Franz Friedrich Levy sat on his high stool before his desk in the office of the Second Secretariat of the Anhalt-Diesterburg-Rickershofen State Railroad and reflected discontentedly on his lot. He had rather an important position, it is true, that of chief bookkeeper of the Second Secretariat, an important subdivision in the management of the railway, which was a prosperous governmental institution, binding together a rich and beautiful stretch of country in middle Germany. He was in receipt of a very fair salary, occupied a comfortable house in the suburbs of the town, and was wedded to a rather good-looking wife, with quite a store of fashionable though useless accomplishments, but still he was not happy. The cause of his unhappiness was a grievance which he had against the Ober-Direction or supreme management of the railway, a grievance for which he thought—and his wife agreed with him in this opinion—there could be only one explanation. He believed that his promotion was unduly slow. He had entered the service of the railroad in his twentieth year as clerk, and now in his forty-fifth, when his once raven black locks were already heavily streaked with gray and more than a suspicion of baldness was showing itself on the top of his poll, he was only chief bookkeeper of one of the numerous subdivisions of the great concern. He thought that by length of service and capacity he was fitted to be general manager of the road; but while admitting that he had no right to aspire to that exalted position, he considered that by this time he should have attained at the very least to the post of division chief or superintendent. “Why is it that I do not advance?” he asked himself as he sat gloomily revolving on the high stool. “Am I incapable? Have I been idle, negligent, or inattentive to my duties? Do I not know all the details of the business from beginning to end? Do I not know by heart all the statistics of the road, the number of passengers and the weight of freight carried, the condition of every station, the receipts and the expenditures to a pfennig? No, the fault is not mine. It is owing to _rishus_, to anti-Semitic prejudice. My only fault, as far as I can discover, is that I am a Jew. To that I owe all my misfortune. This accursed accident of my birth prevents my talents being appreciated, prevents my attaining the success which I should naturally reach; and, I suppose, as long as I am marked with this badge of disgrace and social inferiority I shall always remain an unimportant, insignificant individual. That Ober-Director von Meinken, he is, I am sure, the chief cause of keeping me down. He always looks at me with such a dark, unfriendly glance whenever I have to enter his office. He is the very picture of a _Rosho_, although he talks smoothly enough. I don’t doubt but he would be glad enough to get rid of me altogether if he only knew how to bring it about.”