during the second part, arriving from
Vienna with his usual unquestioned unexpectedness, and was quite
startled to find it was Passover night, and that the immemorial
service was going on just as when he was a boy. The rarity of his
visits to the old folks made it a strange coincidence to have stumbled
upon them at this juncture, and, as he took his seat silently in the
family circle without interrupting the prayers by greetings, he had a
vivid artistic perception of the possibilities of existence--the witty
French novel that had so amused him in the train, making him feel
that, in providing raw matter for _esprit_, human life had its joyous
justification; the red-gold sunset over the mountains; the floating
homewards down the Grand Canal in the moonlight, the well-known
palaces as dreamful and mysterious to him as if he had not been born
in the city of the sea; the gay reminiscences of Goldmark's new opera
last night at the Operntheater that had haunted his ear as he ascended
the great staircase; and then this abrupt transition to the East, and
the dead centuries, and Jehovah bringing out His chosen people from
Egypt, and bidding them celebrate with unleavened bread throughout the
generations their hurried journey to the desert.

Probably his father was distressed at this glaring instance of his
son's indifference to the traditions he himself held so dear; though
indeed the old man had realized long ago the bitter truth that his
ways were not his son's ways, nor his son's thoughts his thoughts. He
had long since known that his first-born was a sinner in Israel, an
"Epikouros," a scoffer, a selfish sensualist, a lover of bachelor
quarters and the feverish life of the European capitals, a scorner of
the dietary laws and tabus, an adept in the forbidden. The son thought
of himself through his father's spectacles, and the faint smile
playing about the sensitive lips became bitterer. His long white
fingers worked nervously.

And yet he thought kindly enough of his father; admired the
perseverance that had brought him wealth, the generosity with which he
expended it, the fidelity that resisted its temptations and made this
_Seder_ service, this family reunion, as homely and as piously simple
as in the past when the Ghetto Vecchio, and not this palace on the
Grand Canal, had meant home. The beaker of wine for the prophet Elijah
stood as naively expectant as ever. His mother's face, too, shone with
love and goodwill. Brothe