But with the beginning of his apprenticeship the subject lost all glamor for him. He found the banking business disappointing and the Judengasse disheartening. He had imagined a bank was—well, he did not clearly know what a bank was like except that money flowed from it like milk and honey in the promised land, and with money one could buy so many beautiful things. For aside from thought and feeling Albert was still childishly unpractical. Rindskopf’s bank was a sombre room with a dingy little chamber in the rear, in which stood a large iron box and was fastened with three locks. He had soon become dreadfully lonesome and homesick for Gunsdorf—the Gunsdorf he had been so glad to leave only a few weeks before. He longed for Schmallgasse, for the Marktplatz, for the Hofgarten, for Father Rhine, for Hedwiga. He had never known how much he loved his native town. How had he ever wished to depart from it, he asked himself again and again in his loneliness. He had already seen the house where Goethe was born, had again visited the Roemer and the Zeil and Sachsenhausen, and found nothing new any longer. All his thoughts again turned to Hedwiga. He had despatched two letters of glowing passion and tenderness but had received no answer. So he stayed up late at night, writing heart-rending verses about a maiden with golden hair, who chanted as she sewed a shroud for her lover . . . The banker had put Albert to copying letters and filling in draft blanks and the youth found the task irksome. At the end of the second week his work was done so mechanically and with such eloquent distaste that his employer, seated at his writing desk a short distance away shook his head and murmured, “_Der Junge hat kein Talent zum Geschaeft_.” No, the young man had no talent for business. Adolf Rindskopf would have sent him away but David Zorn was his friend and he must endure his friend’s son a little longer. Besides, Albert wrote a very neat hand, with a flourish which Adolf secretly envied. When he wrote to Berlin—_die Kaiserstadt_—he was anxious to make an impression on his correspondent. Yes, Albert’s penmanship was beautiful.