Voltaire, the arch-enemy of Feudalism, yet defended the feudal attitude towards the Jews. His enmity for the race did not spring entirely from capricious ill-humour. He had a grudge against the Jews owing to some pecuniary losses sustained, as he complained, through the bankruptcy of a Jewish capitalist of the name of Medina. The story, as told by the inimitable story-teller himself, is worth repeating: “Medina told me that he was not to blame for his bankruptcy: that he was unfortunate, that he had never been a son of Belial. He moved me, I embraced him, we praised God together, and I lost my money. I have never hated the Jewish nation; I hate nobody.”[136] ♦1750–51♦ But this was not all. Whilst in Berlin, Voltaire waged a protracted warfare against a Hebrew jeweller. It was a contest between two great misers, each devoutly bent on over-reaching the other. According to a good, if too emphatic, judge, “nowhere, in the Annals of Jurisprudence, is there a more despicable thing, or a deeper involved in lies and deliriums,” than this Voltaire-Hirsch lawsuit.[137] It arose out of a transaction of illegal stock-jobbing. Voltaire had commissioned the Jew Hirsch to go to Dresden and purchase a number of Saxon Exchequer bills--which were payable in gold to genuine Prussian holders only--giving him for payment a draft on Paris, due after some weeks, and receiving from him a quantity of jewels in pledge, till the bills were delivered. Hirsch went to Dresden, but sent no bills. Voltaire, suspecting foul play, stopped payment of the Paris draft, and ordered Hirsch to come back at once. On the Jew’s arrival an attempt at settlement was made. Voltaire asked for his draft and offered to return the diamonds, accompanied with a sum of money covering part of the Jew’s travelling expenses. Hirsch on examining the diamonds declared that some of them had been changed, and declined to accept them. It was altogether a _mauvaise affaire_, and to this day it remains a mystery which of the two litigants was more disingenuous.