Prometheus. No doubt that image of himself he read in the faces of his
friends, and in the loving eyes of the Countess Hatzfeldt--that
glorious wonder-youth gifted equally with genius and beauty--must seem
enviable enough, yet to his own heart how chill was this lonely
greatness. And youth itself was passing--was almost gone.

IV

But he shook off this rare sombre mood, and awoke to the full
consciousness that Friedland was fled. Well, better so. The stupid
fool would come back soon enough, and to-day, with Prince
Puckler-Muskau, Baron Korff, General de Pfuel, and von Buelow the
pianist, coming to lunch, and perhaps Wagner, if he could finish his
rehearsal of "Lohengrin" in time, he was not sorry to see his table
relieved of the dull pomposity and brilliant watch-chain of the pillar
of Prague society. How mean to hide one's Judaism! What a burden to
belong to such a race, degenerate sons of a great but long-vanished
past, unable to slough the slave traits engendered by centuries of
slavery! How he had yearned as a boy to shake off the yoke of the
nations, even as he himself had shaken off the yoke of the Law of
Moses. Yes, the scaffold itself would have been welcome, could he but
have made the Jews a respected people. How the persecution of the Jews
of Damascus had kindled the lad of fifteen! A people that bore such
things was hideous. Let them suffer or take vengeance. Even the
Christians marvelled at their sluggish blood, that they did not prefer
swift death on the battle-field to the long torture. Was the
oppression against which the Swiss had rebelled one whit greater?
Cowardly people! It merited no better lot. And he recalled how, when
the ridiculous story that the Jews make use of Christian blood cropped
up again at Rhodes and Lemnos, he had written in his diary that the
universal accusation was a proof that the time was nigh when the Jews
in very sooth _would_ help themselves with Christian blood. _Aide-toi,
le ciel t'aidera._ And ever in his boyish imagination he had seen
himself at the head of an armed nation, delivering it from bondage,
and reigning over a free people. But these dreams had passed with
childhood. He had found a greater, grander cause, that of the
oppressed German people, ground down by capitalists and the Iron Law
of Wages, and all that his Judaism had brought him was a prejudice the
more against him, a cheap cry of Jew-demagogue, to hamper his larger
fight for humanity. And yet was it not