David and Marc slackened their steps when, admitted by the lodge-keeper of La Désirade, they at last found them selves in the grounds. It was a splendid and enjoyable August day, and the beauty of the great trees, the infinite placidity of the lawns, the delightful freshness of the waters filled them with admiration. A king might have dwelt there. At the end of the enchanting avenues of verdure extending on all sides, one invariably perceived the château, a sumptuous Renaissance château, rising like lace-work of pinkish stone against the azure of the sky. And at the sight of that paradise acquired by Jew wealth, at the thought of the splendid fortune amassed by Nathan the Jew money-monger, Marc instinctively recalled the gloomy little shop in the Rue du Trou, the dismal hovel without air or sunshine, where Lehmann, that other Jew, had been plying his needle for thirty years, and earning only enough to provide himself with bread. And, ah! how many other Jews there were, yet more wretched than he--Jews who starved in filthy dens. They were the immense majority, and their existence demonstrated all the idiotic falsity of anti-semitism, that proscription _en masse_ of a race which was charged with the monopolisation of all wealth, when it numbered so many poor working-folk, so many victims, crushed down by the almightiness of money, whether it were Jew, or Catholic, or Protestant. As soon as ever a French Jew became a great capitalist, he bought a title of Baron, married his daughter to a Count of ancient stock, made a pretence of showing himself more royalist than the king, and ended by becoming the worst of renegades, a fierce anti-semite, who not only denied, but helped to slaughter, his kith and kin. There was really no Jew question at all, there was only a Capitalist question--a question of money heaped up in the hands of a certain number of gluttons, and thereby poisoning and rotting the world. As David and Marc reached the château they perceived Baron Nathan, his daughter, and his son-in-law seated under a large oak tree in the company of the Marchioness de Boise and a cleric, in whom they recognised Father Crabot. Doubtless the Rector of the College of Valmarie had been invited to a quiet family lunch, in neighbourly fashion--for a distance of less than two miles separated the two estates; and doubtless, also, some serious question had been discussed at dessert. Then, to enjoy the fine weather, they had seated themselves in some garden chairs, under that oak and near a marble basin, into which ever fell the crystal of a source which an indelicate nymph was pouring from her urn.