Goethe and Hebbel, Stendhal and Heinrich Heine, Alfred de Vigny and Friedrich Nietzsche, all made their ten steps towards the sun and are now sleeping peacefully beneath the dry sands of Christian democracy. Their works are read, to be sure; but alas! how few understand their meaning! I see this and I shudder. And I remember another moment in my life--a moment of perturbation too--a moment in which an idea overcame me, which has been haunting me ever since. I was on a visit to Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche, in her villa high up amongst the hills of Weimar, waiting in the drawing-room for my hostess to enter. It was the first time that I had stood upon the holy ground where Friedrich Nietzsche gave up his heroic soul, and I was naturally impressed; my eyes wandered reverently around the scene, and I suddenly noticed some handwriting on the wall. The handwriting consisted of a powerful letter N which the ingenious builder had engraved profusely upon the oak panels of the room. The N, of course, reminded me of another big N, connected with another big name,--the N which used to be engraved together with the imperial crown and eagle upon the plate and regalia of Napoleon Bonaparte. There was another victim of democracy: the man who, elevated by its revolutionary wave, tried to stifle and subdue the anarchical flood, was swallowed up as ignominiously as its other implacable opponent, the plucky parson's son of the vicarage of Röcken. The mighty sword in the beginning and the mighty pen at the end of the last century were alike impotent against--Fate. No doubt, I saw in that moment, as though lit up by a flashlight, the fate of Europe clearly before my eyes. A fate--an iron fate. A fate unavoidable for a continent that will have no more guides, no more great men. A fate unavoidable for an age that spills its best blood with the carelessness of ignorance. A fate unavoidable for a people that is driven by its very religion to disobedience and anarchy. And I thought of my own race, which has seen so many fates, so many ages, so many empires decline--and there was I, the eternal Jew, witnessing another catastrophe. And I shuddered, and when my hostess entered I had not yet recovered my breath. Gruesome, isn't it? But what if it should not come true? "There are no more prophets to-day," says the Talmud scornfully. Well, unlike my ancestor Jonah, who became melancholic when his announcement of the downfall of Nineveh was not fulfilled, I beg to say that I on the contrary shall be extremely delighted to have proved a false prophet. But I shall keep my umbrella all the same. OSCAR LEVY. 54 Russell Square, London, W.C. [1] 'I have loved justice and I have hated iniquity, _therefore_ I die in exile.' Contents Introduction