His first political pronouncement proved a veritable boomerang. It was too daring, too pointed, too truthful. He learned that even in letters, no less than in the drawingroom, truth must be masked, if not altogether suppressed. His acquaintances of rank looked at him askance, his Polish friend and patron shunned him, Prussian officials took notice of him. Even Rahel, herself a passionate lover of truth and no friend of _Junkerdom_, advised caution. And when she tried to give him the wisdom of her experience, he only grew peevish and said he was no diplomat and did not wish to be one, and that truth was to be his only guide in life. He found himself at odds with everybody. He had anticipated applause but instead met with hostility and condemnation. His cultured Jewish friends, too, took offense at this essay. In speaking of the pitiful conditions of his co-racials in Poland he spoke disparagingly of the elegantly dressed Berliners. He had ironically made a comparison between the exterior of the ungainly Polish Jew, with a heart beating for freedom, and the elegant Berliner, whose head was filled with the silly romanticism of the period, with nothing but vanity in his heart. V. One winter evening as he was brooding over his sad plight his landlady informed him that some one wanted to see him. “I don’t want to see anybody—leave me alone!” he finally cried irritably. “I’ve tried to send her away but she insists on seeing you—she has come all the way from Poland to see you,” came the landlady’s voice through the closed door. He jumped up from his bed. He could not even guess who this intruder might be but the word Poland was magic to him, and it was a “she”! Perhaps it was an admirer from that fateful land. The hope of an admirer stirred romance in his soul. He wondered which of his scattered songs had found an echo in the heart of a Polish admirer. Yes, he was becoming famous! The stray children of his brain were traveling far. He opened the door with a flush of joy on his face. He rushed downstairs to the sitting-room, dimly lighted by a tallow candle. By the door stood a slender girl shivering with cold. He took a step closer to her. “Miriam!” he cried. She rushed up to him, tears welling in her luminous dark-blue eyes. “How did you get here?” His joy and confusion were bewildering. “I had your address so I came here,” she murmured in the tone of a helpless child. He made her sit down and tell him how she had happened to leave Gnesen.