"It is an idea." "It is an inspiration. Nay, why shouldn't you translate all my books? You shall; you must. You know how the French edition _fait fureur_. French, that is the European hall-mark, for Paris is Athens. But English will mean fame _in ultima Thule_; the isles of the sea, as the Bible says. It isn't for the gold pieces, though, God knows, Mathilde needs more friends, as we call them--perhaps because they leave us so soon. I fear she doesn't treat them too considerately, the poor little featherhead. Heaven preserve you from the irony of having to earn your living on your death-bed! _Ach_, my publisher, Campe, has built himself a new establishment; what a monument to me! Why should not some English publisher build me a monument in London? The Jew's books, like the Jew, should be spread abroad, so that in them all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. For the Jew peddles, not only old clo', but new ideas. I began life--tell it not in Gath--as a commission agent for English goods; and I end it as an intermediary between France and Germany, trying to make two great nations understand each other. To that not unworthy aim has all my later work been devoted." "So you really consider yourself a Jew still?" "_Mein Gott!_ have I ever been anything else but an enemy of the Philistines?" She smiled: "Yes; but religiously?" "Religiously! What was my whole fight to rouse Hodge out of his thousand years' sleep in his hole? Why did I edit a newspaper, and plague myself with our time and its interests? Goethe has created glorious Greek statues, but statues cannot have children. My words should find issue in deeds. Put me rather with poor Lessing. I am no true Hellenist. I may have snatched at pleasure, but self-sacrifice has always called to the depths of me. Like my ancestor, David, I have been not only a singer, I have slung my smooth little pebbles at the forehead of Goliath." "Yes; but haven't you turned Catholic?" "Catholic!" he roared like a roused lion, "they say that again! Has the myth of death-bed conversion already arisen about me? How they jump, the fools, at the idea of a man's coming round to their views when his brain grows weak!" "No, not death-bed conversion. Quite an old history. I was assured you had married in a Catholic Church."