"A pedlar!" cried Maimon, open-eyed. "Yes, the money would come in at once, you see. I had quite a fight to persuade him I would do better as a Rabbi. I fear I was a very violent and impatient youngster. He didn't at all believe in my Rabbinical future. And he was right after all--for a member of a learned guild, Jewish or Christian, have I never been." "You had a hard time, then, when you came to Berlin?" said Maimon sympathetically. Mendelssohn's eyes had for an instant an inward look, then he quoted gently, "Bread with salt shalt thou eat, water by measure shalt thou drink, upon the hard earth shalt thou sleep, and a life of anxiousness shalt thou live, and labor in the study of the law!" Maimon thrilled at the quotation: the fine furniture and the fine company faded, and he saw only the soul of a fellow-idealist to which these things were but unregarded background. "Ah yes," went on Mendelssohn. "You are thinking I don't look like a person who once notched his loaf into sections so as not to eat too much a day. Well, let it console you with the thought that there's a comfortable home in Berlin waiting for you, too." Poor Maimon stole a glance at the buxom, blue-eyed matron doing the honors of her salon so gracefully, assisted by two dazzling young ladies in Parisian toilettes--evidently her daughters--and he groaned at the thought of his peasant-wife and his uncouth, superstition-swaddled children: decidedly he must give Sarah a divorce. "I can't delude myself with such day-dreams," he said hopelessly. "Wait! Wait! So long as you don't day-dream your time away. That is the danger with you clever young Poles--you are such dreamers. Everything in this life depends on steadiness and patience. When we first set up hospitality, Fromet--my wife--and I, we had to count the almonds and raisins for dessert. You see, we only began with a little house and garden in the outskirts, the main furniture of which," he said, laughing at the recollection, "was twenty china apes, life-size." "Twenty china apes!" "Yes, like every Jewish bridegroom, I had to buy a quantity of china for the support of the local manufactory, and that was what fell to me. Ah, my friend, what have not the Jews of Germany to support! The taxes are still with us, but the _Rishus_ (malice)"--again he smiled confidentially at the Hebrew-jargon word--"is less every day. Why, a Jew couldn't walk the streets of Berlin without being hooted and insulted, and my little ones used to ask, 'Father, is it wicked to be a Jew?' I thank the Almighty that at the end of my days I have lived to see the Jewish question raised to a higher plane." "I should rather thank _you_," cried Maimon, with sceptical enthusiasm.