e in deeds. Put me rather with poor Lessing. I am no
true Hellenist. I may have snatched at pleasure, but self-sacrifice
has always called to the depths of me. Like my ancestor, David, I have
been not only a singer, I have slung my smooth little pebbles at the
forehead of Goliath."

"Yes; but haven't you turned Catholic?"

"Catholic!" he roared like a roused lion, "they say that again! Has
the myth of death-bed conversion already arisen about me? How they
jump, the fools, at the idea of a man's coming round to their views
when his brain grows weak!"

"No, not death-bed conversion. Quite an old history. I was assured you
had married in a Catholic Church."

"To please Mathilde. Without that the poor creature wouldn't have
thought herself married in a manner sufficiently pleasing to God. It
is true we had been living together without any Church blessing at
all, but _que voulez-vous_? Women are like that. But for a duel I had
to fight, I should have been satisfied to go on as we were. I
understand by a wife something nobler than a married woman chained to
me by money-brokers and parsons, and I deemed my _faux menage_ far
firmer than many a "true" one. But since I _was_ to be married, I
could not leave my beloved Nonotte a dubious widowhood. We even
invited a number of Bohemian couples to the wedding-feast, and bade
them follow our example in daring the last step of all. Ha! ha! there
is nothing like a convert's zeal, you see. But convert to Catholicism,
that's another pair of sleeves. If your right eye offends you, pluck
it out; if your right arm offends you, cut it off. And if your reason
offends you, become a Catholic. No, no, Lucy, I may have worshipped
the Madonna in song, for how can a poet be insensible to the beauty of
Catholic symbol and ritual? But a Jew I have always been."

"Despite your baptism?"

The sufferer groaned, but not from physical pain.

"Ah, cruel little Lucy, don't remind me of my youthful folly. Thank
your stars you were born an Englishwoman. I was born under the fearful
conjunction of Christian bigotry and Jewish, in the Judenstrasse. In
my cradle lay my line of life marked out from beginning to end. My
God, what a life! You know how Germany treated her Jews--like pariahs
and wild beasts. At Frankfort for centuries the most venerable Rabbi
had to take off his hat if the smallest gamin cried: 'Jud', mach
mores!' I have myself been shut up in that Ghetto, I have witnessed a
Jew-riot more tha