brooding
pedestrian was startled to find his hand in the cordial grip of the
very man he had gone out to see.

"Salve, O Benedicte," joyously cried the fiery-eyed veteran. "I had
despaired of ever setting eyes again on thy black curls!" Van den
Ende's own hair tossed under his wide-brimmed tapering hat as wildly
as ever, though it was now as white as his ruff, his blood seemed to
beat as boisterously, and a few minutes' conversation sufficed to show
Spinoza that the old pedagogue's soul was even more unchanged than his
body. The same hilarious atheism, the same dogmatic disbelief, the
same conviction of human folly combined as illogically, as of yore,
with schemes of perfect states: time seemed to have mellowed no
opinion, toned down no crudity. He was coming, he said, to make a last
hopeless call on his famous pupil, the others were working. The
others--he explained--were his little Klaartje and his newest pupil,
Kerkkrinck, a rich and stupid youth, but honest and good-hearted
withal. He had practically turned him over to Klaartje, who was as
good a guide to the Humanities as himself--more especially for the
stupid. "She was too young in thy time, Benedict," concluded the old
man jocosely.

Benedict thought that she was too young now to be left instructing
good-hearted young men, but he only said, "Yes, I daresay I was
stupid. One should cut one's teeth on Latin conjugations, and I was
already fourteen with a full Rabbinical diploma before I was even
aware there was such a person as Cicero in history."

"And now thou writest Ciceronian Latin. Shake not thy head--'tis a
compliment to myself, not to thee. What if thou art sometimes more
exact than elegant--fancy what a coil of Hebrew cobwebs I had to sweep
out of that brain-pan of thine ere I transformed thee from Baruch to
Benedict."

"Nay, some of the webs were of silk. I see now how much Benedict owes
to Baruch. The Rabbinical gymnastic is no ill-training, though
unmethodic. Maimonides de-anthropomorphises God, the Cabalah grapples,
if confusedly, with the problem of philosophy."

"Thou didst not always speak so leniently of thy ancient learning.
Methinks thou hast forgotten thy sufferings and the catalogue of
curses. I would shut thee up a week with Moses Zacut, and punish you
both with each other's society. The room should be four cubits square,
so that he should be forced to disobey the Ban and be within four
cubits of thee."

"Thou forgettest to reckon wi