The following day, as Judith entered the dining-room at the dinner-hour, her father came to meet her. "A letter from our dear ones!" he exclaimed, "from Breslau. They have journeyed that far without pausing, but they propose to remain there a week before crossing Saxony and Bavaria to the Neckar. Only think, Bergheimer has found our old pupil from Mayence in Breslau. He is a banker, named Berthold Wertheimer, and Bergheimer cannot laud him enough. I have written to Raphael, and told him of the generous conduct of our count. How much he and the others of our co-religionists have misjudged the man!" "What conduct?" inquired Judith. "Have you not heard of it yet? The whole town is talking of it. The sign-board at the entrance of the castle gardens has been removed, and he has notified the heads of the congregation in a very pleasant letter. I suppose you will wish to add something to this letter to Raphael. He sends you his love, and says: 'Judith's promise at our parting to remember our last conversation makes me very happy.' What does he mean by that?" "Nothing," she murmured. "Only childishness!" "I thought so; but you are surely not well, my child? You are so pale!" CHAPTER IV. It was three weeks later; a mild, bright October day. The landscape is scantily blessed with that beauty which in more favored countries delights the heart of man. Limitless plains surround us on all sides, from which gently swelling billows of earth occasionally elevate themselves above the dead level, only to sink back into it again. Brooks and rivers roll their muddy, sluggish waters between miry banks, from their birthplace in the distant mountains to the lower and drearier steppe country, while here and there a streamlet is sucked up by the thick turf, or dammed into a pond, whose broad, turbid mirror reflects the reed of the small boggy islands and the pale, misty blue of the firmament. The small towns, where the Jews, the outcast chosen people (chosen, it would seem, for unspeakable miseries), live huddled together in crowded groups of wretched huts, are poor and dirty. More pitiful still are the villages, where the Ruthene, sullen and fierce, ploughs the land under the lash of the Pole. Here and there are tiny plantations of birch-trees; but one may wander over heath for miles and miles, where little grows but the juniper and nothing blooms but the heather. The winter is fearful, when the storms from the north drive the snow across the vast plains. Short and scanty is the spring, and parching the heat of summer; but the autumn, gentle and bright, revives the hearts of the poor and refreshes the barren land. The heath takes on a vivid crimson blush, the woods a darker tinge; the deep blue of the sky is intensified by the greater purity of the atmosphere; and even the stubble-field becomes a thing of beauty, with the transparent spider-webs floating over it like a bridal veil.