"I am no traitor--no traitor to you; and, though you know me, why should I not serve you still? Why should we not be friends?" "Friends! you and I!" said the cavaliere with scorn. "But no matter! This affair of the lodger looks ill, I tell you." "Times are bad--times are bad, noble cavaliere," stammered the Jew, in a whining and apologetic tone. "Our contract stipulated not that I should not strive to earn an honest livelihood where I could." "And who prevents you, man," said the cavaliere, with a sneer, "from earning what you please to term an honest livelihood, as far as it interfere not with my interests? But this imprudence"---- "Heavy losses! heavy losses!" continued the old man, interrupting him, to pursue his apology. "I have had heavy and serious losses, which I must strive to cover by what scanty means are left me--to say naught of drugs unpaid, and services to the rich ill recompensed and scouted. I am a needy man. I am, indeed, a needy man." The cavaliere shrugged his shoulders. "Ah! You feel not that, noble sir. But the God of my fathers knows that it is true. Was there not the Illok affair, in which the poor money-lender was cheated of his honest earnings? Did not the Count Csaki leave the country, a bankrupt, and cause me all but utter ruin? And, worse than all, did not the Baron Bartori, after he had made over to me his estates, in return for moneys lent him in his need, die with the intent and purpose, as one would say, to defraud me of my just dues? and did not his son, without whose signature to destroy the entail, I cannot obtain possession of my rights--the God of Israel's curse be on the Philistine laws of this unjust country!--disappear, no one knows whither? He is an honest youth, and a just, they say, who would not deprive a poor needy man of his own: but he may be dead--he may be dead, without giving his precious sign-manual; and I should be a ruined man--a ruined man--alas! alas!" The cavaliere had borne impatiently the lamentations thus uttered as apologies for his love of gain by the Jew money-lender: and he now broke in upon them with disgust. "A truce to all this comedy of woe, man! If you be shorn of a lock or two of your ill-gotten golden fleece, we well know that it is still a full and warm one. Come, come--no more of this!" he pursued, as the Jew continued to squeeze alternately the skeleton fingers of each hand, as though he pretended to be wringing them in despair. "We must to business; and since the mischief has been done--and, mark me! it must be remedied forthwith, and this boy driven from the house--see that the coast be clear!"