"Yes! the Lord will make you sleep under tents once more and, with you, there may be some who are innocent, meek and lowly ones, toilers ... unless, beforehand, they all break away from you!" "Enough, M. Schleifmann!" dryly declared Herschstein, who was gradually recovering his arrogance. "Enough of your jeremiads! We know your ideas.... You are an anti-Semite, a renegade! It is well known!" Schleifmann lifted his arms again and looked up at the ceiling. "A renegade!" he repeated, "Anti-Semite!... Adonaï! Adonaï! Hearest thou what this man is saying to me?" "Moreover," added Pums who, like Herschstein, had recovered his ease, "moreover, when it comes to people being expelled, you might very well be before we are, M. Schleifmann! For we are French, we ... while you...." A frantic laugh cut him short. Schleifmann exploded with bitter merriment, a prey to a fit of wild hilarity. "French! You French!" he exclaimed, between two sobs of laughter. "But you are neither French, nor German, nor Austrians, nor anything at all--least of all Jews!... Your Jewry oppresses you under your clothing.... It oppresses you in drawing-rooms, in clubs, everywhere you go! It makes you itch, like a haircloth.... You wear it without good grace, without good nature, without pride! You only acknowledge it with regret.... It makes you pale!... You are unacquainted with its most elementary dogmas.... And, were it not that you fear it might hurt you in your business, I wager that, to-morrow morning, you would all seek to be naturalized as Catholics!" "We do not argue with possessed people!" cried Herschstein, whose forehead and cheeks were striped with livid lines. "With whom do you argue, if you please?" Schleifmann vociferated. "With dross like yourself? For I tell you, in the words of Ezekiel: 'You are all dross, all dross of brass, of lead, of iron; you are all dross of silver.... And the Lord shall precipitate you in the crucible to melt you under the breath of His anger!'" He had given the Hebrew text. Now he gave it in German, and it was such a volley of harsh, thundering syllables that Pums began to take fright. What would the agents and the clerks in the hall nearby think of this noise? He decided to try audacity and said haltingly: "That will do, M. Schleifmann!... Enough scandal!... I ask you to retire.... Shut up and get out, or damn it all, I will call the police!" "Ah! that would complete the day!" Schleifmann exclaimed. "No! but do it; do it, so that I can laugh a little more!... Have me removed to the police station for a religious brawl!... Have me arrested!... Jeremiah was arrested twice.... Hamasiah also and Micah as well, and many others.... It is natural.... No, I stay right here, if only just to see it happen! The police!... Ha! ha!" "He is mad, raving mad!" Pums murmured, his face convulsed. "Not at all," Herschstein said in an attempt at irony. "You haven't got it right.... He is a prophet, my friend, a great prophet!"