s a bear with honey.
However, I pleaded that he who makes verses plays at nine-pins, and he
who plays at nine-pins, be he monarch or peasant, must be satisfied
with the judgment of the boy who has charge of the bowls."

"And you are still alive!"

"To the annoyance of many people. I fancy His Majesty was ashamed to
punish me before the French cynics of his court, and I know on good
authority that it was because the Marquis D'Argens was astonished to
learn that I could be driven out of Berlin at any moment by the police
that the King made me a Schutz-Jude (protected Jew). So I owe
something to the French after all. My friends had long been urging me
to sue for protection, but I thought, as I still think, that one ought
not to ask for any rights which the humblest Jew could not enjoy.
However, a king's gift horse one cannot look in the mouth. And now you
are to become _my_ Schutz-Jude"--Maimon's heart beat gratefully--"and
the question is, what do you propose to do in Berlin? What is the
career that is to bring you a castle and a princess?"

"I wish to study medicine."

"Good. It is the one profession a Jew may enter here; though, you must
know, however great a practice you may attain--even among the
Christians--they will never publish your name in the medical list.
Still, we must be thankful for small mercies. In Frankfort the Jewish
doctors are limited to four, in other towns to none. We must hand you
over to Dr. Herz--there, that man who is laughing so, over one of his
own good things, no doubt--that is Dr. Herz, and the beautiful
creature is his wife, Henrietta, who is founding a Goethe salon. She
and my daughters are inseparable--a Jewish trinity. And so, Herr
Physician, I extend to you the envious congratulations of a
book-keeper."

"But you are not a book-keeper!"

"Not now, but that was what I began as--or rather, what I drifted
into, for I was Talmudical tutor in his family, when my dear Herr
Bernhardt proposed it to me. And I am not sorry. For it left me plenty
of time to learn Latin and Greek and mathematics, and finally landed
me in a partnership. Still I have always been a race-horse burdened
with a pack, alas! I don't mean my hump, but the factory still steals
a good deal of my time and brains, and if I didn't rise at five--But
you have made me quite egoistic--it is the resemblance of our young
days that has touched the spring of memories. But come! let me
introduce you to my wife and my son Abraham.