ier, had I not been
stopped at the Rosenthaler gate three years ago."

"At the Rosenthaler gate! If I had only known!"

The tears came into Maimon's eyes--tears of gratitude, of self-pity,
of regret for the lost years. He was on his feet now, he felt, and his
feet were on the right road. He had found a powerful protector at
last. "Think of my disappointment," he said tremulously, "after
travelling all the way from Poland."

"Yes, I know. I was all but stopped at the gate myself," said
Mendelssohn musingly.

"You?"

"Yes--when I was a lad."

"Aren't you a native of Berlin, then?"

"No, I was born in Dessau. Not so far to tramp from as Poland. But
still a goodish stretch. It took me five days--I am not a Hercules
like you--and had I not managed to stammer out that I wished to enrol
myself among the pupils of Dr. Frankel, the new Chief Rabbi of the
city, the surly Cerberus would have slammed the gate in my face. My
luck was that Frankel had come from Dessau, and had been my teacher. I
remember standing on a hillock crying as he was leaving for Berlin,
and he took me in his arms and said I should also go to Berlin some
day. So when I appeared he had to make the best of it."

"Then you had nothing from your parents?"

"Only a beautiful handwriting from my father which got me copying jobs
for a few groschens and is now the joy of the printers. He was a
scribe, you know, and wrote the Scrolls of the Law. But he wanted me
to be a pedlar."

"A pedlar!" cried Maimon, open-eyed.

"Yes, the money would come in at once, you see. I had quite a fight to
persuade him I would do better as a Rabbi. I fear I was a very violent
and impatient youngster. He didn't at all believe in my Rabbinical
future. And he was right after all--for a member of a learned guild,
Jewish or Christian, have I never been."

"You had a hard time, then, when you came to Berlin?" said Maimon
sympathetically.

Mendelssohn's eyes had for an instant an inward look, then he quoted
gently, "Bread with salt shalt thou eat, water by measure shalt thou
drink, upon the hard earth shalt thou sleep, and a life of anxiousness
shalt thou live, and labor in the study of the law!"

Maimon thrilled at the quotation: the fine furniture and the fine
company faded, and he saw only the soul of a fellow-idealist to which
these things were but unregarded background.

"Ah yes," went on Mendelssohn. "You are thinking I don't look like a
person who once notched his lo