Leipzig, he alone being capable by flattery, money, and brandy, of overmatching the covetousness of the Sclave nobles. Meanwhile, the most opulent sat in the well-grated rooms of their Jewish town, concealing securely, under lock and key, the bills of exchange, and mortgages of the highest lords, they were great bankers, even according to our present standard. The Jews of that period were probably richer in proportion to the Christians than now, and at all events, from the peculiarities of their traffic, more indispensable. They had friendly protectors alike at the Imperial court, in the harem of the Sultan, and in the secret chamber of the Pope; they had an aristocracy of blood, which was still highly respected by their fellow-believers, and at bridal feasts they wore with pride, the jewels which some ancestor, long perhaps before the days of Marco Polo, had brought from India, while exposing his life to manifold dangers; or another had got by bartering, from the great Moorish king at Granada. But in the streets the Jew still bore the degrading mark of the unhonoured stranger; in the Empire, a yellow cockade on his coat, and in Bohemia the stiff blue cravat; as in the middle ages he had worn the yellow hat, and in Italy the red mantle. It is true he was the creditor and employer of numerous Christians, but in most of the greater cities he still lived closely confined to certain streets or portions of the city. Few German Jewish communities were larger or more opulent than that in Prague, and it was one of the oldest in Germany. Seldom does a traveller neglect to visit the narrow streets of the Jewish quarter, where the small houses, clustered together like the cells of a beehive, enclosed at once the greatest riches and the greatest misery of the country, and where the angel of death so long caused tears of gall to trickle into the mouth of the believer, till every inch of earth in the dismal churchyard became the ashes of men. At the end of the seventeenth century, near six thousand industrious men dwelt there in a narrow space; the great money lenders, as well as the poorest frippery dealers and porters, all closely united in firm fellowship and common interests, indispensable to the impoverished country, yet in continual warfare against the customs, coarseness, and religious zeal of the newly converted kingdom.