Jewish woman once came weeping to her Rabbi with her
son, and complained that the boy, instead of going respectably into
business like his sires, had developed religion, and insisted on
training for a Rabbi. Would not the Rabbi dissuade him? 'But,' said
the Rabbi, chagrined, 'why are you so distressed about it? Am _I_ not
a Rabbi?' 'Yes,' replied the woman, 'but this little fool takes it
seriously,' _Ach_, every now and again arises a dreamer who takes the
world's lip-faith seriously, and the world tramples on another fool.
Perhaps there is no resurrection for humanity. If so, if there's no
world's Saviour coming by the railway, let us keep the figure of that
sublime Dreamer whose blood is balsam to the poor and the suffering."

Marvelling at the mental lucidity, the spiritual loftiness of his
changed mood, his visitor wished to take leave of him with this image
in her memory; but just then a half-paralyzed Jewish graybeard made
his appearance, and Heine's instant dismissal of him on her account
made it difficult not to linger a little longer.

"My _chef de police_!" he said, smiling. "He lives on me and I live on
his reports of the great world. He tells me what my enemies are up to.
But I have them in there," and he pointed to an ebony box on a chest
of drawers, and asked her to hand it to him.

"Pardon me before I forget," he said; and, seizing a pencil like a
dagger, he made a sprawling note, laughing venomously. "I have them
here!" he repeated, "they will try to stop the publication of my
_Memoirs_, but I will outwit them yet. I hold them! Dead or alive,
they shall not escape me. Woe to him who shall read these lines, if he
has dared attack me. Heine does not die like the first comer. The
tiger's claws will survive the tiger. When I die, it will be for
_them_ the Day of Judgment."

It was a reminder of the long fighting life of the freelance, of all
the stories she had heard of his sordid quarrels, of his blackmailing
his relatives, and besting his uncle. She asked herself his own
question, "Is genius, like the pearl in the oyster, only a splendid
disease?"

Aloud she said, "I hope you are done with Boerne!"

"Boerne?" he said, softening. "_Ach_, what have I against Boerne? Two
baptized German Jews exiled in Paris should forgive each other in
death. My book was misunderstood. I wish to heaven I hadn't written
it. I always admired Boerne, even if I could not keep up the ardor of
my St. Simonian days when my s