But this admiration was not fated to endure very long. As Rubenssohn grew accustomed to the company in which he found himself, the vagueness left his eyes. In Cyril he discovered one who appealed to a different side of his nature, and a mocking spirit took possession of him. Mansfield and the melancholy Paschics listened with bated breath while the guest embarked upon a career of destruction, sparing neither the beliefs common to mankind generally nor those of his own people. He ridiculed with the utmost impartiality the ideas of love and immortality, the tyranny of the Law, and the Messianic hopes of Rabbi Schaul. The keen arrows of his wit played round each subject in turn, disclosing with cruel certainty the weak spot or the flaw. He made no attempt to deny the degradation of his people, and in Mansfield’s view he proposed no remedy for it. He believed in the Jewish race, it seemed, and he accorded a qualified toleration to Judaism on account of its services in the preservation of the race, but his Judaism possessed neither prophecies nor the hope of a Messiah, and existed independently of any religious sanctions. Its ecclesiastical system had been evolved naturally enough during the progress of the race, and ascribed, as other nations ascribed their religions, to the guidance of a higher power. Freedom, toleration, a more natural mode of life, these things would in his view raise the Jews far above the level of other nations, and then the old fetters which had held the race together might safely be shaken off. Mansfield thought of the prosperous Jews whom he had met at Alexandria, and who enjoyed all these blessings already, and his heart rose in revolt against Rubenssohn’s philosophy. If this was to be the end, if the Jews had remained a separate people merely that in the end of the ages they might be better fed, clothed, housed, than the nations, throwing aside callously the prophecies which had cheered them and the faith that had sustained them in their sorrows, if they were to be bereft at once of hope and of religion, then the heaviest of their former woes would be a lighter curse than their new prosperity. “I had rather be in the wrong with Lady Phil and Princess Soudaroff than in the right with Rubenssohn,” he decided, remembering how often he had listened to the old lady as she expounded her views on the Jewish question and her interpretation of prophecy, Philippa at her side concurring enthusiastically in all that was said. This time, however, he did not confide his feelings to Cyril.