e beer-swilling middle-class of Berlin. Oh yes, I think we
met over a game of chess. Then we wrote an essay on Pope together.
Dear Gotthold! What do I not owe him? My position in Berlin, my
feeling for literature--for we Jews have all stifled our love for the
beautiful and grown dead to poetry."

"Well, but what is a poet but a liar?"

"Ah, my dear Herr Maimon, you will grow out of that. I must lend you
Homer. Intellectual speculation is not everything. For my part, I have
never regretted withdrawing a portion of my love from the worthy
matron, philosophy, in order to bestow it on her handmaid,
_belles-lettres_. I am sorry to use a French word, but for once
there's no better. You smile to see a Jew more German than the
Germans."

"No, I smile to hear what sounds like French all round! I remember
reading in your _Philosophical Conversations_ your appeal to the
Germans not to exchange their own gold for the tinsel of their
neighbors."

"Yes, but what can one do? It is a Berlin mania; and, you know, the
King himself.... Our Jewish girls first caught it to converse with the
young gallants who came a-borrowing of their fathers, but the
influence of my dear daughters--there, the beautiful one is Dorothea,
the eldest, and that other, who takes more after me, is
Henrietta--their influence is doing much to counteract the wave of
flippancy and materialism. But fancy any one still reading my
_Philosophical Conversations_--my 'prentice work. I had no idea of
printing it. I lent the manuscript to Lessing, observing jestingly
that I, too, could write like Shaftesbury, the Englishman. And lo! the
next time I met him he handed me the proofs. Dear Gotthold."

"Is it true that the King--?"

"Sent for me to Potsdam to scold me? You are thinking of another
matter. That was in my young days." He smiled and lowered his voice.
"I ventured to hint in a review that His Majesty's French verses--I am
glad by the way he has lived to write some against Voltaire--were not
perfection. I thought I had wrapped up my meaning beyond royal
comprehension. But a malicious courtier, the preacher Justi, denounced
me as a Jew who had thrown aside all reverence for the most sacred
person of His Majesty. I was summoned to Sans-Souci and--with a touch
of _Rishus_ (malice)--on a Saturday. I managed to be there without
breaking my _Shabbos_ (Sabbath)."

"Then he does keep Sabbath!" thought Maimon, in amaze.

"But, as you may imagine, I was not as happy a