“The Jewish law has been repealed!” With these words ringing in his ears the wretched Deputy fell in a profound and beneficent swoon. CHAPTER XX. THE REPEAL OF THE ANTI-JEWISH LAW When Leo entered the Parliament Building the newly elected Presiding Officer had just greeted the ministers he had chosen the day before to replace the old cabinet, and had informed the Assembly that there had been presented two declarations of urgency to the effect that Paragraph Eleven of the Constitution, prohibiting sojourn in Austria to Jews or persons of Jewish origin, should be repealed. A Social-Democratic deputy rose to move that the declarations of urgency be taken up immediately. In spite of the noisy objection of the Christian-Socialists and Pan-Germans the majority voted for the motion, whereupon the Presiding Officer gave the floor to Dr. Wolters, the leader of the Social-Democrats, as the first speaker in favor of the proposal. Wolters pointed out that he and the other members of his party had opposed the law even three years ago as a direct blow at the most sacred rights of man, and as indicative of retrogression into the darkest of the Dark Ages. At that time the opposition had been hooted down, abused, and crowded out of the hall; today, however, the once misled and deluded people had brought them back in such numbers that the power now lay in their hands and in those of other liberal-minded men. Continuing, Wolters sketched the events of the past few years, pointed to the terrible collapse of Austria, cited striking statistics, and closed with these words: “The audacious, too audacious, work of the man who once assumed divine powers and now could not even obtain a seat in this House, has gone to pieces; outside a hundred thousand unemployed citizens, together with all our working but desperate people, are waiting for the new House to open our gates to a new future, and to give our Jewish fellow-citizens the opportunity to work again side by side with us--not against us--to employ their intelligence, their industry, and their creative force in the interests of our sorely tried and almost ruined country.” After the applause, to which the galleries contributed their share, had died down, the second majority speaker, Herr Habietnik, who had been elected by the downtown business men, was given the floor. In a whimsical speech, frequently interrupted by loud laughter, he described the poverty-stricken, provincialized Vienna of the day, regaled his audience with tales of his experiences in his line of business, and declared: