Samuel Freudenstein had seen more of the world than all the other Neustädians together. After extensive commercial journeys, especially in Southeastern Europe, he had settled in Neustadt and begun to trade in second-hand goods and junk, as heavy losses in a speculation prevented his embarking on a greater enterprise. He got on, and married, but his wife died at the birth of their son in 1819, on the very day when Hans Unwirrsch, too, was born. Samuel Freudenstein brought up his son in his own way, which in many respects differed widely from the curriculum of the charity school. Samuel thanked Hans for the protection he had given Moses, and Hans' mother and Uncle Grünebaum allowed him to continue his visits to the Jew's house. Hans now discovered so many wonders in the gloom of the junkshop that for the first time his life seemed to be filled with real substance. At the same time he mounted a rung higher on the ladder of knowledge by entering the lowest class of the grammar school. On this occasion Uncle Grünebaum did not fail to make one of his finest and longest speeches and to present Hans with his first pair of high boots. Now, too, for the first time Hans entered into a more intimate relation with the other sex. He found his first love, Sophie, the daughter of an apple-woman. With her cat, Sophie sat in her mother's booth opposite the school, sold her fruit with seriousness and had difficulty, on her way home, in defending herself and her cat from the rough schoolboys. Hans lent her his protection and he and Moses kept up a friendly intercourse with her through the spring and summer. But in the course of the winter one of the diseases of childhood carried her off, and her companion, the cat, did not long outlive her. The death of little Sophie and the cat made a deep impression on Hans. He did not become friends with any other girl at present; but from now on the second-hand shop gained an ever greater influence over him. In this enchanted cave Hans saw the father, Samuel, going about, like a magician, with brush and glue-pot, stuffing birds and quadrupeds, collecting curious goblets and tankards, buying up odd portraits of other people's ancestors. He listened attentively when father and son talked of the history of their race, he lost himself completely in old Dutch descriptions of travel, with their copperplates, one day he even saw a real ostrich-egg. Moses was far ahead of Hans in all branches of knowledge. Samuel Freudenstein had taught his son that knowledge and money were the two most effective means of power and now they were both indefatigable, the son in acquiring the former, the father in accumulating the latter. Things were well classified in Moses' head, he could find what he wanted there, any minute;--he had never been a child, a real, true, natural child.