Hence he could say of himself, "I do not belong to the class of painted people, my outward conduct always corresponds with my feelings." Leo Modena was sincere at each moment. On one day he broke a lance for the Talmud and Rabbinical Judaism, on the next, condemned them utterly. He disapproved of gaming, and grieved that the stars had given him this unfortunate propensity, for he believed also in astrology; yet he prepared a Talmudical decision defending it. When the Venetian college of rabbis pronounced the ban on cards and dice, he pointed out that gaming was permissible by Rabbinical principles, and that the ban had no justification. His disciple, Joseph Chamiz, a physician and mystic, once asked him his opinion on the Kabbalistic transmigration of souls. Modena replied that as a rule he would profess belief in the doctrine even though convinced of its folly, in order not to be pronounced a heretic and a fool, but to him he was willing to express his sincere and true views. Thereupon Leo Modena prepared a work to expose the absurdity and inconsistency with Judaism of the belief in transmigration of souls. But so feebly was this conviction rooted in his nature that, having had an extraordinary experience, he again, at least for a time, believed in the transmigration of souls, a favorite theory of the Kabbala. The Ghetto of Venice must have been a totally different place from that of Frankfort, or Prague, or from the Polish-Jewish quarters, since it was possible for men like Leo Modena, with his peculiar principles, and Simone Luzzatto, as little of a genuine rabbi, to be members of the rabbinate. In the largest Italian community next to that of Rome, consisting of 6,000 souls, there were cultivated Jews interested in Italian and general European culture, and enjoying not only social, but also literary intercourse with Christian society. The walls of the Ghetto formed no partition between the Jewish and the Christian population. At this time, in the age of Shakespeare, there was no Shylock, certainly not in Venice, who would have stipulated as payment for his loan a pound of flesh from his Christian debtor. The people properly so called, workmen, sailors, and porters, precisely in Venice, were milder and more friendly towards Jews than in other Christian cities. Jewish manufacturers employed 4,000 Christian workmen in the lagoon city, so that their existence depended on their Jewish employers alone. At the time of a devastating pestilence, when, even in this well policed city, the reins of government became slacker and looser, and threatened to fall from the hands of those in power, Jewish capitalists voluntarily offered their money to the state to prevent embarrassment. There were not a few among them who vied with the cultivated classes among the Christians in the elegant use of the Italian language in speaking and writing, and in making good verses. Besides the two rabbis, Leo Modena and Simone Luzzatto, two Jewish poetesses, Deborah