Ten days later one show-window actually displayed red, blue, and printed flannel petticoats, drawers and knitted vests, another showed cotton stockings and durable shoes, while a third revealed high piles of rough woolens in brown, gray, and black. And the salesrooms were filled until everybody’s needs had been supplied, and the salesgirls again yawned or surreptitiously read Engelhorn’s novels behind their black silk aprons. CHAPTER III. THE OLD-TIMER Dr. Haberfeld, the lawyer, sat in the Café Imperial and crossly pushed aside the newspapers which Josef, the old head-waiter, had brought him. “Say, Josef, it’s so empty here, a fellow could freeze next to the stove! In the old days it was a hard job to scare up a seat, and now--now you could stage a Derby race here, there’s so much room!” Josef stroked his grayish muttonchops, gazed sorrowfully at the other, wiped off the table with his napkin, and said with a worried air: “The Ring cafés are closing one after the other--I guess we won’t last much longer either. Y’know, Herr Doktor, what the Hebrew gentlemen--beg pardon, the Jews--were, they always liked to go to the high-class places, where there’s something doing and something to see. But the Christian gentlemen, they go to a coffee-house in the suburbs, and play tarot or billiards there--or else they go to a cheap barroom. Yes, sir, times have changed.” “A deaf, dumb and blind man could see that,” growled the lawyer. “Look here, Josef, we two have known each other long enough not to pretend that things are what they aren’t. To tell you the truth, I don’t like the whole business. Vienna’s going to the dogs without the Jews!” Josef started, and looked around with frightened air. “Don’t worry, nobody’ll hear us! Vienna’s going to the dogs, I say; and when I, a veteran anti-Semite, say that, it’s true, I tell you! And I’ll tell you something more, Josef. You know, better than anyone else, that after I eat I always have to take some bicarbonate of soda, to counteract the wretched acid in my stomach. But if I had no acid in my stomach, I wouldn’t be able to eat anything any more, and I’d kick the bucket. Now, y’see, that anti-Semitism of ours was only the soda to counteract the Jews, to keep ’em from becoming a nuisance! Now we have no acid any more--that is, no Jews--but only soda; and I’m afraid that’ll be the end of us.” Josef, who had listened with breathless and reverential attention, dejectedly flicked a chair with his napkin as he whispered miserably: “Right you are, Herr Doktor, though a fellow don’t dare say so out loud. My finish has started already. In the last six months I’ve spent half my savings. Between ourselves, Herr Doktor--and because you yourself are a liberal gentleman, so the shoe don’t fit you. The Hebrew gentlemen--beg pardon, I mean the Jews--were real generous with their tips!”