active as Joseph Kalonymos showed himself, an inkstand in the
wrong place would have hindered his imagination from getting to
Beyrout: he had been used to unite restless travel with punctilious
observation. But Deronda's last sentence answered its purpose.

"So-you would perhaps have been such a man as he if your education had
not hindered; for you are like him in features:--yet not altogether,
young man. He had an iron will in his face: it braced up everybody
about him. When he was quite young he had already got one deep upright
line in his brow. I see none of that in you. Daniel Charisi used to
say, 'Better, a wrong will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy
than an uncertain friend; better a false belief than no belief at all.'
What he despised most was indifference. He had longer reasons than I
can give you."

"Yet his knowledge was not narrow?" said Deronda, with a tacit
reference to the usual excuse for indecision--that it comes from
knowing too much.

"Narrow? no," said Kalonymos, shaking his head with a compassionate
smile "From his childhood upward, he drank in learning as easily as the
plant sucks up water. But he early took to medicine and theories about
life and health. He traveled to many countries, and spent much of his
substance in seeing and knowing. What he used to insist on was that the
strength and wealth of mankind depended on the balance of separateness
and communication, and he was bitterly against our people losing
themselves among the Gentiles; 'It's no better,' said he, 'than the
many sorts of grain going back from their variety into sameness.' He
mingled all sorts of learning; and in that he was like our Arabic
writers in the golden time. We studied together, but he went beyond me.
Though we were bosom friends, and he poured himself out to me, we were
as different as the inside and outside of the bowl. I stood up for two
notions of my own: I took Charisi's sayings as I took the shape of the
trees: they were there, not to be disputed about. It came to the same
thing in both of us; we were both faithful Jews, thankful not to be
Gentiles. And since I was a ripe man, I have been what I am now, for
all but age-loving to wander, loving transactions, loving to behold all
things, and caring nothing about hardship. Charisi thought continually
of our people's future: he went with all his soul into that part of our
religion: I, not. So we have freedom, I am content. Our people wandered
before they