the synagogue had been given the tramp, and the
wealthy president had invited him to his Sabbath dinner and placed him
between himself and his daughter, a pretty virgin of twelve,
beautifully dressed. Through his wine-glass the future had looked
rosy, and his learned eloquence glowed responsively, but he had not
been too drunk to miss the wry faces the girl began to make, nor to be
suddenly struck dumb with shame as he realised the cause. Lying on the
straw of inn-stables in garments one has not changed for seven weeks
does not commend even a Rabbi to a dainty maiden. The spell of good
luck was broken, and since then the learned tramp had known nothing
but humiliation and hunger.

The throb of elation at the sight of the gate of Berlin had been
speedily subdued by the discovery that he must bide in the poorhouse
the Jews had built there till the elders had examined him. And there
he had herded all day long with the sick and cripples and a lewd
rabble, till evening brought the elders and his doom--a point-blank
refusal to allow him to enter the city and study medicine.

Why? Why? What had they against him? He asked himself the question
between his paroxysms. And suddenly, in the very midst of explaining
his hard case to a new passer-by, the answer came to him and still
further confused his explanations. Yes, it must have been that wolf in
Rabbi's clothing he had talked to that morning in the poorhouse! the
red-bearded reverend who had lent so sympathetic an ear to the tale of
his life in Poland, his journey hither; so sympathetic an eye to his
commentary on the great Maimonides' _Guide of the Perplexed_. The vile
spy, the base informer! He had told the zealots of the town of the
new-comer's heretical mode of thinking. They had shut him out, as one
shuts out the plague.

So this was the free atmosphere, the grander Judaism he had yearned
for. The town which boasted of the far-famed Moses Mendelssohn, of the
paragon of wisdom and tolerance, was as petty as the Rabbi-ridden
villages whose dust he had shaken off. A fierce anger against the Jews
and this Mendelssohn shook him. This then was all he had gained by
leaving his wife and children that he might follow only after Truth!

Perhaps herein lay his punishment. But no! He was not to blame for
being saddled with a family. Marriage at eleven could by no stretch of
sophism be called a voluntary act. He recalled the long, sordid,
sensational matrimonial comedy of which he