The magistrate smiled more deprecatingly than ever; but he stopped in the corridor, and soliloquized: "I did not think you were so young, my noble patron. But you shall pay dearly for that shake of the hand you gave me." Proceeding to the Wolczinski house, his communication again started the fountains flowing. Only Herr Jan retained his composure. "Heaven will not allow two young noblemen to murder each other for the sake of a Jewess. Rest assured, God will work some miracle." The pious confidence of the old man was not deceived. The miracle was wrought. Nathaniel returned the same evening. He was much frightened when Judith went to meet him in great excitement. He listened to her confession, and walked up and down the room with long, nervous strides. "Keep calm, my child," he said at last, stroking her ruffled hair tenderly. "It would have been more dignified, perhaps, to have passed over the first innuendo of the cad in silence. But it is past now, and pay no heed to the gossip; all will soon quiet down. I am only grieved for the result upon your own heart. How unhappy and how lonely you will be if you retain your present opinion of Christians! But you will not, for your present bad opinion is as erroneous as your former good opinion was. Now go away and lie down, my poor child, and sleep off your headache." He himself kept awake a long time. "Poor child!" he mused. "Even your loveliness and brightness could not disarm hatred. How hard you will yet have to feel that hour! If you were a Pole, you would be the more sought after; and if both were killed, a hundred admirers would spring about you. But you are a daughter of that nation in which any whispered blemish on her reputation is fatal. Lost and damned, in her own country at least." He did not paint it a whit too black, for he knew his own countrymen. It seemed strange enough to them that he should have allowed her to reach her twentieth year without marrying, and now how they would judge her! It became of vital importance for Bergheimer to secure a suitable _parti_ for Judith from abroad, for at home she would have no chance. Even should he pile up mountains of gold, it would be impossible, duel or no duel. But in case it took place, the news would spread abroad, and the coming bridegroom would probably hear of it at the first Galician town in which he rested. This supposition sank into the old man's soul with terrible force. "Am I blameless?" he asked himself. "Have I given my child the education best conducive to her own good? Was I right in rejecting Raphael's warning?" The following morning, instead of going to his _comptoir_, he went where he would meet his acquaintances--on the street, and to the _Weinstube_ of Aaron Siebenschläfer. He turned the conversation in the direction of the proposed duel, treating it quite as a joke. Every one was surprised--the Christians wondering how they could have made so much of it, while the Jews shook their heads dubiously.