af into sections so as not to eat too
much a day. Well, let it console you with the thought that there's a
comfortable home in Berlin waiting for you, too."

Poor Maimon stole a glance at the buxom, blue-eyed matron doing the
honors of her salon so gracefully, assisted by two dazzling young
ladies in Parisian toilettes--evidently her daughters--and he groaned
at the thought of his peasant-wife and his uncouth, superstition-swaddled
children: decidedly he must give Sarah a divorce.

"I can't delude myself with such day-dreams," he said hopelessly.

"Wait! Wait! So long as you don't day-dream your time away. That is
the danger with you clever young Poles--you are such dreamers.
Everything in this life depends on steadiness and patience. When we
first set up hospitality, Fromet--my wife--and I, we had to count the
almonds and raisins for dessert. You see, we only began with a little
house and garden in the outskirts, the main furniture of which," he
said, laughing at the recollection, "was twenty china apes,
life-size."

"Twenty china apes!"

"Yes, like every Jewish bridegroom, I had to buy a quantity of china
for the support of the local manufactory, and that was what fell to
me. Ah, my friend, what have not the Jews of Germany to support! The
taxes are still with us, but the _Rishus_ (malice)"--again he smiled
confidentially at the Hebrew-jargon word--"is less every day. Why, a
Jew couldn't walk the streets of Berlin without being hooted and
insulted, and my little ones used to ask, 'Father, is it wicked to be
a Jew?' I thank the Almighty that at the end of my days I have lived
to see the Jewish question raised to a higher plane."

"I should rather thank _you_," cried Maimon, with sceptical
enthusiasm.

"Me?" said Mendelssohn, with the unfeigned modesty of the man who, his
every public utterance having been dragged out of him by external
compulsion, retains his native shyness and is alone in ignorance of
his own influence. "No, no, it is Montesquieu, it is Dohm, it is my
dear Lessing. Poor fellow, the Christian bigots are at him now like a
plague of stinging insects. I almost wish he hadn't written _Nathan
der Weise_. I am glad to reflect I didn't instigate him, nay, that he
had written a play in favor of the Jews ere we met."

"How did you come to know him?"

"I hardly remember. He was always fond of outcasts--a true artistic
temperament, that preferred to consort with actors and soldiers rather
than with th