“Zurich: The telegraphed and telephoned reports of the decisive session of the Viennese National Assembly were watched with feverish interest on the stock exchange here. The definite news of the repeal of the anti-Jewish law was immediately followed by large purchases of kronen, the buyers including groups of American and English financiers. The stamped Austrian krone doubled its value by leaps and bounds, and had tripled it by closing time.” At six o’clock in the evening there appeared a third extra edition that attracted attention throughout Vienna and called forth great merriment mixed with slightly off-color jokes. The announcement was as follows: “FIRST JEW ARRIVES IN VIENNA.” “We have the honor to inform the public that the first Jew has just returned to Vienna from his exile. He is the young but already world-famous painter and etcher Leo Strakosch, who, longing for his own country, spent the period of banishment in Paris, leaving that city the day before yesterday to proceed to Lundenburg, on the Austro-Moravian border. When the news of the nullification of the expulsion law was telephoned to him he immediately went on by automobile to his native Vienna. At the present time he is staying at the home of his future father-in-law, Hofrat Spineder, in the Kobenzlgasse, where he is now embracing his faithful and loving fiancée after years of dreary separation and waiting.” This extra edition represented a well-meant bit of mischievous pleasantry on the part of the editor-in-chief of the _Arbeiter-Zeitung_. It was followed by an extra edition of the _Weltpresse_, containing two sensational news items. One was to the effect that the former Chancellor, Dr. Schwertfeger, despondent over the wreck of his nobly and sincerely conceived work, had committed suicide by means of a bullet. The other was an announcement by the _Weltpresse_ that, submitting to the will of the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of Vienna, it would thenceforth appear as the organ of the new Party of Active Citizens. CHAPTER XXI. “MY BELOVED JEW!”