He wrote to the Emperor Justinian the story of the old Jew, and--really and truly--the patriarch Moses can work still greater miracles than Saint Cyprian. Justinian, more greedy and avaricious than the whole race of Jews put together, ordered these treasures to be taken, not to Constantinople, but Jerusalem, where they are to be divided among the Christian churches and the Jewish synagogues. So the old Jew has recovered a portion of the treasures of his people,--without a single sword-stroke,--while Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, gained them only after fierce battles and much bloodshed. Does the old man believe in the curse that rests upon the treasure? I think he does. He does not lie, and it is useful for his purpose to believe it; so he credits it easily and seriously. The German says: "Gain by blood rather than by sweat." The Jew says: "Gain by sweat rather than by blood, and far, far rather by money than by sweat!" It may be said in praise of the Jews that both their faults and their virtues vie in preserving them and increasing their wealth and their numbers, while the Germans destroy themselves, their lives, their possessions, and their power by boundless indolence and boundless revelling no less than by their boundless obstinacy and their stupid heroism of honor. (True, these Vandals in their carousing have even forgotten their obstinacy and their love of fighting!) We hate and despise the Jews; I think we ought to fear and--in their good qualities strive to excel them. * * * * * I have read aloud my opinion of the Germans to my friend Fara, whose thirst for honor did not impel him toward reading and writing; he heard me quietly to the end, drained a cup of unmixed wine, stroked his long reddish-yellow beard thoughtfully, and said: "Little Greek! You are a shrewd little Greek! Perhaps you are not altogether wrong. But to me my German faults are much dearer than the virtues of all other nations." Gradually--so we learn--all the rest of the Barbarian kingdom will be plucked leaf by leaf, like an artichoke, without a sword-stroke, for Justinian's wide-open mouth. Belisarius's first care, after his victory over the land forces, was to secure the hostile fleet.