He left his lodgings and wandered along the bank of the Arno, unmindful of the cold and the pain in his head. The water of the flowing river did not reflect the azure of the Italian skies. The drizzling rain had stirred the placid surface and, like his heart, was turgid and muddy. Nothing was beautiful around him now. All was grim. For not only woman’s beauty but all beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. He wished to think of other things—he said to himself he would dismiss the “filth and stupidity” of the “congregation” at Munich—but his brain would admit no other thought. But for his birthright—or was it his birth-curse?—he would have been now on his way to assume the duties of a professor of literature and devote the rest of his life to his beloved fatherland. He shuddered, then a cynical smile appeared on his tightly closed mouth. He remembered that morning at the Franciscan school, when he revealed to Christian Lutz the fact that his father’s father had been a little Jew with long whiskers. Every time the world recalled that revelation there was a mob to jeer at him and a Father Scher to shower blows upon him! He continued along the bank, one moment serious, his eyes closed, the next moment a strange smile on his lips. When he reached the Ponte Grazie and made his way across the little stone bridge toward the Uffizi, his heart felt lightened. He saw the sublime jest of life; everybody laughing at everybody else. The world was a great lazaretto where every suffering inmate was laughing at the infirmities of the other. Was he not himself a suffering patient mocking the other patients? The irony of it all amused him and made him forget the drizzling rain and the pain in his head. Presently a priest passed him, a sorry spectacle of a man; pale, emaciated, bent, his bony hands quivering, his lips muttering something. The poor fellow had spent so much time in praying that his lips moved even when not at prayer. What a face! All the pains and sorrows that human flesh was heir to were mirrored in it. Albert’s heart was wrung with pity; there was no mockery in his heart. No, he would not even reply to the attacks of his enemies. Love those that hate you! He now understood that sublime utterance. The great Jew of Galilee must have understood the jest of life, and when one understands one can only pity, not mock.