ephraim. She perceived that he would not 
 recognize her proper and peculiar nature, and 
 wanted tyrannically to remodel her after his own 
 wishes. The railleries and little quarrels which the 
 two now continually kept up on both sides divided 
 them more and more widely, and Ephraim at last 
 withdrew from the field. 
 
 * German for Jbol. 
 
12— THE PRACTICAL HEAD. 
 
 EPHRAIM formed the resolution to retire from 
 business and live a life of leisure; he had been 
 disappointed in the hope of being able to build him- 
 self up a domestic life of his own on the firm ground 
 of love; he needed now no longer any increase of 
 property, for the satisfaction of his own wants his 
 present means were fully adequate. Lessing had 
 advised him to make himself master of the rules of 
 German prosody, and now when he had been all 
 day long counting, weighing and verifying moneys, 
 he went in the evening to a similar labor with words 
 and syllables; each must legitimate itself as to ex- 
 traction, character and current value; here too he 
 cultivated his most frequent and finely measured 
 intercourse with the female sex — the accented sylla- 
 bles. All went on after the strictest order of pre- 
 cedence, for up at the head sat Themis in the form 
 of Professor Ramler on Parnassus, that is, in his 
 critical chair, and behind him a great blackboard, 
 on which the sins of all heedless or willful traitors to 
 the law were chalked down. 
 
THE PRACTICAL HEAD. 171 
 
 ITndcM- the pretext of illness Eplirnlm sat fit first, 
 l)y way of experiment, for some days in his chamher. 
 He waits the coming of a heavenly visitor: there lie 
 sits at the table, — all is still around him, not a mur- 
 mur of the eternal rush and roar of the world's life 
 reaches him, he can listen to the lightest whisper of 
 his inner being; from all experiences, references, and 
 connecting links with every-day life he has disen- 
 tangled himself entirely; he will soar freely into 
 the free ether, into that higher stratum of the at- 
 mosphere where the mists and vapors of this lower 
 sphere are melted away, there will he absorb a lumi- 
 nous ray of genius, of divinity and of original hu- 
 manity and bind it as a halo around his brow. 
 But suddenly there starts up before him some mem- 
 ory, some thought, some person from the terrestrial 
 region; his father, or Heymann Lisse stand suddenly 
 before him, and he finds himself creeping and pant- 
 ing on the ground. This overstrained, every-day, 
 life-despising ideality had suddenly sprung back to 
 its opposite; for the very reason that he fancied he 
 might and must poetize outside of, and above, his life 
 and work, for the very reason that he did not attempt 
 to glorify and harmonize this life itself, so much the 
 more forcibly did it fasten itself upon him as an 
 avenging spirit, and lame his flight. 
 
 The nicely-made pens and the fine white paper 
 still lay untouched before him; he leaned back smil- 
 ing in his chair, and sadly contemplated his environ- 
 ment and his miserable efforts; he scrawled gro- 
 tesque figures on the paper, he chewed the pen as if 
 
1Y2 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 it were the cud of reflection ; still the holy spirit of 
 Poesy seems farther and farther from coming upon 
 liini; he paces up and down the chamber, takes a 
 book and reads, but knows not what he has read; he 
 copies one of his own poems, in a very beautiful 
 hand, in German text, and framed with the boldest 
 strokes, and at last he succeeds in addressing an 
 apostrophe to God, to Spring, or to his own spirit 
 in the form of an ode. He had pretended a sickness 
 as an excuse for his seclusion; he knew not, himself, 
 how little of poetic license there was in this. 
 
 Ephraim called on Lessing; he showed him again 
 several of his poems and bewailed his unhappy fate. 
 
 "No man can serve two masters," said Ephraim; 
 " if I would strike Apollo's lyre, immediately Mer- 
 cury strikes in with his wand, or yard-stick, on which 
 the two snakes are called Debit and Credit^ and hiss a 
 catch between them." 
 
 " It is a very fine touch in Homer," said Lessing, 
 "that Ulysses, even when he is now in Ithaca, w^ails 
 and laments and does not recognize that he is already 
 at home; so it is with you, you worry yourself in vain 
 to hang upon your spirit the toga or chasuble of the 
 ode, and make it swing the censer; the wooden sword 
 and the motley jacket of Harlequin would fit you 
 much more naturally: meanwhile you can very well 
 exchange the wand for the sword. Let us take the 
 nearest example : my friend Mendelssohn serves in the 
 silk-establishment of the widow Bernhard, and is, 
 withal, an able philosopher; I write here orders and 
 all that sort of thing, and I know how much more 
 
THE PRACTICAL HEAD. 173 
 
 insignificant occupations weary one than the most 
 intense study, and how this round of pretended en- 
 joyments and diversions upon diversions shatter the 
 blunted soul. O my time! my time! my all that I 
 have! and that I should sacrifice it so utterly! " 
 
 Lessing looked down dejectedly, and suddenly was 
 silent. 
 
 "Perhaps it lies in the character of our times," 
 suggested Ephraim, " that no one can be quite com- 
 plete. Our king himself is both soldier and philoso- 
 pher, and yet the two properly exclude each other; 
 the Prussian Eagle also has two heads, only he has 
 skillfully hid the one behind the other and is not so 
 open as the Austrian." 
 
 Lessing started at this bold view of the matter; 
 he seemed, however, unwilling to fall in mth it, for 
 still keeping to the nearest subject he continued: "I 
 told you before, at our first interview, that you seem 
 to me to have a pre-eminent talent for the Ej^igram; 
 that is to say, I see in the Sententious Poem, or, ac- 
 cording to the old usage, in the Epigram, a poem in 
 which after the manner of the inscription proper, 
 our attention and curiosity are drawn to some indi- 
 vidual object, and kept more or less in suspense, 
 that they may content themselves with one thing. 
 I differ herein from Scaliger, Boileau and Battaux. 
 We will talk over that subject more fully. What I 
 would say to you now is that you must recognize 
 your capacity gratefully; your calling in life will not 
 hinder, nay, it will much rather help you. Who 
 would be all day long making epigrams ? Do you 
 
174 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 see, these little verses are more pithy than all your 
 bucolic poems: 
 
 "TO ROSALIE. 
 
 *' In a true maiden, Rosalie, I own, 
 A type of Paradise is shown; 
 We learn loo oft its fitness to our cost, 
 So soon this Paradise is lost." 
 
 " Ah, that was meant for a long-vanished flame, the 
 daughter of my writing-master," said Ephraim. 
 
 "All the better," said Lessing; "no incident oc- 
 curs just in the way that the poet can use it. All 
 poesy creates out of truth and fantasy a third thing, 
 which is neither of the two and yet both. I like 
 this too very well," continued Lessing after a pause; 
 "here you certainly stand on your own ground: 
 
 "THE GOOD PEOPLE. 
 
 "This race God's image show, from whom they came, 
 To their poor brothers merciful and mild men, 
 They heal the sick, no fee they claim. 
 What is this singular nation's name ? 
 Jews are they? Christians ?— They are Wild-men. 
 
 " Here you have got above the point of view of mere 
 specialty: Poetry is the herald of Humanity; I will 
 attempt that in a larger work, but first of all my 
 soldiers here must sit to me for a picture, which I 
 draw fresh from the life and the times. Perhaps I 
 may then find a higher, a heavenly Jerusalem where 
 the great dissensions of the world are liealed." 
 
 Lessing's eye shone; his whole countenance was 
 radiant in the light; it seemed as if, at this moment, 
 in the lively conversation, as he for the first time. 
 
THE PRACTICAL HEAD. 175 
 
 in words that to him only were intelligible, touched 
 upon a secret silently carried in the depths of his 
 heart; he now saw also the ground and the forms 
 wherein he was to cause a new revelation to rise. 
 
 Lessing had gazed into the face of the pure spirit 
 and his face shone, and the word " Nathan " means 
 in Hebrew, " He has given it." 
 
 Lessing had now to follow a different discussion. 
 
 Ephraim mentioned how the delineations of the 
 life and manners of savage nations, particularly 
 those of Otaheite, always made a powerful impres- 
 sion on him; — virtue and moral purity without 
 priests, obedience to law without police, — here was 
 found the genuine and healthy human nature; and 
 that he often felt in himself an almost irrepressible 
 impulse to wander forth, there to lead among the 
 simpler children of nature a peaceful and healthful 
 life. 
 
 Lessing had spoken of the truth regarding the 
 fictitious natural state of the philosophers and the 
 actual condition of the wild men, when the conversa- 
 tion was interrupted by the entrance of Veitel 
 Ephraim. 
 
 "Only I beg you not to spoil my nephew any 
 more," said he to Lessing, half smiling, in the course 
 of the conversation; "he is already unpractical 
 enough and only half a scholar; the Christian can 
 be a scholar, what harm can it do him? he, to be 
 sure, is treated well, and is in good repute; but 
 a Jew who has no money and earns none, is a cipher. 
 The only practical literate who has yet come to my 
 knowledge was Voltaire." 
 
176 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 " How so ? " asked Lessing. 
 
 " How so ? " replied Veitel; " he got money enough 
 together, like a genuine practical man." 
 
 They talked now of the falling-out of Voltaire 
 and Frederick, and Veitel remarked: 
 
 "Every man has his fancies: other kings — one has 
 his pleasure in handsome women, another in the 
 chase, or he plays with soldiers, or is a horse-jockey; 
 a third makes his hobby-horse of religion, of 
 antiques or of painted canvas. Our king cares for 
 none of those things; he finds his enjoyment in hand- 
 some dogs, in monkeys and in jokers; Voltaire was 
 his court-fool; if one should barber an ape and put a 
 ring on him, you could not tell one from the other; 
 you know the story, of course, how at a review he 
 was taken for an ape. 1 tell you, he was a fellow 
 no dogs could catch, a shrewd, speculative head; he 
 tried to cheat Abraham Hirsch himself with Saxon 
 bank bills and false jewels, but though they were 
 ever so cunning, the Jew is seven times their match; 
 in a matter of bargain, they must get up early be- 
 fore they outwit a Jew." 
 
 Ephraim rumpled a paper which he held in his 
 hands, and bit his lips till they almost bled; the re- 
 pulsive and unblushing self-complacency with which 
 many trades-people set themselves off against un- 
 practical men and phantasts, as they call all men of 
 an ideal aspiration, stood out sharply before his view; 
 he despaired of a spiritual elevation of the Jews, as 
 he saw their whole invention and industry diverted 
 only to gain. 
 
THE PRACTICAL HEAD. 177 
 
 He feared for the favorable sentiments of Lessing. 
 
 "What is your opinion of the Jews?" he asked 
 him one day, when Veitel had gone to the General's. 
 
 " You mean to ask," replied Lessing, " what I think 
 of your uncle. The pre-eminence of man over the 
 beast is commonly argued from the fact that man 
 alone has reason and a thumb. Your respected 
 uncle uses his human reason in very shrewd business 
 speculations, and his thumb in very industrious 
 counting of money. Such a use of man's pre-eminent 
 endowments you find in thousands of forms among 
 the most divers confessions of faith. Characters of 
 this kind may, however, be of great use to you in 
 your poetry." 
 
 " But my uncle exasperates and disgusts me every 
 time I dispute with him." 
 
 " Then leave that off," said Lessing, smiling. " It 
 is an old law of honor in the duel, that one shall 
 fight only with his equals in birth: apply the same 
 rule so far as possible in the intellectual contest." 
 
 Ephraim smiled contentedly ; he saw in this admo- 
 nition a covert praise also, and with the characteristic 
 turn which his mind took from every outward joy, 
 he said: "That's good. You are right. I too, as 
 often as I bring in a knave caught in verse, will ex- 
 claim as our king did at the sight of the captured 
 Pandour: ' And is it with such rascals that I must take 
 up the cudgels! ' That helps one; and our king has 
 after all gained greatness and renown even from his 
 contest with the rascally Pandours. You shall have 
 your satisfaction in my prisoners." 
 12 
 
178 POE T AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Ephmim went from Lessing contented and happy; 
 he had been brought by him to a nearer view of life 
 and liad at tlie same time been furnished with a 
 magic cap, which warded off all blows and arrows 
 of custom. 
 
 At home he stitched together a neat blank book, 
 and wrote on the cover with a raven's quill in very 
 eleo:ant German text the word "Epigkams." As a 
 motto he composed: 
 
 TO THE FOOLS. 
 
 The canvas is ready, the ground is laid, 
 
 I hold in my hand the brush ; 
 Come, fools, and be painted — be not afraid, 
 
 It will not cost you a rush. 
 
13.— THE ITNTPKACTICAL HEAD. 
 
 WITH a radiant face, Ephraim walked up and 
 down his chamber; he thought he had now 
 found the Art of Poetry, in which light and joy were 
 to open to him; at that moment Veitel entered with 
 a look full of gayety. "Congratulate me, I have 
 concluded the contract, and thereby contracted 
 [cramped] my rival, Itzig, very decidedly. I have 
 just come from the king," said Veitel. 
 
 "From the king?" 
 
 "Aye, from the king, who is like the wise Solo- 
 mon: there is absolutely nothing hidden from him; 
 he understands all trade, all handicraftsmen, all sci- 
 ences. He now holds possession of Saxony, and will 
 have a great deal of money that is two-thirds below 
 par stamped with the Saxon mark. I have under- 
 taken the delivery; to children's children it shall be 
 enjoined by testament that they are to have deal- 
 ings only with distinguished gentry ; from a golden 
 wJieel there falls a silver nail^ says the proverb; 
 there is always some profit to be picked up in such 
 cases. I have talked with the king for almost an 
 hour on all possible matters." 
 
1 80 POE T AND MER CHANT. 
 
 Ephraim soon forgot that he had selected the nat- 
 ure of his uncle for a study of character, as the 
 "motive for a picture" as the artists express it; he 
 suffered himself to be excited, and lost thereby his 
 point of view and his temper. 
 
 " You never speak of this," said he, — and a glow 
 of indignation kindled in his face — " that the king is 
 to remove the stigma on our hearts, which disgraces 
 him more than us; that he is to make us free, if rea- 
 son and humanity are not to be a mere sound of 
 words upon his lips. O ! how gladly would I, too, 
 go to the war and shed my blood, and if I should 
 die, I would cry out to him: See, even a Jew can be 
 brave ! " 
 
 "Youngster, youngster," replied Veitel, "thy 
 words gilded in the fire, thou art, after all, in a gen- 
 eral way, clever enough, but I think thou hast a 
 crack in thy noddle. Thou art, to be sure, so expert 
 with the pen and all that — where is it written, that 
 I should mix myself up with the war between the 
 king and Maria Theresa ? Let them defend them- 
 selves, I will see who is master. I tell thee, I am 
 glad that no Jews are wanted in the war; fellows 
 who have nothing else to do may shoot each other 
 dead for passer le temps. I have some better busi- 
 ness." Upon this he jingled the money which he 
 kept about him for any occasion of bribery. 
 
 " And the disgrace and the being held cheap ? " 
 cried Ephraim. 
 
 " We hold a man cheap," replied Veitel, " when he 
 has no money. I tell thee thousands of them will 
 
THE UNPRACTICAL HEAD. 181 
 
 put up with anything, if they can only get money; 
 that is the main thing; all else— I wouldn't give a 
 pinch of snuff for it." And he took one out of his 
 gold box, snuffed it contentedly, and offered a pinch 
 to his nephew. 
 
 Although provoked with himself for being drawn 
 on into such a long discussion with his uncle, 
 Ephraim nevertheless almost involuntarily contin- 
 ued: "And the highest good, honor, is nothing to 
 you ? and of your suffering fellow-men you take no 
 thought?" 
 
 Veitel smiled silently awhile, and shook his head, 
 and then replied: "What, honor! Eat of thy 
 honor if thou hast nothing, or go into thy counting- 
 room and get it exchanged; thou shouldst be glad 
 that our Lord God has not brought thee and thy 
 kindred to that pass; the rest must see to it how 
 they get themselves out. I tell thee, if our king 
 (God preserve his life to a hundred years !) should 
 say to me: 'Veitel, I will make thee a baron, but 
 thou must give up thy business.' I tell thee, I'll 
 snuff up with this snuff poison and operment,* if I 
 would say another word than what I did say : ' The 
 baron I accept most submissively, your Majesty, 
 (why ? because, as baron, I can deal better with the 
 barons,) but I must beg your Majesty to leave me to 
 carry on my trade and traffic, as I have been accus- 
 tomed to do.' " At these words Veitel took off his hat 
 and made a low bow, as if he really stood before the 
 king. Laying his hand on his nephew's shoulder, he 
 
 * Orpiment : sulphide of arsenic 
 
1 S2 POE T AND MERCHANT. 
 
 then proceeded: "I see already how thou wilt have 
 come to have quite other ideas, when thou standest 
 one day in my shoes; I've heard a good many birds 
 vt^histle this tune in my day — na ! na ! we know their 
 story: I w^ould rather starve and gnaw off my fingers 
 than follow anything else but truth and honor. 
 What is truth, at bottom, and what, honor? — 
 money ! Look thou ! I can give thee the best ex- 
 ample in that tall Emanuel whom I have with me, 
 and who writes up there in the little corner room. 
 When we were yet young, say about sixteen or eight- 
 een years old, my father and his were still living in 
 Prenzlau; his father was the richest man in the 
 wdiole place. How often was I made glad when his 
 mother gave me a good dishful of soup. Now just 
 look at it ! then he was rich and I poor, and now he 
 is glad to have found a situation under me; but I 
 never let him want for anything, so long as I have 
 an eye open; he fares with me as a child in the 
 house, and has already served faithfully and hon- 
 estly for fifteen years. I can say of him, as it is 
 written in the Thorah: 'lie is faithful in all mine 
 house ' (Numbers, XII., 7.) — But to come back to the 
 point for which I introduced the story. Emanuel 
 was rich and learned much of the pastor in the 
 ])lace, both German and French; he reads French 
 like water [fluently], he knows Voltaire and Homer 
 (1 know the names of all the hocus-pocus-makers as 
 well as I know my own sins), he has them all by 
 heart; the wliole country round rang with the praise 
 of Emanuel's cleverness, and how beautifully he 
 
THE UNPRACTICAL HEAIX 183 
 
 could play on the violin, what a favoriie-4rd was 
 with all the gentry and ate and drank with them 
 what God has forbidden. This much must be said 
 for him, he never was proud; he would often enter- 
 tain himself for hours with a parcel of ragged chil- 
 dren; but his father died too early, and he did not 
 understand economy, and went oft" with his money to 
 Berlin. There he once handed in a petition to King 
 Frederick William, that he would remove the ban 
 which had been pronounced against the Jews, that it 
 was unkingly to oblige the Jews to buy wild boars 
 from the chase, and many other points, and finally, 
 that the youth should be educated and enlightened. 
 But there he wakes up the right passenger, one that 
 will have nothing to do with all that nonsense about 
 enlightenment, and likes best to see every man stick 
 to his last; and once when Emanuel had an audience 
 with him, he sent him off with a flea in his ear. It 
 is not generally safe to speak about that, and it will 
 not do to remind him of it, unless one wants to put 
 him into a rage, but once in a confidential moment 
 he told me how he had been treated. So there he 
 stands before the king, jabbering about Jews and 
 what all — about learning trades, school instruc- 
 tion, virtues of citizens, and all the rest of the 
 schemes and fiddle-faddle and 2^^^^''' '^^^^^ ^*"^^- 
 When he had got through, the king walks up and 
 down the room, and brandishes his Spanish cane, 
 which has an enameled head eighteen carats fine (I 
 had it in my hand only four weeks ago). 'Pity ! 
 It's a pity ! ' says the king, with his eyes fixed on 
 
1 84 POE T AND MER CHA NT. 
 
 vacancy, *but it will not do, it cannot be.' My 
 Emanuel was quite delighted that the king was so 
 gracious, and said: * Thus and so one might manage 
 it, and your Majesty will be adored as a Messiah, as 
 a father by his children.' Then the king turns 
 round and looks upon him, with a pair of eyes, 
 Emanuel himself told me, and if one had gashed all 
 his veins, there wouldn't have come a drop of blood. 
 *What does he* say?' cries the king. 'He will 
 dictate to me what I shall do ? What then does he 
 understand about my notions ? It is a pity, I've 
 been thinking to myself that he is a Jew. He is 
 just the right height for my garde du corps; there, 
 too, they would drive his good-for-nothing reasoning 
 out of his head, but there is no making anything out 
 of you Jews; you are damned here and hereafter. 
 But let me say this to him, not to trouble himself 
 about things that do not concern him; let him stick 
 to his business, as he has liberty to, and as becomes 
 him, or — another word, and I'll have him paid on ac- 
 count five-and-twenty on the ^/'t — "^'^^^ *^^* ^® 
 shakes his Spanish cane at him so significantly that 
 my Emanuel's back already burns. Do you think 
 he was glad when he had got the palace behind 
 him? But Emanuel is nothing if not a Hotspur. 
 What does he do but run round through the wiiole 
 town among all the faith preaching and threshing 
 away how all the Jews were good-for-nothings be- 
 cause they didn't emigrate to America. Isn't that 
 nonsensical ? " 
 
 * Addressing his inferior in the third person. 
 [Musical abbreviation ol fortissimo. 
 
THE UNPRACTICAL HEAD. 185 
 
 " I think, too, that one cannot expect of every one 
 that he shall forsake his fatherland." 
 
 " Fatherland — don't take it ill of me — that again 
 IS so, so — a studied word. What have I to do with 
 fatherland ? But what more do I want ? Can one 
 do more in America than eat and drink and sleep ? " 
 
 "How did it fare with Emanuel after that?" 
 asked Ephraira, diverting the discourse. 
 
 " Yes, I will go on with my story. In a night he 
 packed up everything, and was up and off. What 
 were a couple of hundred dollars to him? Some 
 good liquid debts, that he hasn't time to collect, he 
 sells for a bagatelle; with one of your ne'er-do-wells 
 he quits Berlin to make a straight track to America, 
 among the wild men, where one carries his life in 
 his hand; but now, no begging or praying is of any 
 avail : the free-thinking fellow that had tacked him- 
 self on to him — a plague on it that I have forgotten 
 his name! this comes of age and care; na, what mat- 
 ters it ? — that free-thinking chap continues to talk 
 it all out of him, and they go straight off to Am- 
 sterdam. Here they stay two or three days. One 
 morning my Emanuel wakes up, looks round for his 
 chum — do you see, now the name comes to me: he 
 was called Mardon— thinks to himself: Well, he's 
 nothing to do, so he's sleeping it out there; but he 
 finds the nest empty; still my Emanuel suspects no 
 harm, and rings; up comes butler: Where is Mr. Mar- 
 don ? He went down to the wharf to see the ships 
 go off; still my Emanuel never suspects anything. 
 It is to me incomprehensible to this hour, how a 
 
186 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 man can be so stupid, and that, too, on a journey. 
 At such times a man will certainly every morning 
 look out for his money. But so it had to be with 
 him; it could not possibly be otherwise. Dinner 
 passed, and still no Mardon. My Emanuel goes 
 singing and trilling up to his chamber to get some 
 pocket-money. He opened his box, where he knows 
 he has a thousand pure Holland ducats of the good 
 old sort stowed away; it is a miracle that he didn't 
 fall down dead in a. fit; he opens it wide, searches 
 in front and behind; the sweat of agony stands 
 upon his forehead; he knows the very spot where 
 he laid it, but there is no trace of it anywhere; he 
 pulls out all the drawers, throws them on the floor — 
 nothing anywhere. Now at last a light suddenly 
 flashes upon him, but instead of running instantly 
 to the police, he tears his hair, throws himself on 
 the ground and screams so that even the very child 
 unborn might have pitied him. Everybody in the 
 house comes running in; he tells his misfortune, 
 and keeps on tearing bushel after bushel of hair out 
 of his head. The people who hear him going on so, 
 part of them believe it and part not. To make a 
 short story of it, with close pinching a man of May- 
 ence, who had known the family, releases Emanuel 
 and takes him into his business. But see what an 
 honest . simpleton of a Schlemihl is? His wages 
 which he has saved up for a year and a half, he 
 takes and pays with them the scot for himself and 
 Mardon; there's a story for an inmate of the luna- 
 tic asylum! After that he left Amsterdam and be- 
 
THE UNPRACTICAL HEAD. 18*7 
 
 gan cruising round through tlic workl. So he is 
 now unsettled and flighty, and, if one considers 
 rightly, for what cause ? — because he didn't sweep 
 before his own door, but went to meddling with 
 things that didn't concern him. What have I to 
 do with suffering humanity ? If it is ailing, let it 
 put on a plaster. Had he done like one of us, had 
 he let seven be an even number, and done a good 
 business, he would still have his golden ducats, and 
 three times over, would have wife and children, and 
 not need to let himself be hustled about among 
 strange people; he would now be one of the first in 
 the congregation, not a bit less than one of us. Xow 
 take heed, thou hast here an example. I advise 
 thee, as thy uncle, see that thou makest a good in- 
 vestment of thy money and let other things take 
 care of themselves." 
 
 Ephraim fixed his eyes upon the ground when his 
 uncle had ended, and w^ithout raising them again he 
 asked: "How then did Emanuel come to your 
 house ? " 
 
 "Four weeks from to-morrow we have Purira 
 [the feast of Haman] ; it will then be sixteen years, 
 just as many as my little Zerlina has lived her irre- 
 proachable life. It is then Purim; in the morning 
 I go home from the school [synagogue] troubled in 
 mind how I shall get another book-keeper — I know, 
 as certainly as I know that I shall get into Gan Eden 
 [Paradise] that my old book-keeper has embezzled a 
 ten-dollar-bill — I was walking along, lost in thought; 
 it was a grim cold morning, enough to freeze stone 
 
188 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 and bone, when I saw a large man. He had on a 
 coat that eight years before had been new on an- 
 other body; ten cats couldn't now have found a 
 mouse in it; he had a hat on his head — I wouldn't 
 pick it up in the street; his hands it was impossible to 
 see, he had drawn them up in the sleeves of his coat 
 because he had no gloves. I looked at my man, 
 who for all that marched along as proud and bolt- 
 upright as a grenadier; his face was familiar to me. 
 I thought I ought to know him, as when one says: 
 I ought to know you, but I can't exactly locate you ; 
 we pass each other, I turned round again, he did the 
 same. 'Emanuel!' says I — 'Veitel!' says he, and 
 is about to fall on my neck; think now — in the open 
 street, with a man in such a rig — so I kept him back 
 and said : ' Emanuel, if thou wilt come to me in 
 half an hour, — I live at such and such a place.' A 
 little while after I hear a noise out in the kitchen; 
 my wife was at that moment in the pangs of child- 
 birth. I go out to command silence; there I find 
 Emanuel in trouble with my cook, who will vloI par- 
 tout let him in to me, and will give him his good 
 half groschen, which every respectable beggar gets 
 in my house; I have strictly forbidden her to let 
 any beggar in to me. Then they come and cry 
 one's ears full, and every one of them claims to be 
 your relation: thank you for nothing for your rela- 
 tionship! If one has a couple of groschen, all the 
 world will be one's relation; so I have always one 
 principle: All comes from God, He ^yills that one 
 shall be rich and another poor. I dare not alter it! 
 
THE UNPRACTICAL HEAD. 180 
 
 — ^It were tedious, if I undertook to tell you all the 
 tests I tried with Emanuel; canst imagine for thy- 
 self that I would not entrust my books to every fel- 
 low that comes along; but Emanuel is thoroughly hon- 
 est, and so has been now sixteen years with me, has 
 his clothes and his board, sits at table with me; I 
 tell thee I never taste a bit but that he has part of 
 it; at New Years he has a handsome douceur; he 
 lives a pious and retired life, and often plays the fid- 
 dle half the night in his chamber without any light; 
 within about two years he has gone out to walk 
 every Thursday after supper; I don't look after him, 
 he can do what he pleases; but I believe he has got 
 among the free-masons; well, one thing is pretty 
 certain, they can't swindle him out of much money. 
 Ah, yes, one thing I had almost forgotten: why, 
 dost thou think, Emanuel has come back again to 
 Berlin ? To get in his outstanding debts ? God 
 help us! Under the gray hairs of the simpleton the 
 same whimseys lurk as under the black hair of the 
 young one; he fancies our present master has noth- 
 ing else to do than first of all to set the Jews free ; 
 but he has soon discovered how the thing is. How 
 a man can ever bother himself about such things! 
 And his whole equipage which he brought to my 
 house in a red handkerchief was two old books, a 
 black shirt and an old fiddle; including Avhat he had 
 on his body. I wouldn't buy the whole at five dol- 
 lars: and still he worries himself about such things! 
 He has always talked of his longing so to tread once 
 more native soil; well, that good fortune has come 
 
190 POE T AND MERCHANT. 
 
 to bim, and how ? in a very genuine manner, for his 
 boots have had no soles to them, and so he has liter- 
 ally run on native soil. 
 
 "Just consider now how things go in the world; 
 Emanuel is so clever, well, and what is he ? A rag- 
 amuffin! As for me, I never learned anything in all 
 my life; when I was only eleven years old my father 
 sent me out to trade with old iron, horse-hair, and 
 a couple of pocket-handkerchiefs; where could I 
 find time to learn, except to reckon a hit? By 
 dint of hard labor Emanuel has taught me to 
 write my name in German — well? and now they call 
 me and Itzig the Jew-princes of Berlin; I have it as 
 good as in my pocket that I get a patent of excep- 
 tion from the king, whereby my whole family is ex- 
 empted from all the burdens of the Jews: I am 
 looked up to, am a cultivated man, for I can converse 
 with the greatest dignitaries, and Emanuel no man 
 ever looks at. There, follow me, and don't give 
 your understanding away for shruff;* then all will 
 go well with thee too." 
 
 It was with a cunningly exalted and sweetly 
 smirking look that Veitel ended his instruction in 
 worldly wisdom. During his whole discourse ho 
 had strutted proudly up and down the chamber, 
 stretching his paunch far forward, now swinging 
 his arms Avith great pliability backward and for- 
 ward like the ends of a balance pole, now standing 
 still and rocking himself to and fro on his legs, 
 planted widely asunder; thus he now stood before 
 
 * Broken plate, which is sold at a reduced price for melting up. 
 
THE UNPRACTICAL HEAD. 191 
 
 his nephew, playing with his watch-seal, with a chal- 
 lenging look. 
 
 " Now I can explain to myself," said Ephraim at 
 last, " why Emanuel always smiles so singularly and 
 says so little: it is a pity that you are going off 
 again so soon; I should like to become better ac- 
 quainted with the man." 
 
 " Dost thou know what I think ? " said Yeitel, in a 
 triumphant tone ; " thou canst become acquainted with 
 him inwai'dly and outwardly ; he must certainly regard 
 it as an honor if thou, my sister's son, shalt favor him 
 with thy company: don't think long about it, strike 
 the bargain," he cried, stretching out his hand; 
 " come along with me; besides, Emanuel is no longer 
 quite well posted; I am just establishing a gold and 
 silver lace factory. I will make over to thee a part 
 of the business and the treasurership; thou wilt get 
 a thousand dollars salary and canst invest thy money 
 at good interest in my business. Besides, it were a 
 good thing for thee to separate from thy brothers. 
 Chajem has already made a blot on the relationship, 
 and I fear Nathan will make another too. How will 
 my children rejoice with thee, and particularly my 
 Zerlina! She reads all thy letters seven times. I 
 tell thee, my Zerlina is a golden child. I will not 
 praise her, she is my own child, but she is faultlessly 
 beautiful, fine-natured and intelligent, and such a 
 housekeeper! She turns a penny over ten times be- 
 fore she parts with it. She can sing as if she had 
 nothing but organ-pipes in her throat; she has cost 
 me a nice penny, as true as I shall live to be a hun- 
 
192 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 dred years old, and ray Lord God shall let me live 
 to take pleasure in you both — three dollars currency 
 per month; but for my Zerlina no money is too 
 much; thou, too, wilt take pleasure in her; thy Vio- 
 let was a nice girl, but as tender and affected as an 
 ^^^ without a shell; my Zerlina is five per cent, 
 handsomer and stronger; na! who knows — it has 
 long been a sore thought to me that my good money 
 that I have had such hard work to scrape together 
 should be so alienated; she could make matches 
 enough, but where is there a family that can come 
 near ours in wealth and respectability ? Well, now, 
 all can be brought about beautifully. I feel certain 
 that thou and I are not to part from this time forth. 
 Thou wilt go with me then ? " 
 
 Ephraim gave no decided ansAver in the negative, 
 and w^hen he was alone in his chamber he wrote the 
 following verses: 
 
 THE LAST WILL OF HARPAX. 
 
 I die, my son! then hear, now, my last will; 
 
 This world's best good — more sweet than honey — 
 
 Despite the prating moralist — is money; 
 
 Be all thy care thy coffer, then, to fill ! 
 
 Eat not too much; thy father was a faster; 
 
 And in that way much gold collected; 
 
 The more I had the more was I respected. 
 
 Money makes wise; money is all men's master; 
 
 Instead of books, I heaped up ducats round me; 
 
 And of the Muses many a son 
 
 Set me up high upon his Helicon, 
 
 And as his erudite Maiccnas crowned me. 
 
 Yield not to womanish commiseration: 
 
 He whom God loves his grace receives ; 
 
THE UNPRACTICAL HEAD. 193 
 
 He hates all those to whom he nothing gives ; 
 
 Who gives the poor provokes His indignation. 
 
 I never shall repent what I have willed thee, 
 
 If thou know'st how to make it more, 
 
 My spirit rest on thee — a double store ! 
 
 And interest thousandfold, son! may it yield thee! 
 
 13 
 
14._0N NEW PATHS. 
 
 IT was late at night; Ephraim still sat pondering 
 and ruminating in his chamber, when suddenly 
 he heard music, which rang out from the little attic 
 chamber overhead, where Emanuel lodged. Ephraim 
 opened the window and looked out ; only at in- 
 tervals between rent clouds the moonlight gleamed, 
 down on the snow-clad earth; here and there drops 
 were heard falling in regular pauses from the roof, 
 or a little avalanche of melted snow rolled down. 
 No stir of human life was audible, only above him 
 sorrow kept its vigils and poured itself out in har- 
 monious tones. These tones of a violin built up a 
 Jacob's ladder on which tearful angels went up and 
 down; then it sounded again like the wrestling and 
 groaning of an imprisoned soul; silently muttering, 
 cowering on the gi-ound, it languished out its life in 
 monotonous sorrow; forever and ever the same sound 
 repeated itself, until at last, growing ever fainter and 
 fainter it wholly died away; but suddenly it gathered 
 up all its powers again, all the tones woke up, and 
 unitedly renewed their conflict, helping, supporting 
 
ON NE W PA TIIS. 195 
 
 each other, flying to each other's aid; wailing it 
 wrung its hands over its head, it clambered down 
 along the grim prison walls, it clung to them and raged 
 and raved, to tear through the walls and wrestle out 
 into light and air; but its strength was exhausted, 
 and now the battle seemed to burst out only in single 
 storms of fitful fury, till at last in a heart-piercing 
 cry it fell back again upon the ground; it seemed 
 utterly dead, but the old monotonous anguish woke 
 again, and writhed out and tangled itself up, like a 
 coil of snakes; again as from a volcano the embers 
 of a lusty exultation flew up therefrom, life's-woe 
 and death's-rapture, all floated together chaotically, 
 and a universal tempest of tones was finally suc- 
 ceeded by silence and death. 
 
 Ephraim saw no more the world around him, his 
 eyes swam in tears; his spirit had gazed into the 
 deepest abyss of a soul, where unsightly monsters 
 swim over coral reefs, crystal temples and glistening 
 sea-flowers. The last tones had long since died 
 away, as Ephraim still stood there spell-bound; at 
 last he roused himself, ascended the shaky stairs and 
 stood before Emanuel's door; it was open, there was 
 no light in the chamber; he almost dreaded to enter 
 with his light, when Emanuel hastily raised himself 
 up in his bed: "Who's there?" he asked, harshly. 
 
 "A good friend," Ephraim answered, mechanic- 
 ally, and then added: "One, indeed, whose highest 
 happiness it would be, if he could be really a good 
 friend to you." 
 
 " Good youth, it is bed-time and thou wilt catch 
 
196 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 cold staying with me," answered Emanuel, with a 
 singular smile and raised his hand, meanwhile, as if 
 repel lingly. Ephraim supposed he meant to offer it 
 to him and reached out his own to take it. — If in 
 every-day greetings or in leave-taking, it is a pain- 
 ful sensation to have to draw back the hand stretched 
 out in confidence and left untouched, this uncom- 
 fortable feeling is greatly aggravated in a position 
 of excitement. 
 
 "Give me your hand," said Ephraim, therefore, 
 trembling. 
 
 " My hand is dry and bony, it no longer feels soft, 
 but I offer it to thee, and will, so far as I can, be 
 thy friend. Behold, in a warm pressure of tlie hand 
 lies the symbol of friendship ; it is the sign of spirit- 
 ual and practical union, and not without significance 
 is it, in secret societies, made the token of brother- 
 hood." So spake Emanuel and stretched out his 
 hand to Ephraim, who fervently held it fast and 
 threw all love into his expression as he gazed upon 
 the face of Emanuel, whose features had been 
 hardened and, as it were, hammered by storms. 
 
 " What spyest thou in my face ? " said Emanuel. 
 Ephraim pressed his hand to his heart and wept. 
 
 "Art thou in love?" said Emanuel; "then marry, 
 and thou wilt be released from love; if thou art 
 not in love, thou shouldst certainly marry." 
 
 "I will not jjut my neck into the yoke of a com- 
 monplace marriage, but neither is it love I seek any 
 longer; it is false, nothing but a fleeting self-delu- 
 sion j love, as I cherish it in my bosom, as it stretches 
 
ON NE W PA TITS. 1 9 7 
 
 out its thousand-armed, yearning desires into the 
 distance to clasp a loving heart, as it makes me long 
 to wind my way through all the veins and pores of a 
 beloved soul, that I might fill it wholly and forever 
 — ah ! it is a phantom which I chase after ; this love 
 I have buried in still solitude in the grave-yard of 
 my heart. It is only friendship that I any longer 
 hope from life; by that will I grow strong; that is 
 the sun by whose rays the bowed and bruised flower 
 of my life shall lift itself up again; do not, then, 
 move away from me, I know all about you, be my 
 father, be my friend." Ephraim laid his hot forehead 
 upon the hand of Emanuel, which he still held fast. 
 " Young friend," said Emanuel, " there is still a 
 violent ferment going on within thee, thy speech is 
 feverish. I like not to put on the grandfatherly 
 look, which always nods to youth self -complacently 
 and seems to say: Wait awhile, after a few years 
 thou wilt smile at thy present storms; the storm is 
 now upon thee, and lashes with mighty waves the 
 ribs of thy bark, but survey thy past life, and learn 
 to perceive that all excitement is only transitory. 
 Thou hast love, that I perceive, but thou hast not 
 found that love in return which thy pride, thy over- 
 weening passion dreamed. Love is lowliness; thou 
 wilt find the genuine reciprocal love, and then with 
 bliss and sadness wilt cry out: That first love was 
 not the true. God keep thee from having to repeat 
 this experience. But demand not of friendship what 
 only love can offer thee, nor prepare for thyself dili- 
 gently later disenchantments." 
 
198 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 "Gladly would I stay Tsdth thee forever," said 
 Ephraim; "do not you also advise rae to accept the 
 position of treasurer in my uncle's silver manufac- 
 tory? Then, too, I shall go away from here, where 
 every stone says to me: Once tliy look fell on me 
 when thou wast happier than now; ah! I know not 
 what I want, but 1 would willingly die, to be rid of 
 all at once." 
 
 " It is well that the stars overhead there keep on 
 in their bright path, and we petty worms crawl round 
 on this little ball of earth; could we clutch the stars 
 with our hands, we should long since have plucked 
 them down and bedaubed them in this commonplace 
 worldliness; that higher thing which thou wilt and 
 shouldst aspire to, let it shine, like the stars above 
 thee; confound it not with the noisome vapor that 
 broods over the lower stratum of the atmosphere, 
 and. if thy sight is veiled in darkness, then look up 
 to the stars, let a ray from their eternal light fall 
 into thy heart, and abide in thy lot, till thou shalt 
 rise into the primal source of the light eternal. — 
 Good night!" — So spake Emanuel and withdrew his 
 hand from Ephraim's and buried his head in the 
 pillows. 
 
 Ephraim, with deep emotion, left the chamber; for 
 a long time he could not sleep, and in dream he 
 journeyed from star to star, but everywhere his 
 uncle followed him, showing him how some of the 
 stars had dark spots; when he awoke he felt his 
 cheeks burn. 
 
 Emanuel presented during the next day an almost 
 
ON NE W PA TITS. 1 9 9 
 
 wholly changed appearance; he entered into no con- 
 versation except on matters of business, and then he 
 spoke with such zeal and such insight that no one 
 would have supposed him susceptible to any higher 
 interest. Ephraim could not yet explain to himself 
 this double state; he began to mistrust his judgment 
 more and more in regard to the individuality of 
 others, and strangely enough, his love for Philip- 
 pina hereby started up again within him; he again 
 approached her, and sought to rectify his former 
 hasty judgment. Ephraim was highly delighted to 
 have found so valid a ground for reviving his old 
 love. He loved Philippina more than he chose to 
 confess to himself. How heroic he appeared in his 
 own eyes w^hen after his first return he often omitted 
 to visit Philippina for two or three days together; 
 how he counted the days, how his heart beat, when 
 he then entered her house; how many sophistical 
 will-o'-the-wisps he followed on their zigzag paths, 
 only that they always led him to her house at 
 last. — All this might have enlightened Ephraim long 
 ago upon the true condition of his inner man; he 
 contented himself with the silent consciousness that 
 it was not yet too late. Repentance almost always 
 follows a breach with a loved one; one reproaches 
 himself for having let a mere trifle part him from 
 the dearest object, one longs to return, and promises to 
 himself charity and tender tolerance, but a false re- 
 lation which has rooted itself for months in the dis- 
 position can scarcely be extirpated, and without our 
 being aware of it, it puts forth new germs from the 
 old root. 
 
200 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 We often recognize the soonest our mutual har- 
 mony by the harmony of our judgments upon third 
 persons, and however easily, often, personal gossip 
 degenerates in censoriousness, nevertheless, its origi- 
 nal ground is a necessary and mutual one. — Ephraim 
 spoke in enthusiastic terms with Philippina about 
 Emanuel. 
 
 " If I might venture to give him a nickname," said 
 Philippina, " I would call him the Darkener. When 
 he comes into the room the lights burn dimmer, 
 when he looks at a thing, I feel as if it must turn 
 gray. I can imagine that he always weeps on his 
 violin. I have never seen him laugh; he is like dry 
 biscuit, it is all good and fine, but one cannot en- 
 joy it." 
 
 Ephraim made no reply, but laughed immoder- 
 ately. This laugh, however, was not a joyous and 
 healthful, but a forced and spasmodic one ; he went 
 so far in his injustice as to consider Philippina as 
 even unworthy his regard ; he compared her in his 
 thoughts with his uncle, and felt that nothing but 
 the interest in business was wanting to make her 
 perfectly like him. In such arraignment he again 
 and forever thrust out Philippina from his heart. 
 
 Ephraim went to Lessing's, and announced a desire 
 to advise with him, whether he should enter into the 
 business of his uncle in Berlin; but Lessing soon 
 perceived that the decision was a foregone conclu- 
 sion, and did not condescend to seal it with his 
 authority; he simply let Ephraim state his objections, 
 and when these were once stated, they readily, by a 
 
ON NEW PA THS. 2 1 
 
 series of rapid mutual questions, received their refu- 
 tation, for Epliraini explained tliat he should only 
 co-operate as subaltern in the business 0})erations of 
 his uncle, and not undertake any kind of moral re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 Lessing closed by saying that he would give 
 Ephraim a letter to take witli him to Mendelssohn, 
 and hoped himself soon to follow it. 
 
 It was with a refreshing cordiality that Lessing in 
 simple words spoke of his Moses, and his justice 
 and generosity. Lessing smiled at the idea when 
 Ephraim said that in Mendelssohn the Demon of 
 Socrates seemed to have transformed itself into an 
 ethical compass. How strange that one can rightly 
 recognize and designate in others what one wants 
 himself, and yet does not recognize as a deticiency! 
 
 The mention of Mendelssohn, meanwhile, kept its 
 hold upon him, and he declared that in one thing he 
 agreed with Mendelssohn, namely, that the latter, as a 
 self-taught man, had never been cauglit by system- 
 atic and school-wisdom, from which he sought zeal- 
 ously to keep himself free. 
 
 Toward the end of April, 1763, Ephraim sat with 
 his uncle in a carriage, which took the road to Ber- 
 lin. It was in the midst of a disagreeable snow- 
 flurry that he left his paternal city, in which he had 
 so long lived and suffered; every one went on his 
 way to his business or his pleasure; no one troubled 
 himself about him, who took his departure with a 
 bleeding heart. 
 
 Veitel had in March, 17G1, received from the king 
 
202 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 a letter-of-patent, that is to say, he had no longer to 
 pay Jew's tribute, etc.; he therefore leaned proudly 
 out of the coach-door, as he passed the city gate. 
 Ephraim sat wrapped in his cloak in a corner, with- 
 out saying a word. Thus they arrived at Deutsch- 
 lissa, where they halted. The host, the hostess and 
 the servants, all sprang forward to Avelcome Veitel 
 in most friendly manner. They walked into the 
 bar-room; here were peasants dicing and drinking. 
 "Here goes for three doublets!" cried one, and 
 threw a leaden-sounding two-groschen piece on the 
 table. "Hollo," cried the others, "away with the 
 Jew that's not worth anything; nail the false churl 
 to the table, it's nothing but an Ephraimite." 
 "Bright on the outside, but inside all dim, 
 Outwardly Frederick; inside, Ephra-im," 
 
 recited, with pathos, the sexton who sat in the cor- 
 ner, then, taking his neighbor's glass, drank to him 
 and went on to relate: " Old King Frederick ^j>r//n?^6' 
 of Prussia once ordered an alchemist, who had 
 cheated him, to be rigged up in a dress of gilt pa- 
 per, to have a gilt-pa'per crown put on his head, and to 
 be hanged on a gallows lined with gilt paper. I tell 
 you, after a Avhile, it will come to pass, and the Jew 
 Veitel Ephraim will hang on a gallows-steel-yard 
 and its tongue will never waver, for in the day of 
 judgment they will find his works too light. So it 
 happened not more than four-and-twenty years ago 
 with an old wizard in Swabia, the Jew Siiss; the 
 devil's grandmother was liis mother and the wander- 
 ing Jew was his father." 
 
ON NEW PA rilS. 203 
 
 " Wliere tlien is Veitcl to be hanged ? " asked one 
 of the peasants; all laughed. 
 
 "On the gallows," replied another; "it is all one, 
 where he stands; the king himself, indeed, is much 
 to blame for it, but Yeitel must after all pay the 
 piper. That's as it should be, the Jews are at the 
 bottom of everything." 
 
 A Jew peddler, who happened in and offered his 
 wares for sale, was derided and insulted by the 
 boors. 
 
 "Na, Smouch," they cried, "hast thou also a hand- 
 some profit from the money Yeitel has stole ? He 
 collects, you know, for you Jews." 
 
 One of the boors splashed beer down the peddler's 
 neck, whereat the fellow screamed and all the rest 
 laughed and jeered. 
 
 During this whole scene, Yeitel, with his nephew, 
 had been sitting at the table of distinction, which 
 was separated from the rest of the room by a board 
 partition; they listened there in silence to the con- 
 versation. Ephraim was still, and Yeitel com- 
 manded in a lordly tone to harness the horses. 
 
 " A pack of ragamuffins," said Yeitel, when they 
 had left the town behind them; "with three meas- 
 ures of beer I could make them drink me a vivat; 
 why, now, do the people insult me ? Am I king of 
 Prussia ? Have I to determine what percentage of 
 silver a coin shall have ? If I do not undertake the 
 supply another will. What is it then I do ? What 
 the king wills; and what can it matter to these 
 men, whether thq. money is good or bad ? If they 
 
204 POE T A ND MER CHA NT. 
 
 only get brandy for it, it is all one. I have a good 
 mind to turn round again and show them the mas 
 ter." 
 
 Veitel was glad when his nepheAV decidedly oj}- 
 posed this last proposition. 
 
 They had come to a hill ; the two travelers alighted 
 and went up on foot, Avithout saying a word. When 
 they had reached the top, Veitel turned round to- 
 ward the valley, and laying his hand on his nephew's 
 shoulder, said with a deep sigh : 
 
 *' One has to endure a great deal of hardship and 
 anxiety in this world; if it were not for one's chil- 
 dren and family, one would often wish rather to he 
 dead." 
 
 Ephraim looked into, his uncle's face; a tenderness 
 one would never have dreamed of hovered over it; 
 he looked down into the valley; all was still and 
 peaceful; the evening bell sounded for prayer, the 
 sky had cleared up, the air was pure and trans- 
 parent; on the snow-clad hills opposite lay the glow- 
 ing red horizon with its more and more softly melt- 
 ing tints, into which trees, standing simpl}^, lifted up 
 like spectres their snow-enveloped skeletons. 
 
 " See the sun sinking with his last glow yonder in 
 the west," said Ephraim; "I feel such a sweet sad- 
 ness, that I, too, were fain at this moment of rapture 
 to expire with him." 
 
 As Veitel made no reply, Ephraim continued: 
 
 "And yet, on the other hand, nature is our only 
 comforter, she stays by us when all else forsake or 
 cast us off. Let us thank God, who has given us all 
 this. Spring — " 
 
ON NE W PA THS. 205 
 
 "Nonsense," interrupted Veitel, "the weather 
 pleases me, also, just now, not a speck of cloud to be 
 liad in the sky for a thousand dollars, but thy Nature 
 is something I can't understand; how canst thou 
 take pleasure in fields and woods that belong to 
 strangers ? " 
 
 They resumed their seats in the carriage ; Ephraim 
 feigned sleep. 
 
 The journey to Berlin was long and laborious; 
 Ephraim occasionally took his memorandum book 
 out of his pocket and noted something, but espe- 
 cially did he often look at the letter to Mendelssohn, 
 which Lessing had given him. This was that letter 
 of the iVth of April, 1763, beginning with the 
 words: "Herr Kuh, also, is about journeying to 
 Berlin and kindly offers to take a letter for me to 
 you. I must not let an opportunity of this kind slip 
 through my fingers; it is rare, and mails do not go 
 to Berlin, never have gone to Berlin, because in that 
 case I certainly should have written to you." Thus 
 wrote Lessing playfully, but this letter contained 
 also a discussion of Spinoza's theory respecting the 
 oneness of body and soul, regarded as only two 
 different modes of manifestation of one and the 
 same substance. Lessing opposed this theory to the 
 harmony maintained by Mendelssohn and sustained 
 by an appeal to Leibnitz, and sharply distinguished 
 Spinoza's view from that of Leibnitz. 
 
 This letter may be regarded in some measure as a 
 picture of the whole relation between Lessing and 
 Mendelssohn; free and sincere personal conjunction 
 
206 rOET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 witli persistent following out of the higher philo- 
 sophical questions to the end of mutual stimulation 
 and enlightenment. 
 
 Ephraim was the bearer of the exposition of the 
 anathematized philosopher and patriot of the last 
 century. He cherished no desire to enter into his 
 doctrine; the whole age of Frederick the Great was 
 disinclined to this systematic study, and partly in- 
 capable of it, and even Mendelssohn, whose teaching 
 and influence the king rejected, stood, notwith- 
 standing his difference, on the same point of view 
 with the king, inasmuch as he conceived philosophy 
 pre-eminently as a wisdom for the world or for 
 practical life. Often and devoutly did Ephraim 
 hold Lessing's letter in his hands and thought, mean- 
 while, of a beautiful Jewish sentiment, for it is an 
 old established usage to commit to one who under- 
 takes a long and laborious journey a gift, which, 
 immediately on arriving at the place of his destina- 
 tion, he must deliver to some needy person; the dark 
 powers of destiny, which preside especially over 
 journeys, are thereby appeased, for the traveler is, 
 according to the Jewish expression, a "messenger 
 of virtue," who is sheltered from every dark power. 
 
 No one had dared to give such a commission to 
 Ephraim, as a presumed free-thinker; but he seemed 
 to himself now, by virtue of his bearing Lessing's 
 letter, as a higher emissary ; he carried the comfort- 
 ing expression of friendly sentiment, the exalting 
 expression of unconstrained thought from one mind 
 to another. 
 
ON NE W PA THS. 207 
 
 Our two travelers arrived at length in Berlin. 
 
 As Ephraim for the first time walked through 
 the streets of Berlin, he must have been struck by 
 the number of women dressed in mourning, whom 
 the war had robbed of husbands, brothers and sons. 
 
 In the bright spring sunshine the signs of mourn- 
 ing stood out all the more sharply, and here and 
 there lounged about men in military coats, on whose 
 faces the word discharge was legible; these went 
 about with anxiously inquiring look toward the fut- 
 ure, seeming almost to envy those whom shots had 
 made cripples, yet who were provided for, and 
 practiced with their unwonted crutches, or rested on 
 a bench in the sun. 
 
 Ephraim sought to lift himself above the contem- 
 plation of the universal destiny, and musing on the 
 chances of his own life, said to himself: The people 
 with whom my future will be bound up, dwell here 
 and there, they are still far from me, perhaps they 
 will soon be so again. — So be it ! These streets, 
 how often will they see me trudging along, busy, 
 composing, filled with joy and sorrow, perhaps arm 
 in arm with a friend, a loved one, perhaps I shall be 
 following the loved one's bier, or a child's. I may, 
 myself, be soon borne along a corpse; be it so! I 
 will clasp the joy to my heart and set a chair for the 
 sorrow, as for an old acquaintance. Remove thy 
 veil, disguised future, whatever face thou hidest I 
 know it, and am ready to meet it. 
 
 Presumptuous one! he did not learn till later to 
 perceive what he had arrogated to himself, and how 
 
208 POE T A ND MERC HA NT. 
 
 useless it is, in the sunshine of fortune to encumber 
 one's self with the rain-mantle; the storm will only 
 be caught the more in the mantle's wide folds. 
 
 Ephraim had found old Emanuel sick; full of sor- 
 row he sat by his sick-bed, and admired the heroism 
 with which he bore his pains. Ephraim took it as 
 a good omen, that his first employment on entenng 
 these new paths of life was privileged to consist in 
 reaching the friendly hand to the forsaken. 
 
15.— DE AMICITIA. 
 
 EPHRABI'S first visit was claimed by Moses 
 Mendelsshon. The house, in Spandau street, 
 was easy to find, for the inn of " the Golden Star," 
 which was not far from it, served as a guide. Ac- 
 cording to his habit of always seeking after signifi- 
 cant emblems, he found such a one in this way- 
 mark. It was, therefore, in a doubly exalted frame 
 of mind that Ephraim entered the house. 
 
 Mendelssohn had just returned from the counting- 
 house of the widow Bernhard, where he was book- 
 keeper and partner; several visitors were with him 
 and were conversing in a low tone. 
 
 The almost gnome-like form of Mendelssohn 
 might have appeared disagreeable, had not mildness 
 and philanthropy, which, like smiling genii, sat 
 throned upon his cauntenance, instantly prepossessed 
 every one in his favor. 
 
 The disproportionately broad head, as in the case 
 of all humpbacks, sat low down between the shoul- 
 ders; a beard kept neatly cut on cheek and neck, and 
 running out to a point at the chin, might have 
 14 
 
210 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 passed for the sign of Rabbinical dignity and observ- 
 ance; the prominent and boldly arched nose, with its 
 broad nostrils, further completed in this countenance 
 tlie stamp of the Jewish character. The two finely- 
 cut lips projected themselves in parallel lines; in the 
 deep-set black eyes gleamed the light of a truth-lov- 
 ing soul; the noble arch of the forehead, whose 
 whiteness the black velvet cap made still more con- 
 spicuous, might have served as the sign of antique 
 clearness and repose. Thus did Ephraim discover in 
 this countenance a mixture of classic and rabbinical 
 elements, which he would fain recognize in Mendels- 
 sohn's whole method of working. 
 
 In the externals of the room, also, the same double- 
 ness manifested itself, for near the bust of Socrates, 
 on a pillar in the corner, hung the Jewish, so-called, 
 3Ilsrach^ a framed Hebrew memorial tablet, with the 
 indication that here was the Eastern side, toward 
 which one has to turn his face in prayer. 
 
 Mendelssohn had only been married a year; he was 
 in his thirty-fourth year, Ephraim was only two years 
 younger; though the latter seemed very raw and 
 youthfully unsettled compared with the former, he, 
 too, meant henceforth to be more firm. 
 
 Mendelssohn, with a certain measured movement 
 like that of a man of the world, yet with a stuttering 
 peculiar to himself in his speech, excused himself to 
 Ephraim and the rest of the company, while he read 
 the letter he had just received; from the changing 
 exi)ression of his features, beginning with a radiant 
 smile, presently passing over into severe philosophio 
 
DE AMICITIA. 211 
 
 meditation and shakings of the head, one could read 
 off pretty nearly the general drift of the letter. 
 
 He folded the letter up again and went into tlie 
 adjoining room. Ephraim now learned that Men- 
 delssohn's object was to look after his wife and his 
 little daughter three days old. 
 
 Among the visitors were the two Doctors, Bloch 
 and Gumperz, elder friends of Mendelssohn, and the 
 mathematician Abraham Wolf, called Abraham 
 Reckoner, who had grouped themselves around a lean 
 figure who reported with much self-complacency that 
 the " Letters touching the latest Literature " had just 
 appeared in a third edition, but now, and with the 
 consent of Lessing, had been brought to a close; 
 that now it was important to unite all minds striving 
 after freedom, in order to achieve, partly in a crit- 
 ical but partly also in a positive way, a work which 
 should serve, more thoroughly than the French En- 
 cyclopedia, to cultivate and organize the provinces 
 which had beefl conquered in the interest of free 
 thought and good taste. He named the " Universal 
 German Library." 
 
 It soon came out that the enterprising reformer 
 was the bookseller, Nicolai. 
 
 He addressed his exposition to a man of extremely 
 quiet and composed bearing, who only nodded assent 
 from time to time, and who in his reserved and 
 measured manner contrasted singularly with the 
 restless and fiery Nicolai. 
 
 Ephraim started when the name of Professor 
 Eamler was whispered to him. 
 
212 POE T AND MER CHANT. 
 
 In a corner sat a Pole in a dirty Icutha, crouching 
 in a chair; he seemed not to notice the company nor 
 was he noticed by them. 
 
 " Our Mendelssohn is certainly passing fortunate," 
 said Doctor Bloch; " it is fitting that after such sore 
 conflicts he should enjoy at last the joys and com- 
 forts of life; he has a clearly defined path of thought, 
 a moderate income, a healthy little daughter — " 
 
 " And a brave housewife," cried another. 
 
 " And a clever and estimable sister-in-law," put in 
 a third. 
 
 " Are you nearly done with your balance-sheet ? " 
 cried Doctor Gumperz; "the best thing of all you 
 have forgotten to note, and that is: true friends." 
 
 "Aye, he has only too many friends; he might 
 continue Plutarch's treatise on Pohjxjhilia^^ said one 
 of the company ; " I always think he who is so hail-fel- 
 low-well-met with all the world, great and small, old 
 and young, rich and poor, cannot be really intimate 
 with any one; I will not reason the matter, but — " 
 
 " Only envy or short-sightedness can pass such 
 a judgment," said Doctor Bloch, with vehemence; 
 "in that case every one would gladly claim the 
 ground-plot of his friendship as his own domain, and 
 if that were impracticable, he says it must, besides, 
 be unfruitful land, since it is perverted to a common 
 highway." 
 
 " For such disquisitions, my dear colleague," said 
 Doctor Gumperz in a refractory tone, " this is neither 
 the time nor the place; let us dro}) all personalities; 
 I should incline to assert that the revival of the 
 
DE AIlf/C/T/A.y\ .-^ 213 
 
 sentiment of friendship is a blossom fWl^^^Jih^ts, 
 and slips of the classic culture of antiquKy; Vhicu 
 we have imported into our times; antiquity alone 
 understood friendship; the middle ages, whose gate 
 of exit has closed behind us, knew only woman's 
 love; men were comrades, but seldom friends in the 
 deeper sense of the word; in our day the true phi- 
 losophy and poetry bloom out again, and with them 
 friendship also; It might be shown statistically 
 that there are more voluntary bachelors or so-called 
 crah-st'icks in our times than in any former; this cer- 
 tainly has its deeper cause in the newly awakened 
 life of learning and friendship." 
 
 " Mascnificent ! " cried Bloch; "whoever now re- 
 mains a bachelor, obeys a universal-historical neces- 
 sity." 
 
 " Our friend Mendelssohn works-over Plato's Phse- 
 don in a way of his own; would not you work-over 
 in a similar manner Cicero's treatise on Friendship ? 
 I'll publish it," said Nicolai. 
 
 Mendelssohn entered, and Nicolai said to him: 
 "We were just speaking of friendship; Herr Gum- 
 perz demands in liiis also the study of the ancients." 
 
 " Have you then settled an idea or found a defini- 
 tion of friendship ? else all will come back again to 
 a war of words," said Mendelssohn, and the Pole, 
 who sat in the corner, rose and joined the circle, in 
 which for a while silence ensued. 
 
 "What need is there of any long thinking here?" 
 said the Pole, with the characteristic accent of Polish 
 Jews; "Friendship is the practical union of independ- 
 ent and consentaneous persons." 
 
214 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 "Bravo, my dear Ilerr Maimon," said Bloch; "I 
 could not at this moment lind any flaw there." 
 
 "If one adds egotism, sympathy, and weakness, 
 friendship will be the result," said Abraham Reck- 
 oner. 
 
 " You must not imagine that the man is so bad," 
 whispered Bloch in our Ephraim's ear: "he has 
 formed the liabit once for all of shrugging his 
 shoulders at everything, and now he has got a 
 chronic jerk and cannot get rid of it." 
 
 "I miss in your definition, dear Ilerr Maimon," 
 said Mendelssohn, holding, as he spoke, his chin 
 with its peaked beard in the hollow of his hand, "I 
 miss in your definition the basis of genial activity, 
 • — good-will; firm alliance of two merchants for 
 business purposes may also be called an actual union 
 of independent and consentaneous minds on the prac- 
 tical side, which is certainly the main thing, as, indeed, 
 one speaks of business-friends; but Aristotle him- 
 self justly calls friendship for a common external ob- 
 ject, be it political or commercial, merely agreement, 
 and rightly distinguishes it from friendship proper. 
 Friendships, also, formed for the sake of pleasure or 
 profit, these in age, and those in youth, are, like their 
 basis, transitory. With friendship, as the free union 
 between creatures of the same species, man rises 
 above the bestial nature, and above his own individ- 
 uality; the attachment of different sexes the beast 
 also experiences, and we know how many in our time 
 will not allow that love has any further siguifi- 
 cance — " 
 
DE A MIC I TI A. 215 
 
 '* Aristotle and Cicero," — Ramlcrhere interpolated 
 tlie remark — " cliaracterize the quality of frieiidsliip, 
 primarily, in showing its distinction from blood-rela- 
 tionship." 
 
 " And in their way, justly," continued Mendelssohn. 
 "Through friendship, the bond between persons 
 who are immediately connected neither by the tie of 
 consanguinity, of sex, nor of state, man rises out of 
 rude nature into the realm of consciousness, of the 
 free spirit." 
 
 "The realm of the free spirit," said Nicolai, "is 
 still, up to this time, the Polish Elective Empire; un- 
 reason, superstition and superannuated prejudice have 
 the last and loudest word, therefore we must root 
 them out and annihilate them with all our might, 
 for not even friendship can thrive among them." 
 
 "There are two sides to the question," said 
 Gumperz; "whether prejudiced persons may not be 
 friends, for one may certainly always call the orig- 
 inal ground of that good-will w^hich cannot give any 
 account of itself, prejudice. But let us rather ask: 
 can only virtuous men be friends ? " 
 
 " That is like putting a light into the tube to see 
 the sun by," said Mairaon, laughing; "friendship is 
 in itself a virtue, therefore only virtuous persons are 
 friends." 
 
 "That last remark is also made by Aristotle in 
 his Nichomachean Ethics, and almost in the same 
 words," added Mendelssohn. With a seemingly self- 
 mocking and yet bold tone, Maimon rejoined: "If 
 Aristotle said that, he, too, is a clever man. But I 
 
216 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 think, also, for the same reason, that if two robbers 
 are pledged to one another with heart and hand, 
 they, too, are friends as much as two philosophers." 
 "Right," said Mendelssohn; " if one robber-friend 
 keeps truth and faith with another, saves hira from 
 the danger of imprisonment and death, he has so far 
 come back upon the stand-point of virtue, of mutual 
 aid and comfort; that this act, in the case supposed, 
 sets itself in contradiction to the arrangements of 
 society, makes no change in its original ground as 
 such. The robber can perform a virtuous action, 
 but he is not therefore virtuous. In Xenophon's 
 Memorabilia, also, Socrates shows that one can have 
 only a virtuous man for a friend, and if one will call 
 such a friend his own, he must himself also be virtu- 
 ous or strive to be. A friend takes another's justifi- 
 cation of him as his own, as I was once delighted by 
 the words of a friend who wrote to me : 'Your 
 better thoughts are nothing more than my second 
 thoughts.' A friend is our objective and incarnate 
 conscience; we rejoice with him when we do a good 
 deed; our life is in him, and his life in us; we mourn 
 and grieve in him and through him, over an action 
 which contradicts our inner aspirations. As we are 
 happy in the thought of God who is above all life 
 and through his Providence acts for us, so have we 
 in a friend a faint tyi:)e of the sway of a spirit out 
 of ourselves, which belongs to us, and to which we 
 belong. Even if a vicious man may have a friend, 
 yet he cannot keep him; some collision or other will 
 sepal-ate them ; for there is wanting to them the guar- 
 
DE AMICITIA. 217 
 
 anty of the law which rests in virtue, and vice is 
 lawlessness in its widest sense." 
 
 Ephraim listened with greedy attention; tlie 
 academic life of the serene Greeks seemed risen 
 again before his eyes; at first shyly and softly, but 
 then more and more loudly and with increasing in- 
 spiration, he said: "I cannot comprehend how you 
 would hold the question concerning the highest 
 good as an open one; certainly there may be dijffer- 
 ences according to time, place and personality; but 
 one thing is et'ernal and universal and for all: that 
 is, a friend. To know one's self doubled and yet 
 one, all our loving, suffering and hoping safe in a 
 Beyond which we can clasp to our hearts, not merely 
 a certain idea and aspiration, abstracted from per- 
 sonality, but to know that this personality with all 
 its slags and peculiaritijes is taken up, cherished and 
 loved by another — " 
 
 "That shows a tincture of love," interrupted 
 Gumperz. " You prescribe too much succus liquori' 
 tiae, which, if not quickly enjoyed, in a few days 
 grows sour; if one mixes up with friendship what 
 the world calls love, but what is certainly only a 
 sexual relation, it will soon die out. Take now 
 youthful friendships; the attractive impulse is there, 
 but it knows not yet its object; so one hugs and 
 kisses his young friend; but how few such friend- 
 ships can pass over into life. Friendship is only a 
 product of the ripe and self-conscious spirit." 
 
 "I am of your view, also," said Bloch, "that you 
 should widen this idea of friendship so far as to 
 
218 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 make out that it thrives only between ripe and free 
 spirits, for this also is to be taken into the account, 
 that, in contradistinction to love, it may and must 
 be based on reflective and intelligent recognition. 
 If the friend is our second, and often our better self, 
 so is the loved one a part of our very self, and in a 
 legitimate relation the half of our self; our care for 
 the loved one lies immediately in the principle of 
 self-preservation; for the friend, only indirectly. 
 To the second self a third and fourth may associate 
 themselves; the second half of the self can only have 
 one other, the first, for its own; for that reason, too, 
 love is jealous, friendship not." 
 
 " Herr Kuh, however, is very right in bringing in 
 the personal element also," said Mendelssohn; and 
 Ephraim felt himself wonderfully moved at hearing 
 his name mentioned approvingly by the venerated 
 philosopher. All listened attentively as Mendels- 
 sohn went on: "I must refer again to Aristotle, 
 who sharply and decidedly distinguishes between 
 benevolence and friendship; the former takes into 
 consideration only the general good qualities of an- 
 other and wishes and offers them encouragement; 
 it may be as general as possible; benevolence is the 
 starting-point of all friendship, but the former does 
 not always attain to the latter; benevolence intensi- 
 fied is not friendship, which needs a thoroughly new 
 element; it demands a 23ersonal inclination, a love 
 for and pleasure in precisely this special manifesta- 
 tion of the universal humanity. Very many per^ 
 Bonal relations stop at the stage of general human 
 benevolence." 
 
DE AMICITIA. 219 
 
 "And just that is a bitter experience," Gumperz 
 broke in, " when a relation makes no progress, when 
 it always remains what it was at the beginning." 
 
 "Tliat is never the case," replied Mendelssohn; 
 " only one must not be provoked because one does 
 not attain what one wished and hoped; one must not 
 transform the false assumption into a disappointed 
 expectation. Human life has its parallel in nature. 
 Why do the trees grow in the forest ? " 
 
 " To yield useful wood." 
 
 "And the orchard trees?" 
 
 "To bear fruit." 
 
 "Very well. But now he who expects apples and 
 figs of a forest tree, does he not do wrong if he com- 
 plains of disappointed expectation and condemns 
 the tree ? " 
 
 " Don't you see," cried Nicolai, triumphantly, who 
 loved to publish even the oral productions of his 
 friends, and looked upon them with joyful inspira- 
 tion as his own editions, and bespoke an interest in 
 them by explanatory prefaces : " Do you see, there you 
 have the essence of the new humanity: to postulate 
 the natural results of things and to search out their 
 nature. It is explicable, taken emblematically and 
 applied to man, with the power of free-will, that 
 w^hen the fig-tree is cursed, which, at the appointed 
 time, when one needs it, bears no fruit, it should be 
 condoned to wither away. Every one must work 
 and be useful." 
 
 The conversation suddenly came to a stand, as so 
 easily happens in the free intercourse of many; they 
 
220 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 had got upon a by-Avay; they stood as men lost in a 
 strange region, and must first take their bearings; 
 they felt the discomfort of aimless digression, and 
 no one ventured to offer himself as guide, till at last 
 Mendelssolm, with a characteristic shaking of the 
 head, took up the word again. 
 
 "Let us stick to our subject. We have seen that 
 benevolence .can be unlimited, whereas friendship, 
 in which the whole personality, with all its attri- 
 butes, unites itself to another, must, in the nature of 
 things, have its limits; a full personality, to be ac- 
 cepted on the one hand, must be made over on the 
 other. Classic Antiquity, which developed, far more 
 than that of Love, the essence and idea of Friend- 
 ship, has recorded I know not how many instances 
 of pairs of friends." 
 
 " There are three or even four pairs," said Ramler, 
 "Achilles and Patroclus, Theseus and Pirithous, 
 Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias;* Plutarch 
 adds a fifth to the number in Pelopidas and Epam- 
 inondas." 
 
 " The fundamental condition of friendship is like- 
 ness," said Mendelssohn, and Ramler, by way of 
 confirmation, added: 
 
 " Cicero laid down as a condition even similarity 
 of pursuits and of natural dispositions." 
 
 " And those good sisters of Mother Nature, dear 
 Aunt Custom and wise Aunt Sophistics, are tSe best 
 corrupters and pimps in the matter," whispered 
 Abraham Reckoner in Ephraini's ear. Tlie latter 
 
 * Phytitias is Auerbach's reading. 
 
DE AMICITIA. 221 
 
 turned away, disgusted as well at what was said as 
 at the impoliteness of attempting a whispered dia- 
 logue, where all were united in a loud thinking. 
 He turned his attention to Gumperz, who now re- 
 sumed : 
 
 " That may well be the reason, too, as I was going 
 to remark some moments ago, why our friend, Mai- 
 mon, included the word * independent ' in his defini- 
 tion of friendship; equality alone makes men truly 
 independent. Between teacher and scholar in the 
 broadest sense of the word, between superior and 
 inferior, master and servant, rich and poor, no 
 friendship is possible. No friendship can be built 
 on gratitude, though perhaps love may, which as a 
 creature of the affections overleaps all differences; 
 in love one hears of mine and thine, only when the 
 lovers whisper to each other: Thou art mine and I 
 am thine. — A rich man who w^ill have a poor one for 
 a true friend must not leave him to his poverty and 
 distress, and he will not demand any thanks for re- 
 lieving it, because he is conscious that in a like case 
 he should expect the same treatment; gratitude takes 
 away independence, free judgement and equality at 
 once." 
 
 " You reverse the king's motto, and say instead of 
 sutmi cuique — meum cuique: mine to eacli^'' inter- 
 posed Maimon, turning his hand rapidly over and 
 over as he spoke, and moving it to and fro after the 
 manner of Talmudists. " There was a fellows-coun- 
 tryman sent to me yesterday, with a letter of recom- 
 mendation that I should help him. I was still in bed 
 
222 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 studying, because I had no wood to make a fire witb. 
 *ril tell you what,' said I to the stranger, *I will 
 move to one side; you get in by me and warm 
 yourself; that is all I can do for you." 
 
 There was a laugli, but the earnest physician 
 would not let himself lose his composure and went 
 on: 
 
 " The Pythagorean society was based upon practi- 
 cal friendship, and Pythagoras lays down the fun- 
 damental condition: Friends must have all things 
 in common. The poor man who receives from the 
 rich, as his friend, can do so independently. The 
 free and generous man takes just as freely as he 
 gives; it is only a more refined egotism when people 
 would rather give than receive; it requires a freer 
 soul to receive." 
 
 " I accept," Maimon again interrupted, " and now I 
 am even proud of it." And again Gumperz contin- 
 ued: 
 
 " But I would like to propound one more question : 
 Can a grandee, a mighty ruler, have a friend ? Has 
 our King Frederick a friend ? " 
 
 "I think not, but you mix too many things up 
 together," said Mendelssohn. 
 
 "What of that?" rejoined the impetuous physi- 
 cian; "every one can pick out for himself what he 
 likes: I simply say: a genuine king, who Avill himself, 
 and only out of himself, govern, can have no friend, 
 for the friend has the right and duty to exert upon his 
 friend's disposition and conduct an immediate influ- 
 ence; an autocrat cannot allow that, and so he 
 
DE AMICITIA. 223 
 
 stands alone on bis dreary lieigllt; our mcomparablo 
 King Frederick is jealous of his sole sovereignty, lie 
 despises avarice and self-interest, he will have nc 
 favorite and he has — no friend; those marshals, Jor- 
 dan, D'Argens, D'Alambert, and so on, with whom 
 he is personally or epistolarily in friendly alliance, 
 are they friends ? Though he makes ever so many 
 poems of friendship, still that, after all, is only a poetic 
 pastime. You, yourself, lierr Mendelssohn, have 
 pointed out to him in your critique of his poems, that 
 he puts thoughts into verse, which cannot he his own, 
 and he has justly taken it ill of you, that you have 
 submissively exposed to him where lie the gaps and 
 logical contradictions. What can a prince do with 
 an independent friend who is a friend of truth ? A 
 king could only have youthful friends, but one for- 
 gets the anti-Macchiavellis and the friends of his 
 youth, when one is king." 
 
 "Friendship is the highest good, it is an angel," 
 said Abraham Reckoner; "but unhai)pily, we with 
 our spectacles can no longer see angels. The strong 
 needs no angel and no friend; he can support him- 
 self: a so-called friend is only a staff for the weak 
 to lean on — " 
 
 "And which, like the rod of Moses, becomes a 
 serpent when one throws it away;" observed Eph- 
 raim. A keen glance from the eye of Mendelssohn 
 smote Ephraim and pierced him to the heart, but 
 Mendelssohn turned to the well-known mocker, and 
 explained to him how friendsliip did not spring from 
 helplessness, and Ramler backed him in this with a 
 pretty citation from Plato's Lysis. 
 
224 POE T AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Mendelssohn had now another little skirmish with 
 Doctor Gumperz npon the relation between friend- 
 ship and honor. The modern Socrates applied here- 
 in, not only the intellectual midwifery of the Mas- 
 ter, but also a piece of Talmudic tactics, in provoking 
 his opponent to uncovered sallies, in order at last 
 to take him prisoner; but it was a mild imprison- 
 ment, in which the parties at last concluded a mut- 
 ual peace. 
 
 Ramler once more directed attention to another 
 side of the conversation, while, bearing in mind its 
 extended literary references, he started a discussion 
 upon the justification of a breach of friendship and 
 again represented the opinion of Aristotle, who des- 
 ignates inequality in the progress of intellectual 
 culture as justifying its dissolution. 
 
 Mendelssohn seemed to himself to have lingered 
 too long in classic antiquity; with a characteristic 
 devoutness he brought out the Bible and explained 
 that Judaism also set friendship in high honor, and 
 speaking of David and Jonathan, he readily found 
 the passage in the penitential Psalm of David re- 
 specting his lost friend, (11. Samuel, I, 26.) "Thy 
 love to me was wonderful, passing the love of 
 women." But coming back also to the living pres- 
 ent, and as if he would conjure up at length the in- 
 timate friend from whom to-day he had received 
 new tidings, he repeated with a voice of emotion the 
 aphorism of Lessing: 
 
 «* He who seeks friends, deserves a friend to have; 
 He who has none, a friend did never crave." 
 
DE AMICITIA. 225 
 
 This was the closing strain and key-note. 
 
 The company retired; it was as if a church of the 
 spirit had been dismissed with a blessing. 
 
 On the stairs Gumperz said to Ephraim: "We can 
 enlarge the friendly couples of the ancients with one 
 more beautiful example, the two intellectual heroes, 
 Lessing and Mendelssohn, who were born in the 
 same year. It is not without significance that these 
 two members of different confessions stand at the 
 gate-posts of the entrance into the new age, or, more 
 properly, are themselves such." 
 
 "With an inward exaltation never before experi- 
 enced, Ephraim left the house of Mendelssohn; all 
 refraction was forgotten and he felt his whole being 
 bathed as in a pure ether; he found himself sud- 
 denly plunged into the onward sweeping stream of 
 mighty intellects which aspired to the highest and 
 noblest achievements of humanity, and stood in liv- 
 ing intercourse with the best minds in the past. 
 New and fresh ardor inspired him. It was not 
 merely that joy which we feel when we go away 
 from a company richer in thought and with deeper 
 incitements; in this case the special circumstance 
 was added that Ephraim felt himself brought into 
 a circle of superior minds; whereas in Breslau, ex- 
 cepting his rare meetings with Lessing, in his for- 
 mer circles of acquaintance he could make his own 
 superiority felt. 
 
 Add to this, that in his native town he always re- 
 garded himself as measured under conditions and 
 Dy standards which in his development he had al- 
 15 
 
226 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 ready surpassed; but here, now, he entered as a 
 susceptible nature, without the drawback of any ret- 
 rospective reference into a society of elevated minds, 
 and the value which was assigned to him became 
 his worth in his own eyes. To one honestly striv- 
 ing to improve himself it became thus a true exal- 
 tation to be able to look up to highly exalted char- 
 acters; the view grows large and extensive, as in 
 the contemplation of mighty mountains, whose sum- 
 mit receives the earliest greeting of the sun. 
 
 And, while in the world of thought freely aspir- 
 ing minds strove to fathom anew the meaning of life 
 and its eternal norms, while they tested the current 
 intellectual coinage, now rejecting these as worth- 
 less counters, now determining there the worthless 
 alloy, and stamping all anew; the business world 
 was also agitated. The law which made uncurrent 
 all moneys coined during the war, changed the usual 
 and supposed secure state of property through all 
 strata of society. There were now discharged men 
 and invalids of quite another kind from those made 
 so by sword and bullet. A hero of the Berlin ex- 
 change and one of the most respectable citizens of 
 the place, John Gotzkowski, was reduced by this 
 stroke, in connection with other misfortunes, to the 
 beggar's staff. As after an earthquake, people 
 looked round to see whether this or that house were 
 still standing, and many a one could only be kept 
 up by a swift application of outside props. 
 
 Ephraim had, as cashier of his uncle — who, as one 
 " in good favor," seemed by his high connections to 
 
DE AMICITIA. 227 
 
 have anticipated the surprising emergency— a heap 
 of business on his shoulders in connection with the 
 financial operations bearing upon it; and often was 
 he tried by the painful feeling in what kind of an 
 activity he was engaged, but Emanuel consoled him 
 with the thought that, once enlisted, he could not, 
 as a good soldier, any longer ask for a justification 
 of the campaign. 
 
 Simultaneously with Ephraim a young Italian had 
 entered his uncle's counting-room; the feeling of 
 strangeness and of a common necessity of accustom- 
 ing themselves to the yoke first brought the two in- 
 to intimacy. Ephraim had at once the sense of 
 home and of strangeness, for he was with his rela- 
 tions; and to this was added his special knowledge 
 of the Italian language; he could meet the handsome 
 young man with the glowing look in the familiar 
 sounds of home, and they attached themselves to 
 each other with the ardor and delight with which 
 one forms a first friendship. 
 
 The contrast of age between Emanuel and Eph- 
 raim made it impossible that they should be in all 
 ways friends and companions. Emanuel, too, was 
 sickly and was already entering on that last turn of 
 life where it bends round again toward its starting 
 point; he had worked himself, so to speak, into the 
 conscious state of growing childishness; he let 
 every-day life in many ways go unregarded, and 
 gave himself up exclusively to particular ideas and 
 amusements. But Ephraim, however well advanced 
 he was into the age of manhood, nevertheless was 
 
228 POE T AND MER CHANT. 
 
 just entering properly upon the great stage of life. 
 Trevirano was here the very guide he wanted: he 
 was young, bold and handsome. When Ephraini 
 went arm in arm with his friend through the streets, 
 he smiled quietly within himself, for he knew that 
 he should now be made doubly interesting through 
 his companion to the fair damsels of his own faith, 
 and that they now for three days would talk of 
 nothing else at their gatherings but of Zerlina's 
 cousin and the pale, interesting Christian who 
 Avalked wdtli him. Malicious enviers did, indeed, 
 spread abroad the report that Trevirano was a baptized 
 Jew, and hence his affability towards that nation; 
 but Ephraim knew, to be sure, that his comrade was 
 an Italian noble and emigrant, and only by the cir- 
 cumstances of the times had been driven to his pres- 
 ent occupation. 
 
 Ephraim would no longer suffer anything to grow 
 under the protection of dark powers ; he felt of the 
 young germs to crush them, if any harm to him 
 could unfold itself from them. Trevirano should 
 be to him a comrade, to accompany him in the glad 
 enjoyment of life. With Emanuel he would main- 
 tain a soul-understanding, and in him would collect 
 himself: the two should be to him the unity of that 
 which he had conceived as the ideal of a friend; in 
 these two should the double demand of his nature 
 be satisfied. " Thou canst not form the least idea," 
 he once said to Trevirano, for it was a way he had, 
 that he must forthwith address any one with whom 
 he was closely associated with the familiar thou — 
 
DE AMICITIA. 229 
 
 " Thou canst not conceive how I envy thee thy un- 
 broken spirits. You Christians do not at all know 
 what a happiness you enjoy in every way. Tlicse 
 churches, these streets, these council-houses and halls 
 of jiistice are yours; you are everywhere at home; 
 the officials are to you no unapproachable spectres, 
 the sabre-bearers no contemptuously staring insolent 
 were-wolves; they are your fathers, brothers, un- 
 cles; the wide open world is your family home. But 
 a Jew, who is conscious of his position, and I have 
 known that from a boy, goes cowering round with 
 the everlasting question: What have you against 
 me ? What have I done to you ? He imagines that 
 looks and glances mean him, which perhaps have no 
 thought of him. And all this trembling, with the 
 inward consciousness all the while of being fit for 
 any refined human society. It is a deadly pain, it 
 eats out the best energy of life. I try to free my- 
 self and to mock at the follies of the world, but thy 
 supreme buoyancy, thy gay and careless playing 
 with the world, is something I can never reach. I 
 shall forever envy thee." 
 
 Trevirano could not understand what so tor- 
 mented Ephraim; he knew not what answer to 
 make, except to disclose to Ephraim all the secrets 
 of his life, his present trouble, and his hopes. For 
 hardly any reason save to make some response to 
 this, Ephraim gave parallels from his own history, 
 and sought thereby to manifest his sympathy and 
 his intelligence; but soon he too came down to the 
 present, and related how he had originally come to 
 
230 POET AND MER CHA NT. 
 
 Berlin to contract a so-called marriage of reason 
 with his cousin Zerlina, but how the majestic pres- 
 ence of Kecha, the sister-in-law of Mendelssohn, had 
 made so deep an imiDression upon him; hoAV beside 
 that he had taken a fancy to the pale chamberaiaid 
 in the house of his uncle; how it was property his 
 unalterable purpose not to fall in love again any 
 more: and a good many other contradictions of the 
 same kind. Suddenly he felt how disagreeable it 
 was to have a confidant. If he had already feared 
 that by the abuse of his experiences to the purposes 
 of poetry he should compromise his own individu- 
 ality, and therefore loved to represent in poems 
 their reverse side, he now saw in these everlasting 
 communications to his comrade the last intrench- 
 ments of an inner individuality give way. In all the 
 disasters of life he had hitherto been able to exclaim 
 to himself: "Thou hast a wealth within thee which 
 the world has thus far neither understood nor mis- 
 understood;" but now he had no still and secret 
 consciousness any more into which he could retreat 
 at the loss of this new friend, and collect himself 
 within himself; if he lost him or was deceived and 
 betrayed by him, he had lost his whole man. 
 
 That is the profound misery of skepticism, that it 
 Bees behind every ripening friend, death lurking, 
 and willfully casts him off, only for the sake of being 
 able to say to himself: I foresaw that this would 
 come of it. A strong mind will draw back in self- 
 satisfied renunciation; a weak one will, with fear 
 and trembling, set its foot over the threshold of a 
 
DE AMICITIA. 231 
 
 new relation, and not even enjoy undisturbed the 
 short pleasure of illusion. Ephraiin needed an at- 
 tachment to another, and yet could not attach him- 
 self with unreserved surrender. And as he never- 
 theless in continued confidence imparted to his new 
 friend thoughts and feelings which he once dared 
 not confess even to himself, he not only lost the 
 inner prosperity and virgin intactness of thought 
 and sensibility, living in secret silence within him, 
 but confession passed over into his life, and a be- 
 spoken sin loses often the terror of the act. Eph- 
 raim felt also his moral foundations giving way, for 
 his friend's principles were elastic as those of a man 
 of the world always are. 
 
16.— DE AMORE. 
 
 THE Peace of Hubertsberg was followed by an 
 intense stir and activity all through Germany, 
 but especially in Prussia and its capital; the latter 
 had been, in comparison with the other cities, but 
 little distressed by the war, and its awakened ener- 
 gies could therefore develop themselves the more 
 readily in their organic fullness. It was as when, 
 after tempestuous weather, the sky clears up again: 
 fresh blossom-dust floats from trees and flowers, 
 shaken by the wind; the birds, which had crept 
 away into silence, encourage and cheer each other 
 with their songs and flutter merrily forth; a refresh- 
 ing vapor issues from the drenched earth; brown 
 torrents gush forth here and there, where once had 
 been a dry desert, and if here and there are seen 
 trees and flowers bowed down, and dams broken 
 through, the swifter flow of sap will soon replace 
 what is lost, under the direction of one mighty will. 
 Even during the war had begun a new era of sci- 
 ence and poetry. The poetic fraternities in Leipsic 
 and Gottingen stirred up and cultivated new life; 
 
^ 
 
 DE A MORE. X 230-, 
 
 but, above all, antiquity was to celebrate a new vcs- 
 urrection. Frederick II. was called now Alexander, 
 now Cicsar, now Marcus Aurelius, and the whole 
 01ymi)us was put in requisition for him alone. 
 Klopstock was to be a new Homer, Lessing a Sopho- 
 cles, Uz and Willamov Pindar, Kamler Horace, 
 Gessner Theocritus, Mendelssohn Socrates, Gellert 
 yEsop, Karsch called herself Sappho, Gleim was 
 Tyrtteus, and our Ephraim would be a new IMartial. 
 Out of the rich stir of life in the Seven Years' War 
 Ephraim had reaped no poetic spoils but two epi- 
 grams: 
 
 TO FREDERICK II. AFTER THE VICTORY OF LEUTHEN.* 
 
 Too many godlike deeds thou doest, 
 
 Great King! 'twere well if this thou knewest; 
 
 Hold up! thou lessenest thine own praise; 
 
 Like fables from the classic days, 
 
 Which, to amuse men, poets told them, 
 
 Posterity will, else, behold them. 
 
 hippocrene; in German, RossBACH.t 
 At Rossbach, French, ye dreamed, victory your arms would 
 
 follow ? 
 At his own fountain-head ne'er could succumb Apollo ! 
 
 The massive life of state and nation was too 
 mighty for the pretty play of wit in epigrams and 
 concetti; he now fastened his satires to the thousand 
 little threads and knots of which social life is con- 
 stituted. Still, after all, his nature was more an el- 
 egiacal and lyrical one, and well might he say of 
 himself : 
 
 *Dec. 5, 1757- 
 
 tin English "Horse-pond." (Coleridge's School-master.) 
 
234 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 * ' Wherefore, O Sybarite, 
 My epigram defame? 
 The glass is not to blame 
 For what it brings to light." 
 
 It was more a kind of extraneous or exotic raillery 
 W'hicli, like a bee, he imported into the carefully ar- 
 ranged cells of his verse; in connection with all in- 
 cidents and conversations he made a note for him- 
 self, in order not to let them slip out of his memory. 
 
 One will very frequently find among the Jews wits 
 and witlings, more frequently among the men, sel- 
 domer among the women. Wit is that form of intel- 
 lect in which blank coins of thought are the most 
 rapidly stamped, and with their easily recognized 
 nominal value are most speedily set in circulation. 
 With these lively minds, not yet drilled in by any 
 regular school-training, it must needs spring up all 
 the more briskly; add to this their peculiar jargon, 
 bristling with Hebraisms, with its capricious accents, 
 the confusion and dilution of different forms of 
 speech, giving easy occasion often for the most com- 
 ical plays upon words. When we consider further, 
 that the new culture was mostly based upon Tal- 
 mudic dialectics, that wit is a successful weapon in 
 the outpost skirmishes against insipidity and hollow 
 ceremonies, and that a certain Voltairianism had 
 also penetrated into the deeper minds, we have the 
 elements of that intellectual epoch of Jewish his- 
 tory from which our fathers and grandfathers can 
 report to us so many keen specimens of play ou 
 words and surprising turns of thought. 
 
DE A MO RE. 235 
 
 Nothing is so contagious as wit; as its effect, 
 laughter, easily and involuntarily transmits itself 
 from one to another. So does its cause, tlie inner 
 mood, easily become a common condition; each out- 
 bids the other in crazy hide-and-seek; an application 
 which, on sober reflection, were meaningless and al- 
 most absurd, becomes in the whirl of hilarity a hap- 
 py hit and is crowned with universal plaudits. In 
 this new intellectual atmosphere Ephraim drank in 
 its characteristic element; he soon passed, in the Ber- 
 lin congregation, for one of the cleverest, that is, 
 wittiest, heads, for Abraham Diogenes had said: 
 "There is a whole cow's* hide full of art in his 
 skin." 
 
 Ephraim now went on his way radiant and smil- 
 ing; he was conscious of his superior understanding, 
 and as, in the days of his childhood, he had dared to 
 lay hold of bodily suicide as a weapon against life, 
 so now he had a new weapon, but was it not that of 
 spiritual suicide, which, for a momentary show, wil- 
 lingly sacrifices and perverts into their opposite the 
 deepest emotions? 
 
 In his own eyes he seemed to himself so flat and 
 stale, for it takes two to make a laugh; in solitude 
 he was sad and melancholy; it was like the breath- 
 ing out of a sigh for the excitement of laughter; he 
 laid the blame of this, again, at the door of his mer- 
 cantile sorrows; so soon as possible he meant to close 
 the account with this false relation of his. 
 
 "I often wonder," Ephraim once said to Trevirano, 
 
 * Alluding to his name. 
 
236 POE T A ND MER CIIA NT. 
 
 " when I get up in the morning, that I can walk, can 
 speak, that I know tliousands of things; I always 
 feel as if I must begin my whole being over again; 
 my life crumbles to pieces. What is there, then, 
 that can or should hold me together any longer?" 
 
 His friend ridiculed him for such splenetic whim- 
 seys, but all that did not set him free. When he 
 woke in the morning he asked himself: Why do I 
 get up? To work. And why work? To get 
 money? And why money? To live. — Untired. 
 life, that devours itself ! 
 
 While others, with purely intellectual occupations, 
 often long for that which shall by outward evi- 
 dences manifest itself as action, Ephraim felt the 
 opposite longing, forgetting the while, as they do, 
 that in either case, not the thing accomplished, but 
 the pleasure taken in activity, as an expression of 
 life, is the true life itself, and that the happiness of 
 life is only the demonstration of power and its rela- 
 tion to others, or in other words, the fulfillment of 
 duty. 
 
 Ephraim was now entangled in a new love affair. 
 Fi'om his confessions to Trevirano we have seen that 
 Recha, the sister-in-law of Mendelssolm, had made 
 a deep impression upon him. Relying upon the 
 coolness of his judgment, he gave himself up unre- 
 servedly to friendly intercourse with Recha; he 
 buried, his gaze in the still glow of her black eyes, 
 he contemplated the quiet, tranquil beauty of 
 her features, and the rich fullness of outline, and 
 delighted in the luxuriance of the tresses which in 
 
DE A MORE. 237 
 
 soft ringlets floated over her whole head. He trust- 
 ed all tlie more to his self-control, that many things 
 about Kecha displeased him; the drawing of her 
 eyebrows, which vanished almost at the middle of 
 the eye, the marked projection of her lower lip, and 
 particularly a crack which she seemed to have in her 
 organ of speech, whereby all sound came out as if 
 shredded, he found great fault with. For his fre- 
 quent visits, meanwhile, he made this excuse to him- 
 self, that he sought the company and conversation 
 of the philosopher; by -and -by, hoAvever, he would 
 go to Mendelssohn's house even when he knew that 
 the philosopher was at that very moment busy in his 
 counting-house; by degrees he forgot his former 
 criticisms altogether. How his heart beat and his 
 breath trembled, as he thought of the hour when he 
 should appear before Mendelssohn to ask of him the 
 hand of his sister-in-law, embrace him as brother 
 and then kiss the trembling Yes from Recha's lips; 
 in what brilliant colors he painted to himself his 
 future life, fresh and fiery activity coupled with 
 thoughtf ulness and tender sincerity. Full of impa- 
 tience and internal excitement he paced up and 
 down alone in his chamber whenever the gracious 
 images of such a future rose more and more distinct 
 and definite before his inner eye. 
 
 This, now, it was, that held him fast again to the 
 mercantile desk; for his own daily necessities his 
 means were adequate, but for the support of a fami- 
 ly he needed a steady income. "Love's bliss is 
 higher than poet's bliss," he said to himself; "nay 
 
238 POET AND MERCHANT 
 
 it is the highest; a father's joy in fine children is 
 more enduring than in his poetic offspring;" and he 
 attached himself more and more ardently to Recha. 
 
 The solid and independent nature of llecha exer- 
 cised a refreshing influence, and one blessed with a 
 thousand quiet joys, upon Ephraim. Here, for the 
 first time, he recognized that it was not the essence 
 of womanhood to be a soft echo of the stronger 
 mind, but in its own original form to apprehend and 
 organize the relations of life; he could here no 
 longer oracularly pronounce and like a fast-day 
 preacher give admonitory lectures on the perversities 
 of the uncultured, as with Philippina and Taubchen. 
 With sound and uncorrupted glance, Recha saw 
 through what was presented to her, and compelled 
 the giver to a closer insight into himself and others. 
 He felt himself thereby uplifted and invigorated; 
 the slumbering productive power stirred itself in his 
 soul, and soon was a new spring-time of love to arise 
 in full-blooming splendor. 
 
 The subject of conversation with Recha was 
 mostly the affairs of the Jews and the enlightenment 
 of the age. On one occasion they spoke of the re- 
 markable incidents, which often, like a lightning- 
 flash, loosed the fetters of free consciousness. Eph- 
 raim told about his Polish Rabbi, and how he him- 
 self, exhausted with his soul's conflicts, had fallen 
 asleep on his bosom. Recha's countenance lighted 
 up as she listened; in Ephraim's voice and look was 
 such a tender sincerity and sadness, Recha miglit 
 well feel how gladly he resuscitated his whole past 
 
DE A MO RE. 239 
 
 before her, in order to lay not only his present 
 being, but also his vanished past on her heart; he 
 spoke of the spirit of freedom and meant the spirit 
 of love; he spoke of the hand which the Rabbi had 
 laid upon his forehead, and thought of the hand of 
 Kecha which, with a soft touch, was to quiet the 
 feverish pulses of his tt robbing temples. 
 
 "Ah, how charming !" said Kecha, when Ephraim 
 had ended, and looked on him, as she spoke, with an 
 eye full of loving sweetness, till he felt a blissful 
 shudder thrill through his whole being; he passed 
 his hand across his face, his cheeks burned; how 
 gladly would he have kissed the sweet "charming" 
 from her lips and folded her forever in his arms, but 
 he restrained himself, for he dreaded the presence 
 of the sister, and no mortal eye but that of his be- 
 loved should see how he infolded her into the 
 paradise of his soul. He soon took his leave, and 
 Recha mused much upon this sudden withdrawal. 
 
 In the street Ephraim kept repeating to himself 
 the words: "Ah, how charming! ah, how charm- 
 ing ! " and dreamed himself the while into such a 
 mood of bliss and freedom, that he was almost com- 
 pelled to shout for joy; he ran swiftly through the 
 streets, that no one meeting him might wake him 
 out of his rapture. All the sweet dreams and pre- 
 sentiments which he imagined had long since died 
 out with him, erected their heads again like flowers 
 on their stems, fresh and free; no frost of doubt 
 could settle again on the newly opened flowers. 
 " When I am so wholly dissolved in love," he said to 
 
240 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 himself, " must not reciprocal love be to me the full- 
 est satisfaction? How childish, indeed, was that 
 which I had hitherto taken for love; she, she loves 
 me, ah, how dearly ! " No one in the house could 
 guess why Ephraim was so gay, and as the treasure- 
 digger must, with mute lips, lift the gold out of the 
 earth, so Ephraim fancied that by even a sound he 
 should cause all the sweet enchantment suddenly to 
 disappear. Only with pain did he conceal this new 
 turn in his life from the good Emanuel; he was 
 sensible that he hereby almost forfeited his friend- 
 ship, but he also felt that another might perhaps 
 smile at his enthusiasm and so brush off the tender- 
 est enamel of the flower. He kept silent. Often, 
 too, he longed to know what misfortune would now 
 befall him, for he knew the might of the envious 
 gods, who suffer no fortune to continue unalloyed, 
 and into the midst of the clearest day send a hail- 
 shower; therefore, he always pictured to himself, 
 when he went home with a bosom swelling with joy, 
 some misfortune or other, which might come upon 
 him. He knew not what he feared, but he feared, 
 and that was enough. 
 
 Ephraim could never speak with Recha alone, 
 there was always either her sister or a friend present 
 with her, and most of all did he feel himself embar- 
 rassed by tlie presence of his cousin Zerlina. Never- 
 theless, he had the most confidential interviews with 
 Recha, when he went to walk alone or when he rest- 
 ed alone on his couch. What sweet w^ords he then 
 exchanged with her, and how glittered everywhere 
 
DE AMORE. 241 
 
 the lenderest pearls of dew in the variegated blos- 
 som-cups ! Often, too, he fixed these moments in 
 poems, but as if he feared to betray her name to 
 paper, he celebrated her with all sorts of strange 
 names; all, however, pointed to her: 
 
 "Among all Flora's children fair, 
 In wood and mead and vale I culled for thee the rarest ; 
 But, Chloe, look not in the glass, I pray, my fairest ! 
 Else thou for them no more wilt care." 
 
 "Will my Amelia bless me, say, ye eyes! 
 No, tell me not, ye lovely eyes, I pray! 
 Hell-pains will kill me, if ye answer, Nay! 
 If Yea, with ecstasy your victim dies ! " 
 
 One must not forget, too, that these poems 
 originated at that time, when, after the lays of the 
 minne-singers had long died away, woman's love 
 could not yet be celebrated in song. They sang 
 friendship and virtue, nature and joy, but purely 
 personal feeling could not venture to express itself 
 in melodious words, till Klopstock first, in lofty 
 strains, publislied his love to the world. 
 
 We find Ephraim truer and nearer to his proper 
 individuality, in the two following poems: 
 
 "Thou'rt silent, sweet, bewitching face! 
 And yet I know full well what aileth thee; 
 Love's very silence speaks more potently, 
 Mirena, than all Suada's words of grace." 
 
 "Heaven's wrath shall cruelty be reaping! 
 By day flies from me Saccharissa, 
 And that in dreams I cannot kiss her, 
 Prevents me all night long from sleeping." 
 
 Ephraim felt the inadequacy of such verses, mere- 
 16 
 
242 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 ly jDointed to a neatly turned conclusion. But what 
 cared he now for the worth of his poems ? Did not 
 love dwelling within him penetrate with an inner glow 
 all his dreamings and his doings? How often and 
 with what joy did he read the sonnets of Petrarch, 
 the singer of love; the thousand songs which he felt 
 out, no sound nor sign of them remains. He re- 
 nounced the thought of ever arriving at a full repre- 
 sentation of his very self; what of tender perception, 
 of susceptibility to the softer emotions of the spirit 
 possessed hira; in a word what of poesy lived within 
 him, he would pour into the cup of love and dedicate 
 it to her, that it might remain forever a fresh love- 
 draught. Poetry sliould be to him only sport and 
 jest; in love his existence had fulhlled its end; he 
 felt that he ha4 found the bond of unison between 
 love and poetry in subordinating and sacrificing the 
 one to the other. 
 
 All this and a great deal else he had talked over 
 in a hundredfold ways with liecha; she understood 
 him so perfectly and almost never contradicted him; 
 for Ephraim regarded his internal soliloquies as a 
 dialogue with Recha; he fancied that she must needs 
 have become as much wrapped up in his spirit as he 
 lived in her. For that very reason he was almost 
 always out of humor and irritated; when he met with 
 liecha, he hoped for a confidential continuation of 
 the dialogues whicli he had fondly carried on with 
 her in his inner man, and she asked him about the 
 events of the day, or she sought, as formerly, to en- 
 rich her knowledge and her intellect by his couver- 
 
DE A MO RE. 243 
 
 sation. Tlecha spoke often and with delight of the 
 writings of the men who went out and in at Men- 
 delssohn's house, and that with a modesty which 
 disclaimed, and yet could not help clearly revealing, 
 the silent interest she took therein. Particularly of 
 the writings of her " honored brother-in-law " she 
 loved to speak as of the children of the house, whose 
 mother, indeed, she was not, but whom she nursed 
 and tended. Of the announcements for the next 
 Michaelmas fair she spoke almost as one would of 
 gathered and j^reserved fruits, which one is already 
 beginning to consume, and she knew its preparation 
 and progress. 
 
 Ephraim saw in all this only the intellectual ani- 
 mation of Recha, which all the time stimulated to 
 wakeful alertness. He gladly followed her in all 
 discussions. 
 
 Did she never dream of what passed between 
 them, and had he deceived himself so infinitely ? He 
 could not believe it; no, it was only a playful teasing 
 and ingenious concealment of her inner being, when 
 she threw out to him, as so many toys, extraneous 
 matters which had no bearing upon their real rela- 
 tion; she certainly loved him — that was written in 
 her eyes,wliich looked down upon him so tenderly. 
 
 Zerlina, Ei)hraim's cousin, remarked his inclination 
 almost sooner than he did himself; for the out- 
 side spectator can more easily distinguish where 
 general social references pass over into personal 
 ones, whence it often happens that the lover is sur- 
 prised at finding his secret recognized by others 
 
244 POE T AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Booner than by himself. Zwlina was a friend of 
 Recha's; she visited her at least twice a week, on 
 parade-day, as well to enjoy her society, as for the 
 sake of seeing, on the long way to the house, her 
 fine figure, her little foot and her tasteful toilet ad- 
 mired by the gaping multitude; not seldom, also, 
 had she a roll of notes in her hand, and Abraham 
 Reckoner said : " She meant thereby to notify peo- 
 l^le of her musical culture." Zerlina often gave her 
 cousin commissions and compliments to Recha. On 
 the whole she deported herself as if it were a matter 
 of course that she understood the whole situation. 
 Ephraim accepted all without remonstrance; the gay 
 and childlike disposition of his cousin delighted him 
 greatly. If he had formerly approached her only 
 with discomfort, because she had been destined for 
 him by his uncle, the mutual complacency now dawn- 
 ing between them in a new point of view, gradually 
 led to a certain brotherly and sisterly familiarity, nay 
 friendship between cousin and cousin, in which still 
 a polite attention is enough to distinguish it from 
 the friendship proper of men and from the love of 
 brothers and sisters. Ephraim behaved towards his 
 cousin as if he lived in the most blessed state of 
 mutual understanding with Recha, and was only 
 sometimes disturbed by little ii-ritations; he made 
 this confession with inward trembling, and only 
 upon the promise of the strictest secrecy, for he 
 knew how he hereby destroyed every bridge for his 
 retreat, but could he have helped being ashamed to 
 confess the truth that he had surrendered so at discre- 
 
DE A MORE. 245 
 
 tion ? Ephraira even went so far as to beg his cousin 
 to invite Kecha to meet her in her father's garden, 
 which lay before the Brandenburgh gate; he hoped 
 here or on the way home to come to an understand- 
 ing with Recha; he would not any longer content 
 himself with the sweet game of " loves me — loves me 
 not," he must have speedy and reliable assurance. 
 Recha came, and with her Fran Mendelssohn. Eph- 
 raim saw, here in the garden for the first time, his 
 beloved in a light and bright summer dress under 
 trees and on the lawn; she appeared to him like a 
 new creature; a fresh breath of spring rested on her 
 countenance; the soft and full outlines of her lovely 
 form flowed all the more sweetly under the light 
 veil; she was to him as one new-born. He gazed 
 upon her with a look full of love and ardent desire, 
 but she looked thoughtfully to the ground and dug 
 Tsdth the point of her foot a little hole in the sand. 
 Frau Mendelssohn reported with rapture the news 
 of the arrival of her husband's friend, the Secretary 
 Lessing; in her picturing of the amiableness and gay 
 humor of his manner, it seemed as if she could ab- 
 solutely find no last word. 
 
 " How dost thou like him, Recha ? " asked Zerlina, 
 as she stood behind her friend and placed a bloom- 
 ing twig of syringa in her hand. 
 
 "I?" said Recha, lifting up her blushing face, 
 " very well, but I have not yet spoken with him." 
 
 "Heigh! what a cat's-memory thou hast," said 
 Frau ^lendelssohn; "did he not beg permission to 
 steal thy name from thee, and baptize with it a child 
 of his muse ? " 
 
246 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 "Do you hear — a m^Vraemory ? " said Ephraim, 
 laughing immoderately. He fancied he had con- 
 cealed his easily provoked jealousy. All looked at 
 each other. 
 
 The conversation would not flow on easily, and 
 Zerlina told about the handsome wedding-clothes 
 which her future sister-in-law was having made. 
 They came unexpectedly upon the subject of the 
 happiness it is when two married people love each 
 other so devotedly. 
 
 " I know not for the life of me how one can help 
 being happy with a husband," said Zerlina; "one 
 does what he likes, and so he, too, will do in his turn 
 what pleases me." 
 
 Recha embraced Zerlina, kissed her and praised 
 her happy disposition. She then talked with Ephra- 
 im about 7ia'lvete^ and how beautifully it idealized 
 everything when the understanding only sees cari- 
 catures. Ephraim did not succeed in bringing his 
 heart's affairs to a decision, especially as still other 
 company arrived. 
 
 They separated in bad humor. Ephraim went 
 home to send Recha his Petrarch which she had 
 asked him for. " If she does not love me," he said to 
 himself, " with the same fast and fervent love with 
 which I am drawn to her, she is not worthy of 
 my love; I must cast her from me, as a piece of 
 glittering glass which I had mistaken and laid up 
 for a diamond; what is more despicable than a lover 
 without reciprocated love ? out of self-respect I must 
 tear her from my heart— but does she not love me 
 
DE A MORE. 247 
 
 then ? " — He could not rescue himself from the soph- 
 istry of the heart. 
 
 When he reached home, he found his chamber 
 open; through the half open door of his side chamber 
 he saw Matilda, the pale handsome chambermaid, 
 standing before the book-case and reading a book; 
 he had often surprised her at this occupation; a 
 tender relation had grown out of it, for Ephraim 
 recognized in Matilda a strong propensity for poet- 
 ical enjoyments; he often gave her books and talked 
 with her about them, but he was compelled to find 
 that Matilda drew from them only food for her 
 sorrow; if she read of gilded princesses and flower- 
 crowned shepherdesses, she sighed still more over 
 her fate, which had given her so dark and dreary a 
 childhood, and which, when it freed her, left her to 
 become a servant-maid. Ephraim knew her history 
 only superficially, that she was the child of a wander- 
 ing beggar, who had fled without leaving any trace 
 of him and had left w^ife and children behind in 
 Berlin; from sympathy and because she was a dis- 
 tant relation, Veitel had yielded to the urgent en- 
 treaties of his daughter Zerlina and taken the child 
 into his house. Matilda never loved to speak of her 
 youth, and particularly Avould never confess how^ she 
 came to have that broad scar on her forehead. 
 Zerlina gave her new playmate (for so she regarded 
 Matilda) instruction in reading and writing, and 
 Matilda, who possessed a ready aptness for all things, 
 learned with astonishing rapidity, so that Zerlina 
 soon had the pleasure of lending her all the books 
 
248 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 wliich she herself read. ^Tatlkla everywhere read 
 her own evil fate between the lines, for everywhere 
 she found it indicated how happily other people 
 lived. There was nothing she wished on earth but 
 to be a shepherdess; when the sun rose, she would 
 sally forth with her sheep; at noon she would lie be- 
 side the fountain and enjoy her bread with a fresh 
 draught, and when the evening bell tolled, she would 
 come home, crowned with flowers; ah! and then, if 
 a Daphnis met her, — she blushed at the thought, and 
 her heart beat faster. Ephraim knew well why 
 Matilda, when she had to hand round the meats at 
 the table, shut her eyes with shame, and why in all 
 the motions of her fine figure sadness and melancholy 
 expressed themselves; Veitel named her nothing but 
 *' the disguised Countess of Have-naught." Had 
 Ephraim found Matilda at the time when he met with 
 Philippina, he would have fallen enthusiastically in 
 love with her; now he could only gather up for her 
 the crumbs of a dish long since consumed. But 
 Matilda saw that he comprehended her sorrow, and 
 loved him with all her soul. Now when he saw her 
 again before the book-case, as she with a down-cast 
 face repeated over in a low tone with her pale lips 
 every word she read, he crept up to her on his toes 
 and would have clasped her hand. 
 
 "Please not," said Matilda; "it is too rough from 
 labor; but tell me, why have you never confessed to 
 me that you were in love with llecha Guggen- 
 heimer? If you are only as happy as you deserve 
 to be, and Recha loves you sincerely, then if it were 
 
DE A MORE. 249 
 
 proper, I could go and say to her how dear and 
 good you are, that she too may rightly know what a 
 treasure she has in you; I could be maid to your 
 wife and serve her with pleasure because she made 
 you so happy, and if you had children, I would nurse 
 and tend them like a mother " 
 
 " O thou heavenly sweet girl," cried Ephraim, and 
 kissed her coarse hand, which she drew back with 
 shame and hid under her apron. Ephraim could not 
 set forth to Matilda his relation to Kecha, nor did he 
 combat her own so deeply expressed affection. " This 
 is, indeed, the only foothold on the quaking ground 
 of her existence," he said to himself; "I dare not 
 rob her of it; on this noble self-delusion she climbs 
 and clings, let her do so!" She now told him how 
 much attached to him old Emanuel also was, and 
 how they often chatted together about him. " Yes," 
 said she, " I think too much of you all the time; that 
 is not good, I know very well, but can I help it? 
 At night when old Emanuel plays the violin so 
 mournfully, I often lie for hours at my open garret- 
 window, and listen, and look up at the stars that 
 glisten so lovely. Ah ! I then often say to myself, 
 one day when thou shalt see him no more, these stars 
 T\dll still continue to shine over thee, and so often as 
 thou seest them thou wilt think of him and pray for 
 him." 
 
 Her bosom heaved more rapidly, her voice trem- 
 bled. " Ilark ! " she suddenly interrupted herself, 
 "I hear the door-bell; mistress is coming back from 
 the garden. Farewell, now, I must go down, but 
 
250 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 you — be right glad and happy." With these words 
 she slipped owX through the door, and made a forced 
 face of playful archness. 
 
 Ephraira smiled sadly at the fearful irony of fate, 
 which sent him yonder in search of love, restless and 
 in uncertain paths, and let him find such love here 
 without his seeking it, and that he must receive 
 merely as if in compassion all the golden treasures 
 of a heartfelt affection. 
 
17._P00R SOULS. 
 
 EPHRAIM had almost forgotten that he was not 
 properly a stranger hi Berlin, that in fact his 
 dearest relative, his sister Yiolet, lived there; but 
 this was once for all his peculiar way, always to seek 
 what belonged to him among foreign elements, and 
 there, where it lay near him, not to recognize it. As 
 the often deceptive resemblance of our features to 
 those of others cannot be perceived by ourselves, but 
 only by third persons, so Ephraim did not see that 
 his own nature, both in form and in spirit, was re- 
 peated in a female way in his sister. She appeared 
 to him too effeminate and morbid, and therefore he 
 neglected her in an unseemly manner; hardly any- 
 thing but his ill-humor did he transfer to her and 
 then let it have its way, and he was vexed that she did 
 not give him pleasure in return, nay that she even, 
 herself, claimed sympathy. 
 
 It is a wide -spread and yet in many ways false 
 maxim, that partners in sorrow are a comfort to 
 each other; we should rather say, there are peculiar 
 natures, and in all at times special moods, to which 
 
252 POET AND MERC HA N^^. 
 
 another's sorrow is inconvenient and vexatious, es- 
 pecially when there is nothing to be done for it. 
 Ephraim was almost angry with his sister for being 
 unhappy. 
 
 In this frame he now went to see her again. Vio- 
 let^had received news from home; she told him, as 
 a preparation, that Philippina had become the bride 
 of a capital man, named Ries. 
 
 *' I congratulate him," said Ephraim, laughing. 
 
 "Even when she was a child, I prophesied to her 
 that she would be fortunate," added Violet; "she 
 has so much careless gayety, and such people are al- 
 ways happy." 
 
 "Happy ! " echoed.Ephraira, " happy! What dost 
 thou know of happiness ? When any one has thrown 
 himself into the water with a stone round his neck, 
 and the rope to which the stone is attached does not 
 break, call him happy, no one else. Wast thou ever 
 once happy ? " 
 
 " Yes, I can truly say, I have been, and I fancied 
 I should be able to live on the remembrance of that 
 happiness all my days. Thousands of times 1 re- 
 peated those blessed moments and lived them over 
 again perfectly, but unhappily I had to learn that 
 the present claims its dues. Does the cold make 
 our teeth chatter any the less because in the midst 
 of ice and snow we can remember a mild spring 
 day ? The remembrance of that happiness, conjured 
 up a hundred times, became a pale spectre, a reality 
 interwoven with dreams, in which I knew no longer 
 what was truth and what was dream. Alas ! I am 
 
POOR SOULS. 253 
 
 too weak, not even the bare recollection could I 
 grasp if I stretched my hand after it." 
 
 " Thou art right," added Ephraim, in wild mock- 
 ery; "whoso feeds upon memory, upon the carcass 
 of the past, may live to be a hundred or die at once, 
 it is all the same. But fresh life is a beast of prey, 
 it requires all the time fresh life, which it may 
 strangle and devour." 
 
 Violet was used to have her brother fly out into 
 all sorts of extravagances; she let him have his way 
 and now only led him back gently by saying: "Ah ! 
 I should be much happier if I had a faith to which 
 I could make a pilgrimage. I would I were a 
 Catholic and could find rest in believing — I would 
 not have been a Protestant, like our brother Na- 
 than." 
 
 "Nathan?" 
 
 " Yes, he has married a young widow of an official 
 from Brieg, and has gone over to the Protestant 
 church." 
 
 "I congratulate him, too; Nathan believes neither 
 in wedded bliss nor in Christianity, therefore he has 
 done right to put his neck into both yokes." 
 
 "Thou, too, hast the bad habit of the people in 
 this place to snap the fingers at everything in a wit- 
 ticism. I confess that, after all, the defection of 
 our brother troubles me sorely; he has cut himself 
 loose from us, from our sorrows and our hopes." 
 
 " But I must tell thee news, too," began Ephraim 
 again, now in a milder tone, feeling, no doubt, how 
 he had pained his sister. "The Secretary Lessing 
 
264 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 has amved here from Breslaii. I shall see him to- 
 morrow evening at Mendelssohn's. Only think 
 whom I shall see there besides; dost thou remember 
 the lady that made such line verses about thee at 
 thy wedding ? She lives here now, celebrated and 
 honored as a poetess. A Baron Kottwitz, a true 
 nobleman, has rescued her from her needy condition. 
 Also the grenadier-poet, Gieim, who, at the Feast of 
 Tabernacles, brought thee the souvenir from thy 
 first bridegroom, will be present. He is now secre- 
 tary of the cathedral in Ilalberstadt, and is building 
 out of poetic epistles a cathedral of friendship. It 
 is not wise in thee to keep thyself aloof so from all 
 companies; thou denyest thyself many a pleasure." 
 
 Violet fell into deep thought when her brother 
 had gone; she reproached herself for immuring her- 
 self so in her domesticity, but she could no longer 
 extricate herself. She had, in marrying her hus- 
 band, married into a whole circle of sisters-in-law 
 and aunts, and it was impossible for her to sacrifice 
 to each one, with the expense of time, a piece of lier 
 life; she had always come home so unsettled and 
 empty from the so-called social entertainments, as 
 she could take no pleasure in all the clack of gossip, 
 criticizing of dress and firing off of small witticisms; 
 she buried herself in a recluse life of reading. "He 
 is here!" she now said to herself; "I wonder, does 
 he dream that I am so near him, does he, perhaps, 
 any longer remember me ? Ah ! that I could see 
 him, only once see him ! " Slie raised her head; she 
 was sitting directly opposite the looking-glass, and 
 
POOR SOULS. 255 
 
 now, when she saw her red cheeks and her glisten- 
 ing eyes looking at her out of the mirror, she veiled 
 her face with shame and remorse, for she had be- 
 come conscious of unfaithfulness to her husband. 
 "But," said she again, "he has, indeed, no claim to 
 my heart, he never demanded that." She considered 
 in what way she could see Lessing to-morrow even- 
 ing, without committing herself to the constraint of 
 society and thereby giving up her whole previous 
 mode of life. 
 
 Whoso observed Violet only superficially, would 
 have agreed with the opinion of the Berlin Jews, 
 that she lived in a happy wedlock, which, in order 
 to be perfect, needed only the blessing of children ; 
 in fact, children would have attached Violet more 
 closely to her husband, and prevented her sorrow 
 from coming to an outbreak; it would not thereby 
 have been appeased. However repulsive to her in 
 the beginning had been the counting-room business, 
 which she had to superintend for her husband, 
 she, nevertheless, became subsequently in the same 
 degree gratified by it, for she derived from it the 
 consciousness of a profitable activity, and could 
 thereby devote herself the more freely to the only 
 passion which she could pursue with unalloyed 
 pleasure, that of benevolence. Not seldom, how- 
 ever, did she spoil this pure pleasure of hers by 
 hypercritical misgivings; she felt herself obliged to 
 confess that she should be less susceptible and help- 
 ful to the sorrow and distress of the afilicted, if she 
 herself led a happy life; she would insist on extorting 
 
250 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 selfishness out of her actions. For the most part, 
 however, the inner truth conquered, and she enjoyed 
 that radiant angelic joy whicli always accompanies 
 beneficence. How she rejoiced to be able to set it 
 high on the list of her husband's good qualities, that 
 he left her beneficence absolutely an unlimited 
 range! Unfortunately, she could add but little else. 
 Ilerz Helft was, indeed, an upright man, but that 
 concerned his business relations with the external 
 world. Love may, indeed, find in the general re- 
 spect for character a fair ground to build upon, but 
 it does not absolutely require that condition, for 
 genuine love detaches not its affection from its ob- 
 ject, even though he bore the Cain's-mark of univers- 
 al scorn. Through her immediate entanglement in 
 business matters Violet had also to endure all the 
 whims of her husband, arising out of the manifold 
 fluctuations of trade. In view of the many good 
 qualities of her spouse, Violet had in the beginning 
 unfolded all her tenderness and good nature, in 
 order to bring her husband and herself into a 
 warmer and more cordial relation, but Herz Helft 
 took it all with cool composure, and Violet, perceiv- 
 ing her pains to be wasted, gradually ceased her lit- 
 tle tender attentions. Her husband seemed hardly 
 to notice it, he was the same afterward as before. 
 
 Herz Helft was a practical man ; he had only mar- 
 ried when he had fully sown his wild oats. Mar- 
 riage was with him an insurance-office for careful 
 uursing in age and sickness; the wants of Violet's 
 soul he could not discern, because nothing of the 
 
POOR SOULS. 251 
 
 kind stirred within himself; he often beheld her with 
 silent sorrow, for she was childless, and he saw in 
 prospect his painfully-earned possessions passing one 
 day into the hands of laughing heirs. lie redoubled 
 his business activity for the additional purpose oi 
 forgetting his domestic trouble. One could not in 
 his presence venture to speak of children, who would 
 not willingly see him put out of humor, and when 
 any one of his nephews or nieces approached him he 
 would kiss them and then softly push them away 
 from him. Violet, also, desired nothing more ar- 
 dently than to possess a daughter, whom she might 
 train up to freedom and love; for such a one she 
 would provide everything which birth and fate had 
 withheld and wrested from her. 
 
 So lived the happy wedded couple which prudent 
 mothers held up to their daughters as an example, 
 how beautiful and blessed marriages of convenience 
 were. 
 
 Violet thought of the ways and means of seeing 
 Lessing the following evening, and when she had at 
 last found them, she was singularly stirred up and 
 went about through the rooms singing in a low tone. 
 The poor who came to-day to get their weekly al- 
 lowance received a double portion. She took down 
 LessiuQ-'s writino;s from the book-case and read in 
 them. 
 
 Ephraim, too, made his preparations for the com- 
 ing evening. He had mentioned to Recha several 
 times his making verses. She begged him to let her 
 see some of them, and he promised to. Here, now, 
 17 
 
258 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 he had found a way that should lead the most 
 speedily to the long-sought decision. Instead of the 
 poems he would hand her a letter; in this explana- 
 tion no one could interrupt nor any stranger's pres- 
 ence embarrass him. Five — six beginnings of a let- 
 ter lay round him; this one was too cold, that one 
 too passionate, a third too intellectually elaborated, 
 etc. At last he surmounted the obstacle by mak- 
 ing it a lever and fulcrum; he began with depicting 
 how hard it was for him to fix to-day the look, in 
 which the soul reposed, upon paper; he pictured his 
 whole inner life; every word breathed love. Never- 
 theless, he asked not openly and outright for her 
 love, he begged for a candid confession of what she 
 felt for him; he imagined thereby to save himself 
 from the self-reproach of having inconsiderately 
 placed his whole being at the mercy of a maiden's 
 hand, and possibly having to take it back rejected. 
 He said he only wanted, like Archimedes, a point out- 
 side of the earth, and he would lift it off its hinges; 
 the love of Recha was to him this point, and sheltered 
 in her, he would as a Jew, an outcast from the whole 
 community, learn to conquer, renounce and despise 
 the world. Finally he conjured her, in case of a re- 
 fusal, simply to return this letter to him after three 
 days; that would be answer enough. 
 
 With anxious beating of the heart he stood the 
 next evening in his chamber, for he had to confess 
 to himself that he had set his foot in the decisive 
 patli of his life. 
 
 Not for the sake of reviewing his dress, but in mere 
 
DE A MO RE. 25C 
 
 absence and absorption of mind, lie starc?d at bis 
 image in tbe looking-glass, and yet he would also 
 fain take a free observation of his personal appear- 
 ance. How would this tall haggard form be likely 
 to strike others? Would they recognize the dis- 
 harmony of the lengthy face, which now loose and 
 now tight, quivered in painful woe, where others 
 only feel pity? — In silent thought he blinked with 
 his dark-glowing eye, and a sarcastically melancholy 
 expression made itself visible in the little wrinkles. 
 
 A loving eye will look upon me, thought Ephraim 
 at last, and its consecrating glance will reconcile 
 me to sincerity and unity with myself. 
 
 As he left the house, Matilda opened the window 
 and for a long time looked after him. "Ah, I am 
 nothing but a poor soul ! " she sighed, after he had 
 disappeared round the corner. 
 
18.— AN EVENi:NrG WITH MOSES MENDELS- 
 SOHN. 
 
 ON the way to the house of Moses Mendelssohn, 
 Ephraim met Dr. Bloch, who was just on his 
 way thither and told him that a Protestant deacon 
 from Zurich, named Lavater, who had made himself 
 known by his Swiss hymns, had with several friends 
 been at Mendelssohn's with the express design of 
 converting him to Christianity; that only with the 
 greatest reluctance had Mendelssohn entered into 
 the discussion; but then, and after the repeated as- 
 surance of discretion on the j^art of Lavater, Men- 
 delssohn had defended himself with decided frank- 
 ness, so that the zealous Deacon could at last only 
 exclaim with tears in his eyes: "Would God, you 
 were a Christian ! " 
 
 " Mendelssohn has been unhappily very much ex- 
 hausted by this discussion," Bloch continued; "when 
 he sent for me to-day, he said to me: 'I am as little 
 made for an athlete in my moral as in my physical 
 constitution.' — Now you must stand by us, Mr. Kuh, 
 in case of any new attack which the Deacon may at- 
 
AN EVENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 2C1 
 
 temiTt this evening. "We must cover Mendelssohn, 
 and should sooner expose ourselves than our gen- 
 eralissimo." 
 
 It AV.1S with a peculiar reverence that Ephraim, on 
 entering the sitting-room, grasped the offered hand 
 of Mendelssohn ; he would fain, indeed, in a twofold 
 sense, earn the right to be near him. 
 
 The friends were already assembled, Fran Karsch 
 only was yet wanting; she was in company at Count 
 Herzberg's, where, agreeably to the fashion, people 
 were admiring her impromptu versification. Men- 
 delssohn stejDped into a side-room to offer the prayer 
 which was usual at that hour, for it was Saturday 
 evening. Lessing and Gleim expressed their pleas- 
 ure at being able to greet Ephraim as an old ac- 
 quaintance; Gleim, in particular, remembered with 
 deep interest that hour which he had spent in the 
 booth at the Feast of Tabernacles, at Ephraim's 
 father's. 
 
 The company was, as yet, at that first stage of 
 buzzing talk to and fro, which may be regarded as a 
 i:)relirainary tuning and trying of instruments, and 
 here one saw that a consonance was sought after, 
 for Mendelssohn loved to make conversation social 
 and lead it out to the discussion of a definite object. 
 Ephraim talked with Gleim and Nicolai, but he 
 listened toward the other end of the apartment, 
 where Lessing was joking with Recha and Frau 
 Mendelssohn. Had Ephraim still doubted of his 
 lov^e, this jealousy must have convinced him of its 
 power. He felt repeatedly after the letter in his 
 
262 
 
 rOET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 side-pocket, as if he feared that it would be snatched 
 from him by a strange hand. 
 
 "It is surely handsome of Frau Karsch," said 
 Recha, " that after my honored brother-in-law "—so 
 she always called Mendelssohn — " has criticized her 
 so unmercifully, in which I did not quite agree with 
 him, she, nevertheless, comes to us without any 
 grudge, and so modestly asks advice." 
 
 " Ah ! I understand that," said Lessing, laughing, 
 " there are persons, who, with the greatest deference, 
 go from house to house and ask every one importu- 
 nately: What do you think of what I have done or 
 produced? Speak to me frankly and advise me 
 what I shall do next. I am without sensitiveness 
 and grateful. — But inwardly they only want praise * 
 and think that when they have expressed modesty 
 they have done enough; all that most care to do 
 or can do, after all, is to go on in their old way." 
 
 Ephraim had just been presented to Deacon Lav- 
 ater, whose glance rested searchingly on his face, 
 when Mendelssohn came in again and in a friendly 
 tone inquired: "Where is Frau Karsch all this 
 time ? " 
 
 " Thyrsis may answer where his Chloe drives her 
 flock so late in the evening," said Lessing to Gleim. 
 
 " If she knew that a God is so gracious f to her 
 she would not seek the favor of a king;" answered 
 Gleim, with an allusion to Lessing's Christian name. 
 
 "The king will do nothing for her; she is a Ger- 
 man and a woman," said Nicolai. 
 
 * "We ask advice and mean approbation." (Lacour). 
 t Gott-hold (God-gracious). 
 
ANE VENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 263 
 
 " And she takes the liberty to be a believer," add 
 ed Lessing; "and here the popular thing is to bring 
 to market as many absurdities against religion as 
 one will. One will be ashamed ere long to use such 
 freedom as this." 
 
 " Where is there then a freer land ? " asked Nicolai, 
 and Lessing replied: 
 
 "You just try to tell the court-rabble a truth; 
 let any one come out, here in this Frenchified Berlin, 
 and undertake to raise his voice for the rights of the 
 subject, and against blood-sucking despotism, and 
 you will soon see which is the most enslaved coun- 
 try of Europe. Your free-thinkers are like the 
 priests; they will believe in private what they 
 please, so long as the dear common people keep 
 nicely in the ruts in which they know how to lead 
 them. The way in which your revicAV of the king's 
 poems was received, dear Mendelssohn, doesn't that 
 show what kind of freedom they will allow ? They 
 have overlooked all the expressions of your sincere 
 respect, and cannot pardon you for having shown by 
 the standard of an infrangible logic what it is these 
 messieurs put into verse, and how they often do not 
 themselves know what they think. Is that freedom, 
 that one will teach others, but will not let himself 
 be taught ? " 
 
 " You are too passionate, dear friend," said j\[en- 
 delssohn, with his mild timidity, and Lessing re- 
 plied : 
 
 "If one may not be warm in speaking of what one 
 sees to be an abuse of truth and reason, when and 
 
264 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 where can one be ? I do not mean any longer to be 
 cold and indifferent. I say with Luther: Necessity 
 breaks iron, and feels no anger." 
 
 All were silent awhile, but Lavater, who always 
 loved to draw out a lively expression of sentiment, 
 and with all his inward inspiration to bring to light, 
 also, the power of his personality, now said: 
 
 "Your King Frederick may be called a great man ; 
 from my point of view I must say: Without faith 
 and humility there is no true greatness. Give God 
 above the glory, the Scripture teaches." 
 
 "The inventor of the Prussian monarchy," began 
 Bloch, with a visible pugnacity, " has certainly no 
 faith nor love, either towards God — " 
 
 "Or women," inserted Abraham the Reckoner, 
 whom, in the friendly circle, they also called Diog- 
 enes. 
 
 " Or the physicians," said Lessing, satirically, to 
 Bloch. 
 
 "I think," began Mendelssohn, with a command- 
 ing motion of the hand, and, as he always stuttered, 
 particularly in the l)eginning of a speech, the 
 attention of all rose to the pitch of a certain joint 
 helping-out; "I think, that Frederick's isolated 
 position conditions the basis of his character, lie is 
 just and tolerant, not from magnanimity or philan- 
 thropy, but from a sense of duty; he is unweariedly 
 active for the mass, and yet is a misanthrope." 
 
 "He himself proves his principle," interposed 
 Maimon, " that the actions of men are not properly 
 determined by their maxims." 
 
L 
 
 AN E VENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 2 Go 
 
 "There we must discriminate;" IMeiidelssohn 
 again took up the discourse. "In our actions we 
 are led by motives, in our sentiments by reasons; the 
 former create the state, the latter religion, which 
 constitutes itself as church, synagogue and mosque. 
 But to return to our king; he wants the central 
 point from which all life proceeds and to which it 
 returns. He has never known the love of children 
 or of woman; the friend of his youth was sacrificed to 
 his father's rigid notion of duty; to parental love 
 he was equally a stranger; love of country and of 
 glory cannot satisfy the lesser relations of existence, 
 which, nevertheless, are a necessity to all; so then, 
 nothing remains but the doing of duty, which per- 
 petuates itself like the breathing of the body, and it 
 is a no small glory of human nature that duty is so 
 firmly rooted in the spirit as to hold its place undis- 
 turbed by all extravagances of opinion.* I say the 
 situation in life of Frederick permits him in his 
 general thinking frivolity and mockery. Every 
 great king of France has therefore been more 
 worthy of respect, because as great king he played 
 with his children on the floor. I should be inclined 
 to assert that only in the family is man truly moral, 
 there he is in the natural spiritual connection with 
 the order of the universe." 
 
 " Let us be married as quickly as possible, dear 
 Gleim, else we shall even be excommunicated by our 
 friend Moses from the church of morality." 
 
 Gleim was ill at ease, for he who sang " God and 
 
 See an eloquent passage in Brown's "Philosophy of the Mind.' 
 
266 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Frederick," had to be one of tlie listeners to all this; 
 he therefore kept his lips pressed together sullenly, 
 and Lessing went on : 
 
 "But friend Moses only means to tease us. He 
 knows that the standard of family welfare is not 
 always adequate; there are natures and relations 
 which demand a different measure. Whoso always 
 lived only for the community, without the least self- 
 reference, always under the point of view of what is 
 universal and eternal, would live in God. I j^ledge 
 myself in this sense not only to defend King Fred- 
 erick, but to prove him holy." 
 
 " There again you are practicing your sham-fight 
 gymnastics," rejoined Mendelssohn. " I will not rob 
 you of the honor of espousing your favorite side, 
 that of the assailed. Let us drop all personalities. 
 You know very well that what I properly mean to 
 say is: outside of society — the first point or inner 
 circle of which is the family — man cannot fulfill his 
 duty to his fellow-men or his God. Care for others, 
 benevolence, makes one at bottom happier than self- 
 interest, but we must, withal, still feel ourselves and 
 the expression of our powers; our action would have 
 no worth nor merit, unless it flowed from the free 
 impulse of good-will. Other standards may hold 
 good for those who stand at the head of society. I 
 let that be with granting it — I only say, for us in 
 the rank of citizens, the family unites equally duty 
 and natural impulse. It is a question whether any 
 but he who lives in family relations has a right to 
 speak in the great council of humanity, of science, 
 
AN E VENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 2G 7 
 
 to purtake in the great festival oj^' hnmanity, of art, 
 or to take part in the great battle of huiiuuiity for . 
 right and reason." 
 
 All were silent, even Lessing kept his thoughts to 
 himself; he may have felt that shyness which often 
 comes over a friend, when before others he has 
 fallen into an exclusive dialogue with his intimate: 
 either it becomes a mere spectacle to the idle 
 by-standers, or there comes in a consideration which 
 prejudices the matter. With contemplative calm- 
 ness Lessing looked into the shining face of his 
 friend, who had suffered himself to be transported 
 beyond his quiet and measured style of speech. 
 
 " Excuse me, respected brother-in-law, if I ask a 
 stupid question," began Recha. 
 
 " Speak up," replied Mendelssohn, encouragingly, 
 and both look and word expressed that friendly 
 interest which treats a wife and sister with the 
 familiarity of a relative, and yet again with a polite 
 attention. " Thou regardest thy question as a very 
 wise one, because thou callest it foolish, but let us 
 hear it," 
 
 All eyes were directed to Recha, Avho said: 
 
 " Is not the idea of the family life, as you have 
 laid it down, a reproach against our religion ? " 
 
 " Express thyself more distinctly." 
 
 "I remember your once explaining to me that the 
 Romans had used the word Family, in the lirst 
 instance, for the company of household slaves; still 
 harder than Rome was Judaism upon women; were 
 they, then, much more than slaves? Has not 
 
268 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Christianity first redeemed -woman from the state of 
 slavery, laid the foundation of equality before the 
 law, and thus founded the family?" 
 
 Lavater rose from his seat, and Ephraim trembled 
 as he met the eye of Doctor Bloch, who was making 
 signs to him; he fancied his love was betrayed, and 
 thought now that the physician was hinting to him 
 how the real fight was only just beginning. 
 
 "That is a delicate subject," said Mendelssohn, 
 looking down a little uneasily; "that does not admit 
 of being explained in few words, how far revelation 
 is in itself perfect and eternal, and yet again in its 
 temporal mode of manifestation capable of being 
 perfected. Judaism has, with the disintegration of 
 state life, cast off the elements of political nationality, 
 and must now let other national elements, as Ger- 
 manism — for this is here the standard — act upon it 
 in regard to the position of woman. But I must beg 
 that our conversation shall not be diverted in this 
 direction. In these hours of recreation which my 
 business allows me, I would gladly forget all differ- 
 ence, all discord, that has ever made man the 
 enemy of man, and I always endeavor at such times 
 to wipe out all experiences which I have had through 
 the day, on that subject, from my memory." 
 
 "Disrespectful as I must seem to my host, I can- 
 not agree with that," protested Lavater. " We have 
 come into the world to bear witness to the truth. 
 Tliat is man's calling and dignity ! We must always 
 confess the name of the Lord, at every hour and in 
 svery place. I cannot, I must not spare you. You 
 
AN EVENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN 269 
 
 evade tlie truth again, in ascribing to Germanism 
 what belongs to our church." 
 
 " Either you or I," said Mendelssohn, " one of us is 
 a memorable example of the power of prejudice and 
 education itself over those who with sincere hearts 
 seek the truth. But let us for that very reason leave 
 all attempts at proselytism. The mass of all relig- 
 ions hold very much to conversions, but not the 
 pliilosophers. You are a Christian preacher, and I 
 a Jew; what of that ? If we restore to the sheep and 
 the silk-worm what they have lent us, we are both 
 tnen. Were I from the heart brought over to an- 
 other religion, it were the most contemptible pusil- 
 lanimity, in spite of the internal conviction to be un- 
 willing to confess the truth." 
 
 "Do you honestly ask yourself whether you are 
 willing to own your prejudices in favor of our re- 
 ligion ? " 
 
 "I know there are in my religion human additions 
 and abuses which greatly obscure its brightness. 
 Whether I have prejudices in favor of my religion I 
 cannot myself decide, any more than I can know 
 whether my breath has a bad odor. I wdll not insist 
 upon it as an advantage of my religion, but only let 
 it have its weight as a fact, that its revelation claims to 
 be binding as a doctrine only on those of Jewish de- 
 scent, and no others, for every other man in like man- 
 ner can, as even King Frederick expressed himself, 
 be saved in his oy^nfa^on; Ju-daism has no revelation 
 of exclusive saving truths which are necessary to 
 happiness ; these are not revealed by sound and 
 
270 POE T A ND MER CHA NT. 
 
 written sign, here find there, intelligible to this and 
 that man, but through the creation itself and its in- 
 terior relations, which are legible and intelligible to 
 all men. 
 
 "For myself I set up this criterion in religious 
 matters : as men must be all designed by their Cre- 
 ator for fraternal happiness, and exclusive religion 
 cannot be the true one, no revelation can be the true 
 one which claims to be the only saving one, for it 
 does not harmonize with the designs of the all-merci- 
 ful Creator. I hold the middle ground between 
 dogmatic and skeptic ; I know, every other rea- 
 sonable man, starting from another point and fol- 
 lowing another clew, may rightly come to an opinion 
 exactly opposite to mine. Herewith, stormy friend, 
 let us, I pray, at last conclude. The truths Avhich we 
 confess in common are not sufficiently diffused to 
 justify us in leaving them for the disputed points." 
 
 Doctor Bloch would not be satisfied with a peace 
 so concluded ; he wanted also to have the victory, 
 and therefore he kindled the strife anew by triumph- 
 antly exclaiming: "All religions, Judaism, Pagan- 
 ism, Christianity, all have brought upon the world 
 more general mischief than blessing in particular." 
 
 "Not so," Mendelssohn once more protested; 
 "we should not yield to the propensity to set cer- 
 tain things very much too low because others have 
 rated them very much too high, for thereby we 
 keep the scales in a perpetual fluctuation and never 
 brill or them to an even balance. And radical 
 negation lends a pretext to superstition. One will 
 
AN EVENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 271 
 
 then rilthcr be surrouiKled by spectres than pursue 
 his way in a dead nature through the midst of noth- 
 ing but corpses. Do not assail the man-ennobling 
 and exalting power of religion — " 
 
 "Tliat I certainly do; it has deterred men from 
 relying on their might and honor; the world is sick; 
 it cannot rid itself of the fixed idea that there are 
 Jews, Christians, and Heathen ; Humanity alone 
 must be henceforth the rallying cry." 
 
 "And the position of the Jews," Ephraira here 
 ventured to put in his word, " is always the index to \ \-~jf^ 
 the state of the barometer .of humanity — " ; 
 
 "I too am a globule of quicksilver," Maimon here 
 interpolated in a whisper to Abraham Diogenes, and 
 Ephraim continued : 
 
 " Here is a gaping wound, into which the incredu- 
 lous Thomas can thrust his hand ; the Jews have no 
 martyrologies, for they are all martyrs, more or less; 
 they attest a high calling, which the world's history 
 has reserved for them, that in tlie midst of all storms 
 and streams of the times they have stood fast and 
 are now awakened to fresh activity. It is important 
 first of all to insure an acknowledgment that in Ju- 
 daism and the Jews, magnanimity and philanthropy 
 have struck their roots no less firmly than anywhere 
 else." 
 
 Recha held her hands clasped while Ephraim was 
 speaking, and looked down into her lap ; this Eph- 
 raim had remarked, and took it as a proof of sympa- 
 thy, or an anxiety about him, and in the midst of the 
 fiery zeal of his speech the thought darted up that 
 
272 rOET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 he was showing himself here in a tournament before 
 liis beloved ; this was at those first words, where he 
 properly repeated himself, but he quickly banished 
 all side-considerations and plunged the more impet- 
 uously into the subject. Recha now looked up, as 
 Mendelssohn added : 
 
 "Yes, one must guard himself from the blasphe- 
 mous ingratitude with which one would ofttimes 
 curse the gift of intelligence, for the position in 
 which Ave Jews stand does not increase contentment 
 if one learns to discern the rights of humanity on 
 their true side. They go on to cut us off from all 
 arts, sciences and other useful professions and occu- 
 pations of men; block up against us all ways to use- 
 ful improvement and make the want of culture a 
 ground for our further oppression. They bind our 
 hands and then reproach us for not using them. But 
 I wish above all that we might refute the contemptu- 
 ous opinion which they have of us Jews, not by 
 contest and the like, but by virtue and integrity." 
 
 "What do you want of recognition?" rejoined 
 Abraham Diogenes. " By whom then would you be 
 recognized? By the blockheads ? They would need 
 to be sensible. By the aristocrats and priests? 
 They would have to cease being what they are. 
 What remainder will there be then, when you sub- 
 tract this sum total ? Two or three people — " 
 " No, the state," interrupted Ephraim. 
 "Thank you for nothing. What does the state 
 concern me ? I can live and tliink — " 
 
 " No, that only is life which knows itself as part 
 
AN E VENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 2 "7 
 
 of the community, that only is tliinking and feeling 
 which turns toward a common shrine." 
 
 " You are nearer salvation than you dream," said 
 Lavater, grasping Ephraim's hand ; " a man who 
 thinks of himself as an image of the Supreme Power 
 becomes a trans23arent medium of the source of 
 Light and of the most living Love, which he con- 
 ceives as cause of all causes. And out of lowliness 
 and a sense of the need of salvation blooms the 
 flower of Faith, awaked by the Sun of Grace to life, 
 and flooded with the pomp and splendor of the Light. 
 You are a substantive in the grammar of humanity; 
 unhappily the grace has not yet revealed itself 
 to you, but it will do so, it must do so in prayer; 
 for without grace, which the Lord pours out upon us, 
 there is no faith." 
 
 Lavater spoke wdth so much unction and with a 
 tone of such profound conviction that even the 
 pugilistic Doctor Bloch would not oppose him; but 
 JNIaimon alone cared nothing for the apostolic zeal 
 of the Deacon and went blustering on: 
 
 "There we have it again, new cldldren of God, 
 elected hy grace. Why am I a step-child of grace ? 
 What have I done, and all the millions of heathen 
 with me ? But I do not think much of the sharp 
 opposition of many Jews, who would willingly have 
 turned to Christianity as it is if they themselves 
 had been allowed a hand in making it, but now that 
 it has become so powerful without their doing, love 
 to pick flaws in it. There must lie in Christianity a 
 high historical idea, since it has received so high a 
 
274 POE T AND MER CHANT. 
 
 Bignificance in tlie world's history, as a Jew was 
 once converted to Christianity by the recognition of 
 the fact that it forever and ever remained holy in 
 despite of good-for-nothing and hypocritical priests. 
 As the Christians call everything that they find good 
 in Judaism and the Jews Christian, so too, do many 
 Jews turn the tables upon them; at anything which 
 pleases them in Christianity, they cry out like the 
 clown in the circus, when his master does a mighty 
 feat: 'Attention! he has learned all that of me.' 
 But why hast not thou mounted the rope, thou wise 
 clown ? " 
 
 There was a general laugh, and Nicolai remarked 
 that that mode of a Jew's conversion was related in 
 Boccacio's Decameron. Hereupon Maimon pro- 
 ceeded: 
 
 " I cannot ascribe all to the circumstance that the 
 Greek and Roman gods were just on the eve of dy- 
 ing out when Christianity arose; accident is a 
 maker of opportunity, but will, and necessity must 
 first be there to grasp it. For aught I care, Christ 
 may have abolished the Jewish ceremonies or not, 
 enough that they do not exist in the Christian 
 church; religion is freed from all nationality, and 
 the idea of humanity is saved. The only question 
 with me is: Can I not also achieve that out of my 
 own thought ? " 
 
 " No," cried Lavater, " not without grace, and 
 even if you could, still you are only a lost, lone 
 lamb; you know not the way to union with the flock 
 and the shepherd: the dogma and the symbol. I 
 
AN EVENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN 275 
 
 will not now dispute the question whether the crite- 
 rion of our friend Mendelssolin in reference to the 
 exclusively saving power will bear examination; I 
 will also let it stand without admitting it, that one 
 can in any other way attain to salvation, but this is 
 my conviction: through Christianity one can reach 
 the highest moral perfection of which he is capable 
 in the easiest and speediest way." 
 
 "Waiving every other consideration," said Eph- 
 raim, " I could not become a Christian, as I, being a 
 German, cannot become a Frenchman or an English- 
 man, even though I held those peoples to be might- 
 ier and happier, and should be glad to have sprung 
 from them; nor could I change my inner religion of 
 language; I must remain a German and I am a Jew, 
 and if I should be a deserter from Judaism, my 
 life's roots would be torn up and torn to shreds. 
 Of course this is only personal, and has for others no 
 rational ground of universal validity, but is it any- 
 thing different with faith, and is not the saving of 
 personality the highest and the inalienable thing? 
 If Christianity will have the free personality, the 
 free man, well then, she must allow him a validity 
 also outside of her church." 
 
 " This is precisely the miracle of the new birth 
 through baptism, that you become another man;" 
 replied Lavater; "that you become something 
 which you cannot be nor attain through the deduc- 
 tions of overweening reason; faith is a miracle, and 
 its interior force is the miraculous creation; it cre- 
 ates man also anew, and hence it is said in the 
 Scripture: Faith can remove mountains." 
 
276 POET AhW MERCHANT. 
 
 Gleim now started up from his silence and with a 
 smile declaimed: 
 
 "I, dwarf in faith, of thee, in faith a giant, pray: 
 For me the Hoppelsberg of Halberstadt convey, — 
 'Tis sure an easy thing for thee, — 
 This day to Sans-Souci." 
 
 A merriment offensive to Lavater seemed about to 
 relieve the air for the company, when Ephraim once 
 more took up the word, and, in speaking of the mar- 
 tyrdoms which chain us to the historic past, he told 
 of the imprisonment and the death of his father on 
 account of the superstitious legend of the passover- 
 blood. The hands of Mendelssohn trembled, his 
 lips turned pale, as he now cried aloud : 
 
 " And all this was done and is still done upon the 
 strength of the most devilish lie, which has not even 
 the shadow of a foundation. Rabbi Menasse Ben 
 Israel asseverated before the English Parliament in 
 the time of Cromwell, with the highest oath, that the 
 alleged crime of blood-letting can never be practiced 
 by a Jew for his passover, for the law forbids us 
 even the blood of beasts. And I stand here and in- 
 voke all the curses of Heaven upon me, if Rabbi 
 Menasse has not spoken the whole truth. I repeat 
 his oath for myself, and my tribe, and all Israel. I 
 bring no charge against the Christian religion; not 
 it, but its priests have loaded us with this lie. What 
 is too bad for the thirst of blood ? But now, let us 
 keep our religion, and do not hinder us from being 
 honest." 
 
 All were moved at the sight of Mendelssohn, who 
 
AN EVENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 277 
 
 sat down again, trembling in his whole body. A 
 long silence ensued, till at last Recha said softly: 
 
 "It is the most painful of questions: Why is it 
 precisely the holiest thing that has brought forth 
 the monstrosities of crime ? " 
 
 No one answered, when Mendelssohn spoke again 
 with calm voice: 
 
 " The answer to this question is given by one of 
 those martyred ones, a Hebrew w^riter, for he says: 
 ' The nobler a thing is in its perfection, so much the 
 more awful in its corruption. A rotted wood is not 
 BO repulsive as a decayed flower; the latter is not 
 so disgusting as a putrefied beast; and this again is 
 not so ghastly as the human body in its corruption.' 
 So too, we may add: The fairest bloom of reason is 
 culture, and proportionately the more hideous in its 
 decay as moral corruption and dissolution; and the 
 sublimest fruit of human intellect is recognition of 
 God and love of man, and the most detestable in its 
 decay and dissolution as fanaticism and misan- 
 thropy." 
 
 " So, dear Moses, so we are now on the mountain- 
 peak and survey the chain of heights and its cross- 
 cuttings of valleys," cried Lessing, at last, turning to 
 and fro with nervous mobility. It was as if fresh 
 choice troops marched upon the battle-ground and 
 renewed the conflict, when Lessing now gave np his 
 previous position of suspense and brought forward a 
 new banner in saying: "I cry with Ulrich von Hut- 
 ten: O century! Minds are awake, it is a joy to 
 live ! In the storm begins the true life. Fools, who 
 
278 POE T AND MERC FT A NT. 
 
 would be glad to banish the storm-wind out of nat- 
 ure, because it there buries a ship in the sand-bank, 
 and here dashes another to pieces on the rocky- 
 coast ! It is not that they care for others, it is only 
 because it has unroofed their summer-house and 
 shaken too violently the loaded fruit-trees — " 
 
 " Whither are you drifting ? " asked Mendelssohn. 
 
 "Into the open sea, where the national emigrations 
 and confining settlements of men, the funeral piles 
 and devout pilgrimages with fluttering banners dis- 
 appear. A great and holy plan runs through the 
 life of humanity, as it rises and falls, and yet comes 
 forth continually enriched. It may lie in the plan 
 of the divine education of mankind, that each indi- 
 vidual shall have had to go over the road on which 
 the race arrives at its perfection, for only so do their 
 results become livingly his own. It may lie in God's 
 educational plan, to let imperfect truths at first sway 
 the world, in order gradually to clarify them — " 
 
 " But there does not appear to be any reason in 
 the nature of things why error and halfness should 
 at first prevail, why the direct way — " 
 
 " Because it is not true that the straight way is 
 the shortest. Providence has, on its eternal road, 
 so much to take along with it, so many side steps to 
 take. The world is the life of multiplicities, of in- 
 dividualities. The holy sources and traditions are 
 the elementary books of humanity, the revelations 
 are the foregone results of the truths of reason, 
 which are to be such in time; they are the amount 
 which the arithmetical teacher tells his scholars be- 
 
AN EVENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 279 
 
 forehand, that they may calculate by it; they are the 
 rules which a father gives his child as law, that he 
 may find them himself later in life and verify thera 
 out of his own experience. We must wait patiently. 
 Beware, thou moi-e capable individual, how tliou 
 stampest and flamest at the last leaf of the element- 
 ary book; beware how thou let'st thy weaker fellow- 
 pupils perceive what thou f orebodest or already be- 
 ginn'st to see." 
 
 "This pietistic regard is beautiful," said Mendels- 
 sohn, "but I cannot allow any valid ground for it, 
 for do you believe that humanity will ever be able 
 to attain what floats before you as the goal of what 
 you term the divine education?" 
 
 And Lessing with out-spread hands cried: 
 " Shall humanity never come to the highest stage 
 of enlightenment and purification? Never? Let 
 me not think this blasphemy, Gracious One ! There 
 will come a new and everlasting gospel for humanity, 
 ripened into manhood, which shall no more need the 
 elementary books, which will and must do what is 
 good, no longer for the sake of arbitrary rewards, 
 which are assigned to it, but for its own sake, simjily 
 because it is good." 
 
 " It will be hard for me," said Mendelssohn, " to 
 set myself in opposition to your Messianic inspira- 
 tion, and yet I cannot help it. As in the state man 
 is the end, and society the means, so, also, in the 
 greatest unity, the one under consideration. New 
 human beings are ever coming on the stage, and 
 their progress is not essentially conditioned by the 
 
280 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 State of the community. I have no idea of this edu- 
 cation of the human race you talk of. One repre- 
 sents to himself the collective thing — the human 
 race — as a single person, and fancies Providence has 
 sent it hither as if to school, to be trained up from 
 child to man. The fact is, the human race is, in al- 
 most all ages, if the metaphor may be allowed, child 
 and man and old man at once, only in different 
 places and quarters of the world. The individual 
 advances, but that the whole of humanity here below 
 must be always going forward and perfecting itself 
 does not seem to me to have been the object of 
 Providence, at least that is far from being so clearly 
 made out and so necessary to the vindication of 
 Providence as one loves to imagine. Man advances, 
 but humanity fluctuates continually up and down 
 between fixed limits, and maintains, on the wdiole, 
 regarded in all periods of time, about the same grade 
 of morality, the same measure of religion and irre- 
 ligion, of virtue and vice, of happiness and misery- 
 and in fact needs as much as the individual for his 
 education here below does, in order to approach, as 
 near as is allotted him, to perfection." 
 
 Lessing had just collected himself to reply to this 
 view of a question, forever dividing the world of 
 thinkers, where on the one side humanity with its 
 recognizable joint-life and in itself is held to be the 
 problem and end of its development, while on the 
 other hand the individual man is made the promi- 
 nent end, and his development into an indefinite re- 
 gion is the chief object of contemplation; but — and 
 
AN E VENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 281 
 
 this is prophetically significant for Lessing's life — he 
 was interrupted by the theologue, for Lavater came 
 to the front Avith the question: 
 
 " You deny then the eternal validity of the Bible 
 and the divinity of the Saviour?" 
 
 "Deny! Deny!" rejoined Lessing. "O you in- 
 quisitors ! But even if one does deny the divinity 
 of the Bible, is the Bible religion ? The inner truth 
 of all religion, and so, too, of Christianity, still 
 stands, though all that is external and the Bible 
 itself should fall. Were this not so, then all the 
 human beings who had lived for four thousand years 
 before Christ are damned. Christ presented himself 
 to his disciples as Kedeemer and Restorer of the 
 Jewish kingdom, and not till after his death was he 
 sealed as the purely spiritual Saviour. This happened 
 not in the way of intentional deception, but devel- 
 oped itself in the natural course of history. Wheth- 
 er Christ was more than man is a problem; that he 
 was very man, is established. Consequently the re- 
 ligion of Christ and the Christian religion are two 
 quite different things. The religion of Christ is that 
 which he himself, as man, also recognized and 
 practiced, which every man can have in common 
 with him — and tliat is love and humanity; the 
 Christian religion is that which assumes it as true 
 that he was more than man, and which makes him as 
 such an object of its worship. Spinoza before me 
 lays great emphasis on the fact that religion is inde- 
 pendent of the Bible, and he justly points to the 
 
282 FOET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 place where it is said of the eternal law: * ' It was in 
 the world and the world knew it not;' which is the 
 true religion must be decided by the fruit of con- 
 duct, not otherwise." 
 
 "I know," Lavater still rej^lied, "every one sees 
 the universe through his own universe. Do you 
 imagine in this way to attain to salvation and eter- 
 nal truth ? " 
 
 "To truthfulness^'' rej^lied Lessing, "and this 
 alone is enough. Thousands hold the place to be 
 the goal of their thinking, which they happen to 
 have reached w^hen they were tired of thinking. 
 But one must precisely there gird up his loins afresh 
 — inexorable to all pleas of laziness and comfort, on 
 his guard against custom and tradition. Let every 
 one speak what is truth to him, and leave the truth 
 itself in trust with ' God, Not the truth which a 
 man presumes to be possessed of, but the sincere en- 
 deavor he has used to come at the truth, makes the 
 worth of man. For not by the possession, but by 
 the pursuit of truth, are the faculties expanded — 
 possession makes one quiet, lazy, proud — " 
 
 " Have you not here caught yourself in a contra- 
 diction?" asked Mendelssohn, making a sign with 
 his finger. "You adopt, wdth me, Leibnitz's indi- 
 viduation in opposition to Spinoza's universal sub- 
 stance, and yet you come back again with your col- 
 lective or even unitarian humanity to the universal 
 substance, and lose the individual. You were going 
 to assign to humanity the conceivable attainment of 
 
 * The Logos. 
 
ANE VENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 283 
 
 its eiul, therefore, absolute triitli anft»^^a] 
 now do you content yourself with the re 
 jective ? " 
 
 "Possibly the progress of knowledge may let 
 that which we contemplate as complete have only 
 a conditional existence; every step in life is transi- 
 tion and terminus at once." 
 
 "In the walk of life the pleasant road is an end, 
 of itself," remarked Maimon, and Lessing continued: 
 
 "It is only enthusiasts who can not wait the fut- 
 ure. The ripe manhood of humanity — " 
 
 " At last, at last, thank Heaven, you have come," 
 cried Gleim, rising up, and all eyes were turned to- 
 ward the door; "only come nearer, Fran Karsch; 
 chase out with your muse Christianity and Judaism 
 and philosophy, and let us be joyous like the igno- 
 rant heathen." 
 
 The ladies present quickly clustered around the 
 entering poetess; they seemed, notwithstanding all 
 their respect for the men and their words, glad, nev- 
 ertheless, to be relieved of the discussion, which had 
 by such singular involutions lost itself in the most 
 uncanny realms of inquiry. The men seemed, on the 
 contrary, to feel that dissatisfaction which at the 
 unavoidable interruption of an oral discussion al- 
 ways causes it to end without a firm final accord. 
 
 Lessing sat with his arms crossed upon his breast, 
 and looked downward. 
 
 Doctor Bloch said softly to Ephraim in remem- 
 brance of their purpose: "When a general, as in old 
 times, decides the battle for himself alone in single 
 
284 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 combat, we soldiers' boys must modestly retire into 
 the background." 
 
 Ephraim could not reply, his feelings were too 
 much agitated. 
 
 Only Maimon seemed in the midst of all to have 
 kejit his characteristic humor, for he said : " Such 
 religious conversations are to me always as if one 
 were performing in a dream a heavy, painful labor; 
 one wakes up bathed in perspiration, weary and 
 bruised in all his limbs, and yet has brought nothing 
 under way. Is it not so? Where are we now? 
 Where we were. He is a parson, you are a doctor, 
 you a rich man, and I a poor Schlemihl. The forms 
 of religion are nothing but empty nests, in which 
 one has hatched truths; the young have flown off and 
 must build themselves new nests. Where? How? 
 Let them see to that. In the place where I live they 
 once put an intoxicated man into a dark cellar and 
 surrounded him with none but people in grave- 
 clothes; when he wakes up he imagines nothing else 
 than that lie is dead, and asks the oldest: You, you, 
 must be well acquainted here in heaven — say, where 
 can I get a good glass of brandy? What can I 
 make of all your philosophizing! I, too, ask: 
 Wliere.can one get in life a good glass of brandy?" 
 
 The grotesque capers of Maimon's thoughts brought 
 back cheerfulness and gayety to these exhausted 
 minds, and all found themselves again in the accus- 
 tomed world. All crowded round the Frau Karsch, 
 for her appearance, as of one who had not participated 
 in the recent discussion, gave the wholesome shock 
 
AN E VENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 285 
 
 to every one, which reminded him of another life 
 out in tlie world and in his own being. 
 
 The silken dress of Frau Karsch rustled conspicu- 
 ously in her somewhat rustic movements; her face 
 was sad and excited, her cheeks burned visibly, her 
 eyes rested often with melancholy love on Gleim, for 
 she loved her Thyrsis hopelessly. 
 
 Ephraim greeted her as an acquaintance of earlier 
 times, and stood by as she assured Mendelssohn that 
 she found his criticism of her poems thoroughly 
 just, only men were too hard, and that the remark 
 that an accidental stroke of the brush might happily 
 imitate the light foam on a horse's bit, but could 
 never produce a rose, was one which it took her a 
 long time to get over. With discreet wit Mendels- 
 sohn replied^hat it was a peculiarity of critics to 
 keep in memory their little malicious discharges less 
 than the poets do who are the subjects of their 
 strictures. 
 
 Ephraim saw Recha alone and, turning to her sud- 
 denly, said that he was almost ashamed in the midst 
 of the most elevated discussions to think of himself, 
 and yet he looked upon it as an inexpressible bless- 
 ing now in the invisible church of the spirit to kneel 
 down and gain a new being. 
 
 Pie handed Recha the letter. She took it trem- 
 bling and with downcast eyes and quickly mingled 
 again in the company, in which the most careless 
 gayety now reigned. 
 
 Contrary to all usual custom, it was near mid- 
 night when the company left Mendelssohn's house. 
 
286 POE T AND MER CHA NT. 
 
 The moon shone clear, tlie houses across the street 
 threw dark shadows. They talked of the surprising 
 meeting of so many old acquaintances. 
 
 "Pray, tell me, dear Mr. Kuh," said Lessing, "you 
 had an extremely lovely sister; 1 have often thought 
 of her with the deepest interest; what has become 
 of her?" 
 
 " She is married here in Berlin." 
 
 " Has she children ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 At that moment there glided out of the shadow of 
 the opposite houses a veiled figure and disappeared 
 round the corner. No one dreamed that it was Vio- 
 let, who had stood there looking up at the bright 
 windows; she darted through the streets, fearing 
 Lessing might have recognized and followed her. 
 Not till she opened her house-door did she look 
 round, and was not after all very glad to perceive 
 that she had only trembled at her own imagination. 
 
 Lessing spoke with warmth of the lively interest 
 of Jewish matrons and maidens in intellectual pro- 
 ductions and expressions generally, and the awaken- 
 ing of a German national literature in particular, and 
 said that a similar sympatliy was seldom found in 
 the corresponding circles of Christian society. Eph- 
 raim added the explanation that the social and po- 
 litical sympathies lying fallow turned over all their 
 vitality into that field; exclusion from direct life 
 created an exaff<i:erated inclination for the more vivid 
 reflection of it in poesy; and with the echo of this 
 evening's discussion vibrating in his soul he cou- 
 
 I 
 
AN EVENING WITH MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 287 
 
 eluded that the reason why the Jews were in every 
 respect more wakeful to every flutter of the divine 
 genius's wing was that they still turned in every di- 
 rection their waiting eyes for the Messiah. 
 
 Ephraim now remained the only speaker, and he 
 spoke with the more freedom and inspiration tliat 
 no one looked in his face. lie disclosed his longing, 
 after such a revelation, that he might gain a new 
 life, follow a master and do all for his pleasure; 
 whereas now nothing remained but to resume to- 
 morrow the old mode of life. 
 
 Lessing was the only one w^ho answered. — The 
 master whom one now followed, he observed, was 
 the thought of truth; the way in which the spirit 
 now showed itself could not at once bring with it a 
 new change of life; the great thing was to affirm it 
 in individual and seemingly secluded forms of ac- 
 tivity. 
 
 At the house of Frau Karsch the party separated. 
 Ephraim still accompanied Lessing to his dwelling 
 at the Nicolai church-yard. Lessing pressed his 
 hand in silence, but Ephraim would not yet let go, 
 and complained that it seemed to him a sin to go to 
 bed now; he would gladly keep awake henceforth 
 and forever, and live on in this way uninterruptedly 
 till death in holy enthusiasm. 
 
 And as it often happens tliat one knows no other 
 way of requiting an ardent affection than by ex- 
 pressing one's innermost motives and purposes, and 
 imparting them to those to whom no inner impulse 
 would otherwise have drawn us, so now did Lessing 
 
288 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 perform this act of involuntary confidence, by relat- 
 ing to Epliraim how he had " stood asking work in 
 the market place;" how, at the exhortation of his 
 friends, only with the greatest repugnance he had ap- 
 plied for a place in the royal library, that Quintus 
 Icilius (Guichard) had nominated, but King Frederick 
 had twice rejected him. Lessing spoke of it as a satis- 
 faction that he had tried to do what seemed to him 
 a duty of life, but said he was well content not to 
 come under " the slavery of office," and that now he 
 should settle in Hamburg. 
 
 Lessing went with Ephraim a little way farther, 
 and the latter escorted him back again. 
 
 It seemed as if Ephraim could not tear himself 
 away from the height of existence which he had now 
 ascended; and when at last he went homeward 
 alone, there came over him a presentiment of the 
 most painful desolation. He was alone in the world. 
 The flower of his life had bloomed and withered. 
 
 But did not love, then, beckon? 
 
 J 
 
19.— SUICIDE. 
 
 OTHE blissful waking, the child-like smile of 
 recognition at the brightly breaking morn. 
 Thou feelest as if thou coulclst shout for joy into the 
 young sunlight; fresh waves of light course through 
 the veins; thou wishest thyself the pinions of an 
 eagle, to soar away over the transfigured earth — and 
 dost thou ask: What is it that wakes in me a thou- 
 sand new lives and cleanses and new-creates me and 
 the world? It is love which has sent her blissful 
 spirit to thee in dream, to sing their heavenly har- 
 monies into thy soul. 
 
 Whoso has ever been made blest, whether by the 
 favor of fortune, by a prosperous deed, or by the 
 deliverance of the inner man, summoning the energy 
 of life to fresh proof of itself, such a one knows 
 that the first opening of the eyes, the waking hour, 
 unlocks anew all the treasures of happiness, and calls 
 the soul to a pure communion with the transfigured 
 world. 
 
 Thus did Ephraim awake on the following morn- 
 ing; the sun beamed as bright and friendly through 
 
290 POET AND MERCHANT, 
 
 the chamber as if it celebrated with him his bridal 
 morning. He was obliged to attend to the business 
 and cares of the day; he did so with a quiet obedi- 
 ence, nay he was even glad to have an outward oc- 
 cupation. No one in the house observed what was 
 going on with hira, and why he was to-day so exceed- 
 ingly gay, and the next moment smiled to himself 
 silently; Matilda alone guessed the true reason, for 
 she saw how sedulously he avoided meeting her or 
 exchanging with her a single word. 
 
 In the midst of his joyful suspense and strain of 
 feeling, it was a comfort to him to watch by Eman- 
 uel's sick-bed. It seemed to him like a divine 
 service before receiving his good fortune, a lowly 
 offering in the fore-court. 
 
 One evening when he entered Emanuel's chamber, 
 he found a man whom the latter always called 
 brother, and who played to him on the violin. In spite 
 of the August heat, the stranger wore a heavy old 
 military cloak, above which rose a face that looked 
 as if it had been wasted in a prison, and was sur- 
 mounted by a bald skull; in the twilight that 
 reigned in the chamber, he appeared like a night- 
 spectre, and at every sweep of the bow his features 
 distorted themselves and his whole body under the 
 flapping cloak seemed to fall into convulsions. 
 When the stranger observed Ephraim, he laid aside 
 the violin, gave Emanuel his hand, and departed. 
 
 " There is no misfortune so great," said Emanuel, 
 "but there is a still greater to which it must yield 
 the palm." 
 
SUICIDE. 291 
 
 "That is what I call pouring gall into the worm- 
 wood potion to sweeten it. What is the name of 
 the man who just went away ? " 
 
 " It is even he of whom I speak. I remember him 
 still in the good old times. Hast thou never yet 
 heard of the man to whom Berlin, at the time it was 
 occupied by the Russians and Austrians, owed 
 everything, in whose house they not only deposited 
 the moneys of the congregation, but even private 
 persons placed their possessions in safe keeping; who 
 was a truly patriotic citizen, to whom the magis- 
 trate himself bore witness that he had given an 
 example without example, and who yet was shame- 
 fully betrayed ? Hast thou never heard of the rich 
 John Gotzkowski?" 
 
 " Yes, indeed, and I cannot comprehend how it is 
 that he still lives." 
 
 *' Because he is not yet dead," answered Emanuel, 
 who turned to the wall and gave no further answer 
 to any of Ephraim's words. 
 
 On the third day, at noon, Ephraim sat sad and 
 disturbed in his chamber; he wrote a letter, not to 
 take leave of any one, but to dispose of his property, 
 of which he bequeathed a third to Emanuel and the 
 other two-thirds to Matilda; the amount which 
 Trevirano owed him he remitted to him. He locked 
 up the papers in his desk and went down to his 
 uncle's keeping-room. Matilda sat alone at the 
 window, sewing. 
 
 "May I not know, then, what ails you?" she 
 asked; "trust me, I can do much. I would go for 
 you as far as my feet will carry me." 
 
292 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 "I thank you, dear Matilda," rejoined Ephraira, 
 " I must make the rest of this journey for myself 
 and by myself alone, but tell me: have I then a bill 
 of lading in my face, so that every one knows what 
 is in me? Do I then look so sad ?" 
 
 Matilda could not so readily answer. At that word 
 " dear " which Ephraim had just used for the first 
 time, instead of his usual "good Matilda," she had 
 suddenly started and thereby pricked her finger and 
 was now sucking the blood. 
 
 " Ah God ! " she said at last, " you look as if you 
 were going to your death !" 
 
 "Really? That is true; and I am always going 
 to my death; have I lived to-day? No, I have died 
 to-day; our life is only a creeping to the grave ! 
 How Avould it be, Matilda, if I should die to-day ? " 
 
 Matilda could not answer for sobbing and weep- 
 ing. "I do not understand what you are thinking 
 of," said she, finally, "but I feel so anxious, so 
 anxious. I conjure you to be frank with me." 
 
 Ephraim gazed on her with a melancholy look, 
 then turned away with a deep sigh. At the door he 
 stopped, as if he would once more turn back, but sud- 
 denly he collected himself and ran down the steps. 
 Matilda looked after him, as he went up the street; he 
 turned round. She thought at that distance she 
 saw a tear glimmering in his eye. Quickly Matilda 
 shut down the window, tossed the bunch of keys 
 which hung from her apron into a corner of the 
 chamber, threw her cloak over her and stole after 
 Ephraim. 
 
SUICIDE. 293 
 
 Twilight had long since set in, when Ephraim 
 turned into Spandaii street and entered the house of 
 Mendelssohn; he found Recha and her sister, with 
 several other women, and a lively little girl of about 
 five, sitting around the tea-table. Recha turned 
 deathly pale at the sight of Ephraim. However, she 
 rose instantly, handed him a cup of tea, and with- 
 drew to an adjoining room, from which, however, 
 she soon returned; but at the threshold of the door 
 she breathed into her handkerchief and pressed it to 
 her eyes. Ephraim saw that she must have been 
 weeping. 
 
 The ladies were intellectual and aesthetic; the 
 conversation turned upon the theatre. The Cinder- 
 ella at the Court of Frederick, German Poesy, was 
 suddenly, through Lessing, greeted in her splendor. 
 Dobbelin had conquered all obstacles, and it was 
 an unprecedented event, that six times in succession 
 and each time with increasing interest, Lessing's 
 masterpiece, " Minna von Barnhelm," had appeared 
 on the boards. 
 
 All were under the overmastering spell of the 
 work which, drawn from life, acted upon life and 
 moved men's souls by holding up to them the mirror 
 of their own being. But one is always, to be sure, 
 more important in a critical attitude than in inspired 
 self-surrender, and so some of the ladies did not find 
 a proper gout in the piece, because there was not 
 enough in it to laugh at. One burly dame, as 
 rotund as she was sensitive, who had never yet tied 
 a shoe-string with her own hands, .turned up her 
 
294 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 nose because there was so mucli talk of that prosaic 
 thing, money, in the piece; she ridiculed the pawn- 
 ing of the ring, and the full pockets of the sergeant. 
 Another lady smiled at the luxury of magnanimity 
 displayed, and incidentally at the reference which 
 Lessing had woven in, to his native Saxony, and that 
 it was surely improper, the way Minna threw herself 
 upon the neck of that noble Tellheim. A native 
 Saxon woman observed, however, that Lessing had 
 also expressed in the character of the Count of 
 Bruchsal the regret of a non-Prussian, that Freder- 
 ick the Great was not the hero of all the Germans. 
 Meanwhile they passed from this subject and 
 discussed the question why Lessing should term 
 coffee a melancholy beverage. One lady who 
 affected great modesty explained timidly that 
 Lessing was this Tellheim himself, that he had once 
 loved a countess. She played the mysterious, 
 and assumed an air of secret intelligence, but 
 asserted that she could not say more, as she must 
 use discretion. 
 
 Once more the conversation came back to a 
 question touching the main point of the piece, when 
 they sought to ascertain whether Lessing had con- 
 ceived Tellheim as a born prince, llecha was 
 disposed decidedly to deny it; she appealed to the 
 bitter mention of Othello, and to that final expla- 
 nation of Tellheim's, when he says: "I became a 
 soldier from partiality, I know not to what political 
 principles, and from the whim that it was well for 
 any honest man to try himself for a while in that 
 
SUICIDE. 295 
 
 calling, in order to familiarize himself with all that 
 is called danger, and to learn coolness and decision. 
 Only the extremest necessity could have constrained 
 me to change this trial into a destination, this 
 occasional occupation into a trade." She spoke with 
 much spirit of the soldier's life, and how Tellheini 
 must be a man of sensibility, because the final 
 result of this war had been nothing but honor, and 
 no change in the state of the world bearing upon 
 human freedom. 
 
 Ephraim smiled bitterly that Recha could now en- 
 ter upon a foreign subject with such coolness and 
 composure, now when a question of life and death 
 was pending. 
 
 He constrained himself, however, to enter into the 
 conversation, and explained that Lessing had indeed 
 expressly designated Major Tellheim as a native Cur- 
 lander, as the servant just said the Major had sent 
 him twicfe in six months to his family in Curland. 
 
 Recha expressed her thanks with peculiar friend- 
 liness for this new light; she seemed full of zeal, and 
 when the conversation turned again from the poet- 
 ry to the poet, and faint attempts were made to find 
 flaws in him, Recha said with a glowing counte- 
 nance: 
 
 "Lessing unites in himself the noblest qualities: 
 clear understanding and profound warmth of heart, 
 nay, passionateness for his convictions; calm, mild 
 judgment and unbending integrity of character; un- 
 swerving firmness and gracious tenderness. I owe 
 to him a great life-maxim, which he has perhaps for- 
 
296 POET A ND MER CHA NT. 
 
 gotten, for he once said in an ojff-hand way: * Many- 
 men take excitableness for feeling.' " 
 
 Does that mean me ? Ephraim asked himself. In 
 this portrayal is she holding up to me a mirror? 
 But Kecha now turned to him with the concluding 
 words : 
 
 "I know you also venerate Lessing with all your 
 soul." 
 
 Ephraim nodded assent and succeeded in rising 
 above the sense of being hurt, that Recha had praised 
 so highly before him another, however highly placed; 
 nay, he even raised himself to the pure devotion 
 which joyfully does honor to a true spirit, and with 
 this feeling he now said: • 
 
 " In Lessing's country there are in the mines men 
 whom they call markers ; they know how, deep down, 
 in the dark shaft, to determine exactly where in the 
 daylight the boundaries of the several fields begin, 
 and whoever calls a piece of earth his own, to him 
 belongs so far as it reaches, all, even up to heaven, 
 and down to the most unfathomable depths." 
 
 Ephraim turned a glowing eye upon Recha, and 
 collecting himself, again went on : " So, too, is Les- 
 sing a marker in the realm of mind; he knows how, 
 in the most nightly depth, where, in the light over- 
 head, is a church, a hovel, a palace, and where the 
 bounds of an individual property; and he also de- 
 cides and divides rightly." 
 
 With still glow, the look of Recha rested on Eph- 
 raim, and it seemed as if the two lovers found them- 
 selves in the joint veneration of an exalted man as 
 
SUICIDE. 297 
 
 before an altar. But the world seems not to recog- 
 nize, or absolutely to deny, the shrme in the midst 
 of its commonplace life. 
 
 After a short pause they glided away over all 
 deeper suggestions, and the ladies soon came in the 
 course of their " entertainment " upon another theme; 
 one of them, in whose house Professor Ramler lived, 
 in the upper story, asserted that every time the Pro- 
 fessor walked, she knew by his step in what metre 
 he was at that moment composing his verses. All 
 giggled; they went on to talk of Voltaire and the 
 Marquis D'Argens, and told how one had no time 
 nowadays to read all the interessant things, because 
 household affairs were so engrossing; and now they 
 passed on to the subject of washing. Ephraim took 
 Mendelssohn's little child in his lap. "My sweet 
 lady," he said to the child, " do you prefer to read 
 Richardson, Yorick, Klopstock, or Diderot? You 
 probably prefer the former; ah! and Marmontelle, 
 and Gessner and Wieland ! and Shakespeare and 
 La Fontaine ! I tell you one cannot be a perfect 
 German lady so long as one reads German; every- 
 body, to be sure, understands German. Who will 
 have anything to do with that ? I tell you this Thu- 
 ringian Minna von Barnhelm is a barbarian; else 
 how could she say that, in Germany, one must speak 
 German with a Frenchman? She certainly has a 
 very bad accent. The Deutsch speak is a clumsy 
 speak. [Die deutsch Sprak ist eine plump Sprak.] 
 Mademoiselle parle fran5ais. Mais sans doute: telle 
 que je le vols. La demande etait bien impolie," 
 
298 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Ephraim quickly set the child down out of his lap. 
 she flew to her mother; the ladies smiled at the odd 
 children's friend; only Recha blinked uneasily with 
 her eyes and chewed at a corner of her handkerchief. 
 The conversation resumed its full tide, for all the 
 sluices of city news were opened; Ephraim moved 
 despairingly back and forth in his seat; at last he 
 rose, and stepping to Recha, said: 
 
 " My young lady, I have some words to say to you 
 in private; will you follow me to the window yon- 
 der?" 
 
 "Pray!—" 
 
 " What do you wish there ? " asked Frau Mendels- 
 sohn. 
 
 " I speak with you alone, Recha," answered Eph- 
 raim, hurriedly, without looking round at the speaker. 
 "You must, you must fulfill my request. 1 have a 
 right to demand it of you." 
 
 "You want a criticism of your poem," answered 
 Recha, trembling, and thrust her hand into her work- 
 bag. "Here it is; my bitter tears which have fallen 
 upon it may be an all-sufficient criticism for you. 
 The hero is a glorious man, whom we must respect, 
 but unhappily he is the victim of a delusion. I wish, 
 my ladies, that Mr. Kuh would read you something 
 of his beautiful poem." 
 
 "What is the subject of it?" 
 
 "A New Archimedes; but it is too hard a prob- 
 lem that one heart shall compensate for the whole 
 world, and the hero must first ask himself whetlier 
 he stands firmly enough on his own feet to ask for a 
 point outside of the earth. The hero is a noble — " 
 
SUICIDE. 299 
 
 "Fool!" Epbraim completed tlie sentence and 
 snatched the letter from Kecha's hand, tore it in 
 pieces and bit it with his teeth; then lie gathered the 
 pieces together and thrust them into his pocket, broke 
 out into a peal of immoderate laughter which was 
 evidently forced, but it seemed absolutely impossi- 
 ble for him to come to an end, and in his violent mo- 
 tions he almost upset the whole tea-table. 
 
 " It is enough to make one die of laughing," he 
 cried; "excuse me, ladies, but it is enough to kill 
 one with laughing. It is the story of a foolish ven- 
 triloquist, who fell in love with the female voice, 
 which he himself imitated; and the super-wise Miss 
 Recha has let her tears be wrung from her by a 
 shred of paper, by a hero out of the inkstand; it is 
 enough to make one die with laughing." 
 
 "An extraordinary man," said one of the ladies, 
 when Ephraim with a polite bow had taken his leave. 
 " I feared he had become crazy," said another, "for 
 that was a crazy laugh." 
 
 Meanwhile Ephraim had left the house. With 
 hurried step he made his way toward the Spree, to 
 extinguish his lamp of life in its waves. A hundred 
 lines of thought coiled themselves up within him; 
 he whistled a lively tune; it seemed to him as if a 
 heavy hand rested upon him and drove him on w^ith- 
 out any will of his own; and yet he often looked 
 back again, as if a magic breath turned him away; 
 he felt that his good genius followed him and called 
 him to turn back; nay, he even believed he continu- 
 ally heard steps behind him. Had he noticed more 
 
300 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 distinctly, he must have observed that a veiled figure 
 followed him at a distance .... He struck into 
 another path. 
 
 On the banks of the Spree wandered moaning a 
 veiled form; it knelt down in prayer; the moon hid 
 herself behind clouds; suddenly it raised itself up; 
 it heard approaching steps, and w^ith a cry of terror, 
 sprang into the flood; the waves closed over it; here 
 and there might have been heard a struggling and a 
 splashing in the water, but soon all was still ; the 
 moon shone out clear, and a fisher came to spread his 
 net. — 
 
 O, what a wretched waking ! there is a dreary 
 w^hirl of frightful grimaces before thy sight. Thou 
 grin'st at the sunlight that steals to thy bed; thou 
 wouldst gladly make the day blind; the wings of thy 
 spirit are broken; thou hast neither the power nor 
 the will to rise; thou wouldst fain close again the 
 gates of the eye upon thy awakened consciousness; 
 wouldst sleep; wouldst die; and dost thou ask: what 
 is it that has crushed and shattered thee ? It is lost 
 love; whether by deception and betrayal, or by the 
 power of circumstances, the robbery has been accom- 
 plished upon thee; into thy very dreams it sends its 
 anguish and murders thy rest and thy forgetting. 
 
 Whoso has ever experienced a heavy sorrow, 
 whoso by the power of fate or by any fault of his 
 own has been cast down and chained down in the 
 confused whirl of life — such a one knows how at 
 the first opening of the eyes, in the hour of waking, 
 the calamity suddenly breaks in afresh and over and 
 over again; the world is dead — dead is his very life. 
 
SUICIDE. 301 
 
 Thus did Ephraim awake the next morning. The 
 servant-girl from Mendelssohn's house brought the 
 Petrarch " from Ma'm'selle Kccha with her best com- 
 pliments." Once he would have envied every leaf 
 and every letter on which his eye rested, and now he 
 flung the book into a corner, for she had touched it. 
 Trevirano entered. 
 
 " Thou, too, hast thy share of blame in the devilish 
 tragedy," he cried. 
 
 " What art thou talking about ? what is it then ? " 
 
 "Well, thou knowest of course, that the mincing 
 chamber-puss, Matilda, had been missing from home 
 since last evening; and this morning a fisher has 
 found her in his net which he spread out upon the 
 Spree." 
 
 Ephraim could not answer; whatever Trevirano 
 might say, he remained mute, till the latter at last 
 went away vexed; now at length he could groan out 
 loud; a flood of tears rolled off from his soul the 
 heavy load of anguish, and at last he sank worn-out 
 and exhausted to sleep. It was past noon when Eph- 
 raim went out. He would have redeemed the body 
 of Matilda from the dissecting-table, but the law 
 was rigid and could not be evaded. To be sure he 
 received one comfort from the dissection; the sur- 
 geons assured him unanimously that Matilda had suf- 
 fered from a heart complaint, and could have lived 
 very few years longer; this could give him, how- 
 ever, but a faint satisfaction. 
 
20.— DEMOKALIZATION AND DEPARTURE. 
 
 WEEKS and months had passed. Matilda had 
 found no grave which bore her name; she was 
 scraped in with other lost ones and forgotten, only 
 Ephraim at times still remembered her, when after a 
 night of revelry he awoke in the morning with re- 
 morse of conscience. — Passion and Avill conspired, 
 and he persuaded himself that he bade the world 
 defiance and w^ould let it know in his destruction 
 what it had lost in him, and yet he defied no one ex- 
 cept his own better self, which the w^orld always 
 sees with unconcern go to the bottom. And as the 
 sense of every pain announces itself first in that i3art 
 of the organism where a malady has seated itself, 
 so it was in this case. " Were I a Christian," Eph- 
 raim said to himself, " I would take military service, 
 or in some other way offer myself for the country 
 and public life and hoQor; now that the public way 
 is closed against me as a Jew, what remains for me? 
 Money-making ? It has no attraction for me. Science ? 
 To be sure, into her sanctuary no arm of secular or 
 priestly police can peneti:ate, but to bury one's self 
 
DEHOR A LIZA TION A ND DEPAR TURE. 303 
 
 in science is also a suicide, only of a more respect- 
 able sort, — nothing therefore is left me but to — 
 merrily live and joyfully die ! " 
 
 Trevirano was a faithful boon companion, and in- 
 ventive in devising new enjoyments, which he knew 
 how to serve up with a certain noblesse^ with an un- 
 impeachable grace. He took Ephraim into the soci- 
 ety of the Italian Singers, where the Galiari and Bar- 
 barine, the Ostroa and Salimbeni, ravished with 
 song and gay jest, but Ephraim felt himself still 
 more attracted by Dobbelin's theatrical company 
 in which a dissolute life of pleasure was overspread 
 with an enchanting veil of geniality. In cities where 
 a dismemberment of society presents itself, one will 
 very frequently find that Jewish youths, aspiring 
 after more refined and free enjoyments, attach them- 
 selves to the play-actor's life; a common revolt 
 against the dull commonplace of society, based on 
 different reasons yet similar in its manifestations, 
 links them together; those repulsive Jewish dandies 
 and aesthetic enthusiasts, those coffee-house asstheti- 
 cians, off with tlie tailor's 2^\^ friseur'' s culture, are a 
 natural, though a sad product of this alliance. 
 
 Ephraim had another special reason for being 
 pleased with this theatrical life, as at this time, when 
 the actors, as strolling companies, had fully separated 
 themselves from general society, they also went on 
 their way freely in disregard of all its laws; wanton 
 young officers, young officials who had not yet 
 played out the student, old worn-out debauchees, in 
 short all that felt itself constrained in the pressure of 
 
304 rOET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 society and excluded and outlawed from the circle of 
 citizens, gathered here. Especially conspicuous was 
 an elderly but extremely attractive Italian; they 
 called him bluntly nothing but Chevalier; he had only 
 recently arrived in Bei-lin and charmed all by the 
 grace and ease of his deportment, as well as by the 
 lively relation of his almost fabulous adventures. 
 
 In this society outside of society the bitterest 
 satire was indulged against the life and doings of 
 the so-called Philistines; they laughed and jeered at 
 the virtues adorned with beauty-patches; and the 
 whole chaotic whirl of demoralization; witticisms 
 and puns followed clap on clap. In Ephraim too 
 the epidemic influence soon appeared which manifests 
 itself in bacchanalian wantonness. At first only for 
 the sake of not appearing prudish and pedantic he 
 joined in timidly, but soon the pleasure of such 
 ways overmastered him, and when he had once given 
 himself up to it he was borne on till he became a 
 spur to all the others. He fell into the most ruinous 
 of all moods, in which the distortions of corruption 
 are contemplated with a certain complacency, and 
 one dares not rest till he has scented out in all the 
 j)henomena of life the hidden drop of evil. His 
 original and borrowed witticisms transplanted hither 
 from Jewish regions excited surprise by their for- 
 eign flourishes, and Ephraim soon passed in this so- 
 ciety for the richest wit. 
 
 Returning home from this jovial company, in the 
 silence of solitude Ephraim almost always recognized 
 the burned-out desolation of his spirit; of all the 
 
DEMORALIZA TION AND DEPARTURE. 305 
 
 laughter, all the flashes of witticism tliat followed 
 each other so swiftly peal on peal, nothing was left 
 beliind that could sustain his inner man in its elastic 
 gayety; for this is the immediate revenge of the 
 spirit against its maltreatment, that such maltreat- 
 ment is dogged by the spectres of remorse and 
 emptiness. 
 
 A large portion of those smaller poems in which he 
 sharply scourges the falseness and faithlessness of 
 women, date, however, from this period; neverthe- 
 less, Ephraim could not suddenly break off his ear- 
 lier social connections, nay, rather, he made a show 
 of his altered view of life; he would fain pass for 
 a misanthrope and life-destroyer. 
 
 As that gloomy Spanish king caused himself to be 
 interred in broad consciousness that he might know 
 the horror of the grave, the funeral pomp and the 
 after-talk of men, so Ephraim went to the last limits 
 of self-de^ruction. He felt a peculiar melancholy 
 satisfaction when any one reminded him of his intel- 
 lectual qualities, of his good heart, of all the zeal and 
 exalted endowments of his nature — that was now all 
 dead, and yet men saw what had died. But not 
 even in this could he quite content himself, and 
 sought to build up a peculiar system of Epicurean- 
 ism, which raised an undutiful enjoyment in opposi- 
 tion to nature and human society to the rank of the 
 highest end and aim. 
 
 And yet there was again a slight quiver of unea- 
 siness within him when he perceived that his wald 
 speeches were taken in earnest and not with the pro- 
 test of the better knowledge of his real self. 
 
30G POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Ephraira had in fact for a long time been account- 
 ed among bis acquaintances as weak and wavering, 
 for be always carried bis wisbes and aspirations on 
 bis lips, and only be wbo locks up bis changing pur- 
 poses and wisbes in bis own bosom and surprises by 
 action, impresses men as strong and consistent. 
 Tbis complete transformation, however, alarmed all; 
 only Veitel smiled quietly: "One must sooner or 
 later sow bis wild oats," said the practical man; "it 
 is better be should do it now than put it off till be 
 is married; that makes the best kind of husband; 
 the two or three hundred dollars which it now costs, 
 one can well let go; we have enough at any rate," 
 and be complacently jingled the money in bis 
 breeches-pocket. 
 
 He was now better satisfied with Ephraim than 
 ever, for the latter had, as if in mockery of himself 
 and the world in which all good fortune should have 
 its market-price, become an enthusiastic speculator, 
 who now all at once transferred bis poetic fantasy 
 to business combinations. Veitel exulted with rapt- 
 ure over the sudden awakening of bis nephew; be 
 ascribed this enlightenment to his own influence and 
 laughed greatly when Ephraim explained to him 
 that be only strove after money because be despised 
 it, because it was the means by wliicli be could learn 
 to despise men. Ephraim was put to bis trumps 
 when Veitel acknowledged that in tbis also be was 
 quite right. 
 
 One day, however, Veitel came to his n^pliew's 
 chamber and said: "Thou kno west what great ac- 
 
DEMORALIZATION AND DEPARTURE. 307 
 
 count I make of thee; thou mayest become the 
 greatest merchant in the world. Thou seest too 
 that I have never put anything in thy way, thou art 
 a free master, and canst do what thou wilt, but there 
 are two things against which, as uncle, I must warn 
 tliee." 
 
 " And these are ? " 
 
 " In the first place, I don't like thy brotherhood 
 with Trevirano; we must not have any such friend- 
 ships with a man who has no money. I am not an- 
 gry; thou seest how I treat Emanuel and that I have 
 a good heart. I know very well all men are not 
 selfish, but still one gets himself into a dilemma of 
 this kind. Such men usually need more than they 
 have; if one gives them money, one gets nothing 
 back again; if one gives them none, the friendship 
 comes to an end and one loses after all his good 
 name. Therefore thou A\dlt have no more to do with 
 this Trevirano, who might drink up thy property 
 and mine and that of seventeen others, houses and 
 lands and all. — My second is this, " here he pointed 
 to the enormous case of books. " I have reckoned 
 there is more than a thousand dollars' w^orth of stuff 
 sunk there, which is worth barely thirty per cent. ; 
 that is a luxury for a prince, but not for a business 
 man, who must make compliments to every one, if 
 he is to make a silver groschen out of him." 
 
 " You have spent a greater sum upon the pictures 
 in your country-house." 
 
 "Tliftt is quite another affair; in the first place, I 
 bought them cheap at the auction sale of Gotzkow- 
 
808 FOE T A ND MER CHA NT. 
 
 ski's things, and can at most lose two or three per 
 cent, on them, which I can soon get back again. 
 But I don't part with them. The pictures are my 
 best friends and relations." 
 
 " Your friends and relations ? " 
 
 " Yes, and never speak ill of me behind my back, 
 and always remain what they are. Dost thou not 
 comprehend my meaning then? My Uncle Jekuf 
 was a horse-jockey, and my grandfather had a voice 
 like a commandant, but it had no weight beyond the 
 synagogue of Prenzlau. Who has got the acquaint- 
 ance of generals and statesmen, and the most 
 considerable dignitaries? My pictures, saints and 
 scamps, men and beasts and trees. Well, now, don't 
 my pictures bring in their revenues? And truly 
 and honestly, I know not how it has come to pass; 
 I now take pleasure in the i^ictures themselves and 
 I understand something about them too, the greatest 
 connoisseurs tell me so." 
 
 Ephraim was silent, and Yeitel, after a pause, con- 
 tinued: "I buy books also; I have this very week 
 subscribed for Karsch's poems. She is a poor lady. 
 I have paid her for it fivefold, and my name is 
 printed at the head among the grandees. Follow 
 my example and sell thy books, now, while they are 
 new and handsomely bound; by-and-by they'll not 
 be worth anything. I have said all." 
 
 Ephraim gave an evasive answer, and when Veitel 
 had gone, he opened his book-case and his eyes 
 rested with delight on the gilded titles. There 
 stood in rank and file his body-guard, as he often 
 
DEMORALIZATION AND DEPARTURE. 309 
 
 playfully called his library; it was splendidly 
 uniformed, blue, and with shields; never, perhaps, 
 did a king cause his troops to display before him 
 with greater complacency than Ephraim here 
 reviewed his books. " No, never," he said, " nothing 
 shall part us; for when all forsake me, you will offer 
 me consolation and rest." 
 
 Ephraim visited Recha also several times after that 
 fatal evening. That is the most oppressive feature 
 of the constraint society exercises, that it is necessary 
 to keep the form of a relation' unchanged, when its 
 original essence has long since evaporated. 
 
 How should Ephraim met Recha ? 
 
 "An old flame is like an old lottery-ticket," 
 Abraham Diogenes used to say; " time was when one 
 set great hopes upon it, and studied the figures as 
 those of a lucky number; now it is no longer 
 anything more than a scrap of paper." 
 
 His altered manner of life gave Ephraim, however, 
 suflicient power of resistance to behave himself 
 toward Recha in a cold and unembarrassed manner. 
 Many a time a demon even sought to persuade him 
 to hail the now friendly and now melancholy looks 
 of Recha as signs of repentance and silently bloom- 
 ing love; but even were a return possible, this much 
 he felt, that the untroubled bliss of a first and pure 
 sensation was forever lost, by mutual rejection, no 
 less than by his own willful change and hardness. 
 After a few weeks Recha took leave of her Berlin 
 acquaintances; she went back to Hamburg. 
 
 "If God himself should ask for her hand, she 
 
310 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 would beg three days for consideration," Abraham 
 Diogenes had said of her. 
 
 Now, when Ephraim had long been out of humor, 
 he did not take refuge as formerly with his sister 
 Violet, for he felt that her habit of indulQ^ino: his 
 assertion of his whims, as a man and one of the lords 
 of creation, was calculated only to aggravate, by no 
 means to conquer them; and beside, the evident and 
 real sorrow of his sister caused him in that still and 
 pure presence too sore a self-reproach. Again he 
 took refuge by the sick-bed of old Emanuel, who 
 always received him with the same kindliness; he 
 had remained almost immovable, while Ephraim had 
 been tossed to and fro by light waves. 
 
 " It is a sad thing that thou dost not understand 
 anything of music," the old man once said; "for 
 what is innermost and deepest in the soul there is no 
 other expression than a kiss or a tear, but when one 
 can neither kiss nor weep, music alone gives us a 
 presentiment of what it is in the innermost soul that 
 sighs for deliverance. Whoso will accomplish any- 
 thing in life, needs others to help him or subserve him ; 
 and in every act he who will create anything needs 
 forms and experiences from the external world 
 which he may freely shape; in music alone one needs 
 nothing of the outer world; it gushes from the 
 inner; music is a something on the other side of the 
 Babylonian confusion of tongues; it is a language 
 common to all nations; music is the inner Saviour of 
 the world." 
 
 " Hence it is, probably," replied Ephraim, half 
 
DEMORALIZA TION A ND DEPA R TURK. 311 
 
 playfully, " we are told, the Messiah is to appear 
 amid the sound of trumpets to redeem the world." 
 
 And all the time, Ephraim complained over and 
 over before Emanuel how he pined for rest and 
 could not iind it, and it seemed at last as if the hour 
 of consecration had come. Emanuel set forth to 
 Ephraim what a saving vocation it was to have been 
 born a Jew; a thousand times cast off, and yet 
 always cared for again continually, to gain his own 
 heart and that of mankind in purity; and with 
 exalted energy he said: "After the great journey 
 of life, I come up again before the dark veil, and 
 wait for light; how gladly would I impart to thee 
 of that which shall be to me over yonder, but of 
 that which I have received here below, I may let a 
 ray fall into thy soul, and enlighten and gladden for- 
 ever thy inner being. Behold, through the wide earth, 
 torn as it is into a thousand hostile camps, there 
 passes an endless girdle of light, into which all good 
 men enter. In the hand of the One God, which thou 
 boldest, thou boldest and art a link of this infinite 
 chain; thou knowest its beginning, but not its end; 
 for in distant zones lives a soul, throb thousands of 
 hearts, animated by the same wishes as thou; and 
 though thou never seest these friendly features, nor 
 feelest the beating of this bosom, so long as thine 
 eye drinks the light of earth — wherever thou 
 standest is holy ground, and thou canst exclaim with 
 joy: * Above me God and his angels, and beside me 
 good fellow-men.' When thou journeyest alone 
 through strange cities and villages, be not afraid; let 
 
312 POE T AND MERCHANT. 
 
 thy heart say to thee: Behind these walls, amidst 
 this whirl, there live human beings who strive for 
 goodness like thee; who love thee as thy brothers — 
 and thou wilt be haj^py. The higher thou soaresC 
 in this universal love, in this universal recognition, 
 the more thou feelest thyself single and whole, and 
 again recognizest thyself as universal, as a splinter 
 in the great world-edifice, as a mote that floats in 
 the sunlight, so much the more purely and freely 
 dost thou live and die in the nearness of God. Be- 
 Ihold, to wish to change the life of the universe 
 according to thy own wish and need, is to desire 
 :what is impossible and were not good. Look at a 
 ingle city; for centuries the generations have built 
 here; no one can any longer arrange the streets 
 differently, after a logical plan; one may think it 
 fortunate, if by a new bridge, by the clearing away 
 of single houses, a thoroughfare is opened which 
 lightens human intercourse, and the new improve- 
 ments must incorporate the old, and what has 
 apparently sprung up by mere caprice, as a precon- 
 certed part of their new plan. So, too, is it with the 
 whole world of history. 
 
 " Ah ! the saddest experience of my life is this, 
 that no man understands anotlier, that no man 
 can give aught to another whicli he can so wliolly 
 grasp and make his own, as it was given. Every 
 one takes only that, and keeps only that, of which 
 he has something already.* Look at human souls; 
 
 *One is reminded of the two sayings; "Every man shall bear his own bur- 
 den," and "To him that hath, shall be given." 
 
DEHOR A LIZA TION AND DEPARTURE. 313 
 
 one is gold ground, another gray, a third brown, 
 and so on; if thou wilt paint the same picture on 
 these different grounds, thou must in each case mix: 
 the colors differently, distribute differently the 
 lights. That is justice, that is the highest. Young 
 friend, thou canst not yet know, take my word for 
 it, what it means to look back at the end of life's 
 journey and survey the dangerous by-ways and bold 
 ascents. How much that one took so hard might 
 easily have been mastered, and how often mere 
 heedlessness and levity helped one over dangers; but 
 all has at last led thee to the goal, and it is well 
 as it is. Fain would I set all the gain of my life as 
 a polished jew^el in the silver of speech, and, making 
 thee my heir, leave it to thee as a protecting talis- 
 man and magic ring. I could die more cheerfully, 
 if I knew that I had also brought as spoils from the 
 conflict, consolation for another, for my life has 
 been unhappily a confused zigzag, on which I 
 almost always missed the mark." 
 
 Ephraim received quietly this last appeal, but 
 when he was alone he said to himself: Just as Rabbi 
 Chananel did in my childliood, so would Emanuel 
 now transfer the outstanding obligations of his life- 
 battle to me to collect them. Is this the boast- 
 ed felicity of the masters of knowledge, that at the 
 end of their days they must content themselves with 
 the living-on of their thought in the hereafter of an- 
 other man ? I will not let myself be so cheated by 
 life, to seek at the end of my existence consolation in 
 
314 rOET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 another. I will enjoy for myself — for myself will \ 
 live and die.* 
 
 Once, after a night of revelry continued almost till 
 morning, Ephraim sat drowsily at his desk, when 
 Yeitel stepped up to him in a friendly manner and 
 took him aside into the inner apartment, where he 
 was accustomed to entertain distinguished strangers. 
 
 "I must at last out with it," he there began; "I 
 have always waited for thee to begin, but it is with 
 thee as with that sick man who lay dying, and whom 
 his son exhorted: 'Wait, father, till the doctor 
 comes ! ' — I cannot wait. Now then, let me make a 
 clean breast: Maier Baschwitz, of Frankfort-on-the- 
 Oder, is here, and has asked for the hand of my Zer- 
 lina; he is a splendid match; Itzig and Siissmann here 
 would each gladly give him three daughters for one; 
 but I shall not breathe a syllable till thou hast told 
 me whether or no thou wilt have her; I have not yet 
 given one the refusal of my daughter, but with thee 
 I make an exception; therefore consider the matter, 
 or rather tell me at once. Yes or No, franchementy 
 
 "I shall never marry, and if I did, I do not know 
 whether Zerlina would be happy with me." 
 
 " As to that last point, all that is mere tomfoolery. 
 Why shouldst thou not be happy? Thou hast a 
 pretty property; and so with God's help has my 
 Zerlina also; but I will not force nor persuade thee, 
 why should I ? Thy books are wiser than I, or a 
 hundred other experienced men. But in thy case 
 
 * And was not this, in fact, the logical carrying-out of Emanuel's own doc- 
 trine, expressed above ? 
 
DEMO RA LIZA TION AND DEPAR TURE. 3 1 5 
 
 the proverb applies doubly: Thou cun-t ])hea3ajits 
 and groaiiest all the while; thou hast wii at thou wilt 
 and yet art always dissatisfied — my understanding 
 is at a stand." 
 
 "I cannot wed Zerlina," replied Ephraim. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Because I do not love her." 
 
 "Youngster, art thou in the theatre? From tho 
 players on the stage one hears such phrases, but not 
 from ordinary people." 
 
 " I choose to live for myself alone." 
 
 " For thyself alone ? " asked Veitel, shaking his 
 head; " Trevirano is. perhaps right; I tell thee, that 
 man does not mean well by thee; thou hast no knowl- 
 edge of men, nor wilt have, to thy dying day." 
 
 "Marry off Zerlina, with my congratulations," 
 said Ephraim, angrily, and went about his business. 
 He knew not to what his uncle alluded in the men- 
 tion of Trevirano, but he would not insult his friend 
 by asking a third person about him. As he de- 
 manded of a friend a direct survey of himself, such 
 as no other could possess, so would he too pledge tho 
 same in return, and repel any outside remonstrance. 
 The reproach of being deficient in the knowledge of 
 men, he felt that he did not deserve, and in some 
 measure justly; his whole poetry and practice, in- 
 deed, took the direction of a close examination of the 
 human heart with all its venous ramifications; hence 
 too he kept his own soul's life moving amidst reflect- 
 ing mirrors set up on all sides; hence, indeed, he 
 watched in a self -tormenting manner for every im- 
 
316 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 mediate emotion, and now came a cool worldly 
 wisdom, and set itself up against him with its keen 
 practiced eye-siglit, and all those advantages which 
 rest upon the logic of hard fact, but cannot prove 
 themselves by inner deductions. 
 
 But is not the explorer into the depths of the hu- 
 man mind, in the presence of the individual phenom- 
 enon, the more liable to deception from the very fact 
 that he seeks after fundamental traits and first prin- 
 ciples for actions and characters, where, as a general 
 rule, only disconnected liking manifests itself ? 
 
 Ephraim, who carried himself with an air of pas- 
 sionate protest against that knowledge of men which 
 prides itself on its experience, still inwardly de- 
 spaired of ever being able to know a human being 
 in his innermost nature, for he had reached that 
 point where what presents itself as a simple element 
 one still contemplates with the question whether 
 after all a manifold combination may not prevail 
 therein. 
 
 Of every fact and feeling he would fain explore 
 the manifoldness of the causes, as every stem of a 
 tree appearing in its unity nevertheless rests upon 
 many-wise ramifying root-fibres and draws from them 
 its nourishment. 
 
 Fate had thrown Ephraim into a position in life 
 where all life's settled customs, all fixity of tradition, 
 appeared to hmi fluid and in chaotic solution; two 
 ways stood open to him, either in harmless levity to 
 content himself with a limited existence, or to make 
 his way through the perplexities of thought to that 
 
DEMORALIZA TION AND DEPARTURE. ZVL a^. / 
 
 point where the creative " Let there be " rc^^eais itself 
 in the original spirit, and the world shapes itself 
 anew. To the one he could not descend, to the other 
 he could not attain. 
 
 Often he thought of turning about and enjoying 
 life as given him, just as thousands did all around 
 him, but he had no longer the power. 
 
 He could not marry Zerlina; she indeed was the 
 confidant of his love to Recha. How could he ever 
 without blushing approach her as a lover, how ex- 
 change a loving word with her, when she knew his 
 heart belonged to another; or should he possess a 
 goddess without love ? Sooner w^ould he take upon 
 himself inextinguishable sorrow and certain destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 A few days after that conversation with Yeitel, 
 Zerlina became the bride of Maier Baschwitz; Men- 
 del Felluhzer, whom we well remember, had been 
 here, also, the business manager and undertaker. 
 
 " Blow on blow," said Veitel to his nephew, whom 
 he had sent for one morning early. "Emanuel has, 
 to crown all, had a shock, and Trevirano ought to 
 have one, wherever he is; he has retained a bill of 
 exchange for three- hundred dollars, which he had 
 of me for collection, and has made tracks; is he ow- 
 ing thee money, too, the scoundrel?" 
 "Yes, indeed, over a thousand dollars." 
 
 "Get them exchanged; I have warned thee 
 enough; I have heard from one of thy jolly com- 
 panions that Trevirano had publicly said several 
 times that his only reason for being on such iuti- 
 
318 POE T AND MERCHANT. 
 
 mate terms with thee was that thou couldst pay 
 the piper with thy money for his merry sprees. 
 But if thy purse has the consumption at such a rate, 
 thou canst not carry out thy project, as, according 
 to Trevirano's report, thou wilt set up a manufactory 
 of thine own; it will not be any advantage to thee 
 that thou wouldst betray the secrets of my gold and 
 silver manufacture to a new associate." 
 
 " You are so great a connoisseur of men that what 
 you imagine must be true," answered Ephraim, and 
 went up to Emanuel. 
 
 A stillness of death reigned in the sparingly- 
 lighted chamber; only a low moan was from time 
 to time audible ; the dark man in the gray military 
 mantle sat by the bedside holding his friend's hand. 
 Emanuel with all his might stretched up his head, 
 his tongue was lamed, his hands refused their office. 
 The friend seemed to read the wish of the sick man 
 from the direction of his eyes; he took the violin 
 from the wall and played a soft adagio. It was the 
 long-drawn tones of a church melody, only more 
 joyful and manly; Emanuel seemed to know the 
 melody; he thanked his friend by repeated winkings 
 of the eyelid. A halo of transparent glory hovered 
 over the face of Emanuel; softer and softer, more 
 and more tremulously sounded the tones of the vio- 
 lin, but soon they swept upward tempestuously and 
 exultingly to the heavenly tent; the sick man 
 breathed faster, when suddenly a window-shutter 
 flew open. "Light! light!" cried Emanuel with his 
 last struggle; he grasped at his eyes with both hands; 
 
DEMORALIZATION AND DEPARTURE. 319 
 
 the tones still sounded, the sun shone in brightly, hut 
 upon the waves of the melody Emanuel had gone 
 up from the light to its primal source. 
 
 " The happiest day of his life was that on which 
 he died," said the dark man; he closed Emanuel's 
 eyes and went away. 
 
 The Jewish inquisitors would have hustled away 
 Emanuel, the freemason, into the criminals' corner, 
 because he had come only once a year to the syna- 
 gogue and had died without the presence of the 
 "holy brotherhood; " the influence of Mendelssohn 
 and his friends, however, nuUilied such a sentence 
 upon the dead. 
 
 Only at the grave of Emanuel did it come back to 
 Ephraim what he had lost in him. Here among the 
 grave-mounds an icy shudder stole over him at the 
 thought that this was the end of life. Pale and 
 painful arose the remembrance of another vanished 
 one, on whose grave no tears fell and no flowers 
 bloomed. Matilda had sunk like Ephraim's past life, 
 leaving in death no trace behind. 
 
 And a funeral wail, full of unfathomable sorrow, 
 rose in trembling tones upon his soul. How crum- 
 bles life and sinks away in ourselves and in other? 
 for whom we lived; who can collect all his energy 
 and carry it and cherish it to the end ? 
 
 At last he stood erect in the thought that hence- 
 forth he would no more let fate be master. A span 
 of time was yet given him. 
 
 His residence in Berlin grew daily more burden- 
 some; all ties which had held him here had been cut 
 
320 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 asunder and fluttered loosely in the wind; to this was 
 added the fraud of Trevirano, and especially the 
 unjust suspicion of his uncle, which he willingly, for 
 the sake of having a stinging excuse, painted in more 
 glaring colors by disclaiming all excuse for it on his 
 own part; he would with all his might plunge into 
 life, but where does life offer the visible handles, 
 whereby one may grasp it and where one may in a 
 fresh accession of energy apply all his strength as a 
 lever? Nothing on all sides but quiet, regulated 
 activity, studying, working. Only in the soldier's 
 or the sea-farer's life can be found the full sense of 
 existence; hourly to expose life means hourly to live 
 a whole life; but how to fill up the dreary intervals ? 
 And always the result was that the whole occupa- 
 tion of the world lay more and more chaotically be- 
 fore his eyes. 
 
 Ephraim resolved to travel. Wandering from 
 city to city, he thought to be able to subdue in him- 
 self the restless yearning which he looked upon as 
 the source of all his unhappiness; then again he fan- 
 cied he should rise again pure and new-created out 
 of the odious chrysalis condition into which he had 
 spun himself. A great poem, a redeeming song, 
 must be slumbering in his soul, which could only 
 struggle out in a state of freedom; how he rejoiced 
 with tliousands after him, who should let themselves 
 be absorbed witli him in tlie joy and sorrows of his 
 living and poetizing. 
 
 Nothing had been left him but his books and liis 
 sister Violet. Iler he again visited often; she 
 
DEMO R A LIZA TION A ND DEPA R TURE. 321 
 
 greatly needed bis solace, for she was confined to the 
 sick-bed of her ailing husband. 
 
 " O God! " she said once, when her brother spoke 
 with rapture of his tour, " ah, if I could only travel 
 with thee, and had wings, that I might fly, far, far 
 away, I know not whither; ah, God forgive me, I 
 am a miserable person, I had quite forgotten that 
 I have a sick husband and duties to do." 
 
 Violet was profoundly unhappy, for her husband 
 was sick; she found a comfort in the careful nurs- 
 ing which she administered to him, and she was un- 
 remitting in her attentions, and full of inexhaustible 
 patience, whereby, also, she would fain make a cer- 
 tain expiation, because her innermost thought and 
 feeling had not wholly and solely belonged to her 
 husband. Hei'z Helft, who recognized the calm ele- 
 vation of his wife's nature, saw now and too late the 
 rich, but hitherto overlooked, bliss of his life. A 
 wronged spirit rose within him, and at the close of 
 their wedded days the married couple learned, for 
 the first time, to love each other. 
 
 Violet begged her brother to stay with her only 
 this winter; they would love each other right heart- 
 ily and make life sweet for each other; but Ephraim 
 was afraid of his own fickleness, and that he might 
 by-and-by no longer have the courage to undertake 
 the tour. When, hoAvever, he bade farewell to Vio- 
 let he could not refrain from tears; she flung her 
 arms around his neck, and clasped her hands tightly 
 together and absolutely would not leave him. 
 
 Not until he was in his room again could he re- 
 21 
 
322 ^OE T A ND MER CHA NT. 
 
 cover from the tender mood which liad unmanned 
 him. Nor did he succeed in doing this except 
 through liis uncle Veitel, who came to him once 
 more and ti'ied to persuade liim to stay. At first 
 Yeitel made a show of unexpected tenderness and 
 family attachment; but as this proved ineffectual, 
 tie said: "Thou wilt take a journey, thou fanciest; 
 I do not understand what troubles thee, but I tell 
 thee, he who cannot be happy in any place, wdll be 
 so nowhere. Yes, laugh aw\ay, thou hast a hot head. 
 It does thee no good to turn thy pillow over, thou 
 gettest nothing thereby except the pain of having 
 to T-aise thyself. Then stay where thou art, I'll hold 
 thy head for thee." 
 
 Not even the consolation was left Ephraim of be- 
 ing able to separate from his uncle with abhorrence, 
 and yet he adhered to his resolve. 
 
 Now it came to the packing up of the books. 
 First he took the Bible and laid it with silent devo- 
 tion in the great trunk; it should consecrate the 
 wooden house in which he shut up his friends: a 
 selection of Greeks, Romans, Italians, Germans, etc., 
 was to be his escort. But the more and the longer 
 he chose, so much the more unjust it ai>peared to 
 him to leave behind this or that book; was there 
 not here and tliere a passage which had many a time 
 comforted, cheered and elevated him, and should 
 not these be worth the freiglit, should they jiot be 
 allowed to accompany him ever)^where? — Thus by 
 degrees two great trunks were filled with his library 
 and his heart was lightened. 
 
DEMORALIZA TION AND BE PAR TURK. 323 
 
 When in the familiar Berlin circle they talked of 
 Ephraim's book-escort, Abraham Diogenes said: 
 " He could not succeed in having a menarje of his 
 own, and now he travels with a literary menagerie,'*'' 
 
 There was a laugh, and with this pun Ephraim 
 was dismissed from the thoughts of those in whom 
 he imagined he had made himself a living home. 
 
21— DAME ADVENTURE. 
 
 THE interaction by which events often call up 
 mysterious apparitions, or these, in turn, pro- 
 duce and determine events, is hard to explain. 
 
 We are occupied with the time when bold advent- 
 urers wandered from court to court, in quest of 
 news and enjoyments. The whole pleasure of life 
 in the upper classes was in masquerades. Ephraim 
 also took i^art therein. 
 
 Before the inn of a residence in middle Germany, 
 a lean man alighted from a well-packed coach; as 
 he threw off his fur-cloak, one could more closely 
 inspect his attire: in the linely frizzled peruke glit- 
 tered strung pearls; over the pale face hovered dis- 
 content or the ennui of rank; the stranger had hard 
 work to hook on his cavalier's sword; one could not 
 tell Avhether his fingers were stiff with cold, or 
 whether he was unused to tliis costume; in fact, 
 however, it was the latter, for this cavalier was no 
 otlier than Ephraim. He was hard to recognize, and 
 yet he had scarcely entered the travelers' room when 
 an acquaintance full of wonder came forward to 
 
DAME ADVENTURE. 325 
 
 meet him. It was the miich-expcricnced Chevalier 
 cle Seingalt, with whom he had become acquainted 
 in the company of the Italian singers in Berlin. 
 Ephraim drew him aside to a window and confided 
 to him that he thought of traveling, but that he 
 did not care to be startled at every boundary post, 
 which would remind him of the payment of the 
 Jew-tax and all the repulsive things therewith asso- 
 ciated; he would for once look upon the world in 
 undisturbed freedom. For a not inconsiderable sum 
 he had therefore procured from a young police offi- 
 cer, whom he had also become acquainted with in that 
 gay theatrical company, this pass. He then showed 
 the passport, in which he was particularly desig- 
 nated as Cesare, Marquis of Tomicola from Mace- 
 rate. The chevalier was highly delighted and prom- 
 ised to present Ephraim at court. 
 
 Ephraim must needs accept this offer and yet he 
 could not rid himself without an inward repug- 
 nance. He had wished to see the world for himself 
 in a free and unembarrassed way, and now he had 
 not strength to withstand the decision and persua- 
 sive arts of the chevalier; he saw himself chained to 
 a man who might perhaps be an adventurer; even 
 the chevalier's mow inspired him with an inexplicable 
 dread. The conversation, however, soon fell into a 
 lighter flow, and Ephraim, who always lived inward- 
 ly and kept up a constant fight with the states of 
 his soul, initiated the chevalier, almost without in- 
 tending it, into his thoughts and feelings. 
 
 " What do you mean by this eternal talk about 
 
326 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 your dead love?" the chevalier once said; "in the 
 case of love particularly the saying holds: 'Le roi 
 est mort, vive le roi ! ' " 
 
 Leaning against a marble column in the great hall 
 of the residence stands a Knight of the Cross, his 
 arms folded across his breast, staring into the 
 masquerade, which, illuminated by a thousand lights, 
 swept tumultuously around him. Ephraim began 
 to regard his fate as a poetic complication, and 
 heightened it yet more by an ironic coloring which 
 created for him a certain inner triumph. What a 
 scene of mad merriment it was! Here and there a 
 group darted forward and crystallized in more and 
 more complex and manifold forms; the Spanish and 
 Turkish costumes richly studded with jewels flung 
 back the thousand in a glittering play of colors. 
 Harlequins leaped round merrily and slapped at 
 them with their wooden swords; the voices sounded 
 shrill and hollow from behind the masks. Ephraim 
 gave himself up involuntarily to the fantastic im- 
 agination how it would be, if under these motley 
 dresses nothing but spectres were disguised; but 
 gradually this thought grew repulsive to him, for 
 in the mere speaking aloud to others the conjuring 
 up of the spectral loses its awfulness; in solitary 
 thinking, without the distraction of mutual speech, 
 it remains an uncomfortable demon, which creeps on 
 again and again. 
 
 Ephraim shuddered violently when for the first 
 time a mask addressed him; this feeling of being put 
 in relation with some one who occupies an invisible 
 
DAME ADVENTURE. 32V 
 
 position, almost made liim tremble; he forgot at the 
 moment that he himself was masked. Several masks 
 spoke to him in German; Ephraim answered in Ital- 
 ian that he did not understand their language; 
 there was a general laugh; now he was asked about 
 his latest love, in what heart he would next take up 
 his residence; and other snares were set for him. 
 Ephraim observed that the questioners, despite all 
 the freedom the mask permitted, maintained a re- 
 spectful bearing, but suddenly they put their heads 
 together and then disappeared. He again resumed 
 his fixed position; the whole intermezzo seemed to 
 liim extraordinary, when the chevalier came to him 
 and told him he had for some time been taken for 
 the Prince. The chevalier might well be the person 
 to tell it, for it was he who confided to a female 
 friend the secret that the Prince was already at the 
 ball as Knight of the Cross; in ten minutes the se- 
 cret had got about among half the assembly. By 
 a crowd which suddenly took place E^Dhraim was 
 separated from the chevalier; a Greek procession of 
 gods came pressing on, music and dancing genii, 
 draped in light veils, led the van, then the mighty 
 Jove strode powerfully and energetically along; 
 around his head flowed the ambrosial locks; Hebe 
 and Ganymede, two alluring maiden forms, followed 
 him, and then the whole divine train of Olympus; 
 throughout, the natural flow and fullness of form 
 came forth free and unobstructed through the light 
 drapery. 
 
 What his boldest fancies had pictured to him 
 
328 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Ephraim saw here appear before him in fresli bril 
 liancy. This is the full bliss of existence ! his 
 heart cried exultingly within liim, and all else is 
 only being buried alive. — And yet he could not re- 
 sist the impulse, in the midst of the swell and din 
 of music, and all the flash and glitter, to trans- 
 port himself for a moment out into the other remote 
 and narrowly-bounded world; he carried himself in 
 fancy to the dark room with Rabbi Chananel, he 
 was working in the counting-house, he was sitting 
 with old Emanuel in his chamber, he was sitting 
 by his sister at the sick-bed of her husband, he was 
 philosophizing with Mendelssohn .... his whole 
 life and that of all his acquaintances he would com- 
 press into one thought, to gain a culminating point 
 for the 13 resent moment; but too vast a multitude 
 and variety of objects came thronging around him; 
 he must needs open his eyes at once to rid himself 
 of his thoughts. There he saw again all the splen- 
 dor and the motley tumult; but suddenly he trem- 
 bled through his whole body; he crumpled his cloak 
 in his hand and could not stir from the spot — for 
 there he saw the form of his father stealing on 
 toward him; there was the reddish frock-coat, the 
 three-cornered hat with the white peaked cap under 
 it, the black velvet breeches, the white stockings, 
 the buckled shoes; the form seemed to seek some 
 one, and stalked straight up to Ephraim: "Massel 
 tov, Rabbi Ephraim! * 
 
 * I congratulate you, Master Ephraim ! 
 
DAME ADVENTURE. 329 
 
 In strife, play, drink, is seen 
 
 How much a friend's words mean."'' 
 
 Ephraim could not answer; his throat was as if 
 gagged, and as suddenly as it had come the appari- 
 tion had disappeared. The signal for unmasking 
 was given; the chevalier approached E2)hraim, took 
 his arm under his and led him to the other end of 
 the hall. In a box not far from that of the Prince 
 sat Luna, a well-knit figure of luxuriant fullness of 
 outline. The chevalier brought our friend up to her 
 and introduced him to the Countess Aurora von O. 
 
 Ephraim took his seat near the countess; she no 
 longer appeared to him so young as he had at first 
 imagined her, but the gay and graceful play of her 
 charms and the refined liveliness of her mind did 
 not fail of their attraction. 
 
 The presumption of the cleverness of a man of the 
 world which had been brought to meet Ephraim, in 
 some measure communicated to him that quality, 
 and he was pleased that the countess accepted what 
 he with trembling lips had put into a word, as a 
 witty gallantry; she pronounced it "very sweet and 
 charming " that so clever a man of the world could 
 so skillfully appropriate to himself the mask of a 
 bashful and enthusiastic youth; this bit of tactics 
 was new and entertaining to her; she readily brought 
 up some reminiscences of the pastoral court-life of 
 the past period, and so entered with ease into Ephra- 
 ini's tone. 
 
 * A saying of the Rabbins. 
 
330 POE T A ND MER CHA N T. 
 
 The latter was quite enchanted with such a new 
 concei)tion of life, which assumes as an understood 
 thing that all is mere joke and jest, and out of 
 politeness gives itself the appearance for a while of 
 believing in something. 
 
 He remembered that Matilda had once prophesied 
 to him that Luna would choose him for her En- 
 dymion. He grew pale at the recollection, but pres- 
 ently again he followed a new idea on the alluring 
 track; how unjust, he thought to himself, are we 
 in the lower walks of life to those in the higher; we 
 repay prejudice Avith prejudice, and fancy that un- 
 der their glittering dresses no hearts beat as purely 
 and nobly as in us; the shining form misleads us, so 
 that we nowhere see anything but the form; but is 
 it not better to taste the ripe fruit of the tree of life 
 out of a golden dish, than to pick it laboriously out 
 of the dust ? Wealth and power are the fairest, if 
 not the highest goods of earth. After this pause of 
 thought the countess asked Ephraim about his so- 
 journ in Madrid or at tlie Berlin Court, of which 
 the chevalier had informed her. Drops of sweat 
 stood upon his forehead at being obliged to commu- 
 nicate on these subjects; he threw over his stay in 
 Madrid a romantic veil and passed on to the Berlin 
 Court, of which he knew more particulars. He in- 
 wardly cursed the chevalier for putting him into 
 this embarrassment, and yet he could not be angry 
 with him, for was not his whole present life one 
 continued lie ? 
 
 The most excruciating part of it all was, however, 
 
DAME ADVENTURE. 331 
 
 that he saw more and more how entirely he had thrown 
 himself into the hands of the chevalier, who could 
 hold him up or let him fall at will by the thread of 
 his favor; the apparition of his father still continued 
 at times to flit before his memory, but a glance at 
 the countess and her friendly smile dispelled all pain. 
 
 The ball was over. The chevalier waited on the 
 steps, and they went to the inn. A troop of young 
 court cavaliers and officers of the guard who like- 
 wise came from the ball w^ere assembled here also. 
 They drew together, they played; the chevalier kept 
 the bank; he shuffled with dexterity and graceful 
 humor, so that one could well perceive that he must 
 have much practice in this line. Ephraim played 
 with easy indifference, but when he had lost fifty 
 ducats, he drew back; the chevalier offered him his 
 purse, and almost forced it upon him. Ephraim was 
 merchant enough to know the worth of money; he 
 modestly declined the offer, and drew back into a 
 corner. Ephraim did not observe for a long time, in 
 his innocence, that a young officer was mocking him 
 with polite raillery, till the chevalier came along; 
 he gave the subject of the ridicule to understand 
 what the matter was, and as the latter still refused 
 to take the matter up, the chevalier himself in the 
 name of his fellow-countryman, accepted a chal 
 lenge. 
 
 The chevalier stayed by Ephraim in his chamber; 
 the day was already dawning. 
 
 "In an hour," said the chevalier, "you must fight. 
 You have the choice of weapons; you choose pistols, 
 
332 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 thereby you are equal to your adversary; you set 
 your right foot forward, direct the point of the foot 
 exactly in the line of your adversary, hold the pistol 
 hard against your thigh, then raise it slowly and 
 without trembling up to a level with your adver- 
 sary's breast; do you see? in this way, believe me, 
 I have often shot at a knife-blade, and cut the ball 
 in halves. At the first call, you blaze away. You 
 will be doing the good youth and his uncle, the old 
 Baron von O., a pleasure by releasing him from his 
 creditors." 
 
 "I cannot fight with him, for we have not an 
 equal stake," replied Ephraim. " I offer nothing but 
 a life which is a burden to me;. before him lies a 
 future rich in hope; his passion for fight is only the 
 consequence of his fresh zest of life; I forgive him, 
 I cannot fight him." The chevalier saw in all this 
 only a cowardly subterfuge, and cried angrily: 
 
 "You must fight with him, I say you must; no 
 way out of it would be left you, except to take in- 
 stant flight; but this I say to you: you shall not 
 pass this threshold alive, for I will strike you down 
 first. My reputation is at stake, if you, to whom I 
 liave introduced her, if you take a cowardly flight; 
 besides I have already risked too much by you." 
 
 Before the chevalier and Ephraim stepped into 
 the carriage, the former caused the groom, Muley, 
 to hand him a few drops of naphtha on sugar; he 
 also made Ephraim take some. The morning was 
 clear, the cold piercing, as they passed out through 
 the gate; at the edge of a wood they stopped and 
 
DAME ADVENTURE. 333 
 
 alighted; Muley followed with the weapons. Eph- 
 raiin fancied he heard the Moor singing a Jewish 
 synagogue melody; he could not help laughing at 
 himself for seeing spectres even in broad day. He 
 concluded the melodies of the Moors and of the 
 Jews must resemble each other. 
 
 They found the adversary with his second already 
 on the ground. The parties saluted each other with 
 silent bows, the two seconds measured off the dis- 
 tance; the chevalier caused a cloak to be spread 
 out on the snow, and laid upon it two pistols cross- 
 wise, and requested the adversary to choose one of 
 them. Ephraim, meauAvhile, stood lost in thought; 
 suddenly his thoughts went back to the still room 
 where he had sat with the Rabbi, and had known 
 nothing of all the life outside. What would the Rabbi 
 think if he should now see him here! With an iron- 
 ical smile he looked up as the chevalier summoned 
 him to hold himself in readiness; the adversary deem- 
 ing this a smile of contempt, quickly threw off his 
 cape and stood there in bare shirt; our friend had ii\ 
 like manner to take off his coat. — Each grasps a 
 pistol, Muley steps up and pours on the priming, the 
 seconds lead the adversaries to their places and then 
 step aside; Ephraim stood firm and collected and 
 pressed his teeth tightly together, that no one should 
 observe his trembling, and at a signal from the sec- 
 onds, he fired first and in an instant after, his adver- 
 sary. Neither was hit; with astonishing rapidity 
 Muley had again loaded, and again neither shot liit. 
 A third time the combatants stood with pistol in 
 
334 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 baud; Ephraim fired but missed again, bis adver- 
 sary's pistol missed fire; be cursed tbe blasted Moor 
 " wbo bad put no powder in bis pan." Epbraim bad 
 now to wait till all was again in readiness, tben be 
 felt suddenly bis adversary's ball; be put bis band 
 to bis bead, a lock of bis bair bad been singed off. 
 
 Tbe two adversaries now stepped up to eacb otber 
 and offered each otber tbe band of reconciliation, 
 and tbe cbevalier embraced Epbraim. "Now you 
 are in all bonor, a cavalier cotmne il faut^'' be 
 wbispered to bim. Epbraim again fancied be beard 
 Muley during tbe packing up murmur to bimself: 
 "I could not bave believed tbe figbting-scbool at 
 Breslau turned out sucb good scholars." The black 
 grew more and more mysterious, and strange to say! 
 to tbe silver earrings of Muley Epbraim fancied he 
 could attach probable stories. 
 
 At the ordered breakfast Epbraim did not tarry 
 long; he needed sleep; be had now suddenly become 
 so genteel that he turned time topsy-turvy and 
 changed day into night and night into day. 
 
 One recollection Epliraim retained from this last 
 adventure: be bad really and truly looked death in 
 the face and felt in himself no trace of fear; true, 
 be confessed to bimself that it was hardly anything 
 more than indifference to life which inspired him 
 with his heroism; who can determine, however, bow 
 many boasted acts of heroism bave been achieved 
 under tbe same incitement? For all that he per- 
 Histed in deriving from this a confidence that he 
 could joyfully meet death in a noble cause. 
 
DAME ADVENTURE. 335 
 
 The next clay he drove to the Countess Aurora's. 
 She was still in her bath; had, however, given orders 
 that if the Marquis of Tornicola called, he might 
 wait awhile in the reception-room. Voltaire's Can- 
 dide lay on the table opened at a particularly at- 
 tractive passage. Ephraim ventured to regard this 
 as a carte hlancJie\ he read and his breath trem- 
 bled. Soon the marquis was ushered into an inner 
 cabinet; the countess apologized for his detention, 
 but she could not deny herself the pleasure of speak- 
 ing again to her brave knight. She was extremely 
 lovely. 
 
 Days of the most rapturous enjoyment our mar- 
 quis now experienced; he was welcomed to what 
 called itself exclusive society, for he had so chival- 
 rously fought out the " affair of honor," — as they 
 called it. In company he always found the countess, 
 but according to her prudent instructions, he vent- 
 ured there to converse with her only sparingly. 
 
 A solemn boar-hunt was appointed by the Court; 
 several hundred vassal peasants had to skip round in 
 the biting cold in their linen blouses to drive in the 
 wild game before the stand of their excellencies; our 
 marquis stayed back on the pretext of illness; he 
 had never sat on horseback and understood nothing 
 of the noble field sport. 
 
 By degrees, however, this mode of life also began to 
 be repulsive to him. Accustomed to a life of steady 
 activity, he saw in this new mode of life nothing but 
 constant preparation for feasts and enjoyments, and 
 this making a business of pleasure could not keep 
 
336 ^OE T A ND MERC II A NT. 
 
 him awake. Even j^oetry forsook him; the materials 
 which hxy around him he could not master and work 
 up; he had been hurled too suddenly into this great 
 world out of his little one. A singular mixture of 
 love for life and contempt for life fermented within 
 him. 
 
 " What a wretched thing after all," he once said 
 to the chevalier, " is the life and labor of men; all the 
 tinkling of the music, the halloo of the chase, the 
 skipping of the dancers, and the risking of money 
 and life, is nothing but a deafening of the cry of con- 
 science, so that one dies every moment; one will not 
 hear and see the death-worm, that ticks and pricks 
 in the stillness. What is the amount of all? to free 
 men? to give them liberty to die more joyfully? 
 — One should either stick to the clod, or see, know, 
 enjoy, the whole circumference of the earth, ere one 
 has to part from it. And more than this: one should 
 either live forever or not at all." 
 
 "I have seen the cities and countries of many 
 men," replied the chevalier, "but I find you still a 
 riddle; I believe, when you have the meat in your 
 mouth, you reflect whether it is right and proper for 
 man to shoot a partridge, and whether it would not 
 be better if one could live without eating. I tell 
 you, chew away, for wholesome wild flesh offers itself 
 to you. I seldom or never think of death; when 
 one has done eating, one wipes his mouth. But even 
 if there be still a soiree by other light, nevertheless 
 I would rather be with his majesty, by the fZ/sfavor 
 of God, king of the lower world; there is the finest 
 
DAME ADVENTURE. 337 
 
 society, there are t]ie handsomest women, the jolliest 
 priests, there it must be paraclisaically amusing, 
 whereas, with the saints and Magdalens in Paradise 
 it must be infernally tedious." 
 
 The conversation was not continued, for our mar- 
 quis soon perceived how the chevalier liad, so to 
 speak, no organ for this kind of discussion; he was 
 wont to drink down the pearling foam fr<jm life's 
 chalice without much thought or inspection, and 
 therein our marquis would follow his example. 
 
 The rosy-fingered goddess Aurora offered him her 
 hand in this dance. The grace of the countess could 
 not but inflame such a man as our marquis to the 
 highest degree. All the wealth of tender feelings 
 which he had gathered in and achieved in his love 
 for Matilda and Recha, all those fresh flowers of 
 love, he again brought out; often he reproached him- 
 self for this abuse, but by degrees he saw a justiflca- 
 tion in the fact that the countess intimated an in- 
 ward trouble about her present situation and gave 
 liim reason to suspect she would prefer a "plain, un- 
 varnished" life of love to all this gilded misery. 
 This was enough with our young marquis to hang a 
 hundredfold plans of love upon; he had already beg- 
 ged the countess several times, instead of the title, 
 "ITerr Marquis," to call him only Cesare, or in fact, 
 by no name at all; he could not yet explain how op- 
 pressive it was to him under the mask, and how icily 
 it cut through his soul to have to receive her tender 
 words under a lying address. 
 
 Ephraim was talking once with the countess about 
 22 
 
338 POET A^D MERCHANT. 
 
 titles and designations of rank, and remarked: 
 " These titles are after all properly, only the nom- 
 inal value, the mint-stamp,* which is put upon the 
 gold, its proper value it carries in itself; we must 
 have the courage to melt down the precious metal 
 again and allow it only its intrinsic value, throwing 
 out all the alloyage of base metal, which the sover- 
 eigns of the traditionary ideas have mixed in with 
 it>' 
 
 The countess took this utterance as a singular and 
 yet unmistakable act of homage ; the marquis praised 
 her inner meaning. Ephraim could not resist a de- 
 mand Avliich lies even in the unintended interpreta- 
 tion of a judgment, and he was already in danger of 
 being charmed out of his proper life, but he forced 
 himself to decision and led the way back by relat- 
 ing that he, though with great reluctance, had occu- 
 pied himself for a time with the coining of money. 
 The countess again refused for a while to see any- 
 thing but an emblematic language in this, but as- 
 serted also at the same time that she believed in the 
 art of alchemy, and only warned her friend against 
 dangerous experiments. 
 
 Ephraim found himself caught continually in new 
 masks, and with the extremest effort he now explic- 
 itly declared that he was resolved to rescue himself 
 and his beloved, and that he would constrain himself 
 to confess another religion, lie clasped the tender 
 hands, covered his eyes with them, and said in a 
 deep tone, " For I am a Jew, I loas one, if you com- 
 mand it." 
 
 * Burns. 
 
DAME ADVENTURE. 33 G 
 
 "That is an unworthy jest," replied the countess, 
 "withdrawing from him her liands. 
 
 "It is no jest." 
 
 " And what then is your Hebrew name ? " asked 
 the countess, hiughing. 
 
 " Ephraim Moses Kuh." 
 
 " You should invent for yourself a more euphoni- 
 ous name." 
 
 "I have not invented it." 
 
 Notwithstanding all Ephraim's assurances and 
 protestations, the countess insisted that she did not 
 believe him ; she kept up a continual jesting, but in 
 her looks there was an uncomfortable fire and her 
 lips trembled. Suddenly she rang for the physician 
 and begged the marquis to retire, but hardly had 
 the latter gone, when she sent for the chevalier. 
 
 Ephraim sat in his chamber tormented with rage 
 and remorse. As once in his love for Recha he had 
 done with poetry, so had he now meant to stake even 
 his innermost sanctuary, faith itself, without being 
 sure of any more certain result; how could he hence- 
 forth seek rest and edification at the altars which, in 
 thought, he had already so cravenly forsaken ? 
 
 The servant of Countess Aurora entered and de- 
 livered a letter from the chevalier; Ephraim broke 
 the seal and read: 
 
 "Mr. Marquis ! You have concealed from me your 
 rank, as I have just learned from the Countess Au- 
 rora; my blade would disdain to meet you in the 
 combat of honor; you understand merchants' lan- 
 guage, then take yourself away from here after sight. 
 
840 POE T A ND MER CIIA NT. 
 
 If you are caught here this evening, you may find 
 your way with your false passport to prison; the 
 tiling has got wind. Take your books with you and 
 don't forget your Don Quixote. Greet your cousin 
 Ahasuerus, if you meet him in his travels. 
 
 " Casanova de Seingalt." 
 Almost as suddenly as he had been launched into 
 this life, Ephraim was hurled out of it again. 
 
22.— SENTIMENTAL JOURNEYS AND THE 
 PROPHET. 
 
 THE rest of the winter Epliraim spent in still seclu- 
 sion in a university town of North Germany; the 
 scientific atmosphere in which one moved there was 
 refreshing. Ephraim overtook a piece of his lost 
 youth in associating himself with the careless ways 
 of the students, and yet he often felt that he was in- 
 wardly too old, had already experienced too much, 
 to be able wholly to renew the wild joy of youth. 
 He translated here a great part of the epigrams of 
 Martial, but hardly had spring sent her first messen- 
 gers when the passion for traveling awoke again. 
 He had cleansed his eyes in the clear Pierian stream 
 of the classic poets, and now he could again contem- 
 plate the world freshly and freely; but he soon fell 
 back into that sentimental haze which then hung 
 over all Germany. We wei-e on the eve of a crisis 
 in the world's history; the blood stagnated with 
 the fullness of heaviness, the spirits of men wander- 
 ed feverishly, now in an adventurous passion for mys- 
 teries, now in a prurient laying bare of all that hith- 
 
342 POE T AND MERC IT A NT. 
 
 oi'to had been sacredly veiled, and tlirongh all -vras 
 infused a melancholy, anxious foreboding, a self- 
 tormenting spirit of inquiry; it was like the pause of 
 suspense before the outbreak of a tempest. 
 
 "I have committed the fault of so many Jews, 
 who eagerly press upward from the Jews' street im- 
 mediately into the palaces of the so-called higher 
 classes," said Ephraim to himself. " Up there there 
 can be none but Court Jews, to whom in gracious 
 jest one tosses the crumbs of toleration; how are we 
 there to hope for an equality which is not allowed 
 to the lower classes of their own nation ? To the 
 people which, sound and sensible to the core, dazzled 
 though it may be, is not blinded, to them we must 
 firmly ally ourselves; the baptism of tears shed over 
 the common oppression of the ruling powers and of 
 time-hallowed prejudice binds us in one, and there 
 alone is a still unbroken and unspoiled force of nat- 
 ure." 
 
 Ephraim had penetrated to the southern portion 
 of his native Germany; he had again accustomed 
 himself to the running of all his thoughts and feel- 
 ings into the channel of poetry; he lived that exalt- 
 ed double life which together with its own experi- 
 ence nourishes within itself another still and secret 
 one. He formed the plan of composing upon the 
 model of Tasso a great epic poem: "The Destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem." Forms, great and mighty, rose 
 before his soul ; the death-struggle of a heroic nation 
 raged in its fury before his eyes. How petty and 
 insi«:nificaut were now all the cares and sorrows of 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEYS. 343 
 
 his life, which had sprung from the glances of a 
 maiden and the smile of her red lips; far away to- 
 ward the Orient, to the ruins of Salem would he make 
 his pilgrimage; there, by the sarcophagus of a great 
 nation, still standing on the earth, for which none had 
 found rest, there would he sing a dirge that should 
 make the angels in heaven weep with him, and men 
 learn to understand and love eacli other; on the fall- 
 en columns of Zion would he breathe out his soul's 
 deepest sorrow and die, or rise to a renovated life. 
 
 If he should succeed in framing in melodious words 
 his pain and sorrow over the ruin of his people and 
 its endless agonies, then should this anguish, and with 
 it his own distressed bosom, be relieved; but this 
 foretaste of a life and a poesy soaring upward to the 
 highest reach of song, was all he achieved; he could 
 no longer gather up his whole intellectual energy to 
 a single act; he had too long accustomed himself to 
 extort something from the little incidents of life; 
 his pain was not one great, yawning, bleeding 
 wound; he bled from the thousand needle-pricks of a 
 petty destiny. How often one persuades himself ii. 
 the failure of power to overtake a great purpose, to 
 regard this as only a preliminary step to other per- 
 formances, and where the deed falls short, to rejoice 
 in a gain of knowledge. 
 
 Ephraim chose to think that in excogitating his 
 plan he had gained deliverance from the sorrow of 
 having been born and living a Jew, and it seemed 
 to hun more agreeable to turn his attention now to 
 immediate life. 
 
844 POE T AND MERCHANT. 
 
 After the example set him by Montesquieu with 
 his Persian, Voltaire with his English, and D'Ar- 
 gens with his Jewish Letters, he thought he would 
 in like manner write Jewish Letters; he would give 
 himself for the purpose a quite free and poetic 
 stand-point: A Jew from tlie time of Christ, or in 
 fact from the time of David, travels through the 
 lands of Christian Germany and reports upon their 
 manners and customs. That was a happy basis for 
 the most many-sided irony. 
 
 The doubly guarded concealment from which 
 Ephraim could now contemplate for himself the life 
 of the world gave him a full sense of freedom, and 
 he hoped to be able to play freely with all events; 
 they did not rule him, they must serve him; no con- 
 fusion, no limitation of sense could touch him; he 
 would like an enchanter wield all the motley phe- 
 nomena of life at his will. Traveling in a carriage 
 was disagreeable; to hold a thought fast for hours, 
 without having relieved himself of it by noting it 
 down, produced dizziness. Ephraim left his books at 
 a little residence city, and roamed on foot over 
 mountains and valleys. 
 
 A beggar woman was on her way to town bare- 
 foot; she carried lier shoes in her hand, to save shoe- 
 leather; she begged for a " Christian gift." Ephraim 
 thrust his hand into his pocket and gave her, un- 
 counted, a handful of money with the words: "That 
 is a Jewish gift, for I am a Jew." How glad he was 
 to have delivered a poor woman from the prejudice 
 attached to an expression innocent in itself. 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEYS. 345 
 
 A Jew peddler came up the road, with liis wallet 
 on his hack, parti-colored cloths hung on his arm, a 
 round, yellow patch was sewed on to the left side of 
 his coat, and he seemed, as he walked, to be making 
 a prayer. E})hraim's heart beat audibly when he 
 beheld his sul)missive salutation; he walked along 
 with him and it did him good, though by a decep- 
 tion, to show the poor fellow the benevolence of 
 a man of rank; he therefore asked the peddler in a 
 friendly manner about his business. " A plague on 
 the enlightened age," said the peddler, " the boor 
 has become too shrewd and knowing, there is no 
 dealing with him any longer." Ephraim tried to 
 show that the new light was the Messiah of the 
 Jews; then, too, would come the better times, when 
 one would no longer need to wear a yellow patch on 
 his heart. " That is the ribbon of my order," said 
 the peddler, "it is dearer to me than a general's 
 badge from the emperor; uj) in the other world yon- 
 der this order is of more account. Perhaps other 
 people also have w^orn it and have had it cleaned off 
 with aqua fortis." The peddler looked at Ephraim 
 sharply, for he took him to be a baptized Jew; he 
 asked him, however, whether he had nothing to 
 trade for, and when this question was answered in 
 the negative he soon parted from him. 
 
 Ephraim's musing mind entered into the life of 
 every tree that stood by the roadside; he saw it 
 germinate, grow and die; into every hovel he passed 
 his mind entered and associated itself with the life 
 of its inmates; but in his unremitting death-thought 
 
346 rOET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 he saluted all the beauty, all the mountains and val- 
 leys, as for the first and also for the last time: with 
 the first perception he at the same time took leave 
 of all this as a dying man. 
 
 ** Laughing — weeping — without rest, 
 Onward to the grave I haste," 
 
 he once wrote in his diary after an enrapturing out- 
 look from a hill-top. 
 
 This characteristic surfeit of life did not therefore 
 allow him to taste the pleasures of this journey in 
 their freshness and freedom. There he stood under 
 the shade of a nut-tree on the shores of the green 
 Khine, saw the castles on the vine-hills, saw the 
 towns and villages that see themselves so brilliantly 
 imaged in the mirror of the stream, and yet in all 
 the wondrous legends that come sounding out of the 
 past, in all the joy of the vintage that pervades this 
 fresh life, there was naught that could revive the 
 weariness of his being. 
 
 As a sick man, carried out from his chamber into 
 the gay and crowded streets, stares in confused as- 
 tonishment into the throng and bustle and din of 
 life, so did Ephraim feel his senses heavily oppressed 
 and he could not roll olff the burden. There he 
 stood, high up in the fresh-living breath of the 
 mountains, and he looked sadly down, for he 
 thought of the misery which lies hid in the folds of 
 the mountains, and in the midst of this world of 
 majesty and freedom his inner eye beheld nothing 
 but a wheezing and maltreated Jew. 
 
 Away with these doleful images! he said to him- 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEYS. 347 
 
 self a hundred times, but his heart always came 
 back to them again, and he gave a friendly greeting 
 as lie passed through a town or village where the 
 Jews stood in festal attire by the wayside, celebrat- 
 ing their Sabbath; he rejoiced that to them air and 
 sunlight were still granted and that they had a heart 
 to deck themselves festally in a life full of persecu- 
 tion and sorrow. Of the landlords he always in- 
 quired in many roundabout ways whether there 
 were also Jews living here in town; if he was sharply 
 observed by any one, he fancied himself detected; 
 particularly did he fear this whenever a Jew looked 
 him in the eye, for it is a characteristic trait that 
 two Jews immediately recognize each other, often 
 by their mere way of looking at each other. In 
 that peering curiosity and importunity of many 
 Jews, who soon after the first greeting begin to ask 
 thee after house and home and all that is around and 
 upon thee; in all this Ephraim saw, as often as it 
 met him, only a genial family trait, which leads 
 the suffering to recognize and fraternize each other 
 and gives them the right to demand the familiar 
 friendship of every one of their kith and kin. He 
 felt himself inclined to give in to it; but there w^ere 
 two occurrences that led him back inevitably to the 
 more general point of view. 
 
 Ephraim was wandering through the Jews' street 
 of a populous city of Middle Germany, where there 
 was nothing but a dull, mouldy vapor, a noisy run- 
 ning and racing, chaffering and jabbering and squab- 
 bling, in the narrow space which the two rows of 
 
348 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 houses inclosed between their high gables; no ray of 
 sunshine found free entrance; he looked up at the 
 innumerable windows, behind which hundreds draor- 
 ged along their life of sorrow; he looked round him 
 in the ground stories which lost themselves in dark 
 holes was the motliest mass of frippery heaped to- 
 gether in checkered confusion. There he saw a 
 stately old man; snow-white locks crowned his pate; 
 under the bristling eyebrows a black eye gleamed 
 brightly forth. " In the gleam of that eye lies a ray 
 from the eternally creating spirit of God," said Ephra- 
 im to himself; "proceeding from another stock, thou 
 hadst haply been highly honored as poet, general or 
 statesman." All at once he had reversed his whole ca- 
 reer of life; the old man quickly perceived that he had 
 become an object of scrutiny, and with a friendly nod 
 called out to Ephraim, "Can I sell you anything, Sir 
 Count?" "No," answered the latter, and quickly 
 left the Jews' street. 
 
 In a little town he saw a tumult before the custom- 
 house; as he drew nearer he learned that within a 
 short time one of th» faithful had farmed the Jews' 
 tribute, and was now proceeding with unexampled 
 tyranny in order to get a good profit from the busi- 
 ness; while he was thus talking with the others, the 
 revenue collector stepped uj) to the carriage and 
 called out: "Thou too must pay me!" Ephraim 
 drove hastily away. 
 
 This trading in one's own shame exasperated him 
 most of all; he would absolve himself utterly from 
 this disgusting business, and fell, himself, into the 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEYS. 349 
 
 fault which he had so often censured, of setting up 
 individual cases of imprudence and baseness as the 
 original type, and forgetting the thousand noble and 
 good. 
 
 On a pedestrian tour he met a young peasant, who 
 sat on the horse which was dragging the plow home- 
 ward; with a clear and powerful voice the youth 
 sang out into the evening air, and his Tyrolese songs 
 echoed back from the mountains. Ephraim joined 
 him; the sight of this free and blooming youtli was 
 as exhilarating as the inspiration of fresh mountain 
 air. The peasant asked our traveler whether he had 
 come for the sake of to-morrow's church fair, and 
 when this was answered negatively, he proudly re- 
 marked that often many distinguished people came 
 and were well entertained by his cousin, the landlord 
 of the Eagle. Ephraim promised himself to sta}', 
 and the peasant in riding by plucked a leaf from the 
 tree, put it between his lips and blew with it the mer- 
 riest country dances, by way of enjoying a foretaste 
 of to-morrow's pleasures. 
 
 Here at last would Ephraim shake off from him 
 all the dust of his books and of the ruins of Jerusa- 
 lem. 
 
 In a fit of bucolic remembrance he wrote the 
 poem: 
 
 ** Hail, ye lindens, alders, ashes ! 
 
 Welcome to my weary heart ! 
 With a peace your shade refreshes. 
 
 Which the town can ne'er impart. 
 "To your huts, ye shepherds, take me, 
 
 Free from vain and vexing noise ! 
 
350 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Ye of unspoiled manners, make me 
 Sharer of your tranquil joys ! 
 
 ** Here men envy not each other; 
 No poor brother here complains 
 Of his proud and cruel brother ; 
 Here the golden age still reigns. 
 
 ** Tinsel-pomp and heartless pleasures 
 
 In our cities well are known ; 
 
 Genuine joys and lasting treasures 
 
 Nature yields with you alone." 
 
 Not long after Ephraim had entered the guest- 
 room, he heard a peasant, who was playing dice with 
 another, cry: "Seven — like a Jew! I'd sooner the 
 devil had a couple of his best witches strangled, than 
 that I should have to lose the liquor ! " 
 
 " Thou art lost like the Jew's soul, Christopher," 
 said a hummer coming along, to whom the winner 
 handed his full glass. 
 
 Ephraim blushed over and over, as he heard these 
 phrases; a teasing demon seemed to be carrying on 
 a horrid game with him. Now, when the loser got 
 up and flung his emptied glass on the table, the 
 archer of the village cried out to him: "Why off so 
 soon, Christopher ? Carriest thou a Jew's beard, for 
 fear thy Annamarie might blow thee up, because 
 tliou hast taken a glass ? I believe thou wilt have to 
 breathe on thy wife wlien thou goest home, like long 
 George's Peter, that she may smell what has gone 
 down thy gullet." 
 
 "I believe the mayor has hung tlie cabbage-knife 
 on thy neck, to cut off a fellow's soul and honor with 
 it, for thou hast not much else to cut, thou starve- 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEYS. 351 
 
 ling, thou art a churl; if thou hadst four kreutzcrs 
 in thy bag, I would not give a groschen for thee." 
 So answered the object of the bantering. 
 
 "Na, na, no brawling," cried the others, "show 
 the master, Christopher, and stay here." 
 
 "No, I must go to the school-master, he shall trim 
 down my Jew;* a fellow can't let himself be seen 
 with such a beard at the church to-morrow." Chris- 
 topher went, and the others soon followed. 
 
 Ephraim sat for a long time, wdth his head sup- 
 ported upon his two hands, alone and meditative in 
 the guest-room. No one else was there now but a 
 little girl, who stood at the other end of the table 
 and eyed the stranger curiously. Ephraim called 
 the child to him, set her on his lap and kissed her. 
 
 " What is thy name ? " he asked. 
 
 "Matilda." 
 
 He gently set the child down again; he covered 
 his face, and something Avithin him said: "Why be 
 a Jew also, is it not miserable enough to be a man, 
 a mongrel, bound and imprisoned in the midst of 
 this worthless world ? " Of the flask that stood be- 
 fore him he could not drink a drop. 
 
 A ringing of bells awoke him the next morning; 
 he smiled at the thought of having been put out of 
 humor by mere phrases, mere fleeting ])ulsations of 
 the air, for in the life of humanity, as in the life of 
 men, dominant notions are found to pass current for 
 a time as proverbial modes of speech, but presently 
 these are melted down again and stamped anew with 
 
 *Long beard, like a Jew's. 
 
352 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 the reigning ideas of the present; the people love 
 the old coin very much and are not so easily accus- 
 tomed to new ones. 
 
 Ephraim went to church with the pious multitude; 
 he would pray to God in silent devotion. There 
 stood in the pulpit a small man in a black gown, who 
 preached in a nasal tone " of those false Pharisees 
 and those accursed Jews who crucified the Saviour." 
 Almost the whole sermon was a motley mosaic of 
 Bible verses. "Upon this conjuring up of an old 
 prescriptive sin of the Jews," said Ephraim to him- 
 self, " the demon of hatred fastens, to which the op- 
 pression and degradation and consequent contempt 
 of the race attaches itself; when wdll this end?" 
 He recollected that old popular usage of AvhicVi he 
 had heard in his childhood, that an executioner's 
 sword, with which a hundred heads have been cut 
 off, must be laid to rest forever, and the question 
 arose within him: When wall this headsman's sword 
 of the faith and of reciprocal damnation be laid 
 down to its eternal rest ? Has it not already mur- 
 dered its thousands and its tens of thousands ? 
 
 After the sermon a summons was read, that all 
 male parishioners, from sixteen years of age to sixty, 
 must repair on the following Tuesday to the castle 
 of his gracious lordship, provided with pick and 
 shovel, to do socage-service. 
 
 "When Avill this end?" said Ephraim, again to 
 himself. "One day the prescriptive vassalages 
 shall all cease together." 
 
 After noonday church there was target-shooting, 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEYS. 353 
 
 according to old custom, witli the cross-bow. A Turk 
 was set up as a mark; they aimed at tlie agraffe on 
 his turban. After that a Jew was set up; a horse- 
 laugh greeted the odd caricature with the long 
 beard, which reached down to the middle of the 
 breast, where a black spot was marked as the centre; 
 from all sides came a hailstorm of derision and wit. 
 Ephraim silently kept himself aloof. 
 
 The rich man and he who is secure in the respect 
 of his fellows may look on smiling when one pub- 
 licly makes himself merry over his poverty or his 
 insignificance, and in familiar circles even over his 
 person; but he who is struggling for recognition and 
 is rebuffed by a thousand limitations, feels himself 
 assailed and dispirited in his innermost soul by de- 
 rision; hence the sensitiveness of so many Jews, 
 which exacts in public and confidential relations a 
 respect such as the children of fortune will but rare- 
 ly pay. 
 
 Far easier had it been for Ej^hraim to separate 
 himself from the so-called higher classes; in his ill 
 humor he saw there only people who had been trim- 
 med and spoiled by the scissors of fashion; here he 
 saw the people in leading-strings and contented with 
 the tinkling of a child's rattle. He thought of the 
 man with the great soul and the mighty hand who 
 cut asunder the leading-strings in the training of the 
 child and the peo^Dle, and loudly demanded that they 
 should be left to act freely; grandmothers and trip- 
 ping aunts might cry death and murder at this inno- 
 vation, and insist that the child would smash its 
 23 
 
354 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 head if it were suffered to run alone without a pad- 
 ded hat and a patriarchal bonne^ but it availed noth- 
 ing. 
 
 Ephraim surmounted his dull despair more and 
 more. ISTow he divided European humanity no long- 
 er into Jews and Christians, but into slaves and mas- 
 ters; now the people appeared to him no more as a 
 child, but as the victim of oppression, who for a mo- 
 ment fancies himself to be free, because there is one 
 still lower whom he in turn oppresses and scorns; 
 the peasant-bondmen oppressed the chamber-menials 
 of the emperor, the Jews. 
 
 On the Alps yonder were Sinai and Golgotha; 
 there wandered the prophet in a pilgrimage; to him 
 the life and journeyings of Ephraim gained once 
 more an end and aim; now he no longer fluttered 
 about like a frightened bird lost in a maze. 
 
 With elated heart sat Ephraim in a skiff, to be 
 ferried over to Peter's-isle, the asylum of Jean 
 Jacques. It was a fresh autumnal morning, the 
 mists gradually rolled away, and as if out of a cloud 
 the lovely island, with red and yellow crown of its 
 groups of trees rose before the view. Ephraim 
 found Rousseau botanizing; the latter looked up 
 shyly on perceiving the stranger. 
 
 "Are you the man to give an unprejudiced hear- 
 ing to a Jew ? " asked Ephraim, stepping boldly into 
 his path. 
 
 "I was enjoying the peculiar formation of this 
 flower," answered Rousseau, smiling; he contem- 
 plated a flower which he held in his hand, looked 
 
SENTIMEXTAL JOURNEYS. 355 
 
 down upon it, then looked up again and sharply 
 eyed the new-comer. "Salem aleikom," he then 
 concluded. 
 
 Epliraim smiled at this final greeting, at which 
 Rousseau offered him his hand, for he had not ex- 
 pected to be received like the arch-patriarch Abra- 
 liara. 
 
 " I come not out of the patriarchal huts," he be- 
 gan again; " my step-father-land drives me hither, 
 which suffers me to be cast out and pine in exile; 
 everywhere, so far as the tone of a church-bell is 
 audible, I hear contempt, hatred and persecution 
 with brazen tongues hurl contempt at me, the Jew. 
 You must be gratified to feel that all Avho are cast 
 down in soul, come to lay the consecrated offerings 
 and images of their sorrow in the temple of your 
 heart. To you I have come on a pilgrimage, I clasp 
 your knees and thank God that he has enabled me 
 to find a man." 
 
 " I have become such once more, since they have 
 forced me to flee from the poisonous breath of 
 cities," replied Rousseau. " The more gregarious a 
 man is, the worse he is. Intolerance, the curse of 
 humanity, weighs not, however, upon the Jews 
 alone. I, too, am banished by the tyranny of hu- 
 man society, because I refuse to think and to feel as 
 kings and priests prescribe; but I nevertheless hold 
 fast to the guiding thought of my life. It is possi- 
 ble in the midst of the perversity and corruptness of 
 the world — it must be possible to shape one's exist- 
 ence after one's own firm convictions, after the laws 
 of reason." 
 
356 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 "And a Jew?" asked Epliraiin. 
 
 "A Jew?" Rousseau continued in a thoughtful 
 and interrogative tone; "it creates a noble pride in 
 the midst of this apothecary's shop of the world, 
 where they have forgotten that all medical virtues 
 are grown in open nature and imported from there, 
 to carry one's own free law within him. Of old time 
 you Jews set your Jehovah by the side of Chamos.* 
 Do the rabbins of Amsterdam still teach that even 
 out of your church salvation is to be found ? " 
 
 "The just of all nations have part in the eternal 
 salvation, the church fathers teach," replied Ephra- 
 im. 
 
 " Toleration to all those who exercise toleration, 
 for an exclusive national religion cannot exist in a 
 pure social compact." 
 
 Ephraim grasped the hand of Jean Jacques and 
 kissed it fervently; the latter looked at him with 
 wonder and quickly drew back his hand, saying: 
 
 " That the miserable condition of men should weigh 
 down those who are called to hold up their heads 
 proudly and freely and show no one a slavish ven- 
 eration!" And he had disappeared in the thicket. 
 
 Ephraim himself stood there as one lost, and he 
 felt only the solitude of his heart; but out of the 
 depth rose the thought how vain it is to seek a sanc- 
 tuary in the outer world in another human being; that 
 only he who has a temple in himself will find such in 
 the world; only he who brings peace with him will 
 find peace coming to meet him. 
 
 * Or Chfimosh, the national deity of the Moabites. — I. Kings, i, 7 ; II. 
 Kings, xxiii, 13, 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEYS. 357 
 
 P]phraim determined henceforth to seek only the 
 fruits of his own inner deeds. 
 
 An old reminiscence arose again within him : lie 
 had come out from the ruts of customary life and 
 could no longer turn into them; to Otaheite, to the 
 fCldorado of simplicity, thither, where pure and un- 
 sophisticated human nature unfolds itself, something 
 drew him with magic cords. 
 
 With new exaltation of soul he read again and yet 
 again the alluring delineations of that boasted land, 
 which at that time inflamed all the youth and set 
 them to recognizing with Rousseau the ideal of 
 humanity in the savage, the so-called man of nature, 
 out of the pale of culture; his purpose grew more and 
 more fixed within him; winter drew near; he resolved 
 to spend it in the circle of his kindred, and then to 
 take leave of them forever; with the spring he meant 
 to steer towards a new spring-time of his life. 
 
23.~THE VAGRANT. 
 
 THE bolts rattle; the iron door turns groaning on 
 its hinges; we go in to see Ephraim in prison 
 There lie sits sunk in solitary musing, rolling within 
 himself, Sisyphus-like, the heavy burden of his fate 
 up even to the seeming heights of peace and knowl- 
 edge; but ever, before reaching its destination, the 
 treacherous load rolls back again into the dark abyss. 
 
 The events of the last day still whirled incessantly 
 in his brain; he could not comprehend his mad au- 
 dacity in daring, on his journey homeward, to stay 
 overnight once more in the residence-city, where he 
 had forced his way into the gayety of court life. He 
 saw there in the inn Trevirano keeping bank at a ta- 
 ble; a great pile of gold lay before him; Ephraim 
 stepped up and fixed his eye on Trevirano, who asked 
 him ill a strange and sharp tone wliat he wanted, and 
 Eplirahn replied he would tell him the next morning. 
 
 In the semicircular room, where the da3dight was 
 crossed by a twofold iron grating, here now he had 
 been sitting for three days, and felt all the horror of 
 one buried alive. 
 
THE VAGRANT. 359 
 
 We seldom know how men, flowers, ?k%<1 Wt^^ 1,^ «■ 
 hold, as it were, their hands, cups and wings sti'efsTreSH^^''^^^^'" 
 out round about us, and bear us up in joy and sor- 
 row, but suddenly, when cut off from all that thou 
 knewest not when it was thine, and now alone with 
 thyself and thy consciousness, immured in a stony 
 solitude, while light and sound announce to thee the 
 life outside; then thou feelest that thou, snatched 
 out of the stream of life, art still dripping with its 
 waves, and soon, after the first shiver and shudder 
 thou wilt attempt to penetrate into thy own inner- 
 most being and that of the world. 
 
 Ephraim lay on the wooden bed; he studied his 
 hand, its pores and many branching lines, and re- 
 flected how he must keep this hand till it should 
 serve as food for the worms. How strange it were 
 that this sum of experiences, feelings and aspirations, 
 should only be there whither this hand and this 
 body were to be swept away. He turned his 
 thoughts now in upon the moving force of all this, 
 the soul. Again his thoughts whirled about confus- 
 edly within him; he helped himself by beginning to 
 sing; he drowned the inner tumult. Suddenly he 
 listened: a voice came up to him from the lower 
 prison. He laid his ear to the ground; he heard a 
 Jewish church melody; he immediately joined in; 
 the person below interpolated the question into the 
 melody, who it was overhead ? Epbraim shuddered ; 
 he felt as he did then when at the masked ball he, 
 for the first time, was addressed by invisible lips; 
 and yet how different were his situations then and 
 
360 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 now; however, lie quickly answered in the same tune 
 what seemed to him advisable, for he still doubted 
 whether he should confess before the judge his Ju- 
 daism, and therefore he feared that he might be de- 
 tected by a spy. The two prisoners now conversed 
 together by singing Jewish airs. The guard could 
 discover nothing suspicious in that; the prisoners 
 might sing, to be sure, to their hearts' content. Eph- 
 raim's fellow-captive had been arrested on the same 
 ground with himself. The two fellow-prisoners had 
 conversed together in their recitative hardly an hour 
 when they had nothing more to say to each other. 
 We do not know, in the state of freedom, what a 
 mighty influence it has upon conversation that the 
 parties can look each other in the face; a glance, a 
 play of the features, the whole outward appearance 
 with its immediate impressions, continually reani- 
 mate conversation; the two prisoners, who could 
 not see each other and never had seen each other, 
 must needs therefore soon come to a dead pause. 
 Every morning they mutually inquired how each 
 had slept, whether no sentence had yet been pro- 
 nounced, and then each one gave himself up to his 
 own thoughts. Ephraim missed men perhaps less 
 than his books; to sit thus half in the dark, not to 
 be able to transport himself intcTthe life and thought 
 of another, nor to unburden himself of his own 
 thoughts either by conversation or writing, that is a 
 torment which stamps itself into the fibres of the 
 brain. A piece of news from his fellow-prisoner 
 startled Ephraim. He learned that the overseer of 
 
THE VAGRANT. 361 
 
 the prison was a baptized Jew; this prisoner under 
 liim might be the jailer himself; he no longer gave 
 him any answer. The jailer was repulsive to him 
 by his smirking show of friendship and by the Jew- 
 ish phrases with which he greeted him. These 
 Christians with a Judaizing jargon were odious to 
 Ephraim's soul, for in this specious complaisance lies 
 concealed for the most part only mockery and ban- 
 ter; besides, Ephraini was offended that they treated 
 him as an ol' clo' Jew; he was proud and chary of 
 his words. 
 
 From this time forth he began, however, to be 
 more friendly toward the jailer; this knavish face 
 with the woolly gray hair and the silver ear-rings, 
 Ephraim fancied he had met once before. 
 
 "Have I not seen you once before?" Ephraim 
 once asked him. 
 
 "Once? Ten times ! " replied the jailer; " I knew 
 the Kuh [cow] when she was yet a little, innocent 
 calf; don't take it ill of me, it is only a fancy of 
 mine." 
 
 Ephraim turned away indignantly, for nothing is 
 more repulsive than a witticism on the family name 
 which the wearer cannot put off all his life long; 
 the jailer, however, continued: 
 
 " In Breslau, in Berlin and liere we have seen each 
 other before, but I will tell you my history from 
 aleph [the beginning of the alphabet] down: My 
 father, — where he lives now, I know not, — but for- 
 merly he lived at Wieliczka, in Poland; he had a 
 large business, a great deal to do, to get ahead, from 
 
3 G 2 POE T A ND MER CHA NT. 
 
 morning till evening. In the morning he goes to 
 market and yawns in the faces of the huckster- 
 women, till they all were' compelled to yawn at him; 
 at .evening, as soon as it was night, he runs round all 
 through the Jews' street, and on the ground-floor 
 shuts up shop for all the people; then, when he 
 comes home, he has to fight it out with my mother. 
 She and we children had to earn the bread. As a 
 child of eight, I was school-knocker; you know very 
 well what that is: three times every day one has to 
 strike with the clapper on all the Jewish houses, to 
 call them to the synagogue. In the cold winter days 
 the hammer almost froze to my hand; many a time 
 I actually did not know any longer that I had hands, 
 they were so dead; and then, too, to have to stand 
 so long in the synagogue on an empty stomach. I 
 have been vexed with God for making me beat the 
 reveille for his soldiers; once, when not a soul was 
 left in the synagogue, I tipped the desks one over 
 another, just to enrage the Lord God, and then ran 
 out as fast as I could. When my father died, my 
 mother packed up and came with me to Germany; 
 on the way she died, for it vexed her to leave my 
 father alone at rest where he is. I was the oldest 
 and hired myself as boy at the horse-delivery in the 
 first Silesian war, because I wore a moustache under 
 my nozzle. A Swabian from Augsburg tacked on to 
 me the nickname Schnauzcrle.'^ Afterward I often 
 came with wife and children to Breslau; I am as 
 well known in Breslau as in my breeches-pocket." 
 
 *Snozzly(?) 
 
THE VAGRANT. 363 
 
 "Where, then, is your family now?" asked Eph- 
 raim. 
 
 "With grandfather." 
 "With grandfather?" 
 
 " Well, yes, above or below, they haven't so much 
 
 as a finger-ache any longer. My Matilda alone I 
 
 cannot yet forget, she was such a dear, sweet child; 
 
 they told me that the silly thing took her own life, 
 
 because she had in her a life too many, but I don't 
 
 believe it, I don't believe it." Schnauzerle grew 
 
 suddenly pensive and chewed at his coat-sleeve. 
 
 Ephraim was glad to find a tie that drew the old 
 
 fellow back to a tender spot in life; had he known 
 
 how nearly the sorrow of this man for his dead child 
 
 touched himself, for Matilda was Schnauzerle's 
 
 daughter, he would not, for the sake of comforting 
 
 the mourner, have diverted him to other subjects; 
 
 but now he asked him again after the fortunes of 
 
 his life, and where he had first met him. 
 
 Schnauzerle went on: "Do you remember how, on 
 Passover-evening, they took your father to a free 
 lodging ? At that time I sat at table with him. — I 
 had even as a child a begging spirit in me. I al- 
 ways kept company with rich children, for I calcu- 
 lated with myself: If I one day come to them as a 
 beggar, I can say: Dost thou remember how, at such 
 or such a place we played together and stole the 
 onion from Gudula's roof? And then they must 
 certainly give me more than any one else. When, 
 in begging, the staff has once grown warm in the 
 hand, or when one has torn a pair of boots on the 
 
8G4 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 tramp, the staff will burn in his hands and the sole 
 on his feet, till he trudges the same road with them 
 again. I have left no stone unturned. I lost my 
 wife and children one day, I know not how. As I 
 sit like a cat on horseback, I was put with English 
 riders; but there nothing is left one but an old bridle 
 and piebald clothes; when things were at the worst 
 with me I played the bass-fiddle for four good 
 groschen a day." 
 
 " The fiddle ? Are you musical then too ? " 
 
 "Yes, the fiddle; the saw was the bow, the wood 
 the string, and the cross-block the fiddle-case; that 
 was the miserablest of all, four good groschen for 
 earnings and ten good groschen spent for drink; I 
 was always a lover of a good swig; it keeps soul and 
 body together; then I was for some time parson." 
 
 " Ah, you take me for a fool." 
 
 "As true as my name is Victor Nepomuk Baptist 
 Schnauzerle, I was parson; what is a parson, then, 
 except a double ventriloquist, or belly-speaker ? He 
 imitates the voice of another that he may get some- 
 thing into his own belly." 
 
 " Who is locked up below me *? " asked Ej^hraim, 
 for he thought now he had sure evidence that he had 
 been deceived by the ventriloquism. 
 
 "That is a Ger;* his name is Chulicki; he will 
 have to drag the cart to-morrow, because he can't 
 pay the fine; he is as restive and hard-mouthed as a 
 silly nag.' Ah, you must certainly know something 
 about him ? " 
 
 * A Jew, turned Christian. 
 
THE VAGRANT. 365 
 
 " I don't recollect him." 
 
 "Well, then I will help you to a clew. Rabbi 
 Chananel, you know, was a long time an inmate of 
 your house; well, Chulicki was the very man on 
 whom he worked a miracle; in one day he made 
 him a couple of thousand years older." 
 
 "I don't understand you." 
 
 "I don't understand him either," said Schnauzerle, 
 laughing. " Rabbi Chananel changed Chulicki from 
 a Christian to a Jew; a nice job, too; Chulicki knows 
 all our religious usages, but one thing he will not 
 get through his thick skull — he can't duck, and that 
 is the very first thing of all." 
 
 Ephraim was deeply affected at finding here his 
 teacher's proselyte, and would have had Schnauzerle 
 announce this fact to him forthwith, but Schnauzerle 
 was once for all in a story-telling vein, and went 
 on: "I was also for the first two years of the Seven 
 Years' War in the cavalry, but I soon took myself 
 off from that, for I saw that one does with the in- 
 valid soldiers as they they do with the butcher's dog 
 w^ho brings the calf to the shambles for the gentry, 
 and runs himself almost to death, so that his tongue 
 hangs out, and doesn't get as much at last as gnawed 
 bone." 
 
 "Had you then already changed your religion?" 
 "Seven times for good; that was for a while a 
 good business; the Prussians, all their fingers itch to 
 get hold of a Jew's soul, but they're poor pay; ten 
 thalers and at most a couple of thalers extra that fall 
 into the contribution-box; the best paymaster has 
 
366 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 been ray last; that was my Jesuit, through whom 
 also I have my present bit of serviee." 
 
 " Have you no conscientious scruples about trifling 
 so with religion?" asked Ephraim. 
 
 "If our Lord God had wanted me in his service 
 here or there, he should have reflected: it takes 
 money to buy truth; the other God has at least giv- 
 en me something for pocket-money. I paid my Jew's 
 tax at once, became a Christian, and have made 
 money out of it too. One must bore through the 
 plank where it is thinnest. If there were a judicious 
 word to be whispered in the Sultan's ear, I wouldn't 
 make any objections to becoming a Turk or a Ilei- 
 duk." 
 
 "You have never reproached yoi^elf, then, for 
 abandoning Judaism ? " 
 
 "To concern one's self for the Jewish religion," re- 
 plied Schnauzerle, "is like bridling the nag's tail; 
 the Jewish religion is a discharged campaign-horse; 
 it is galled; one should treat it respectfully, but one 
 cannot use it any more." 
 
 "And do you never think of a future life?" 
 
 "The present life is cash in hand; tlie other — na ! 
 it is an obligation resting on mere promise of mouth, 
 or note of hand without security; may be it will be 
 paid, may be not. I am now, it is true, in the tliird 
 week of the fair — when one is in the sixties, it is, to 
 be sure, a day after the fair — my best business is 
 done; I have no longer a firm seat on horseback, my 
 knees are no longer steady; I might now, indeed, 
 hold on to religion, but religion is nothing but a 
 
THE VAGRANT. 307 
 
 nose-piece for the common folk; the hard-mouthed 
 jade would never let a rider sit on her any more, if 
 one did not hold her rigorously by the snaffle; the 
 priests, they make the best grooms." 
 
 " You said we had seen each other here, too, be- 
 fore now ? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed, but I was masked. Do you remem- 
 ber the Moor Muley, with the chevalier ? That was 
 I. Do you remember the mask of your father at 
 the carnival? That was I. I gave you warning 
 enough, but there are people who, if you say to 
 them a hundred times: There's a stone there! will 
 not believe you till they themselves stumble over it. 
 At that lottery where there was no prize, the pistol- 
 duel, I was present also, and as Moor played the 
 orphan. Wasn't I a handsome Moor ? I have my 
 clothes yet, all of them. Shall I fetch them ? " 
 
 Ephraim nodded assent; his head was all in a 
 whirl with Schnauzerle's long and crowded story; 
 he had not for several days been accustomed to con- 
 verse with any human being, and now he saw sud- 
 denly a checkered vagabond life shoot about before 
 him in a jack-o-lantern zigzag, and at so many 
 points cut across his life's pathway. Ephraim, who 
 had always floating before him the sense of a mis- 
 match between his character and his condition, loved 
 also to seek the same in others, and shifted every 
 one arbitrarily out of his given position into the one 
 that seemed fitted for him. Thus he now transfer- 
 red Schnauzerle into another station in life and saw 
 him shine in the salon with literary renown as a kind 
 
368 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 of Rabelais or Yoltaire. When Schnauzcrle came 
 back ill his Moorish costume, he found his prisoner 
 far niore pensive than before, for that is the pecul- 
 iarity about the conversation of a wag, that it be- 
 comes dry wood so soon as a pause ensues and 
 new tricks are not incessantly started up. 
 
 In a few hours Schnauzerle had showed up his 
 nature and his fortunes; all further could be nothing 
 more than repetition or variation. When twilight 
 set in Schnauzerle withdrew. 
 
 Ephraira paced with short steps the narrow space 
 of his i^rison; suddenly he stopped and counted the 
 strokes of the clock in the neighboring steeple, it 
 struck eight; from another tower it struck again; 
 Ephraim again counted; the same with a third; this 
 was a torment which he could not escape; ever since 
 he had sat here in confinement, here where it could not 
 be of the least consequence to him what hour it was, 
 here he counted involuntarily every stroke of the 
 hammer; by no action of the mind, but only by mak- 
 ing a racket with table and chair, or crying out loud 
 and singing, could he tear himself away from this 
 numeration; i^erhaps he could not avoid this impres- 
 sion for the reason that in the perfect silence it was 
 the only tone that reached him. 
 
 The burlesque tricks of Schnauzerle had the char- 
 acteristic effect upon Ephraim of inclining him to 
 melancholy. He placed the chair on the table, 
 mounted upon it and peered out into the starry 
 night. Right over him shone Jupiter with his blu- 
 ish flame. — " O these stars," he said to himself, almost 
 
THE VAGRANT. ^09 
 
 aloiul, "they are worlds peopled likQ our earth, aud ^ 
 even much larger than it; lo, there sweL'i> miUioitSP - 
 of worlds, and our earth is only a drop in the sea, in 
 which a heap of worms wriggle, called humanity ; 1 
 mount from star to star, from world to world. Hold 
 fast, my spirit, and tremble not before the immensi- 
 ty; lo, here thou standest and lookest down upon 
 the dust-heap where they contend with each other 
 in nations and religions, till death shakes them off 
 like the leaves from a tree; lo, here and there they 
 have set their houses together, how they race and 
 chase, amuse themselves, hate and love, starve and 
 gormandize; there, on the countless sand of the sea- 
 shore, there under a tiny pebble lies a fly imprisoned, 
 how she moans and wails ! The pebble, that is my 
 prison, and I am the fly; exult, my soul, on liigh 
 above the worlds, thou art free — O eternity ! End- 
 less eternity, would men only recognize thee, they 
 would share the eartli lovingly; but now each will 
 have all the room for himself; when will life begin, 
 and peace and freedom ? Death, thou art the only 
 Saviour ! " 
 
 Long sat Ephraim there feeling his way into the 
 centre of the world's being; he held his hand to his 
 forehead; his wits seemed to reel; sighing he shut 
 the window and laid himself on his board. 
 
 The next day Schnauzerle came and took him to 
 trial. Already during the ten days of his imprison- 
 ment Ephraim had been preparing himself for this. 
 He meant to represent to the judge with deflance 
 and sharpness how, not he alone, but most Chris- 
 24 
 
3 70 POE T A ND MER CHANT. 
 
 tians had false passes, inasmuch as their baptismal 
 certificates were made out in the name of Christ — 
 and so on. But now when he came before the judge 
 he suddenly felt an unconquerable trembling and 
 quaking. In thought he had already in a hundred 
 ways questioned the national validity of the state 
 authorities, nay, the whole order of the world; he 
 who defiantly arrayed himself against the state au- 
 thorities stood here cast down and submissive, for 
 he stood here, the first time in his life, before a 
 judge, in open conflict with the power of the state, 
 accused of forgery; besides Ephraim had from 
 youth up been accustomed to regard every official 
 with lowliness and reverence, and even at this ad- 
 vanced age he had not the courage to stand out 
 boldly. 
 
 The judge had contrived a rat-tail string of 
 counts, and worried Ephraim with it; there were as- 
 saults upon the rights of nobility, forgery, fraud, etc., 
 and an inquisitorial inquiry as to the object and oc- 
 casion of the notes in his memorandum-book. During 
 the delivery of his observations it was as if an in- 
 vading horde of soldiers dragged slumbering chil- 
 dren from their beds. Ephraim saw with profound 
 sympathy for himself his most individual and 
 deeply concealed life dragged into the light and 
 called to account; what he had felt in still and 
 sacred hours, and what he had sharpened into an 
 arrow in bold presumption and antagonism to the 
 world — all that he was now summoned to justify 
 and explain. He saw himself placed all alive under 
 
THE VAGRANT. 371 
 
 the dissecting-knife of the anatomist. He demeaned 
 liimself with a perfect faint-heartedness; he confess- 
 ed all, for he wished to end his confinement speedily 
 and pay his penalty; he inwardly persuaded himself 
 also that he could look down with a smile on +' 
 petty machinery and motives beneath him. Thv 
 judge seemed surprised at these voluntary confes- 
 sions. 
 
 In one thing only Ephraim remained steadfast: 
 he concealed the name of the person who had drawn 
 up his false pass, and demanded with resolution that 
 Trevirano, his betrayer, should be confronted with 
 him. The judge asserted that he knew no man of 
 that name. His books, too, for which Ephraim 
 earnestly begged, were refused him. 
 
 A hundred times more dark and sweltry than 
 ever did the gloomy solitude seem to Ephraim, when 
 after his trial he was brought back again to prison. 
 He ran round like a madman, but at last he was 
 compelled to calm himself; he could no longer find 
 free thought of his own; it was to him as if his 
 whole soul's life were fastened to a chain, of which 
 the last ends were riveted into the court records. 
 
 Schnauzerle came now very often; Ephraim re- 
 fused to understand him Avhen he remarked repeat- 
 edly that all men were blind and dumb, unless one 
 applied gold to the eyes and tongue. 
 
 One morning Ephraim was taken again to the 
 court-room; irons lay upon the table; the judge came 
 in and announced to the criminal that he must pay 
 a fine of several hundred dollars too^ether with the 
 
372 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 costs of examination and imprisonment, and drag the 
 cart for a year; hereupon the judge handed the irons 
 to Schnauzerle to have them put on to Ephraim. 
 Ephraim stood there, with his eyes staring wide open, 
 passing his hand across his forehead ; it was there as 
 if an adder suddenly darted his poisonous teeth into 
 his brain, but as with the speed of lightning he be- 
 gan again suddenly to laugh aloud; he had placed 
 himself with his consciousness high above himself, 
 and now looked down transfigured upon the extra- 
 ordinary complication of a thread of life, which lay 
 over against him as a foreign spectacle; there stood 
 a man who had cruised about wildly and crazily 
 through the world, who many a night had wrestled 
 with demons and conquered them, there he stood 
 now, and was to have irons put upon his feet ! Was 
 not that an extraordinary fiction of the poetic mind? 
 He conjured up in his thoughts still more extraordi- 
 nary complications, he no longer knew whether he 
 were physician or patient, poet or poem; he knew no 
 longer who he was. 
 
 The judge took this singular start and this wild 
 laughter of Ephraim's for an attack of craziness, of 
 which Schnauzerle had already given him intelligence. 
 Ephraim was remanded to his prison. At his request 
 he there received permission to inform his relatives 
 by letter of his fate, but Schnauzerle drew his atten- 
 tion again to the fact " that people only double up 
 their fists until one chooses to put money in their 
 hands, and then they open handsomely;" at last he 
 came out with a free utterance, and Ephraim gave 
 
THE VAGRANT. 373 
 
 him full power to use all his property for purposes 
 of bribing, etc. He asked nothing but his books 
 and so much of the rest of his money as would carry 
 him buck by post to Breslau. 
 
 Towards evening Schnauzerle came triumphantly 
 to Ephraim in his prison with a pass for Breslau. He 
 reckoned up all the money and assured him he had 
 not kept a farthing for himself. ''The criminal 
 court was criminally lax," Sclinauzerle said, "but if 
 a regent will have corruptible officers, he has only to 
 make tyrannical laws, then one's conscience gives him 
 absohition when he peeps through his fingers." 
 Ephraim answered not a syllable; the prison-door 
 was open; he insisted upon staying here this one 
 night. Not without sadness did he the next morning 
 bid farewell to this place: twice he turned round 
 when he was already on the steps, and contemplated 
 the walls and the furniture upon which his eyes so 
 long had rested. He thought of the innumerable suc- 
 cessors who like him would moan there, and now 
 for the first time he pressed out a tear from his eye- 
 lashes. 
 
 Ephraim's first act after his release was to release 
 his fellow-prisoner, Chulicki. It was a singular rela- 
 tion, to stand eye to eye with the man with whom 
 he had conversed invisibly and by singing. ChuUcki 
 was a nature that had run wild, and when with a 
 mixture of pride and subserviency he thanked him 
 for his release, Ephraim replied: 
 
 " It is better to have nothing at all, than only a 
 wretched remnant." 
 
374 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 In fact Ephraim had that pleasure in profuseness 
 which takes possession of one who sees himself lost, 
 and now in dejection throws away from him every 
 remaining support, in order to stand wholly bare. 
 Chulicki would fain have attached himself to him, 
 but Ephraim laughingly declined. 
 
 In the company of his books Ephraim sat in the 
 coach on his way to Breslau; at a spring, which 
 flowed by the roadside, he alighted and stared a 
 long time into the clear mirror; he had not for a 
 long time seen the features of his face; he turned 
 away several times and looked again into the liquid 
 glass; it was to him as if he saw therein an old man 
 with the face of a stranixer. 
 
24— RETURN HOME. 
 
 AFTER an interval of more than ten years Eph. 
 raim alighted once more at the inn well known 
 to us, at Deutchlissa. Immediately on alighting he 
 requested the host to advance to the postilion tem- 
 porarily the necessary fare and drinking-money. 
 The host measured the new-comer from head to foot 
 with a wondering look and quickly put on again 
 with a look of assurance the cap which he had held 
 in his hand; he ran out to help bring the great 
 trunks into the house; he himself lent a hand, and 
 with a friendly grimace he hefted their weight. In 
 the guest-room the stranger requested writing mate- 
 rials and a messenger to send to Breslau. 
 
 " Good weather for traveling," said the host to his 
 guest, on re-entering; " every fair day we get now is a 
 gift outright; the proA^erb says : After Michaelmas 
 our Lord God does not owe the Germans another 
 pleasant day." 
 
 "Nor does he properly the whole year round,"' 
 answered Ephraim. 
 
 " Has the gentleman ever been in this country be- 
 fore ? " asked the host again. 
 
376 POE T AND MERC HA NT. 
 
 " Yes, several years ago." 
 
 " Isn't it a fact, one would hardly know Silesia 
 any longer? The roads as clean and smooth to 
 travel as a table, for with the officials the word is: 
 Look out ! Things go on no longer as in the Aus- 
 trian times, then it cost heaven and — money, and 
 nothing was done. Thank God that we are Prus- 
 sians! From the beginning we were unwilling to 
 trust our old Fritz, because we imagined he would 
 treat us Catholics like step-children, but: Think 
 what you will and pay what you must, is liis prov- 
 erb; all are alike to him." 
 
 "Yes, in paying taxes," replied Ephraim, "and 
 there it always happens that tliey who have the 
 fewest rights must pay the most." 
 
 " Between ourselves," the host continued, " he has, 
 properly, no religion at all. Since his f atlier's death 
 he has been once to God's table! but what does that 
 concern us ? Every one must carry his skin to market 
 himself; one thing is certain, the land has much to 
 thank him for. The potato salad you are eating 
 there — those are good potatoes, ar'n't they? just like 
 meal ! six years ago we knew nothing of them — there 
 you have an example ready to hand, what we owe 
 liim. The stupid peasants cried murder when six 
 years since at the king's command they had to ])kint 
 the potato ; there was nothhig hut poison in the cluiJips, 
 and the object teas to nialce them po6r. — Such is the 
 people — one must force their blessings down their 
 throats in spite of their screaming, as one does an 
 infant's pap. In the awful famine of last year, they 
 
RETURN HOME. 377 
 
 thanked God a thousand times that they had pota- 
 toes; how many thousand would otherwise have 
 starved! Whoso undertakes to say anything against 
 my king, has to do with me," conchided the host, 
 pouring out a glass of potato schnapps, and drank it 
 down at one gulp. 
 
 Ephraim handed the letter to the waiting messen- 
 ger; the host hurried after the man, overtook him in 
 the yard and read the address: "'To the brothers 
 Kuh in Bueslau.' — Hallo, there's a chance for one to 
 borrow," he said, smirking to himself, went back tc 
 his guest, seated himself by him with proud con- 
 descension, and communicated that he never judged 
 according to appearances, on the whole was not 
 given to prejudice, this trait of his had pleased so 
 much the great Fritz, who on his revie wing-rides had 
 twice stopped at his house; to him Christian and 
 Jew, Turk and Pagan, were alike, they were all 
 human beings after all. The Jews too, by the way, 
 were brave and were men, like others. 
 
 Ephraim asked for his chamber. 
 
 "Have you also heard," said the host, as he pre- 
 ceded his guest up-stairs, "that it is whispered, be- 
 cause there was so great a famine, the potentates 
 also have a deep stomach, so they have made up a 
 Polish salad; one pours on the oil, another the vine- 
 gar, a third puts in the pepper; now they stir all to-, 
 gether, then it is portioned out to be eaten; jesting 
 aside, the restless kingdom of Poland is to be torn 
 to pieces, the Russian and the Austrian take each 
 a piece of it, and we — we don't go away empty, we 
 
378 POE T AND MER CHANT. 
 
 eat Saxony as a buttered roll, and when once the 
 king of Prussia is emperor — any further com- 
 mands?" 
 
 "No," answered Ephraim, and shut himself up in 
 his chamber. — With his burning forehead pressed 
 vigainst the window-pane, he stared out into the 
 street, he thought of the mournful manner of his re- 
 turn. Swiftly his mind darted through all the rows 
 of houses, and looked out at the Avindows; he saw 
 himself plodding along with downcast look, he 
 knew all that they were whispering there, and heard 
 all their wise talk; drawing back his head he 
 quickly turned round and paced the chamber up and 
 down; he stopped before his trunks, contemplated 
 them for some seconds, opened one, took out a book 
 and threw himself on the bed. Long and busily he 
 read the well-thumbed leaves, till the book dropped 
 from his hands and he fell asleep. 
 
 How long he had slept he knew not, when sud- 
 denly he heard a knocking at the door and his name 
 called; he sprang up, opened, and lay in his brother 
 Nathan's arms; but quickly, as if an alarming 
 thought startled him, he tore himself away, sat still 
 on the bed and stared at his brother with glazed 
 eyes. 
 
 " What is thy name now ? " he asked. 
 
 " I am thy brother, what matters it to thee, what 
 name I bear in the church-register ? " 
 
 "Thou art now too in the company that collects 
 the Jews' tax, art thou comfortably situated there ? " 
 
 It was but gently and with the most cautious 
 
RE TURN HOME. 3 Y 9 
 
 words that Nathan could bring his brother to a con- 
 fidential disclosure of his inner and outer experiences. 
 Illusions, wrongs and maltreatments of all kinds 
 Ephraini recited with a cold indifference, with an 
 orderliness from which one might see that he meant 
 to vouch for it, that he had long since buried in the 
 grave all inspired feelings for love and friendship, 
 human happiness and human confidence, and now 
 pursued his way cold and immovable by their sunken 
 grave-stones. 
 
 " As a beggar I lift my brotherly hand to thee," 
 he concluded ; " give me clothes and money enough to 
 last me till I reach the so-called savages; there I 
 shall need your coined money and your coined faith 
 no more! or art thou already so far on in your 
 Christianity, that thou hast no feeling for my unut- 
 terable sorrow ? Hast thou also a mischievous joy 
 and malice in thy heart towards the Jew, who is thy 
 born brother ? " 
 
 "Thou wilt always that others shall forget thou 
 art a Jew, and thou thyself never forgettest it," re- 
 plied Nathan, sharply, and then went on more ten- 
 derly: "Look, I pray, into the glass; thou art sick, 
 come with me to Breslau, there thou wilt get well." 
 
 Almost without a will of his own, Ephraim let 
 himself be induced to return to his native town. 
 
 " IIow would it do," he said to Nathan when they 
 were seated in the carriage, "how if we should let 
 the horses take the reins, and harness ourselves to 
 the coach ? " 
 
 "In that case we should have to have another 
 
380 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 kind of harness," replied Nathan, smiling and look- 
 ing his brother sharply in the eye. 
 
 "Yes, another religion," replied the latter; he un- 
 dertook to take a pinch of snuif, but opened the box 
 upside down, and spilled the contents; he began to 
 laugh aloud ; Nathan again fastened a keen look upon 
 his brother, and shook his head. 
 
 They had not driven far, when Ephraim suddenly 
 jumped out of the carriage and ran back; Nathan 
 cried out, but Ephraim would not hear, till suddenly 
 he fell over a pile of stones; Nathan hastened to him, 
 lifted him up; the blood ran from Ephraim's fore- 
 head, the sharp stones had torn the skin of his face. 
 After a w^hile Ephraim again sprang out of the car- 
 riage. Nathan did not turn back this time, but crack- 
 ed the whip and drove on; Ephraim sat down in the 
 ditch by the roadside, and looked after his brother 
 with tears in his eyes; when he no longer saw the cloud 
 of dust, he ran after him weeping and screaming, 
 but Nathan did not hear. At this moment they 
 came to a hill; Ephraim exerted his last remaining 
 strength, screamed and ran; panting he came up 
 with Nathan, who, without saying a word, reached 
 out his hand to him and lifted him into the carriage. 
 
 "My wife is greatly rejoiced at thy arrival," said 
 Nathan, at last; "she is an old acquaintance of thine, 
 she says; dost thou remember Rosa Petzhold, the 
 daughter of our writing-master ? That is my wife." 
 
 Ephraim pressed his lips tightly together. " I will 
 aliglit at our brother Maier's," he said, and in a per- 
 fectly calm and rational tone he asked, after a j^ause: 
 
RE TURN HOME. 381 
 
 "Dost tliou feel thyself now entirely al pari with 
 a Christian ? " 
 
 " Perfectly," replied Nathan Frederick. 
 
 "I could never bring myself to it," continued 
 Ephraim; "even on the best footing of familiarity, 
 I feel myself under a favor, bound by regard and 
 gratitude. I should like once to have a tussle with 
 a Christian. Indulge me with one thyself, thou art 
 a Christian." 
 
 Again Xathan looked at his brother at these 
 strange flights and sought in every way to calm him. 
 
 Before the gate stood a female form dressed in 
 mourning; she wore a veil fastened on her head, and 
 over the forehead almost down to the middle of the 
 eyebrows was laid a heart-shaped peaked piece of 
 black crape; she stretched out both hands to the 
 new-comer. Nathan kept still. Violet mounted the 
 steps; a scream of joy, and she lay weeping on her 
 brother Ephraim's neck, then she stroked his fore- 
 head and chin and looked fondly into his restless 
 eyes. 
 
 " How I came to be so bruised, thou wouldst ask ? " 
 began Ephraim ; " I fell over a heap of stones on my 
 way, but why dost thou wear mourning ? " 
 
 Violet now related that within a half-year she 
 had returned a widow to her home; she begged her 
 brother in the most fervent terms to live with her; 
 they would set up a peaceful life, would spend their 
 days together in domestic tranquillity. She described 
 to him how she had arranged his chamber. She 
 painted in the most alluring colors how she would 
 
S82 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 care for him, nurse him, do anything for him. But 
 Ephraira answered coldly; 
 
 "The wisest course would be for thee to marry 
 again, Violet; I do not want to have people pointing 
 at our house and saying, there live two bankrupt 
 widows; no, no, besides I shall not stay here." 
 
 As they drove in through the gate, Ephraim took 
 his sister's hand and said: 
 
 " Dost thou still remember the history of Ruth in 
 the Bible ? When the noble mother returned from her 
 wanderings to Bethlehem, the whole city was aston- 
 ished, and said: Is that Amorosa? But she said: 
 Call me no more Amorosa, call me Dolorosa, for the 
 Lord has given me bitterness and sorrow. Would 
 that I might only glean the ears, too, like liuth, 
 barefoot in the stubble. I stand here as a beggar; 
 let me not starve, Job is my name." 
 
 There was silence all round. 
 
 The first news Ephraim heard on the threshold of 
 his native city, was the intelligence of the death of 
 his oldest brother, Maier, who had been dead three 
 years. 
 
25— THE SORROWS OF WERTIIER. 
 
 FOR several days Ephraim lay in bed and received 
 no visits; in the Jewish congregation of Breslau 
 the most fabulous reports succeeded each other con- 
 cerning the fate and appearance of Ephraim. At 
 the breaking up of the Brody synagogue they talked 
 with an especial liveliness on the subject, and Hey- 
 mann Lisse made all laugh by remarking that there 
 were cows (Kuhs) which one could not milk because 
 they sucked their own milk if one did not tie them 
 with a short halter to the crib. 
 
 This kind of mockery Ephraim anticipated, hence 
 lie refused to see any one ; only when Philippina an- 
 nounced herself, he smiled again and begged she 
 might be admitted. 
 
 "How dost thou like my face?" said Ephraim; 
 *' isn't that a fashionable beauty-patch?" 
 
 "Tliou saidst thou wast going to the savages, and 
 hast been tattooing thyself beforehand comme ii 
 faut^^ replied Philippina. 
 
 With this single answer Ephraim was suddenly 
 transported back again into the old relation to his 
 
384 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 gay cousin ; the many years since they had last seen 
 each other had to be sure entirely changed her out- 
 ward appearance, but not in the least her peculiar 
 character. She was of a well-to-do aspect, but still 
 had the same gracieuse unrest, the same sprightly 
 and saucy humor. 
 
 "Why dost thou look at me so?" she asked, 
 " wilt thou take an exact pattern of me ? Dost thou 
 see, such I am." She whirled round on her left foot 
 and made a courtesy. 
 
 "Thou look'st very respectful," observed Eph- 
 raim. 
 
 "Ah, heavens! don't say anything to me about 
 that," replied Philippina; "I have been vexed enough 
 that I have not more dignity, more aplomb, as Taiib- 
 chen would say; people always treat me as if I were 
 sixteen years old, and if I say anything serious, or 
 undertake to come out pointedly, they laugh. I 
 have, for a long time, taken great pains to tramp 
 along with majestic composure, in this way, seest 
 thou ? and wave my hand ever so lightly, or to smile 
 graciously, but it soon grows too close for me. I 
 tear off all the ribbons, and now I feel well again; 
 there is nothing more tedious than what is called 
 dignity. I cannot lit it to myself and now I will 
 not try any more. — I have a favor to ask of thee, 
 dear cousin." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "When thou art out of humor, do not let the 
 world have the pleasure of consoling thee. Then 
 every one comes and will have his portion of wo- 
 
THE SORROWS OF WERTIIER. 385 
 
 begone face; send him off with a laugh. When thou 
 hast any trouble, bring it to me. I am a good cup- 
 board." 
 
 E})hraim took it for granted that his cousin gladly 
 heightened her natural gayety in order to cheer him 
 up. The town-history, that is, the history of the 
 Jewish congregation, for the last ten years, offered 
 rich material; into Philippina's narrative there en- 
 tered, despite all her good nature, a certain element 
 of satire; out of the circle of town-history they soon 
 passed over again to the central point of family-his- 
 tories. 
 
 " What shouldst thou say to this," asked Philip- 
 pina, " that thy sister-in-law Taubchen has run away 
 with a death's-head?* It was a handsome officer, 
 a man 'like an Adonis.' Such kinds of 'morn- 
 and eve-nts,'f indeed, belong to the necessaire of 
 a dame of the haute volee. Taubchen had also 
 learned to ride, and once asked her riding-master 
 whether the horse was religious — meaning, of course, 
 good and gentle. She also gave gi-eat parties, and 
 the Messieurs Christians made fun of her, when they 
 had eaten to their hearts' content of her viands; siic 
 never invited a Jew, for, 'I am responsable for their 
 violations of ho7i ton,'' she used often to say, and 
 tlie 'Messieurs Christians,' too, must never discover 
 by her company that she was a Jewess. Thy sister- 
 in-law Rosa, she is so sweet, so amiable, so good and 
 
 * Name given to Zielhen's hussars. 
 
 t "Morgen-und abenteuer," a play on the title of the religious book, "Mor- 
 gen und abend-opfer " 
 
386 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 loving; I often enjoy Rosa, she is so still and happy 
 and makes everybody happy with a look, with a 
 smile, with nothing; Rosa is the best of florists; 
 every plant thrives with her, and I, I love flowers 
 too, but I forget to take care of them, and they 
 starve under my hands; Rosa has a true flower-hand. 
 There, make a poem on that some time." 
 
 Ephraim was silent, and after a while Philippina 
 went on: 
 
 " On the other hand, with thy sister-in-law Tailb- 
 chen there is nothing but pride and rouge. It is a 
 pity that Taiibchen is no longer here, for she used 
 to make a good deal of fun for me; I was quite ex- 
 clusively en faveur with her. I cannot compare her 
 culture to anything else than an actress coming on 
 the stage with only one cheek painted. She has sat 
 half a day at a time all alone in the middle of the 
 sofa decolleth and with the lap-dog in her arms, 
 practicing how one shall assume a right lady-like at- 
 titude. But there is one thing I envy Rosa most of 
 all." 
 
 " And that is ? " 
 
 " Only think — she never has ennui, and yet is so 
 clever. She is as contented as a tree in the garden; 
 she can be still and yet happy for a week at a time 
 when nothing at all happens, when she doesn't stir 
 from one spot; and I, I die with restlessness if for 
 a single day I have notliing happen to me and noth- 
 ing to expect. But most of all did I pity thy brother. 
 The good Chajem Achilles found it all fuss and 
 flurry in the grand parties, where he had himself to 
 
THE SORROWS OF WERTIIER. 387 
 
 play great folks; when he came to see me he breath- 
 ed freely again; now he has gone with Taiibchen on 
 a tour to Paris." 
 
 When Philippina at length departed, Ephraim's 
 eyes followed her with a heavy look. 
 
 His first visit abroad Ephraim made to his brother 
 Nathan, who lived in a garden before the Oder-gate. 
 He found his brother alone; his sister-in-law had 
 gone out. 
 
 Nathan now showed Ephraim with the satisfac- 
 tion of quiet possession, his house, its convenient 
 arrangements, the laying out of the garden, etc. 
 
 " Come here, Ludwig," Nathan called out to a boy 
 of about six years old, who was riding his hobby- 
 horse in the yard, " give the gentleman a hand, this 
 is thy uncle Ephraim." 
 
 "And hast thou brought me anything, and may 
 I ride with thee in thy carriage ? " said the child. 
 
 The face of Ephraim darkened, the consciousness 
 of his poverty fell heavily on his heart; he could 
 not even make this boy a present; he kissed him on 
 his forehead and mouth; it was the forehead and 
 lips of his mother; the boy rode off. Nathan took 
 his brother round through the garden; suddenly 
 Ephraim stopped, passed his hand over his eyes 
 and stamped on the ground. 
 
 "See, brother," said he, "thou standest here on 
 thy own ground and soil, a piece of the great earth 
 is thine, down to the lowest depth up to the height of 
 heaven, it is thine; thou liast a firm foothold on the 
 earth — and I, I can say with Christ: 'I have not 
 
388 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 where to lay my head.' Tlie leaf which I pluck 
 from the tree, the flower I pluck from the meadow, 
 are they mine? Only a hand's breadth of earth 
 would I fain have for my own, out of doors, where 
 fpring and winter, sun and storm may rise on my 
 earth too; I pray thee, Nathan, or Frederick, as thou 
 art now called, pardon me, I cannot yet accustom 
 myself to it; I pray thee, give me a little piece of 
 garden; I will give thee one of my teeth for it, 
 whichever thou wilt, that is still my own; don't 
 laugh, I am no child, and yet does not the fact that 
 children love to have little gardens for themselves, 
 fenced round, contain a deep meaning ? See brother, 
 the ground-idea is the idea of ground and soil, of 
 possession, is it not ? " 
 
 " Thou comest to buy when the market is already 
 run out," replied Nathan Frederick; "thou hast ar- 
 rived somewhat too late at a view of the necessity 
 and agreeableness of possession; to ownership of 
 the soil thou couldst not, as thou well knowest, in thy 
 present position, have attained; consider what is 
 mine as thine own. Must I be thy liege lord ? " 
 
 "Aha! I understand," interrupted Ephraim; "I 
 cannot as a Jew hold any real estate. I had for- 
 gotten that that is a Christian sun which shines 
 above us; yes, those are Christian birds that fly over 
 our heads; this is all Christian grass and flowers." 
 
 The garden-gate was heard to swing open. " My 
 wife," said Nathan ; Ephraim started; at no more 
 inappropriate time could he have met Rosa again 
 than at this very moment, Avhen the shrill discord 
 of religious difl'erence still rang in his ears. 
 
THE SORROWS OF WE R TITER. ^89 
 
 Rosa offered her brotlier-iii-law her hand and bade 
 him a hearty welcome; Ephraim hardly dared to 
 raise his eyes and contemplate Rosa's charmingly 
 majestic form. By degrees, however, he lost more 
 and more his shyness; he scrutinized her features; 
 they were still the same that had once impressed 
 themselves on his youthful dreams, and yet again they 
 were quite different; the radiant friendliness of Rosa 
 did not leave him long to his scrutinizing speculations. 
 There was so much thoughtful tranquillity and clear- 
 ness, so much wisdom in her whole bearing, that 
 one could not help feeling himself immediately at- 
 tracted and transported into a clear atmosphere; 
 Rosa even respected a delicate jest, yet with a cer- 
 tain serene smile, by which she did not forfeit a 
 dignified bearing; her speech was void of wit and 
 yet full of pleasantry. 
 
 " I have still a relic of you," she said among other 
 things to Ephraim; "the ABC w^hich you set as 
 a copy for me in the writing-lesson with my father 
 of blessed memory; I had it a long time lying in my 
 prayer-book, till once I lost it on the way to church; 
 when I found it again I took better care of it; I Avill 
 show it to you sometime. Those were delightful 
 times, when we still were so young." 
 
 " If father had only not looked and knocked so 
 Lard at one's fingers," remarked Nathan Frederick 
 with a smile. 
 
 " It is really extraordinary," said Ephraim to Rosa, 
 when they were alone together, "that fate should 
 have so singularly snatched us asunder and now led 
 you to me again as my sister." 
 
890 POE T A ND MER CHA NT. 
 
 "I greet yon with joy as a brother," replied Rosa, 
 again offering him her hand. 
 
 Ephraim looked straight before him in silence. 
 
 " I hear you make such beautiful poems," be- 
 gan Rosa, in a light and lively manner; "may I beg 
 one favor of you ? " 
 
 " All, all, if you wish." 
 
 " No, not so'; I am not so immodest as to ask that; 
 only this one thing I beg of you: promise me, on your 
 word as a man, never to make a poem on me, either 
 in praise or in blame. If you do not promise me that, 
 I could not speak a word freely, nor give myself out 
 without embarrassment as is fitting between rela- 
 tions; I should always be thinking: now he has 
 caught me again. Do you promise, then ? " 
 
 " As you wish it, I promise willingly." 
 
 Rosa poured herself out in sympathetic conversa- 
 tion with him; she was as gay and free as Philippina, 
 only more calm, one might say, more logical. 
 
 Alone and thoughtful Ephraim lived on by him- 
 self; he was compelled more than ever, and in the 
 midst of his relations, to lead a self-secluded exist- 
 ence. 
 
 A cry of anguish was suddenly wrung from the 
 lips-of many German youths and maidens; the pistol- 
 shot of young Jerusalem woke hundredfold echoes; 
 here and there the knell of a pistol was heard in some 
 hidden thicket; here and there a dagger plunged it- 
 self into some poor or impoverished heart, and a sor- 
 rowing soul groaned out its last. 
 
 With wet eye and quivering pulse, Ephraim read, 
 
THE SORROWS OF JVER TITER. 391 
 
 nay, devoured, the " Sorrows of Young Werther." 
 Old as he ah-eady was, far advanced beyond tlie years 
 of youth, yet every word, every breath had been 
 stolen fi'om his soul; that was a night of passion un- 
 der which his soul quaked; that was an undreamed- 
 of magic of speech which caused common words to 
 be listened to, as if they suddenly sounded out melo- 
 diously from a beloved and venerated soul. Ephra- 
 im felt himself distressed, as if his most original and 
 personal life-thoughts and experiences were wrested 
 from him, and set, larger and deeper, before the eyes 
 of the world, and then again distorted into foreign 
 relations; he was angry with the poet who had rob- 
 bed him of all this; he, only he himself, could and 
 must tear off the bandage from his wounds before 
 the world, and bleed to death, or rise again fresh, re- 
 deemed, crowned with laurel. But soon he rose to 
 the pui'ely human point of view; then the beatings 
 of his heart were redoubled; he thanked the poetic 
 spirit which in the far distance had felt sympathet- 
 ically, nay, even prophetically, the faintest agitations 
 of his soul; with a growing sense of suffocation he 
 read on and on to the conclusion, and with a deep 
 sigh closed the book — he had seen his double; he 
 must needs die. 
 
 Almost the Avhole family were assembled in Na- 
 than Frederick's garden; mention was made of the 
 death of a young officer who had the night before 
 shot himself through the forehead; the Sorrows of 
 Young Werther lay open on his table. 
 
 "The man had already a scorched brain, and has 
 now scorched it again," observed Nathan Frederick. 
 
802 POR T AND ME R CHA N T. 
 
 "The book is deeply affecting," sighed Violet, 
 "but men take for strength what is properly only 
 weakness; it is far stronger to endure a life than to 
 throw it away." 
 
 "My sympathies are all with Lottie," said Philip- 
 pina. " Good Heavens ! what a horrible thing it 
 were, if one were accountable for all the people 
 who choose to fall in love with one or had done so; 
 one could no longer stir or turn round without fear- 
 ing to tread on some lover's toes. Now it will be 
 the fashion to dress d la Werther : blue frock, yellow 
 waistcoat, white pantaloons, colors that never prop- 
 erly tone together. Yellow and white necessarily 
 require a light-brown frock, not a blue one." 
 
 " Nothing is more insipid than aping others," ob- 
 served Nathan once more. " When one is going to 
 take the salto mortale, he should at least do it orig- 
 inally, and even show his inventive spirit. Why 
 dost thou bite thy lips and shake thy head, Ephraim ? 
 What dost thou say to the sj)eculation, if one should 
 now get up blue merino d la Werther? I think it 
 would go off like Avild-fire." 
 
 Ephraim still made no reply. Rosa meanwhile 
 came to him and asked in a confidential tone: 
 
 "Why so dull?" 
 ' " And so dumb ? " added Philippina. 
 
 "Do you regard us as unworthy to hear your 
 view ? " continued Rosa. 
 
 " O, no! " answered Ephraim, smiling; he had just 
 heard how such an " aping " was censured, he was him- 
 self ashamed of that, and would now fain destroy 
 
THE SORROWS OF WER TITER. 093 
 
 every suspicion of imitation in the opinion of liis 
 relatives, therefore he now said: 
 
 " I see notliing in the whole book but the last strag- 
 glers bringing up the rear of the old overstrained 
 niinne-singer's love-errantry: an idle and borne man 
 seeks all his happiness and his life's end in love, and 
 because love alone cannot satisfy, he is unhappy, has 
 all the time one foot in the air, and knows not where 
 he shall set it down. This Werther is an impotent 
 nature possessed by an overmastering passion; we 
 see all his moods laid bare within him; we follow 
 their currents, as according to a legend of a German 
 emperor's bride, they saw the red wine she drank run 
 through her neck. — But now if Werther had mar- 
 ried Lottie, he would have been still more unhappy, 
 for then he would for the first time have rightly 
 seen how much emptiness there still was in his life, 
 and how many faculties slumbered in him which 
 must all decay for want of use. Since we can in no 
 direction freely unfold ourselves, nowhere feel our- 
 selves borne on freely in the full force of our nature, 
 either by the world as a whole or by the life of the 
 state, we seek the whole salvation of our existence in 
 a turtle-dove-idyll, and are and must be disgracefully 
 deceived. In Greek antiquity, love, too, Avas not 
 wanting, but it did not absorb all the life-juices of 
 the youth: country, freedom, glory, the public 
 conversations of the philosophers and the public dis- 
 cussion of state affairs, all this busied heart and 
 head of the youth as of the man, and thus there was 
 no such thing as coming to the state of madness, 
 
394 POET AXD MERCHANT. 
 
 where, for the sake of two brown or blue eyes, one 
 will seek to turn the world upside-down, and will 
 rummage and distort everything. This love-epi- 
 demic, with which most of the deeply sensitive souls 
 of our time are affected, is nothing but a consequence 
 of the narrow-minded and dislocated state of our 
 private and public relations; since we can in no di- 
 rection stretch out our hands freely, we twine them 
 around the neck of a maiden, and will in our egotism 
 find there all that which nothing but a life fully oc- 
 cupied on all sides can supply. There is a mighty 
 fermentation everywhere; it always seems to me as 
 if the whole world would jump out of its skin, such a 
 universal discontent prevails; this amorous billing and 
 cooing can effect nothing; the wedding-rings on the 
 hands of men and women are nothing but rings of a 
 great chain, by which the whole of humanity lies 
 fettered." 
 
 "So all people say w^ho clutch round in the air 
 with empty fingers," observed Philippina. 
 
 " All I meant to say by that," Ephraim continued, 
 "was, that this pusillanimous fuss and fury about 
 single persons or about a single circle is answerable 
 for the fact that the world is kept down by priests 
 and military monarchs; then it is happy in its cage, 
 if the great ones stick a bit of sugar in the wires. 
 The time must come again when, free and uncon- 
 strained, in the symmetrical development of all his 
 practical faculties, every one shall feel himself borne 
 on in the harmony of a great whole. Love and do- 
 mestic life are the root and summit of all the joy of 
 
THE SORROWS OF WERTIIER. 305 
 
 existence; in a state of freedom there will be far 
 fewer unhappy lovers, for love will no more be the 
 va baiique of life, and if it is lost, then there are 
 still paths enough of action and enjoyment open; 
 even despairing ones there may still be, but what a 
 heaven-wide difference there is between the suicide 
 of a Cato and that of a Werther ! Ah ! that one 
 could only die nobly ! " Ephraim wiped the sweat 
 from his forehead. 
 
 " For God's sake only say nothing of suicide," said 
 Violet, striking out with both hands into the air, as 
 if she would ward off the evil thing; "I cannot im- 
 agine anything more horrible for the survivors, than 
 when a relative of theirs has laid violent hands upon 
 himself; when one dies of sickness, that is sad 
 enough, and yet one cannot get it into one's convic- 
 tions that he now no longer exists; it was only an 
 hour ago he still spoke, took medicine, and now 
 dead ! One hates himself for still living, one hates 
 all life. How affecting is that cry of Lear over 
 the dead body of Cordelia : Shall a dog, a horse, a 
 mouse have life, and thou not even a breath? If 
 mere death is so terrible, then self-murder, the sud- 
 den extinction of full life — it is to me always, when 
 I think of such a thing, as if one bored into my brain 
 with a red-hot iron." 
 
 " You have heated yourself very much," said Rosa, 
 bringing a glass of eau sucre to Ephraim, " drink this; 
 I thank you heartily for being so good as to impart 
 to us your view. I can conceive that one cannot al- 
 ways or to everybody express such things, You are 
 
396 POE T A iVD MERC HA NT. 
 
 SO good that you will certainly one day be right 
 happy." 
 
 Ephraim took with a smile the glass of sugar- 
 water; Nathan walked up and down the garden; 
 Philippina, for whom the conversation was too seri- 
 ous, soon diverted it to other topics. 
 
 " O inconstancy, inconstancy ! " said Ephraim to 
 himself when he was alone again; " under the mask 
 with which I would have deceived others, I saw deep- 
 er into myself, and found the truth, for it is truth, 
 that love is transitory and freedom eternal. But are 
 the Philistines right when they assert that only they 
 who in some way or other have become bankrupts 
 of life are the loud champions of freedom ? No, 
 self-interest may well be a low motive, but it can 
 serve as a lever to lift us to truth, and he whom life 
 has flung up so high that he stands clear out of it 
 and above it, may the more freely and serenely sur- 
 vey it and attempt to control the wheel-work. I am 
 old and want nothing more for myself." 
 
 With a strange medley of feelings Ephraim in- 
 serted in his row of books the " Sorrows of Werth- 
 
26.— THE OLD BACHELOR. 
 
 A QUIET life, in which all storms are spent, has 
 its pleasures and its memorable incidents, not a 
 few, still left; one knows exactly the state of the 
 thermometer for the day ; one becomes familiar with 
 the signs of change in the weather; one is in readi- 
 ness for the era of new vegetables which the next 
 month will bring; one has to look after the recruits 
 and see what new exercise they will begin to-day; 
 one knows what progress was made to-day and yes- 
 terday in the building of the new house in Niemer- 
 Row; how they are getting on with the cleaning of the 
 public walks, and who dined at the commandant's 
 yesterday — these are all good things to kill time, and 
 then, too, the family news, and if one corrects a 
 nephew's school exercise, or hears him say his Gel- 
 lert's fable, and then, what a pity the day has only 
 twenty-four hours ! 
 
 Thus, too, did Ephraim live for years in the still 
 monotony of an old bachelor; with greater content 
 than ever he now labored several hours every day in 
 his brother's counting-house, for he thereby earned his 
 
398 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 subsistence; and his brothers and sisters tried all 
 ways to make his life comfortable and cheerful. It 
 was a melancholy confession which he once made to 
 his brother, Nathan Frederick: "I now see for the 
 first time that I was originally created to let my life 
 be determined for me by others; to go on in a pre- 
 scribed path — that is my calling. Ah, and a Jew 
 must begin the world anew with himself. I awake 
 at evening; I have dreamed away, worried away 
 the best part of life; I am about to say, Good-morn- 
 ing, and lo ! it is night." 
 
 In this state of tranquillity Ephraim became con- 
 scious of many evils and of the failure of his pow- 
 ers, and now, when life had no more to offer him, he 
 had to expend the greatest care upon its preserva- 
 tion; but he made his own philosophy out of it, and 
 expounded it to Philippina in these words: 
 
 " I begin again to spell Life, I dissect the words of 
 existence into syllables and letters, I will have noth- 
 ing more to do with days, years and large periods of 
 time, I confine myself to the blossoms called min- 
 utes, they alone are ours. This thought is the tinct- 
 ure of iron which I give my mind, and that works a 
 great deal better than this from the apothecary's." 
 
 The tincture of iron which his physician had or- 
 dered him he always carried with him, so as to be 
 able to take it at the appointed hour, and once when 
 he came to Philippina's she quickly took the bunch 
 of keys from her apron, " for," said she, " I should 
 be afraid Cousin Iron-eater would sometime devour 
 all ray keys." 
 
THE OLD B A CUE I OR. n09 
 
 "I fear nothing so much as madness," Ephraim 
 once said to her, " with broken joints to be dragged 
 round in life as a loathsome pappy mess, paugli! 
 that must be horrible. Why do they shoot mad 
 dogs and not mad men ? Every village and every 
 city ought to have a house of invalids, where all old 
 people, men and women, without distinction, rich 
 and poor, should be sent; there every one could live 
 and die according to his convenience and ability, 
 and the young could freely enjoy life; no dry knot 
 should be left standing in the midst of a budding 
 and blooming world; life and the world belong to 
 youth; why does not one die like the flower, when 
 one has bloomed out ? Often, when I am alone, mil- 
 lions of demonic thoughts whirl and whiz round me, 
 and clutch at my brain ; I grow dizzy, I reel, I must 
 needs cry out — then at my voice they are frightened, 
 and like mice dart off to their holes. O, how long 
 and distressful is the night, when both body and 
 soul in vain yearn for sleep; then the ghosts of past 
 days, of plans that miscarried in the past, rise up, 
 and all is so dead, so alive. I soar away over all 
 that has departed, I want a future; purposes, hopes, 
 wishes, come and wave their salutations, and all, all 
 is lost. When I lie in bed at night, perfectly quiet, 
 without stirring a muscle, my eyes closed, and I see 
 nothing at all, then Fantasy sweeps restlessly, aim- 
 lessly, to and fro; often I feel myself borne far, far 
 away; I think upon religion, God, death; then it is 
 to me as if I suddenly came against an iron lid, or 
 sank into a bottomless nothingness; I must fly, bo 
 
400 PORT AND MERCHANT. 
 
 crushed like a hollow egg-shell; then I find no longer 
 any way to help myself, I ahiiost die with restless- 
 ness and torment. Hast thou ever had such experi- 
 ence, where a yelping pack of evil spirits is suddenly 
 let loose upon a prey ? On all sides they hack and 
 tear it with their bloody teeth; when I would quiet- 
 ly pursue a thought, all of a sudden the dogs come 
 and rend and strangle; then I must needs stretch 
 open my eyes, only to see something which hounds 
 me in another direction and lets me go; I see the 
 pale light gleam through my windows, that relieves 
 me; I count the panes, I grow more quiet again; I 
 throw a chair over and set it up again, that always 
 takes my mind off to other things; then I get up 
 and look out of the window, then I say to myself: 
 * See, there dwells Lippman Maier, there dwells the 
 dyer,' and the fact that I still know this is to me an 
 assurance that I am yet in the ruts of common rea- 
 son; — but, my dear child, I pray thee, throw me 
 down-stairs instantly if I ever come to thee crazy; 
 feel of my forehead, how it burns; in the bony pot 
 my brain boils and bubbles; I fear, I fear, it will run 
 over yet." 
 
 "Nothing is more repulsive than to see any one 
 play with a loaded pistol; I pray thee, rise," replied 
 Fhilij^pina, without losing her composure; "it is not 
 mannerly of thee so to distress me; thou tormentest 
 thyself as well as me." She laid her hand upon 
 the forehead of her cousin, who by this touch seemed 
 suddenly transformed. "I thought thou wert quite 
 happy and cheerful," Philippina continued. 
 
THE OLD BACHELOR. 401 
 
 " Ah, I have indeed lost all ! " 
 
 "That is nothing," said PhiHppina, laugh itt^,'^if 
 one takes off an arm of mine to-day, I still enjoy the 
 other to-morrow; indeed, it would still have been 
 my duty to be content with my lot if God had sent 
 me into the world with only one arm. If I could 
 only make all men so content and happy! Just lis- 
 ten once: thou wilt not believe me when I tell thee 
 how sensible I have grown. Dost thou know why 
 children when they fall down do not hurt them- 
 selves? They say because a good genius protects 
 them. But the reason is simply this: Children 
 never rely on their standing, and therefore do not 
 defend themselves when they fall; they come plump 
 down and get up again unharmed. And so must 
 we, too, do, and can, if we will. A little bump does 
 no harm." 
 
 Without making any transition, Philippina took 
 her lute and sang the then favorite song, "Thou 
 hast done with sighing and with sorrow," from the 
 much read "Sigwart, a Story of the Cloister," but 
 hardly had she ended a strophe and made a serious 
 face at it, when he burst into a laugh and exclaimed: 
 " This is a stupid world where one is always walking 
 in a church-yard by moonlight and shedding soft tears 
 over death, which has come and is still to come. 
 Thou, too, art in this case, though thou wilt not have 
 it so. Pray help me finish the verse differently. 
 Good-bye yesterday, all hail to-morrow! .... help 
 me. I tell thee a pinchbeck joke is worth more 
 than all tear-drop brilliants set in rhyme." And 
 26 
 
402 POE T AND MER CHANT. 
 
 forthwith she sang in a gay mood an old song of 
 contentment. These tones, these words, trickled 
 like heavenly dew on Ephraini's languishing spirits. 
 With transfigured countenance he sat there and re- 
 lated how he seemed outwardly to be leading the 
 usual life of an old bachelor, but that his inner self 
 was always wakeful and full of youthful freshness. 
 That it was this which often led him to the dizzying 
 brink of madness, but many a time he plucked even 
 there a little flower, a little epigram. 
 
 "Thou knowest, of course," added Ephraim, "that 
 epigrann is a Greek word, meaning originally writ- 
 ten upon^ and was applied to monumental inscrip- 
 tions. Precisely in this point, that of attracting 
 attention to a subject by an unexpected turn to sat- 
 isfy curiosity, lies the chief charm. Understandest 
 thou that ? " 
 
 "If thou comest to me again with thy ex-cathe- 
 drd tone, I shall run right away from thee," replied 
 Philippina; "but as a proof that I understand thee, 
 I give thee liberty to make as many epigrams on me 
 as thou wilt, nay, I shall even thank thee for them, 
 for I should be glad to see myself once in this glass. 
 But I cannot after all exactly imagine to myself how 
 one makes such a poem," she concluded, archly. 
 
 "Then I can bring you the best example from 
 last Sunday," answered Ephraim. " I look out of 
 ray window in the morning, it is raining frightfully, 
 the bell is just tolling for church; just then I observe 
 my neighbor's little daughter up at the window there 
 looking out at the heavens, and then twitching again 
 
THE OLD BACHELOR. 403 
 
 at her handsome summer dress; I thoncjht 9i f^ con- 
 versation with my sister Violet, avIio luaBy- yoars 
 ago had described so enthusiastically the joys of a 
 Christian woman on her way to church, but all at 
 once the demon of fun nudged me, and transporting 
 myself into my neighbor's daughter's frame of mind, 
 I composed: 
 
 "THE PIOUS MAIDEN. 
 
 **If God would grant good weather, so 
 That a poor girl to church might go ! 
 One lives worse off here than a heathen, — 
 Me in my new dress here, how can the people see, then? " 
 
 Philippina seemed not much exhilarated by this 
 poem, for she observed: 
 
 " So it often is with me, I love to transport myself 
 into the people's ways of thinking and acting. 
 When I walk along the street I always long to know 
 what all the people are thinking of, who split wood, 
 carry wares, take drives; there perhaps is one going 
 a-courting, and beside him another going to get a 
 divorce; here one going about doing good and there 
 another with thoughts of murder; for the most part, 
 especially on Sundays, it seems to me as if they all 
 wanted to sneeze and could not; dost thou under- 
 stand ? there is such a prickling and tickling all over 
 the face, and one is after all not quite comfortable. 
 But what does the world concern me?" continued 
 Philippina, whirling round, as if she would turn her 
 thoughts round with her body. " The sorrowing 
 Werther gets no hold of me, my Minna von Barn- 
 helm says the cleverest word: What can the Creator 
 
404 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 look on with more pleasure than a happy creature ! — ■ 
 That is more agreeable to me than all prayer-books 
 with silver clasps. I proposed to thy sister-in-law 
 Rosa to have these words inscribed with golden let- 
 ters upon her new ball-room." 
 
 His intercourse with Philippina was always ani- 
 mating to Ephraim; into his serious thoughts as well 
 as into the craziest and most romantic matter that 
 he might bring forward, she always entered good- 
 naturedly, but soon let both drop again; her gay 
 view of life, as well as the manifold speeches of 
 politeness that he addressed to her, gave him occa- 
 sion for many little poems, and he was happy when 
 he had transformed her name Philippina into the 
 classic Phillis, which fitted better his kind of verse. 
 
 "Ah, I have actually nothing poetical in my 
 whole environment," said Philippina, on one occa- 
 sion, " unless it be my cat. Men and poets particu- 
 larly do a crying — I may say a caterwauling — wrong 
 by these creatures; they call them false and thieving, 
 that is their nature; a cat remains forever wild and 
 can never be tamed." 
 
 Ephraim went away smiling, and the next day he 
 brought Philippina the following poem: 
 
 "TO PHILLIS, ON HER CAT. 
 
 *'Thy pussy, Phillis, shall I sing? 
 Thalia, touch and tune my string ! 
 Wise is this cat, her form is fair, 
 And white as Phillis's skin her hair ; 
 She plays, caresses, kisses, strokes. 
 Sometimes demurely mischief cloaks. 
 O be not wroth ! is not this, too, 
 The way the pretty maidens do?" 
 
THE OLD BACHELOR, 405 
 
 With Violet, his sister Rosa and Philippina, he 
 spent alternately most of his leisure time; he gladly 
 avoided intercourse with men, and found almost his 
 only satisfaction here among the women who hu- 
 mored his excitability; the crown riglit of geniality, 
 which in earlier youth he had once enjoyed, he 
 sought again to appropriate to himself; he knew not 
 that they allowed him so much, not in deference to 
 his superiority, but in deference to his weakness. 
 Next to the women he loved best the society of 
 strangers; in such flying contact and mere meetings 
 of pleasure no one had either the right or the oppor- 
 tunity to intrude upon his inner retreat, and attack 
 there his favorite idiosyncrasies. Add to this that 
 towards his relatives he was easily tilled with mis- 
 trust and fear, he deliberately invited injuries, and 
 was vexed with the physician who offered to heal 
 them. The latter was alarmed when Ephraim re- 
 minded him once of an expression in the Talmud: 
 " If we Lnew what demons are continually lurking 
 around us in the air, we could never breathe freely 
 and should go out of our senses." 
 
 Nathan turned pale when the physician com- 
 municated to him his fears regarding Ephraim. 
 The latter seemed, however, merrier than ever; for 
 like a fowler, he took a special pleasure in catching 
 witticisms or other winged thoughts; with sadness, 
 however, he observed the failure of his memory; in 
 a twinkling, what he would retain had flown away 
 and he could not overtake it again; this effort to 
 hold fast every salient point made by others or him- 
 
406 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 self murdered his very sleep. When he lay in bed, 
 and as his eyes closed, a magic lid began to spread 
 itself gradually over the eye of consciousness, sud- 
 denly a startling thought would spring up within 
 him, he would fain hold it fast, without disturbing 
 his rest; he would impress it strongly on his mind, 
 80 as never to forget it, but into the sweet forgetf ul- 
 ness of sleep this thought had been spell-bound like 
 a rest-scaring spectre; he would wake up exhausted, 
 seek the idea, and find nothing but a commonplace, 
 a dry stalk, incapable of putting forth a blossom. 
 
 Another morning he woke, and it was to him as if 
 a golden, luminous thought had rayed across through 
 his dream-life; he tore all the memories which had 
 been lulled into sweet slumber from their pillows; 
 with clouded looks they blinked at him, but he 
 thrust them from him; he sought that luminous 
 thought, but it had vanished; feverish and dizzy he 
 rose, and all day long was disturbed and irritated. 
 As the loto-player sits up in the morning in her hag- 
 gard bed, rubs her eyes, sends her thoughts to and 
 fro, and groans and is almost distracted, she remem- 
 bers perfectly that she dreamed her lucky numbers, 
 but the ciphers ! the ciphers ! who shall find them ? 
 At last she finds this and that one, but she does not 
 quite believe that these are the ones she dreamed; 
 no, certainly not, and yet, yet, she puts them down 
 — so, too, did Ephraim cajole himself with some 
 thought or other that shot up through the feverish 
 sti-ain of his memory. 
 
 Ephraim often stood for hours before the looking- 
 
THE OLD BACHELOR. 407 
 
 glass and stared at his image. OncCj when Philip- 
 pina called him to account for this, he said: "Only 
 in this way, by contemplating no strange object 
 whatever, but only my own likeness, which coincides 
 with my vision of it, only so can I most easily draw 
 myself away from all worldly objects, and become 
 absorbed in the most abstract and general existence; 
 thou canst hardly imagine what a height of enjoy- 
 ment it is, no longer to be this person, Ephraim, but 
 only, in general, to be." 
 
 "Thou art right, I cannot imagine it, nor will I; 
 I am content to be in my skin, and wait calmly till I 
 shall one day as a spirit travel round through the 
 universe ; but I, too, am a friend of the looking-glass ; 
 I think it would be impossible for me to be a whole 
 day long in a room in which there was no mirror; 
 not from vanity, but I should feel the want of some- 
 thing; a room without a looking-glass is blind. The 
 first act of furnishing a room is to hang up a look- 
 ing-glass, thereby it becomes immediately habitable; 
 one thinks: There were, or are, human faces which 
 have peered at themselves therein. The Jewish 
 mourning custom has always been most touching to 
 me, of hanging in the house of mourning the look- 
 ing-glasses face to the wall; dost thou know why no 
 looking-glasses hang in churches ancl synagogues?" 
 
 Now at length Ephraim began to follow with 
 friendly acquiescence the fitful leaps of Philippina's 
 mind; she told him that every time she came home 
 from a party, she almost involuntarily looked a long 
 time into the glass without changing her dress; 
 
408 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 "for," said slie, "one must after all know once more 
 how one has appeared to the people; formerly, in my 
 slender days I could always say to myself I was surely 
 very stylish, but now I have already advanced to the 
 time of sham-fighting.* I always fancy the glass must 
 have threads in it, because little wrinkles show them- 
 selves in my face ; I cannot at all get it into my head 
 that one must grow old. When we pass from sum- 
 mer into autumn and then into winter, one will not 
 believe, it shall not be, that the bright, green days are 
 gone by, until one wakes up some morning, and the 
 hoar-frost is there and the leaves are yellow, and then 
 one says: ah, such a fresh autumn has its beauty, 
 too! And when it snows, the talk is: I am very 
 fond of winter, — and that, too, is true. One must 
 simply not fight against that which, once for all, is 
 not to be changed; then all is right and good." 
 
 Ephraim saw how unjust it would be to drag this 
 innocent creature into the hurly-burly of his inner 
 speculations; he therefore concealed his second in- 
 tention in that self -absorption into general being, for 
 it made even himself dizzy to have reached the 
 height of such a design. By the contemplation of 
 his external appearance he would gain a position out- 
 side of and above himself, and then, and only then, 
 did he deem that he could be free, and should be 
 able to lift himself above his temporary affliction, 
 when he had really and truly laid hold of his second 
 self as an outward object, so that he could look upon 
 himself as a stranger; therefore it was tliat he con- 
 
 * Literally, "fighting before a looking-glass." 
 
THE OLD BACHELOR. 409 
 
 templated for hours togetlier these features, these 
 eyes, this forehead, and placed himself over against 
 his other self which contemplated all this. Once he 
 got so far as even to laugh at this whole apparition 
 and to gnash his teeth at it; suddenly he felt him- 
 self grasped as from behind with demonic power, 
 and fell swooning on the floor. 
 
 Never could Ephraim look into the glass any more 
 without a shudder. 
 
 In this life, full of feverish convulsions and mighty 
 inner dismemberment, there was still, however, no 
 want of lucid points, at which Ephraim was conscious 
 of the harmonious consonance of all his powers of 
 life, spiritual as well as bodily; and this was the 
 clear and immediate joy of being, when, with his 
 arms folded across his breast, he held nothing but 
 himself, when he leaned on no other breast, on no 
 event, no idea and no wish. Ephraim rejoiced over 
 his joy, and at such moments exhorted himself in his 
 inner being still to enjoy life; this joy over the con- 
 sciousness of youthful sensibility was then the prop- 
 er enjoyment itself also, and the exaltation, for sel- 
 dom did he succeed in actualizing what he recog- 
 nized and wished in the spirit. 
 
 "It is my fortune and my misfortune," he once 
 said to Philippina, " not to groAV old. Generally age 
 has its coming-in of twiliglit, as childhood has its 
 twilight of departure; with me it is not so; I am, to 
 my great discomfort, still evermore under youthful 
 excitement. O, how sweet is the evening twilight 
 of life, which permits us no longer to apprehend 
 
410 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 things in definite outline, and thus enables us to go 
 to sleep, to live with a child's indifference. But I 
 will die young." 
 
 lu such a mood he wrote once the poem: 
 
 "MY BIRTHDAY. 
 
 "Those bright goddesses, the Hours, 
 Bring this morn my fiftieth birthday. 
 And who knows if e'er the Parcse 
 Let another greet my eyes. 
 Now then, let me live life swiftly, 
 Ere this light for me is quenched; 
 Ere old age has plowed deep furrows 
 In my brow, and snowy-white 
 Lilies o'er my crown has scattered. 
 Quickly let me scare away 
 Every grief that gnaws my heart-strings; 
 Anxious cares for coming time 
 To the winds a prey deliver, 
 And devote myself to joy.* 
 Bring me, boy, fresh-blooming roses ! " etc. 
 
 This Horatian bacchanal style with its out-worn 
 forms could never exert on the poet the true liberat- 
 ing power of poesy; never had Ephraim crowned 
 with roses his head, which a neatly braided queue 
 adorned, and if he drank a goblet of wine his senses 
 reeled; but this was the period in which the wine- 
 loving Gleira, "sober, of drunkenness sang." In the 
 essential features those expressions and exhortations 
 of Ephraira's might be true, only as he could not set 
 
 * "Then top and main-top crowd the sail, 
 Fling care o'er-side. 
 And large before enjoyment's gale 
 Let's talc the tide. "— ^wr^w. 
 
THE OLD BACHELOR. 411 
 
 them with all the Olympian appurtenances to poetry, 
 this latter remained forever separated from his life; 
 he could not represent and poetically transfigure the 
 immediate and original elements of his life; this 
 whole classicizing style of artificial poetry was daily 
 convicted by life of falsehood. 
 
 Often, therefore, did Ephraim sing his "Farewell 
 to the Muses, or Swan-Song : " 
 
 **My locks are wasting, 
 Hoar age creeps on; 
 My years are hasting. 
 Ten lustrums gone. 
 
 "The fates have bereft me, 
 Lone is my breast; 
 The Muses have left me, 
 And wit and jest. 
 
 ** Muses ! ye brought me 
 Sorrow and grief; 
 Parting has wrought me 
 Endless relief." 
 
 It has, however, been long since well known how 
 these bills of divorce from the Poet to the Muses 
 were meant. Unfaithfulness to such an expressed 
 purpose is so sweet and alluring, and can so easily 
 make itself as valid as fidelity itself, that one often 
 and willingly returns with a penitent smile. 
 
27.— HITHER AND THITHER. 
 
 THE comj^laisance and polite attention of Eph- 
 raim to strangers and those who came recom- 
 mended to him had become, in the Breslau congrega- 
 tion, almost proverbial; the monotony of his com- 
 monplace life was suddenly refreshed as with a 
 breath of wind by the arrival of a stranger; a 
 stranger's way of looking at things gave what was 
 familiar a new coloring; almost the only pleasure he 
 now had left him consisted in seeing others happy. 
 In the precisely-bounded circle of family life, his love 
 had not found satisfaction; he now extended its 
 limits as far as he could. 
 
 He had in this love for strangers another special 
 interest; not that he would fain make a display of 
 his knowledge of many cities and countries, but he 
 always listened attentively in any direction from 
 which he raiglit catch the voice of the age in its 
 most immediate expression; nothing was too small 
 for liim to count worthy his attention, and the 
 people loved his company and conversation and 
 I)raised his depth of mind, for never are men more 
 
HITHER AND THITHER. 413 
 
 grateful than when one gives them opportunity to 
 bring their views and experiences to the right man 
 and markjct, and thereby enables them to enjoy the 
 pleasure and triumph of playing the teacher. 
 
 Dull and confused as Ej^hraim's life was when he 
 entangled himself in his sophistries and self-tormeut- 
 ings, even in the same degree was it right and clear 
 w^hen he went out of himself, attached himself to 
 the people around him and to general interests, and 
 yet on the other hand he felt the feebleness and pov- 
 erty of it all. 
 
 " Dost thou know who is the poorest mortal ? " he 
 said once to Philippina. "He who cannot bear to 
 be alone, who cannot do without others, who is una- 
 ble to conquer in solitude a melancholy thinking, 
 and must seek diversion and dissipation." 
 
 " No, thou art too good, thou need'st association, 
 thou walkest much straighter and more surely when 
 thou goest arm-in-arm with some one." 
 
 " Call it not goodness, it is weakness and misfort- 
 une," said Ephraim, deprecatingly, "to expect and 
 require anything of the outward w^orld that shall 
 answ^er one's most individual yearning and longing; 
 that is the greatest misfortune and weakness at once. 
 I depend upon the barometer in the face of every 
 human being. I know w^hence that comes." 
 
 A new-comer engaged Ephraim's whole attention. 
 Full of good cheer and good things Maimon " dark- 
 ened" — nay brightened — "his door" one evening, 
 laid his knotty stick on the table and gave notice 
 that he was going to live in Breslau now, as, in Ber- 
 
414 rOET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 lin, things had uot gone according to his wishes; 
 Ephraim must give liini for the nonce a few grosch- 
 en, that he might wind np " his clock-works " again, 
 as he called his body, with some brandy and black 
 bread. 
 
 "How stands it now with your philosophy?" ask- 
 ed Ephraim, and Maimon responded: 
 
 " Where my iirst box on the ear left it." 
 
 "I don't understand you." 
 
 " Nor I either, but, as I said, it sticks just there, 
 at my first box on the ear. When, as a little young- 
 ster I first read the Chumesh [Bible] to my father, 
 there I read: 'In the beginning God created the 
 heavens and the earth ; '- I asked : Who created 
 God ? Then my father gave me a smart box on the 
 ear, and that is up to now the only answer that I 
 have got to my question; no philosophy has given 
 me any other." 
 
 Maimon was one of the most peculiar apparitions 
 that presented themselves in the first breaking forth 
 of Judaism from its chrysalis state. Sprung from 
 the closest cells of Polish orthodoxy, he kept him- 
 self in a state of restless roving among the sciences 
 as among the cities; his ingenious mind found itself 
 attracted by all systems of knowledge and held fast 
 by none; like a tamed savage, he would suddenly 
 put all pedagogic discipline to shame, and with Tal 
 mudistic dialectics cleared at a bound all the limits 
 of order in life and knowledge. With devoted dili- 
 gence Ephraim provided for him, and soon, through 
 his acquaintances, secured him the means for his 
 
HITHER AND THITHER. 415 
 
 support and tlie prosecution of liis studies. Ephraini 
 n;ul, liinisclf, now readied tliat stage wliicli he had 
 ere while so greatly despised and pitied; he regard- 
 ed his own life as a failure, and found no longer any 
 satisfaction in it, except in caring for others, whether 
 it were individuals or societies. 
 
 Through Mairaon Ephraim was also drawn to the 
 tavern-life, to which he had hitherto remained almost 
 a stranger. The German-Jews are distinguished 
 from the Polish very much by their sobriety; Mai- 
 mon followed his national bent in unrestrained geni- 
 ality. Here, too, he loved best to talk of his highest 
 interest, the enlightenment of his fellow-believers. 
 
 "The mathematics alone can plane down these 
 crooked heads," asserted Maimon; "hence I worked- 
 over the Latin mathematics of Wolf in the Rabbinic 
 language; but the edition is too costly, and the few 
 friends of the liberal cause have already given 
 enough." 
 
 Ephraim needed only a fresh breath to kindle the 
 glow within him to a blaze; henceforth his poetiz- 
 ing and all his pursuits were devoted to the great 
 work of enlightenment. He once spoke with Mai- 
 raon to the point, that the limitations of Pietism 
 were the highest sin against God and humanity, for 
 "every withdrawal of a pleasure of life and of an 
 enjoyment was the highest sin against the end of 
 creation and of existence." 
 
 "A Polish nobleman once came to Warsaw," 
 Maimon related, in his singularly desultory parabolic 
 way; "the nobleman having nothing better to do, 
 
416 POE T AND MER CHA NT. 
 
 sets himself to walking up and down the streets. 
 lie sees on all hands provisions exposed for sale, he 
 is hungry, thrusts his hands into his pockets, but 
 finds all bare and desolate. Now he begins to vent 
 abuse upon the capital: co to so mjasto nieniam saco 
 piro(/i Kupicz! (What sort of a city is this, in the 
 devil's name, where one has not even the wherewith 
 to buy a roll !) just the way the pious Rabbins do." 
 
 "I don't understand how you apply that to the 
 case in hand." 
 
 " The application lies close at hand," replied Mai- 
 mon. "When people have no coin of original 
 thought in their heads, they let fly abuse at Jeru- 
 salem and Babylon. — But I tell you, the whole his- 
 tory of Judaism and all that has come out of it, lies 
 in a single legend of the Talmud. Only two men of 
 tlie present day understand it, and I am one of 
 them." 
 
 "And what does the legend say?" 
 
 " The Jews, once on a time, after the return from 
 Babylon, caught the demon Jezer-Hara (sensual im- 
 pulse) and put one of his eyes out, and I say that 
 means since that they had no sense for beauty 
 and pleasure, for art generally. But the Talmud 
 goes on to relate: but they would fain have put out 
 the demon's other eye also, and then no hen would 
 any longer have laid a single egg. Will you be the 
 third that has comprehended this legend?" 
 
 Epliraim nodded affirmatively, and recognized 
 with much satisfaction how the end of his life was 
 after all coming round again toward its point of de- 
 
HTTHER A.VD T/riTI/ER. 417 
 
 parture. lie had worked his way out of his Jewish 
 limitations, then had staked all upon a personal, ay, 
 one might even say, egoistic happiness; when this 
 had been denied him he had attempted to associate 
 himself with the general movement of the world. 
 He found himself in the midst of a circle of spirits 
 full of youthful aspiration, who felt themselves 
 blessed by every new piece of knowledge which they 
 made their own, and exalted by every principle of 
 reason which they diffused among their Jewish fel- 
 low-believers. The impulse given by Mendelssohn 
 had created in the provincial towns a zeal for en- 
 lightenment and culture, which maintained itself in 
 lively activity long after they had in the chief cities 
 begun to fall away. The Hebrew magazine called 
 *^The Gatherer," which appeared frequently, had in 
 Breslau its most active collaborators; among whom 
 Joel Lowe and Bense, the author of a commentary 
 to Rabbi Saadia Gaon's "Faith and Knowledge," 
 stand especially prominent. A circle of young men 
 had been formed full of noble aspirations, who tried 
 their hand at Hebrew poems and treatises; and a 
 new paper of Mendelssohn was like a new revelation, 
 and was read and expounded in full meeting. 
 
 More and more did his past life seem to Ephraim 
 like a dream. Where was the distressing aberration, 
 where all the terrifying spectres? He had awaked 
 and was once more at home. 
 
 That reflective point of view after which he had 
 so often striven, where joy and sorrow melt indis- 
 linguishably into each other, he had now reached; 
 27 
 
418 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 he recognized that the future redeems all the prom- 
 issory notes of the past by fixing new limits; come 
 what might, he felt confident he could master it, for 
 he knew to-day how he should review to-day and 
 smile at it a year hence. 
 
 Maimon recounted with much joviality incidents 
 of his youthful days; how, according to the Polish 
 custom, he was married as early as his eleventh year, 
 and often got cudgelings from his mother-in-law; 
 the most delicious anecdotes were slipped in by the 
 way, and there was no end of laughter. One day, 
 however, Maimou was surprised by the arrival of 
 his wife and son. She had come to get a divorce 
 from her run-away husband. This reminded Eph- 
 raim of his old teacher. Rabbi Chananel, and he 
 heard now of his recent horrible death. Maimon had 
 known the Rabbi intimately, and now communicated 
 the following account of his falling away from him- 
 self and the world : Tossed to and fro between en- 
 lightened conviction and hypocritical sanctimoni- 
 ousness, Rabbi Chananel lapsed now into one ex- 
 treme and now into the other. With the thought 
 of fleeing from manifest death and corruption he 
 betook himself into the stir of fresh life; he would 
 become a convert to the dominant church, since in- 
 deed it w^ere all one whether he played here or 
 there his Jesuitical game with forms which one could 
 no longer honor with faith or conviction; his bosom 
 heaved; there gleamed from his eye a transfiguring 
 fire; yearningly he stretched out his arms to the 
 millions of liuman beinffs to whom he would hence- 
 
HITHER AND THITHER. 419 
 
 forth consecrate the might and force of his spirit; 
 he felt himself borne on by the stream of the world, 
 living and giving life, but soon he sank back again 
 into his withered existence; he saw himself the cap- 
 tive of those who venerated him as a saint, and he 
 became again a bitter zealot and persecutor of those 
 who deviated a hair's breadth from the forms of 
 the faith; he often fasted for weeks together and 
 mourned and prayed for the forgiveness of his sins, 
 and yet his orthodoxy was doubted by many in the 
 congregation, for he almost always during prayer in 
 the synagogue stood with closed lips, looking on 
 dreamily, or hastily closed his eyes tight and threw 
 his head this way and that as if he w^ould scare away 
 flies. The people said he was possessed with a 
 demon, and so in fact he was. The thought which 
 in a Voltairish wantonness he had once thrown out 
 in the smoking-club at Berlin was alive, and in his 
 very self. He knew no longer what was fantasy 
 and what reality. At first Avith a strange smile, but 
 then with wild rage, he refused all food and drink 
 that was offered him, and when at last nourishment 
 was forced upon him it was too late. His last cry 
 was the tearful entreaty : " Let me live ! Help me to 
 live ! " 
 
 Ephraim heard the account of Eabbi Chananers 
 end with profound sadness, and it became more and 
 more singular to him that all old life one day awakes 
 and sounds its last knell. 
 
 Maimon applied to the life and end of the Rabbi 
 the significance of a Jewish legend which forbids 
 
420 PORT AND MERC HA NT. 
 
 the creating of images in tlie fancy; for in the hour 
 of death the phantoms of the imagination come as 
 demons, hang upon the spirit which would fain 
 mount upward, pluck at it and cry: "Thou gavest 
 us a body; give us now a living soul." Whoso lives 
 out of unity with himself, thinks out one thing and 
 acts out another, to him the creatures of his imagina- 
 tion become demons, he falls their victim, they rob 
 him of his vital existence. 
 
 Ephraim gazed shudderingly into an undreamed- 
 of abyss. 
 
 Maimon had, according to the Jewish canonical 
 law, as a vagabond, been compelled to a divorce; 
 he determined, soon after it, to leave Breslau; on the 
 fast-day of the Destruction of Jerusalem he cele- 
 brated his departure with Ephraim at the inn of 
 " The Golden Wheel," and, as was his wont, he read 
 from his favorite book, which he always carried 
 about with him, Butler's " Hudibras," pithy passages, 
 and threw in all sorts of enlivening expositions as he 
 went along. This made a great noise through the 
 whole community. The Rabbin Isaac Joseph Fran- 
 kel, however, a just and tolerant man, would not take 
 any notice of it. The congregation was ruled, how- 
 ever, by the stout and ugly better-(?)half of the 
 Ruler llirsch Levi; zealotism and female ambition 
 spurred her on to the highest activity, and she 
 brought it about at last by all sorts of intrigues, 
 that Ephraim should be summoned before a Jewish 
 ecclesiastical court for violation of the fast-day. 
 
 Ephraim's friends advised him to pay no attention 
 
HITHER AND THITHER. 421 
 
 to such a summons, for the time had gone by in 
 which any one needed to fear tlie tliunders of liie- 
 rarchical excommunication; Frederick II, a foe to all 
 "priestly government," had intimidated even the 
 Jewish rabbins. But Ephraim rejoiced in this op- 
 portunity, for he would fain for once lay hold on 
 this skeleton of orthodoxy and smash it with the 
 whole weight of his mind. But here again things 
 had almost gpne with him as in the presence of the 
 judge at his arrest, for Ephraim had an insuperable 
 shrinking from standing forth boldly and independ- 
 ently in the sight of many, and if he attempted it, 
 he seldom accomplished his purpose; in his monastic 
 thinking and speculation he had already so many 
 stages of the discussion beneath him, he stood al- 
 ready on such a position that he was always inclined 
 to presuppose this in regard to others, and seldom 
 possessed the skill to lead those standing below him 
 up to his point. 
 
 With a blank stare he stood for a while before the 
 judges and heard their questions; then trembling 
 with rage, he cried: "Shut tight the doors and win- 
 dows, that no breath of free nature may find its way 
 in; spin away and whirl and twist spiritual bands 
 with which ye may throttle the free soul; a light- 
 ning-flash from heaven will consume the bands and 
 you. Go home and pray; set free your slaves, and 
 be yourselves free." 
 
 " Did you on the fast-day of the Destruction of Je- 
 rusalem eat meat ? " was the question propounded by 
 the ecclesiastical court. 
 
422 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Ephraira could not lielp langliing. " What have 
 I to do with the dead Jerusalem?" he replied; "day 
 by day you are destroying it, for Jerusalem is every- 
 where, as it is written : ' In every place where I let 
 my name be mentioned,* will I come to thee and 
 bless thee.'" (Ex., xx, 24.) 
 
 Ephraim had to leave the room. 
 
 "He is wanting here," said one of those who sat 
 in judgment, tapping with his forefingcK his ow^n wise 
 forehead; "if he were not crazy, how could he talk 
 in that way ? " 
 
 "Yes, he is crazy," said the second judge; "and I 
 w^as afraid of him; we have no need to punish him; 
 God has already punished him enough in taking 
 away his understanding." The Rabbin availed him- 
 self of this happy mood; Ephraim was pronounced 
 crazy, and acquitted; his whole previous life, how- 
 ever, w^as subjected to a severe censorship; the 
 whole course of his life had been carefully watched, 
 but it was brought in a distorted and disfigured state 
 before his eyes. 
 
 With a sorrowing heart Ephraim sat at home and 
 reflected how the fast-day for the Destruction of Je- 
 rusalem had now continued for eighteen centuries; 
 he sought solace and illumination; and he who had 
 called the enjoyment of the moment the only life, 
 who would fain dissect the words of existence back 
 into their original letters, contented himself at last 
 with a word, in assigning to the rhythm of universal 
 history millenia as counting syllables. 
 
 * In King James's version: "in which I record my name." 
 
HITHER AND THITHER. 423 
 
 Eijhraim, in crossing the Jews' place one day, saw 
 two boys who had fallen out and were beating each 
 other; he kept off the one who was in the wrong, 
 when the father of tlie boy ran up, scolded at Eph- 
 raira and told him to keep quiet; he had been de- 
 clared crazy by the Jewish ecclesiastical court, and 
 that was the only reason why he had not been put 
 under ban. Ephraim smiled and passed on; he 
 thought the matter over, how he could end the rest of 
 his days in peace, far from all Jewish concerns. As 
 he came upon the ring, several Christian boys, their 
 catechisms under their arms, who were just coming 
 from the catechising, threw snow-balls at the Jew 
 and laughed at his anger. If he had at that first 
 occurrence involuntarily thought of Moses in Egypt, 
 so would he now, like the prophet, gladly have fled 
 into the wilderness, that he might never more behold 
 a human face; he took refuge in the house of his 
 sister Violet. 
 
 It was toward the end of February, of the year 
 1781. As Ephraim entered his sister's door she came 
 to meet him with a pale face and said: 
 
 "Ah, God ! Thou art come to mourn with me, I 
 thank thee." 
 
 "What has happened, then?" 
 
 " Alas ! alas ! only a bit of paper, and a drop of 
 ink, that is the news of a death. Hast thou not read 
 it, then, in the newspaper? He died on the 12th." 
 
 " Who is it, then ? " 
 
 "Come, brother," answered Violet, and lier eye 
 beamed brightly, tears hung in the lashes; "come, 
 
424 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 brother, let me kiss thee, for thou hast, indeed, his 
 name. Dost thou remember how thou broughtest 
 him for the first time to our house ? I remember it 
 yet as distinctly as if it were to-day; it was spring, 
 a Monday afternoon, towards three o'clock, I sat at 
 my work-table and was busy with a summer dress — 
 the secretary — " 
 
 "So Lessing is dead?" asked Ephraim; Yiolet 
 nodded affirmatively. 
 
 "I knew he was dead," said she; "the very night 
 he died I saw him; I was walking in Spandau street, 
 now with a man, now alone; on and on I walked; all 
 at once I was on a barren heath — night everywhere 
 — Ignes fatui darting round — when suddenly I saw 
 his dead body; hoo ! he passes his cold hand over 
 ^ my face." Violet looked at her brother with a rigid 
 stare. 
 
 "Alas! thou art out of thy senses," he cried; 
 " touch me not, thou inf ectest me, away ! away ! " 
 He thrust his sister from him and ran away raving; it 
 seemed to him all the time as if the spirit of madness 
 were in chase at his heels, and would seize him as its 
 prey, and not till he reached Philippiua did he find 
 rest. 
 
 Meanwhile Violet lay at home sobbing on her 
 sofa; she drew her amulet from her bosom and kiss- 
 ed it; it was a letter of Lessing's, Avhich she had 
 managed to get possession of; to be sure it was di- 
 rected to a stranger, yet it was, indeed, from his 
 hand, that hand which now mouldered in the cold 
 ground. 
 
HITHER AND THITHER. 425 
 
 Here, in the far distance, mourning for the great 
 dead, was a soul, which, in the succession of poetic 
 creations, in the vicissitude of life's events and con- 
 flicts, he had certainly long since forgotten; but this 
 is the power of the spirit and its reward, that its in- 
 fluence is immeasurable and unfathomable. 
 
 Violet, also, soon found again her consolation; 
 Lessing was no more dead to her than formerly, when 
 he still lived; the next day she saw him again in the 
 circle of the poor children whom she taught to sew 
 and knit, and whose spirit she labored to ennoble; her 
 life flowed on again in its calm course. 
 
 Ephraim ventured, meanwhile, to undertake a 
 change respecting himself; he forsook the Jews and 
 betook himself to his brother, Nathan Frederick. 
 
 Now, at this late day in life, Ephraim made an ex- 
 perience with which he had never acquainted him- 
 self, or which he had always evaded: the happiness 
 which may be found even in the business of a mer- 
 chant. 
 
 "Since I learned what I could do, and by that 
 means was in a condition to do it," Nathan Frederick 
 often declared, " I have been the happiest and most 
 contented man in the world. The small business 
 of our blessed father was as full of anxiety as it was 
 laborious. I suffered long under it, and was tor- 
 mented with all sorts of misgivings. I was like a 
 bird that hops on the ground, and I cannot tell thee 
 how happy I was when I discovered that I could fly, 
 and that I can now do, and far and high; and I 
 make it a rule in life, as in business: one must make 
 
426 ■ POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 large discount from the idea of men which one forms 
 to himself; one must yearly reckon upon some bank- 
 ruptcies; then one gives himself no trouble about 
 them. I know thou boldest the poetic flight to be the 
 highest, but I tell thee, a business which flourishes 
 can make one happy, too; and it is all the same; and 
 so to see and feel how one grows — if thou hadst ever 
 rightly discerned this in thyself, thou hadst never 
 chosen to be a poet." 
 
 Ephraim suppressed every other emotion and re- 
 joiced to see his brother so filled and elated. 
 
 How sharply, toward the end of life, the contrasts 
 stood out! 
 
 It was spring. Ephraim lived with his brother 
 and his sister Rosa at the country-house ; he was 
 walking with Rosa and Philippina in the broad 
 shady avenue; he was remarking how the first grass 
 was now growing over Lessing's grave. " The great 
 heart is no more to be found," he concluded. 
 
 " I am sure thou hast a great heart too," said Phil- 
 ippina, as she took her cousin's stick out of his hand, 
 skipped nimbly round on the broad gravel walk, 
 drew the outlines of a heart on the ground, and 
 cried: "Dost thou see? That is a miniature pict- 
 ure of thy heart; with twenty times as many ladies 
 as can stand within this figure thou hast already 
 fallen in love, O, thou great heart!" 
 
 Ephraim was silent. As often as Rosa and Phil- 
 ippina were present at once, it was impossible for 
 him to bring the conversation into an even flow, the 
 cause of this he fouud in the dissimilarity of charac- 
 
HITHER AND THITHER. 427 
 
 ter between tlie two ladies, who, iievertlieless, were 
 ill such sisterly accord; he would not confess to liiiu- 
 eelf that his inclination and attentions vibrated to 
 and fro between the two. 
 
 A new incident breathed fresh energy again into 
 Ephraim's life: now in his advanced years he re- 
 ceived the poetic confirmation from Father Ramler. 
 He had sent two great quarto volumes full of epi- 
 grams to the good j^i'ofessor, who read them with 
 diligent care, made a selection from them, filed and 
 polished it, and exhibited it in the "German Mu- 
 seum." 
 
 Not only Ejihraim alone, but a great portion of 
 the creative minds of the time, found their first sat- 
 isfaction and ground of self-confidence in the recog- 
 nition of the Berlin Horace. Inasmuch as, both in 
 matter and form, they followed the rules of a poetical 
 catechism drawn from the free creations of the Greek 
 and Latin classics, hence the inner recognition was 
 wanting, the repose of the inner consciousness, and 
 one needed encouragement from without. 
 
 The inner self-reliance which Ephraim had now 
 gained was answered by the outer appreciation and 
 respect which were accorded to him in the larger 
 circles of society; they pardoned in the poet what 
 they had blamed in the merchant; they indulged his 
 odd nature because they recognized its foundation, 
 and he who gains fame is suddenly raised far above 
 many trivialities of every-day life. Garve, with 
 many other litterateurs and oflicials who frequented 
 Nathan's house, showed Ephraim a friendly attention. 
 
428 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 The latter was now more friendly toward everybody, 
 for he was proud of liiuiself. Those people whom 
 he had encountered to his joy or his sorrow, whose 
 looks he had anxiously watched and for whose 
 words he had anxiously listened, when he was made 
 glad by every little recognition, — they were now his 
 world no longer. What were these two or three per- 
 sons ? His name and his thoughts went now through 
 the wide world by thousands and thousands. He 
 once expressed his whole state of mind and the char- 
 acteristic change of his way of thinking, when he 
 said to Fiilleborn and Garve: 
 
 " Well, there is something of me in the world now 
 of which I can be modest." 
 
 Nathan was especially gratified that Ephraim 
 seemed now to have come out from his inward 
 moping, and he once deeply moved his brother's 
 heart by sa3dng: 
 
 "The reason why Judaism is so heavy a burden 
 is that it keeps one in a constant antagonism to the 
 world. Thou wilt always keep thy peculiar charac- 
 ter, but this will not do. If a prince passes by, and 
 three hundred men doff their hats, I am not going 
 to be the fool to be the only one covered. I live 
 with the world as it is, and not with that world 
 which it possibly might be. To be angry Avith the 
 world and growl at it — whom does one hurt by that? 
 Himself, himself alone; the rest are not a bit the 
 wiser for it that one wanders round all day long in 
 disgust. From very selfishness I am on peaceable 
 and friendly terms with every one, and so he must 
 
HITHER AND THITHER. 429 
 
 be the same with me, and I have pleasure instead of 
 torment." 
 
 Ephraim sighed heavily and nodded assent. Na- 
 than went on triumphantly: 
 
 " Last Sunday our parson at the Elizabeth preach- 
 ed at large and at length on the text: * If thine eye 
 offend thee, pluck it out.' I tell thee, they don't un- 
 derstand the New Testament rightly; a Jew is more 
 readily at home there. What does the saying mean 
 except simply: If anything comes in thy way in the 
 world which annoys thee, if thou seest anything that 
 vexes thee, ask thyself first whether the fault is not 
 in thee; have the courage to attack thyself first; tear 
 out thine own irritable eye; if thou canst not do 
 that, well then, be content with the world! Is that 
 the alphabet of common sense ? " 
 
 With an ambiguous smile, Ephraim grasped his 
 brother's hand. 
 
 He now moved freely and unconstrainedly in 
 "Christian society," but neither in word nor in 
 thought could he forget this last designation; he had 
 lived too long outside of this circle; the roots of his 
 thinking struck into another region ; they w^ere too 
 firm and gnarly to be capable of transplanting into 
 new soil; he never forgot that he was a Jew. Often 
 did he blame himself for his narrowness, for not feel- 
 ing himself at home here, but he could not overcome 
 the consciousness that he was here partaking only 
 the allowance-bread of society, that he was not per- 
 mitted to help himself, but must always wait for 
 what was handed him. 
 
430 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 To him who is not accustomed to society, many a 
 usage is strange and startling, which to others ap- 
 pears natural and unquestionable. Ephraim was 
 once staring at a stately young officer, when Philip- 
 pina came up to him and asked him what he was 
 thinking of. lie drew her aside and said to her in a 
 subdued tone: 
 
 "See that young officer there; how pleasantly 
 he smiles; perhaps he is just saying some polite 
 thing, and rests his whole body the while on his 
 sword. How is it possible that one should carry a 
 deadly weapon with him into gay society? Is it 
 then an ornament to man to be always ready and 
 have his instrument at hand to kill his fellow-man? 
 Ought he not to make people forget that, here at 
 least ? Is cutting peoples throats the way to honor ? 
 Mendelssohn once said: 'Ah, if these officers knew 
 what is stirring in my brain, they would draw their 
 swords and split my skull open. Pray, don't say a 
 word about it.' " 
 
 Philippina sought to pacify him, but Ephraim could 
 never pass by an officer wdthout shrinking into him- 
 self; and if he spoke with an armed man, his glance 
 was uneasy and always went back and fixed itself 
 upon the weapon. 
 
 Not only as a Jew, far more as a man, Ephraim 
 felt himself a stranger in society. Soon was he to 
 learn that society also had not forgotten that he was 
 a Jew. On one occasion a larger party than usual 
 had just sat down to supper, when Ephraim found 
 under his serviette a paper on which was written the 
 stanza: 
 
HITHER AND THITHER. 43 1 
 
 ** Best and dearest Kuh ! 
 Tell us why, pray do ! 
 Thou dost with the Father stay; 
 Wilt not greet the Son some day ? " 
 
 Ephraim read the verse out loud; a painful silence 
 followed; Ephraim's eyes rolled furiously; he asked 
 for the poetaster; but presently smiled again and 
 answered, "that a good son must never disparage his 
 father's servants." Whereupon he swallowed the pa- 
 per on which the verse was written, expressed his 
 thanks for the good supper, and departed. 
 
 For a long time after this he avoided all society; 
 and as often as a stranger appeared in the circle of 
 his relatives, he suddenly slipped out, and was no 
 more to be seen; in silence and solitude he would 
 worry away his days and learn to despise men. 
 For this latter course, however, he had neither 
 strength nor self-complacency enough; he was glad 
 therefore to yield to the urgent entreaties of his sis- 
 ter-in-law and gradually gave himself up to the 
 pleasures of society. 
 
 With silent pleasure he often contemplated the be- 
 havior of Rosa. In her nature, as in her whole 
 environment, all must be ever orderly, nay, sym- 
 metrical; at table, even while she listened attentively 
 or spoke herself as one interested, she was always 
 able to restore glasses and decanters to a symmet- 
 rical position. At first Ephraim could not see any- 
 thing in all that but a certain pedantry, an absence 
 of real sympathy and a housekeeper's petty regard 
 to trifles; but soon he began to recognize in it the 
 
 ^ 
 
432 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 kindly manifestation of an inward symmetry, whose 
 outward exactness had, as well upon the somewhat 
 impetuous Nathan as upon himself, a most beneficial 
 influence. 
 
 There was a great party one evening at Nathan's 
 house; there was playing and dancing and singing; 
 Ephraim stood leaning against a side-board, his arms 
 folded on his breast; he kept his eyes shut for a long 
 time, and then stared again out upon the gay 
 throng. 
 
 " What are you thinking of again ? " asked Rosa, 
 approaching him, and contrary to her custom taking 
 his hand familiarly. 
 
 " When I look upon the ways of men," said Eph- 
 raim, " how they smile upon each other, ogle each 
 other, while, after all, there is nothing but falsehood, 
 malice and fanaticism behind it all, I could willing- 
 ly flee away into solitude, lest I should commit a 
 murder. Then I close my eyes, and imagine sudden^ 
 ly that all the people around me were dead; that the 
 fiery, rolling eyes were nerveless; these lips sealed; 
 these glowing-red cheeks pale and cold; these supple 
 limbs rendered powerless by inward decay; and after 
 a while nothing were left but a bald skull with 
 empty eye-sockets, a fleshless skeleton encoflined 
 within four boards; instead of the music, nothing 
 but the snapping tick of the gnawing death-worm; 
 hoo! that is horrible! I open my eyes and see all 
 the fresh, bounding life; and I could fold every hu- 
 man being to my heart, because he lives; I love him 
 because he lives; ah! it is so beautiful to live! ah! 
 it migJu he so beautiful I " 
 
HITHER AND THITHER. 433 
 
 "You torment yourself too horribly with these 
 night-thoughts," answered Rosa with trembling 
 voice; but Ephraim went on: 
 
 " I have yet one favor to ask of you, dear sister, 
 will you promise me unconditionally to grant it?" 
 
 "If it is not against my conscience and out of my 
 pow:^er." 
 
 " It is neither. You promise me that if I should 
 be crazy and have no longer the strength or the con- 
 trol of my will to destroy myself, that you will then 
 give me poison? Now, your hand?" 
 
 "Ah! you are a tormenting-spirit and ought to 
 have known long since that I have no mind for such 
 jests," said Rosa, and disappeared among the com- 
 pany. 
 
 Again Ephraim was at a larger party. The chief 
 topic of conversation still continued to be the death 
 of Frederick the Great, although his successor Fred- 
 erick William IT. had already for four weeks admin- 
 istered the government, certainly the most indubita- 
 ble proof of the greatness of the late king. 
 
 "This year, 1780, has taken another great victim, 
 I mean Moses Mendelssohn," said Ephraim; and 
 quoted in that connection the sentence set up over 
 Maimonides and transferred to Mendelssohn : From 
 Moses in Egypt to this Moses, none has arisen like 
 Moses. All were silent and looked round them with 
 astonishment; Ephraim miglit well feel how out of 
 place this observation was in a circle which ^vaa 
 ruled by wholly different sympathies; by the side of 
 a hero of the world's history he had set up another 
 28 
 
434 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 significant indeed, but infinitely subordinate man. 
 After a pause he therefore added: "One pillar of 
 the age after another sinks into the grave, the old 
 time dies and a new comes; what will it bring?" 
 
 No one answered; an officer drew a pamphlet out 
 of his pocket; all clustered around him; the officer 
 read Schubert's hymn; "The Death of Frederick," 
 which may perhaps be called the greatest master- 
 piece of German hymnology. 
 
 Ileverential silence reigned in the assembly when 
 the reading of the poem came to an end; gradually 
 the most enthusiastic praise of the incarcerated poet 
 and of Frederick the Only poured forth from all lips. 
 In the midst of this inspiration Ephraim stood smil- 
 ing, and intimated his differing sentiments occasion- 
 ally by a shake of the head. 
 
 " I suspect you are of a different opinion," said the 
 officer, stepping up to Ephraim in company with a 
 comrade. 
 
 " By all means." 
 
 Speedily had the company gathered around him. 
 " Let us hear your view," they insisted on all sides. 
 
 "My view is, that this old Fritz the Only is 
 chargeable with the misery of a whole great period. 
 He was a good king? For all me; but then they 
 will go on believing for a generation that they can 
 be made happy by kings, the poetic eagle-parrots 
 and phiIoso})hic greyhounds will 'fetch' the stars 
 and wag their tails systematically: 'Hold your 
 jaw!' 'Stupid stuff!' 'No reasoning!' Is not 
 the Austrian uniform handsomer than the Prussian ? 
 
HITHER AXD THITHER. 435 
 
 Wliy will you slioot each other dejirl about that ? 1 
 wisli — I wish — I had a pair of leather breeches. 
 Give me thy cap, cuckoo, stick thy calves into thy 
 waistcoat pocket, the cat bites, miaow ! cock-a-doo- 
 dle-doo ! " 
 
 " I've a good mind to throw that fellow out of the 
 window," said the officer to liis comrade. 
 
 "Dost thou not notice anything, then? he is simply 
 crazy," said the other. 
 
 "He's crazy," was whispered and hissed from 
 mouth to mouth through the whole company; Eph- 
 raim seemed to hear it; with glazed eyes he stared 
 at vacancy; all gave way before him; he stoi)ped 
 before a large looking-glass, from which his whole 
 form stared out at him. 
 
 " Yes, there thou art, my double ! " he cried, foam- 
 ing at the mouth as he clenched his fist, " churl ! 
 thou art crazy; die, thou mad dog; so! so!" he 
 dashed his fists and feet against the glass, till the 
 pieces came rattling down; all were horror-struck; 
 he leaped round furiously, threw everything topsy- 
 turvy, yelled and raved at the crazy Ephraim. 
 
 With great difficulty he was bound and carried 
 home. 
 
28.— HE IS MAD. 
 
 HE who scourged so keenly the frailties and fol- 
 lies of men, Swift, became toward the end of 
 his days childish, and was exhibited by his domes- 
 tics for money; he who named and classified the 
 countless plants on the earth's surface, Linmeus, had, 
 in his last days, forgotten his own name; he who 
 mastered and bridled the reason with his mighty 
 will, who imveiled and described its limits and laws, 
 Kant, became, in his last days, dull and feeble: — we 
 stand here before those awful depths of the human 
 intellect, whose bottom no explorer's plummet has 
 ever yet sounded. 
 
 In a dark, secluded chamber of the house of Na- 
 than sat Ephraim in a strait- jacket, raging and rav- 
 ing against his murderer, till the foam stood on his 
 lips; ever and again he gathered himself up afresh 
 and struck out on all sides, cried and howled. At 
 last he sank back exliausted with the words: " Good- 
 night ! Ephraim is dead, cock-a-doodle-doo ! " 
 
 In characteristic ways did the three females now 
 manifest themselves in their relation to Ephraim. 
 
HE rs MAD. 437 
 
 Violet was the first to visit liim, and yet she stood 
 the most in fear of him; "but," she said to her- 
 self, " one must not entertain fear or disgust at any 
 malady. Who shall nurse him, if I keep aloof?" 
 With trembling heart but with firm tread she went 
 into her brother's dark cell; she sat down silently 
 by the attendant; Ephr^im lay on the bed, playing 
 with his fingers and muttering to himself: "There, 
 there, mouse-trap, thou hast caught Ephraim, but 
 thou hast not got him; dost thou see, Ephraim, clever 
 youth, in every village is a mouse-trap, with a tall 
 tower, and a black cat inside; swallows on the win- 
 dow-sill; peep in; down, thou rabbinical goat's- 
 beard, eat thy dry hay; ow ! ow ! let Ephraim go, 
 you tear his heart out. Heretic ! heretic ! heretic ! 
 die as a dog dieth ! " 
 
 With suppressed breath Violet approached her 
 brother; he shrieked out, struck at her, cursed her; 
 then he asked her: "Was the shearing good? is the 
 wool already sorted? Ephraim would be glad to deal 
 in wool, that is all clear mortling; come, Schnauzerle, 
 thou blackamoor, must get thyself washed white by 
 a priest; give Ephraim back his golden box; only 
 one pinch, only one, faugh! that is mere mouse-dung. 
 Ephraim has devoured Jerusalem; if he could only 
 bring it up again out of his body." He sank back- 
 it was as if his glassy look implored pity; Violet 
 ventured with her transparently delicate hand to 
 stroke the hair from his forehead; and Ephraim said 
 softly; " Blow, blow, ah! that does me good; but don't 
 burn thyself, thou good child!" 
 
438 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Now for the first time could Violet weep, as she 
 heard her brother speak so tenderly; she held her 
 hand on his hot forehead. " Dost thou not know me 
 then, dear Ephraim? " she asked with trembling voice; 
 Ephraim made no answer; he chewed, motionless, at 
 his coat sleeve; but then suddenly he started up 
 again and raved against the two officers, who would 
 foully murder him; he struck with all his might at 
 Violet and ground his teeth at her. The attendant, a 
 sturdy wool-packer, drew Violet away, but she still 
 stood before the door and listened; she wept again, 
 for she seemed to hear her brother maltreated by the 
 rough fellow; she went to Nathan and begged for a 
 more gentle treatment; Nathan went to Ephraim. 
 
 " St! Hush! " cried the latter to him as he entered: 
 " hearest thou how they work? they are digging the 
 grave; they will murder Ephraim." 
 
 " The noise comes from the dyers who live oppo- 
 site." 
 
 "Dyers? whoo! whoo! they require Ephraim's 
 blood, to stain altar-cloths with it; ungag Ephraim! 
 If father comes, he will give you a beating. 
 "There wa« one time a pious man 
 Who babbled about 'All's Well ! ' 
 
 " Ephraim is frozen ; when father comes he'll bring a 
 little nothing in a little stocking, because thou hast 
 not been good; who is biting Ephraim on the tongue? 
 There you have dyer's blood." — lie spat out blood; 
 Nathan had him carried into another chamber. 
 
 Rosa, after some days, transgressed the strict pro- 
 hibition of her husband; she stole softly after the 
 
HE IS MAD. 439 
 
 doctor into Ephraim's chamber, and glided np almost 
 inaudibly to the patient. AVhen Ephraim discovered 
 the slender form in the white dress, he raised him- 
 self up as well as he could; his features suddenly as- 
 sumed a fresh eagerness; his breath trembled; he 
 folded his hands softly across his breast; his lips 
 moved as if for prayer. 
 
 "How are you, dear Ephraim?" asked Rosa. 
 Ephraim grasped her hand; a tear came into his 
 wild, wandering eye; sobbing, he whispered: " Sweet 
 Matilda, art thou here? Ah! they have bound poor 
 Ephraim; thou art going to take him with thee, is it 
 not so ? Whoo! thou art wet! " Tears ran down his 
 cheeks; then he closed his eyes and fell asleep; 
 llosa soon withdrew her hand. 
 
 " You are his guardian angel," said the physician, 
 as he retired with her; "these tears which he shed 
 give evidence that a great commotion of the soul 
 has taken place in him; they may be the happy 
 crisis; I hope at least from this time lucid intervals. 
 You may visit him now and then, not often, and talk 
 very little. You must also always be dressed in 
 white when you visit him." 
 
 " It is singular," said Rosa, " that he calls me now 
 by my second baptismal name, Matilda." 
 
 " In maladies of this kind all is singular or noth- 
 ing," replied the doctor. Rosa pondered, however, 
 over the " singular appellation." 
 
 The lucid intervals in Ephraim's mental life grew, 
 in fact, more and more marked, and now at length 
 Philippiua ventured to visit her cousin " Iron-eater." 
 
i44J0 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 Unwonted anxiety and discomfort had tormented 
 Philippina from the hour when she heard of her 
 cousin's insanity; she absohitely refused to visit him, 
 and said once: "I don't love to see spectres, and a 
 crazy man is the ghost of himself." Her thoughts, 
 however, she could not prevent from having the 
 ghost of Ephraim appear in them, where it would 
 not be conjured down. Often she would stop sud- 
 denly in the middle of her chamber and tie knots in 
 her apron-string, as she looked down musingly; she 
 had seen this horrible distraction of Ephraim's com- 
 ing on; she asked herself a hundred times whether 
 she might not have counteracted it; a dreadful me- 
 teor had fallen at her feet; she could no longer gaily 
 skip over it; for hours together she lay on her sofa, 
 hid her face in the cushions, and then looked round 
 again with confused and unsteady glance at the fa- 
 miliar objects about her. She determined at last to 
 be rid of the tormenting imaginations. Reality is 
 certainly, even in this case, less horrible than the cre- 
 ations of fantasy, she said to herself consolingly, and 
 formed a firm resolve. Without giving an audible 
 hint of her struggle, she had fought out the whole 
 battle within herself, and now with her old cheer- 
 fulness looked the new relation in the face; the 
 world was suffered to know nothing of the horrible 
 upheaving within her, and she herself had soon for- 
 gotten it. 
 
 " One must just take every man for what he is," 
 she said to herself; "the only difference is that with 
 others the lucid intervals last longer." She had her 
 
HE IS MAD. 441 
 
 lute taken into Epliraim's chamber, and^oon followed 
 herself. Ephraim lay on the bed; he had closed his 
 eyes, was playing with the qnilt and murmuring to 
 himself broken sentences; ''■Bon giurno^ Signor Tre- 
 virano — va banquet — Rabbi Chananel, to-morrow is 
 church-festival — come, fair countess, we'll have one 
 more dance — ha, ha, ha! — thou hast a bat on thy 
 head, fy! fy! " He turned round and greeted Philip- 
 pina. She could not stir from her seat for agitation 
 and alarm; with trembling hand she made a pass 
 over her lute; the patient gave a nod of satisfaction, 
 and Philippina sang to him one of her favorite songs, 
 to which he hummed a low accompaniment; Philip- 
 pina drew nearer to him. 
 
 " Are the two lieutenants still standing at the door 
 down below there, watching to kill Ephraim ? " he 
 asked, mysteriously; " they know what I think; they 
 mean to split my head open." 
 
 " An hour ago they stood there, but the command- 
 ant, I hear, has ordered them to go upon guard- 
 duty," replied Philippina, boldly; she gave to all 
 questions the desired answer, without contradicting. 
 
 Ephraim's condition improved but very slowly; 
 for though a dam bursts suddenly and abruptly, it is 
 only by little and little and with hard labor that it is 
 built up again, and the overflowing flood led back 
 into its wonted channel. Ephraim's kinsfolk, how-, 
 ever, soon accustomed themselves to this situation; 
 for no state of things is so sad and oppressive that 
 one does not, when it has continued a considerable 
 while, sometimes forget it. They went about their 
 
442 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 usual occupations, nay, even their usual enjoyments: 
 they even laughed, half sadly, at the fantastically 
 jumbled phrases of the patient; only on Violet's 
 face one noticed not even the faintest smile, even 
 when her brother did and said the most absurd and 
 ridiculous things. 
 
 There was once a family gathering at Nathan's. 
 " Now for the first time one becomes really acquaint- 
 ed with Ephraim," remarked Nathan Frederick; "he 
 hates all men, and speaks it out freely; children and 
 fools tell the truth." 
 
 "That is not true," replied Philippina; "they 
 merely tell their truth; if a fool or a child says to 
 me: ' Thou art a frog,' am I therefore a frog ? No; 
 but he has spoken his truth; most other men say all 
 the year round things which they have either learned 
 from books or heard from others, and these are pre- 
 cisely the things on which they insist the most stiff- 
 neckedly. My old music teacher plumed himself the 
 most upon his skill in drawing and his mathematical 
 accomplishments, precisely because he had made him- 
 self master of all that with great labor; whereas 
 music was originally his own. With so-called crazy 
 people the original inner being is turned immediate- 
 ly outward; they babble everything that is in their 
 thoughts, without having first filtered it; I have oft- 
 en thought if, all of a sudden, all the thoughts, 
 without distinction, which during the day pass 
 through a man's head, if all of them suddenly were 
 put into words, or were uttered without an act of 
 the will, every one would run away from himself 
 
shocked at licnring what crazy stuff wa^ludgyQ in 
 his brain. Our whole reason lies in the little bit of 
 self-mastery." 
 
 No one followed the burlesque jumps of Philip- 
 pina, and she went on with her discourse: " Now I 
 have come to the point of showing why I am no 
 longer afraid of the sight of a crazy person. The 
 first time I was ever in a windmill I was seized with 
 an inexpressible confusion and alarm; the whole 
 building trembled; there were the wheels moving, 
 beams turning round; the great millstone-maw was 
 whirling about; there was such a groaning and clat- 
 tering; all was so uncanny, so spectral, I thought I 
 must needs fall in myself, till the miller explained to 
 me how one thing worked into another. And so, 
 too, I have found it in regard to the insanity of our 
 cousin Ephraim; I have even sought to get behind 
 the uncanny snarl, and our doctor, like the miller, 
 has explained all to me, and now I am no more 
 frightened and look on with perfect composure." 
 
 All were silent; Rosa bent over to her sister Vio- 
 let and asked her softly, handing her a parcel of 
 worsted, with what color she should shade the dark 
 green in her embroidery; Nathan walked up and 
 down the chamber, shaking his head. "For all the 
 unhappiness of our Ephraim," he said at last, half in 
 soliloquy, "Judaism alone is, after all, to blame; it is 
 of itself a madness to remain in a fortress which the 
 advancing army leaves unconcernedly behind it, be- 
 cause it must at last starve or surrender. As well 
 the insight of the Bible prophets, as the world's 
 
444 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 history, impels one to our faith; here alone is peace 
 and blessedness." 
 
 Philippina had already opened her mouth to re- 
 mark to Nathan how great is the force of habit 
 he had gone over without faith, and now he had al 
 ready advanced even to the stage of proselytism. 
 She remembered, however, in good season how un- 
 edifying was this everlasting clutching at great 
 questions; she only smiled and played with her 
 locks. Nathan appeared to have observed this dis- 
 satisfaction of Philippina's; he now informed her 
 that according to her advice he had gone to the 
 Commandant; that he, an amiable man, had will- 
 ingly fallen in with the j^roposal and might be ex- 
 pected at any moment. The Commandant came; 
 he informed Ephraim that he had sent the two 
 officers who had had design on his life under arrest 
 to the fortification. Ephraim smiled and remarked 
 with great composure that this fear of his persecu- 
 tors was only a part of his disorder; that the most 
 painful part of it was that no thought would any 
 longer keep any foothold with him, and he wonder- 
 fully supplemented the explanation of Philippina by 
 complaining that he could no longer think without 
 uttering his thoughts in words, since otherwise the 
 thoughts shot through each other in a perfect whirl, 
 and how again he was frightened at the words which 
 he heard from himself and yet could not silence. 
 
 Ephraim had scratches on his face, which he ex- 
 plained by saying that he had done it himself. In 
 the dead of night he was almost suffocated, he said, 
 
HE IS WAD. ... , 
 
 by the swarm of raving, miirSrous"lTiaQg1its,'"an< 
 he had an intense longing for bodily pain, tlial it 
 might deliver him from them. During the last 
 night it had seemed to him as if his body were dead, 
 insensible; then he had violently dug into his face 
 with his nails and had found relief when he felt the 
 trickling of blood and a bodily pain. 
 
 Now, at length, he was induced to obey the direc- 
 tions of the physician, and to take, accompanied by 
 his watcher, a walk in the open air. In the street he 
 greeted, right and left, all whom he met, whether he 
 knew them or not, and gave them a friendly smile; 
 the people would stop for a few seconds, and look 
 after him with wonder, and then each one would go 
 on his way again. 
 
 A quiet melancholy and shyness of men seemed to 
 take possession of Ephraim. For hours together he 
 would sit with his chin resting on his hand, mutter- 
 ing to himself unintelligible words; then he would 
 rave and rage again at all present; people gradually 
 became accustomed to this, and would then leave 
 him alone. Here in his solitude, at such times, the 
 inner cloud would often suddenly lift and the sky 
 light up, and he would become conscious of his con- 
 dition, and once, after a frightful out-break of 
 frenzy he wrote the following "Thoughts occasion- 
 ed by certain calamities:" 
 
 " Upon his back the world stout Atlas bore. 
 I bear a world of grief, full sad and sore ; 
 Yet thee great Jove, for this I thank : 
 Beneath my load I never sank." 
 
446 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 His mind was able to handle again the old ready- 
 made forms of the usual poetic style and metre; he 
 had, through word and sign, detached his condition 
 from himself and set it before him as an object of 
 recognition, and here for the first time he found 
 again the notion and the word, " I ". With the rec- 
 ognition of himself came back to him also the cliang- 
 ing forms of the outer world, and threw their light 
 reflection upon the mirror of his consciousness, but 
 he turned away from them. More and more, in the 
 spirit of a recluse, did he bury himself in the se- 
 cluded world of his past history; coldly and indiffer- 
 ently he held the life around him as not worth a 
 glance; he was calm and quiet; death had but a 
 scanty remnant of life to glean from him. 
 
 In this seclusion Ephraim also failed to observe 
 that his sister Violet had not visited him for several 
 weeks; Philippina, too, came seldom, and for the 
 most part with a troubled countenance; she came 
 from Violet's sick-bed. So long as Ephraim's in- 
 sanity had lasted, Violet had lived in a feverish ex- 
 citement; day and night she went through, in sym- 
 pathy, with all the sufferings of her brother's soul. 
 Throusrh all this ran the consciousness of her own 
 miscarried life. Often she rose at night from her 
 bed, stretched out her hands to heaven and prayed 
 for death; no one ansAvered her voice; then she woke 
 her maid, and chatted with her about one thing and 
 another. Now, when all seemed to have come back 
 into the old track, Violet lay prostrate with a 
 severe sickness, a fiery fever consumed her wasted 
 life; Philippina hardly ever left her sick-bed. 
 
HE IS MAD. 447 
 
 One noonday black rain clouds hung in heaven, 
 when Ephraim unexpectedly desired an excursion into 
 the open air; Nathan accompanied him. Unluckily 
 they passed along before the Jewisli burial-ground. 
 "I will see the graves of our parents," said Ephraim, 
 stopping; Nathan tried to hold him back, but Ephraim 
 tore himself away, climbed up the wall, and jumped 
 down; Nathan hurried after him. His hands clasped 
 above his head, Ephraim flung himself face down- 
 ward on the grave of his father; long he lay there, 
 without stirring; Nathan looked on thou.vhtfully; at 
 last he endeavored to rouse his brother, but the latter 
 gently waved him ofi: with his hand, and it was with 
 difficulty that he could be drawn away from the 
 grave. When he was again on his feet, he once more 
 looked round; an open grave stood not far from that 
 of his father. "Is that for me?" asked Ephraim; 
 and he leaped down and laid himself on the damp 
 ground. "Ho! ho! it is too short, dear brother; cut 
 off my head, then I shall just go in." Nathan stood 
 there in despair; he cried for help; just then the gate 
 opened, and six men brought in a bier; the whole 
 congregation followed; Ephraim had raised himself 
 up. " Whom are ye bringing here to my parents? " he 
 cried out from the mouth of the grave to the aj)- 
 proaching train; all shrank back with terror; the men 
 placed the bier on the ground. 
 
 "Tliy sister Violet!" then cried all, as with one 
 mouth. 
 
 Ephraim was lifted up out of the grave; he fell 
 weeping on his brother's neck; then he threw him- 
 
44 8 POE T A ND MERC HA NT. 
 
 self down and tore the cover from the bier and kiss- 
 ed the dead lips of his sister, begged a thousand times 
 her forgiveness, wept and cried and rolled on the 
 ground. 
 
 Nathan stood aside petrified with horror; no one 
 said a word to him ; he might well have felt what it 
 means in life as in death to be severed from one's 
 kindred. 
 
 Violet was buried; Ephraim had thrown in the first 
 clod of earth npon her cofiin ; he was led home by two 
 men. A whole day and night he sat upon the floor ; his 
 lips never once oj^ened either to take food or to speak 
 a word. 
 
29.— RELEASE. 
 
 THE death of Violet, and an inner exhaustion 
 which scarcely ever left him again, gave to re- 
 turning life in Ephraim a peculiar character. By 
 the careful nursing of his health he had now to 
 bring his life into the tranquil and natural condition, 
 and this reminder became to him by degrees a 
 pleasure. 
 
 In an arm-chair under the broad shade of the 
 weeping-willows in Nathan's garden sat Ephraim 
 all day long, silently brooding over his own thouglits. 
 From his wild and wayward rovings through the 
 length and breadth of human life he had come back 
 home to the steadfast continent, and a tree was his 
 companion. From his survey of the spiritual pro- 
 ducts of all ages and countries, one single book at 
 last still lingered in his hand, on which the child's 
 eye had long ago rested, whose words his boyish lips 
 had long ago uttered; it was — the Psalms of David. 
 
 He read them in the original language; and these 
 words, these tones awoke an echo out of his long 
 vanished youth, and renewed a refreshing spriug- 
 f raffrance of life. 
 
450 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 And as the tree above him inclined its twigs to 
 ward the earth again, in which its roots sprouted, so 
 was it to him with his life and thought. 
 
 Many a time, too, he compared Moses Mendels- 
 sohn's translation of the Psalms with the original, 
 and he transported himself alternately into the life 
 of the royal singer and that of the philosopher, who 
 in his painful afflictions made himself a way of de- 
 liverance by bringing over the words of David into 
 the German mother-tongue. 
 
 Often they heard Ephraim in the night singing a 
 Hebrew psalm; and even Nathan, who did not like 
 to have anything remind his children of Judaism, 
 was touched by the fervor of the tone and let his 
 brother have his way. 
 
 The persistency with which Ephraim, from the 
 beginning of spring onward, chose now to sit only 
 in the garden under the willow, might also pass for 
 a symptom of disease, but the peace which thereby 
 came over him prevented all interference. 
 
 It was in August, when in the heavy sultriness of 
 noonday a violent tempest suddenly broke out in the 
 heavens; the first anxiety of all the inmates of the 
 house was to get Ephraim under the shelter of the 
 roof; but he repelled them with all his might and 
 persisted in sitting quietly there under the willow. 
 And when the storm had passed over, they found 
 him in a soft slumber, and in his hand a leaf of 
 paper, on which were the words: "Praise to God 
 after a short, but violent thunder-storm: 
 
RELEASE. 451 
 
 ** My soul, thy fleshly fetters breaking, 
 To new and nobler life awaking, 
 
 Up by a path no fowl hath known. 
 On wings of faith and wonder soaring, 
 Creation's ladder climb, adoring, 
 
 Up toward the great Creator's throne ! " 
 
 Peace with God had from this time forth entered 
 into possession of Ephraim's breast; he had found it 
 again in the devout contemplation of nature; with 
 the human beings around him, with their manners 
 and customs, he also became more and more recon- 
 ciled; the tenderness of his soul's mood suffered now 
 only soft tones to wake an echo within him; he 
 found men to be, he felt himself to be, better and 
 nobler. All met him with tender and affectionate 
 regard. As the deaf man thinks he hears better 
 again because every one, knowing his trouble, 
 speaks to him more distinctly, so too it fared with 
 Ephraim; people knew his shyness and his sadness; 
 every one was glad to meet him with friendship and 
 civility, and he could thereby come bettor and bet- 
 ter to recognize the actual virtue of men. Kecon- 
 ciled and converted he went forward to meet his 
 end, and out of the fullness of his soul he prayed 
 to God: 
 
 "With love for each my bosom fill. 
 Whose being came from Thee; 
 Let him adore Thee as he will, 
 If but Thy child he be. 
 
 "When my last hour of life draws near, 
 And death's stern call shall come. 
 Then let the thought my spirit cheer: 
 My father calls me home ! " 
 
452 POE T A ND MER CHA NT. 
 
 In reliance npon God and the virtue of individuals 
 he sought to forget those devices of the world which 
 so often contradict that sentiment; he dared to liope, 
 even though the hope might in his day never be f ul- 
 lilled. 
 
 With manly fortitude he now, also, endured the 
 sufferings which he was still destined to meet; a 
 shock of paralysis came upon him, which lamed his 
 whole right side and his organs of speech. There 
 he lay now, and could with his left hand and by 
 signs only, with difficulty intelligible, express his 
 wishes. Tranquillity and silent resignation spoke in 
 his countenance; often he laid his left hand on his 
 breast, his eyes turned upward; he prayed for death. 
 No more, as in former days, would he have defiantly 
 challenged him; he awaited patiently his end. Out 
 in the world the carriages rattled, the drum beat for 
 the march of the soldiers, mechanics whistled lively 
 airs as they went about their work, happy people 
 sauntered under the green domes of the trees, the 
 lark soared trilling into the sky — and here, in the 
 solitary chamber was heard nothing but the regular 
 tick of the clock, the vanishing of time and the 
 footsteps of approaching death; here was no life, 
 save the scanty breath on Ephraim's lips. But such 
 is the might of the spirit, that he, bound to his 
 earthly integument, yet can soar away far above it, 
 and sweep unfettered through the universe; one 
 could see by the changeful play of Ephraim's feat- 
 ures, that he was now here, now there, in space and 
 time. 
 
RELEASE. 453 
 
 When he recovered the use of liis vocal organs 
 he said to his sister-in-law, who nursed liim witli 
 self-sacrificing solicitude: "I bear this sickness far 
 more easily than the previous one, when the shock 
 affected my spirit; it is not true that it is a blessing 
 to lose one's consciousness; consciousness alone, and 
 though it were that of pain, is life." 
 
 Rosa sat the chief part of the day by Ephraim's 
 sick-bed; she sought in every way to entertain him; 
 she told stories, she read to him, nay, contrary to 
 her former habit, she even indulged in lively jests. 
 
 One day Ephraim had sunk to sleep; "art thou 
 here, Matilda?" he cried, on waking; Rosa started 
 with a shudder, she feared a relapse into his mad- 
 ness, as he had called her then by that name; Epli- 
 raim was silent for a while, his lips moved, he beg- 
 ged his sister-in-law to take pen and ink in hand, 
 and dictated: 
 
 "When sore woes and pains oppressed me 
 
 And heart-gnawing cares distressed me, 
 
 Like an armed man, frightfully, 
 
 Then came fell despair on me. 
 
 Lo! a soft-eyed maid advances, 
 
 And before her radiant glances 
 
 That dark foe affrighted fled ; 
 
 Then, with grateful rapture fired, 
 'Whence, who art thou?' I inquired; 
 'Patience is my name'— she said." 
 
 He requested the sheets to be brought to him, on 
 which in a neat handwriting he had inscribed his 
 poems; with a melancholy look he contemplated 
 these few leaves; in them lay all the gain and 
 
454 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 achicA'ement of a whole life. Neither chilclreii nor 
 grandchildren will one day revert to their ancestor 
 and seek the spot where his remains were committed 
 to the dust; without leaving a trace of his footsteps 
 he had passed over the earth, only these lines might 
 one day bear witness that here a soul had lived and 
 suffered, wept and laughed, to sink at last into the 
 arms of death. 
 
 With smiling mien he now almost day by day 
 turned over the leaves of these manuscripts; often 
 he paused; he conjured up before him the hour and 
 the circumstances in which he composed such and 
 such lines; as he had spell-bound this fleeting into 
 poesy for sport and pleasure, and in such wise 
 doubly enjoyed it, so now it rose before him in a 
 third resurrection, as he confronted life itself as well 
 as the poetry which mirrored it, as things far off and 
 foreign to him; often, however, even the original 
 occasion of such a poem floated before him only as 
 the vision of a dream; out of reality and fancy he 
 had created a third thing; this third thing alone re- 
 mained now all that was true for him; the arche- 
 types had vanished and melted away. Sorrowfully 
 he once named his whole life, "nothing but a bound 
 book;" the old propensity to have a firm and im- 
 mediate foothold in life, as it shapes itself in domes- 
 tic and civil society, seemed not yet to have wholly 
 gone to sleep within him. 
 
 To no one but his sister-in-law did he confide his 
 dearest jewel, his poems; he therefore often called 
 Rosa, playfully, his " soul-keeper Chloe." Kosa's in- 
 
RELEASE. 455 
 
 defatigable care and watchfulness had in fact any- 
 thing but a pastoral character, but the tenderest 
 breath of love ennobled and glorified all her doings; 
 not more tender and fervent appears the maiden 
 ^hen, with graceful modesty, she binds a fresh 
 wreath of flowers around the floating locks of her lov- 
 ed one's forehead, than Rosa appeared here, when she 
 put upon the head of her brother-in-law, who could 
 not move his limbs, the prosaic night-cap. Ephraim 
 was a passionate snuff -taker; his lameness disabled 
 him from this enjoyment; but Rosa found a resort; 
 with a half -sportive, half-sympathetic smile, she laid 
 the grains of tobacco-dust on the delicate palm of her 
 white hand, with her left she raised his head from 
 the pillow, and with the right hand let him snuff it 
 up. Ephraim stared at her, and expressed his thanks 
 only by a soft inclination of the eyelashes; he might 
 well have felt how this soul, so full of love and 
 kindness, so unassuming and contented in all her 
 doing, turned neither to the right hand nor to the 
 left to see whether others would think it comely. * 
 When Ephraim could speak again, Rosa soon dis- 
 covered that he liked to converse about his poems; 
 not from love of poetry, but only to give the sick 
 man a pleasure, she read the poems of Ephraim; she 
 could not, herself, enter into this way of thinking; 
 nay, there was much that displeased and offended 
 her in it. She, however, once remarked to Ephraim: 
 "I have wondered at not having yet found among 
 your poems any one about the merchant's life." 
 This simple observation struck Ephraim very deep- 
 
456 POET AND MERCHANT, 
 
 ly, and half in vexation lie wrote that very evening on 
 the last page of his blank book: 
 
 *'This little book's my shop; the goods I with me carry 
 Are epigrams ; whoso has use for them, come buy. 
 But, good folks, if there's naught that takes your eye, 
 Go to another shop, pray do not tarry." 
 
 He had at last, in some measure, fought his way 
 to a certain unity, he stood as merchant in poe- 
 try; he showed his brother Nathan the advertise- 
 ment he had drawn up for himself; Nathan smiled 
 approvingly and then gave him an account of what 
 was going on in the world. The affairs of the coun- 
 try had not much to offer of more than transient in- 
 terest; the controversies with Holland were lost in 
 details and cabinet-mysteries. " Will Neckar keep 
 his place in the French Cabinet ? Will the nobility, 
 the clergy and the third estate form a coalition?" 
 Such were the oft-handled questions. Nathan loved 
 to assume the air of an expert financier, and he 
 plumed himself not a little upon the fact that he had 
 been chosen to the office of auditor in the city treas- 
 ury. Philippina, too, was fond of taking part in 
 this conversation; she was an industrious newspaper- 
 reader; Rosa alone took no interest in all this. 
 
 Here, in remote Silesia, in the si(;k-chamber of a 
 man whose life was slowly ebbing away, here did 
 the transactions of the French National Assembly 
 find a clear and manifold echo, for it was the first 
 time that things were discussed by the law-givers of 
 Europe, which in books and social gatherings had 
 long been put into words. 
 
RELEASE. 457 
 
 It was a hot summer noon, "The people of Pari? 
 liave stormed the Bastille," cried Nathan, rushing in 
 with excited face. " Listen! " He drew a letter from 
 his pocket, and read a report of that memorable event, 
 which may be regarded as the first rolling particle, 
 which in process of time swelled into the mighty av- 
 alanche. 
 
 The eyes of the Avhole cultivated world were turned 
 upoiT Versailles and Paris; the Declaration of Human 
 Rights as the base of the new constitution, won, es- 
 pecially in Germany, countless votaries to the new or- 
 der of things; for here, particularly, one could not 
 fail to hail it as a victory when one saw philoso})hy 
 and humanity exalted to be the law of the state; that 
 was indeed already discussed in schools and books 
 in manifold forms. Only when it came to innovations 
 in individual and definite titles were discordant tones 
 audible. Klopstock greeted the new day in a lofty 
 ode; all were full of joyful expectation. As here in 
 the sick-chamber of Ephraim, so was there in all 
 places and in all families a sympathetic excitement 
 of men's minds. 
 
 Often too did Ephraim murmur to himself in He- 
 brew the words of the Prophet Zachariah: (xiv. 7.) : 
 " And at eventide it shall be light." Once more life 
 seemed to flare up in him like an expiring lamp. 
 
 "Woe is me that I am dead," he once lamented ; 
 "here must I lie in a trance; I lioar the steps of the 
 beloved on the stairs, and cannot hasten to meet her; 
 cannot stretch out to her my hand; I hear peo])le 
 talking, acting, fighting round about me; I hear and 
 
458 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 feel all tins and cannot rouse myself up to take my 
 place among them: I would that I were dead! nay, 
 only one day more would I live, wholly live, and die 
 in battle! I thank Thee, oh God! Lord and Father! 
 that thou hast preserved me in pain and sorrow, and 
 spared me to behold this new day! I see the dawn of 
 the morning; I hear millions of trumpets sounding; 
 the earth trembles down to its deepest heart; spectres 
 flee, chains break, the scaly armor falls from the 
 breasts of men; there is no more prejudice nor injus- 
 tice, and in silent embrace they feel, breast to breast, 
 their hearts beating alike. Away with all tlie rub- 
 bish ;" he cried, and threw his poems which lay on 
 the table, down upon the floor; "only one more song 
 would I sing, my swan-song, and then die. I con- 
 jure you, bury me not in a trance; thrust a knife in- 
 to my bosom, here! " 
 
 Such excitement exercised the most pernicious in- 
 fluence upon Ephraim's condition; he would then lie 
 there for hours together, and only his short breath- 
 ing would give sign of life. They w^ould fain have 
 concealed from him the events of the day; but he al- 
 ways insisted stormily upon exact reports. Nathan 
 was once complaining of the horrible murders which 
 were committed by the liberated people, and that so 
 many men, even innocent ones among them, must fall 
 victims. 
 
 "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" cried Ephraim; " did not 
 all the world shout and sing jubilee and extol the 
 hero to heaven, because so many thousands of men 
 had to die, that Silesia might be Prussian or Aus- 
 
RELEASE. 459 
 
 trian ? May not men die now, too ? Eagle or cock- 
 erel; cock-a-doodle-doo! " — 
 
 Nathan shook his head compassionately; his 
 brother had again gone mad; he wished for his 
 death, which indeed drew nearer with every beat of 
 the pulse. Spring came on; Ephraim grew weaker 
 and weaker. "I feel it," he said one day to liosa; 
 " I shall never more see the spring flowers; they will 
 grow out of my grave." Rosa covered her face in 
 silence, and sought to console him, but he begged 
 her to write; he would dictate his epitaph; he beg- 
 ged so fervently that Rosa wrote with tears in her 
 eyes. 
 
 The next day Rosa sat again b}^ the sick-bed of 
 her brother-in-law; the sick man hardly breathed; a 
 fresh nosegay of violets lay on his bed-quilt; Rosa 
 had herself gathered them in the garden. Epliraim 
 awoke; he looked round with astonishment; he saw 
 the flowers on his bed; he seized them with trembling 
 hand and pressed them to his lips; he lifted himself 
 np in the bed with all his might, grasped Rosa's 
 hand, pressed and kissed it passionately. 
 
 "I love thee, Matilda!" he groaned, and sank 
 back on his pillow; Rosa cried for help. In the 
 course of an hour Ephraim had sunk to the sleep of 
 death. 
 
 Men bury their dead; Ephraim, too, was buried. 
 Rosa had woven a laurel-wreatli around his liead; 
 the Jewish grave-diggers tore it off, for the Jewisli 
 ceremonial tolerates no such adornments. 
 
 lu the Jewish " Good-place " at Breslau is a grave 
 
460 POET AND MERCHANT. 
 
 on which is inscribed in Hebrew letters the name of 
 Ephraim Moses Kuli, and beneath it the epitaph 
 composed by himself: 
 
 *' Here lies the poet, Kuh, 
 Who, now by fate malicious, 
 And now by luck capricious, 
 Was teased; his war is through." 
 ******* 
 On the steep declivities and in the open passes of 
 the mountains one meets with carved wooden pillars, 
 on which are inscribed the names of those who were 
 here crushed by wheels, overwhelmed by avalanches, 
 or frozen in blinding snow-drifts. Some more com- 
 passionate than cunning hand paints the incident in 
 glaring colors, and devout piety begs a prayer and 
 the benediction of a remembrance from the passing 
 traveler, who now treads the same road in bright 
 sunshine and in the fresh breath of the mountain. 
 
 Not by a sudden and overwhelming shock has a 
 man here sunk in death; often cast down, he had 
 gathered himself up again, and toiled along to the 
 end. In seclusion and solitude has he breathed 
 away his existence, and here the carved image is set 
 up in his memory. 
 
 THE END. 
 
94 
 
0'.t->ber, I>8|. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 No. I. 
 
 p. 
 No. 2.._ 
 No. 3. 
 
 No. 4. 
 No. 5.- 
 
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