The case ended in a sentence which forced Hirsch to restore the Paris draft and Voltaire to buy the jewels at a price fixed by sworn experts. Hirsch was at liberty to appeal, if he could prove that the diamonds had been tampered with. In the meantime he was fined ten thalers for falsely denying his signature. Voltaire shrieked hysterically, trying to convince the world and himself that he had triumphed. But the world, at all events, refused to be convinced. The scandal formed the topic of conversation and comment throughout the civilised world. Frederick’s own view of the case was that his friend Voltaire had tried “to pick Jew pockets,” but, instead, had his own pocket picked of some £150, and, moreover, he was made the laughing-stock of Europe in pamphlets and lampoons innumerable--one of these being a French comedy, _Tantale en Procès_, attributed by some to Frederick himself; a poor production wherein the author ridicules--to the best of his ability--the unfortunate philosopher. The incident was not calculated to sweeten Voltaire’s temper, or to enhance his affection for the Jewish people. Vain and vindictive, the sage, with all his genius and his many amiable qualities, never forgot an injury or forgave a defeat. On the other hand, the Jews could boast not a few allies. Among the champions of humanity, in the noblest sense of the term, none was more earnest than Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the prince of modern critics. His pure and lofty nature had met with her kindred in Moses Mendelssohn, the Jewish philosopher, born within the same twelvemonth. ♦1728–9♦ The friendship which bound these two children of diverse races and creeds together was a practical proof of Lessing’s own doctrine that virtue is international, and that intellectual affinity recognises no theological boundaries. ♦1779♦ This doctrine, already preached in most eloquent prose, found an artistic embodiment, and a universal audience, in _Nathan der Weise_--the first appearance of the Jew on the European stage as a human being, and a human being of the very highest order. The Wise Nathan was no other than Moses Mendelssohn, scarcely less remarkable a person than Lessing himself. Years before Mendelssohn had left his native town of Dessau and trudged on to Berlin in search of a future. A friendless and penniless lad, timid, deformed, and repulsively ugly, he was with the utmost difficulty admitted into the Prussian capital, of which he was to become an ornament. For long years after his arrival in Berlin, the gifted and destitute youth laboured and waited with the patient optimism of one conscious of his own powers, until an unwilling world was forced to recognise the beauty and heroism of the soul which lurked under that most unpromising exterior; and the Jewish beggar lad, grown into an awkward, stuttering and insignificant-looking man, gradually rose to be the idol of a salon--the eighteenth century equivalent for a shrine--at