Franz Friedrich Levy sat on his high stool before his desk in the office of the Second Secretariat of the Anhalt-Diesterburg-Rickershofen State Railroad and reflected discontentedly on his lot. He had rather an important position, it is true, that of chief bookkeeper of the Second Secretariat, an important subdivision in the management of the railway, which was a prosperous governmental institution, binding together a rich and beautiful stretch of country in middle Germany. He was in receipt of a very fair salary, occupied a comfortable house in the suburbs of the town, and was wedded to a rather good-looking wife, with quite a store of fashionable though useless accomplishments, but still he was not happy. The cause of his unhappiness was a grievance which he had against the Ober-Direction or supreme management of the railway, a grievance for which he thought—and his wife agreed with him in this opinion—there could be only one explanation. He believed that his promotion was unduly slow. He had 245entered the service of the railroad in his twentieth year as clerk, and now in his forty-fifth, when his once raven black locks were already heavily streaked with gray and more than a suspicion of baldness was showing itself on the top of his poll, he was only chief bookkeeper of one of the numerous subdivisions of the great concern. He thought that by length of service and capacity he was fitted to be general manager of the road; but while admitting that he had no right to aspire to that exalted position, he considered that by this time he should have attained at the very least to the post of division chief or superintendent. “Why is it that I do not advance?” he asked himself as he sat gloomily revolving on the high stool. “Am I incapable? Have I been idle, negligent, or inattentive to my duties? Do I not know all the details of the business from beginning to end? Do I not know by heart all the statistics of the road, the number of passengers and the weight of freight carried, the condition of every station, the receipts and the expenditures to a pfennig? No, the fault is not mine. It is owing to rishus, to anti-Semitic prejudice. My only fault, as far as I can discover, is that I am a Jew. To that I owe all my misfortune. This accursed accident of my birth 246prevents my talents being appreciated, prevents my attaining the success which I should naturally reach; and, I suppose, as long as I am marked with this badge of disgrace and social inferiority I shall always remain an unimportant, insignificant individual. That Ober-Director von Meinken, he is, I am sure, the chief cause of keeping me down. He always looks at me with such a dark, unfriendly glance whenever I have to enter his office. He is the very picture of a Rosho, although he talks smoothly enough. I don’t doubt but he would be glad enough to get rid of me altogether if he only knew how to bring it about.”
“Aha, friend Levy, why are you plunged in such deep thought?” suddenly said a deep, hearty voice at his side. “I have been standing here a whole minute and you have never even noticed my presence, so absorbed were you in your reflections. Did I not know that you were a married man of virtuous principles I would say that you were in love. But then the expression of your face shows that you have not been dreaming sweet dreams of love delights. If I am any judge of physiognomy at all, your thoughts have been disagreeable ones. May I ask what they were?”
Levy turned around with a startled jerk of 247the high stool. It was the Herr Ober-Director, Baron Adalbert von Meinken himself with a good-humored smile on his broad, handsome, Teutonic face, the lower part of which was covered with a neatly trimmed brown full beard. Levy blushed guiltily. He felt as though the keen blue eyes of his superior were gazing into his very soul and reading the thoughts that had just occupied him. He stammered forth a half apology.
“The Herr Ober-Director will pardon my preoccupation,” he said, “but I can assure you that I was not thinking of any outside matter. I never permit myself to think of outside matters in business hours. I was thinking of a method of reducing the expenses of the station Weizenhofen on the Blauberg-Schoenthal branch. That place costs a great deal more than it ought to, considering the small amount of business done at that point, and I hope soon to be able to lay a project before your Excellency which will materially reduce the cost of maintenance of the station.”
“Ah,” said the Ober-Director, with a pleased expression, “I might have known that you, Levy, were not wasting your employer’s time in idle ruminations. You have always been a faithful, industrious worker, devoted heart and 248soul to the interests of the road. I shall be glad to receive your proposal in the Weizenhofen matter and I shall give it full consideration.”
And the Ober-Director passed on and entered his private office. Levy bent over his books as soon as his chief had passed, and was careful not to fall into another fit of reflection that afternoon. The words of the Ober-Director had pleased him but he did not altogether trust them. He feared that he was under close surveillance, and that all his actions were being rigidly scrutinized, with a view to finding some flaw in his conduct. He devoted himself, therefore, with redoubled assiduity to his routine work until the welcome sound of the bell, announcing the closing hour, relieved him from further labor for the day. He put on his hat, exchanged his light office jacket for his street coat, and with a pleasant word of farewell to his fellow-clerks sallied forth into the street. As he sauntered down the beautiful Kaiser Strasse, the finest thoroughfare of the town, through which he always walked both in his daily journeyings to and from the office and on his Sunday and holiday promenades, he was greeted by so many friends and acquaintances that his hand was continually busy raising his hat in response to their salutations. His social equals, both Christian 249and Jewish, saluted him with easy and unaffected cordiality, his humbler acquaintances with great deference. These manifestations of friendship and respect, instead of pleasing him, added to his discontent and his resentment against the authorities of the railroad. He said to himself that it was a crying shame, indeed an outrage, that a man so generally esteemed and honored by his fellow-townsmen should be kept in a subordinate position because of the religious prejudices of his superiors; and should be prevented by such a reason, so repugnant to the culture and civilization of the century, from attaining to the rank and emoluments to which he was clearly entitled. In this frame of mind he reached his handsome dwelling, which was charmingly situated in the Schoenberger Allee, a new and fashionable street in the suburbs of the town. To the effusive greetings of the spouse of his bosom, Frau Ottilie, née Kahn, he returned a curt answer and threw himself, in an attitude of utter disgust and weariness, upon the sofa.
Frau Ottilie Levy was a worthy counterpart of her partner in life. If harmony in marriage is secured by similarity in tastes and disposition, theirs should have been an ideal union, for their characters and views were almost 250exactly alike. Like her husband, Frau Levy was intensely ambitious. Her sole aim in life was to secure the greatest possible measure of wealth and social prestige. She shared her husband’s grievance to the fullest extent; but, womanlike, she was inclined to put the blame on him for his failure to advance, and continually nagged and pestered him with her complaints, and the expression of her discontent at not being able to shine as much as Frau Geheimr?thin So-and-So or Frau Commerzienr?thin Somebody Else. Seeing the discomposure under which her husband was evidently laboring, her woman’s instinct told her that now was not the time to nag and scold, but to sympathize and console. She therefore relinquished, or rather postponed to a more favorable opportunity, the caustic lecture combined with a demand for a larger allowance which she had been preparing all day for the special benefit of her life partner, and began inquiring, with great solicitude, concerning the cause of his disturbed condition.
“What is the matter, Franz dear?” she asked, in the same tone of winning gentleness which she had lately so greatly admired in the celebrated stage heroine, Adele de Pompadour, as played by Madame Graetzinger, the renowned 251Erste Dame of the Stadt Theater. “Why are you so upset? I trust that nothing serious has happened.”
“Yes and no,” answered Franz dejectedly; “that old Von Meinken caught me to-day, when I was thinking about the shameful slowness of my promotion, or rather my lack of any promotion, and was neglecting my work. I was so absorbed in thought that I never noticed him, although, as he told me, he stood by my desk over a minute. Of course I gave him as good an excuse as I could get up in a hurry to account for my absent-mindedness; but how can I tell whether the old fox believed what I said or not? Confound him, he’s always sure to be around when he isn’t wanted. You can rely on it that I worked extra hard all the rest of the afternoon.”
“You don’t think that can hurt you any, do you?” asked Otillie, dropping her theatrical manner, and with just a shade of anxiety in her voice. “What harm is it if an old, trustworthy employee like you is idle for a minute or two in the day?”
“It oughtn’t to be any harm,” answered Franz. “But then you know how stiff and exacting these Prussian officials are. They think men are nothing but machines, and they make no 252allowances for anything. A number of men have been discharged of late, and then, you know, there is so much anti-Semitism nowadays. I, as a Jew, have to be particularly careful.”
“There’s the root of the whole matter,” said Frau Ottilie, pouncing with avidity upon her favorite argument. “It’s only because you’re a Jew that you have any trouble. Don’t tell me that an experienced, faithful official like you, if he were a Christian, would be trembling with fear of losing his place because he had been thinking of something for a moment or two. No such trivial thing would have been of any consequence in his case. It is only we Jews who must be continually alarmed, continually alert lest we commit the slightest error; because, in our case, any fault, sometimes even only imaginary, means ruin. Yes, Heine was right when he said: ‘Judaism is not a religion; it is a misfortune.’ It certainly is your misfortune, and therefore mine. As long as you are a Jew you will never advance. You might as well try to jump over the moon as to overcome the deep-seated prejudices of Christians against Jews. You simply cannot do it.”
 
IT’S ONLY BECAUSE YOU’RE A JEW THAT YOU HAVE ANY TROUBLE
 
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253“But, my dear,” said Levy, who had heard this sort of talk very frequently, and was rather weary of it, “what is the use of telling me all that again and again. I know as well as you that being a Jew is the chief hindrance to my progress. But what is the use of continually harping on it. I cannot change what I am; so why kick in vain against the unalterable?”
“But it is not unalterable,” said Frau Ottilie, with even more acerbity than the sense of her old and keenly felt grievance usually aroused. “You talk as though to be a Jew was the same as being a negro, or a Chinaman, or blind, or lame. The negro cannot make his black skin white, nor the Chinaman his complexion or his features resemble those of the Caucasian; neither can the blind nor the lame alter their physical deformities. But the Jew needs only to speak a meaningless formula and permit three drops of water to be sprinkled upon him and presto, change, he has ceased to be a Jew and become a Christian. All his former blemishes and shortcomings are forgotten, and he is received with open arms into Christian society. Instead of being an outcast and a pariah, an individual barely and unwillingly tolerated, he becomes a beloved brother. Then, why stupidly submit to a load of inherited, unnecessary trouble? Why not rather take the one bold step which will make an end of them all at once and forever?”
254“But, my dear Ottilie,” said Franz, who, though used to this line of argument, was surprised by his wife’s unusual bitterness. “What is the purpose of all this? You don’t want me to be baptized, to be a meshummad, do you?”
“That is just what I do want,” answered Ottilie, vehemently. “I want you to cease being a stupid martyr and begin to be sensible, and I want to be sensible with you, too. I am not afraid of the word meshummad. That is only a harmless term which stupid and fanatical Jews use to condemn people who are more sensible than they. Baptism will not hurt you. It is only the key which will unlock before you the gates of prosperity and happiness in life. Besides, if you look honestly into your heart you are no Jew. A Jew must have a faith, must believe in Judaism, and practise a lot of senseless ceremonies. You do not care a straw for the whole Jewish religion, nor bother your head about the Sabbath or the dietary laws, or any of the other absurdities which they call religious practices in Judaism. I don’t believe you have been inside of a synagogue in ten years. I am just as little of a Jewess as you are of a Jew. Yet, by keeping up the name of Jew, without any real reason except a blind clinging to you know not what, you expose yourself and me and 255our only son to all the trouble and disadvantages which result from connection with a despised and hated people. Again, I say, be sensible. Pay the price of admission to civilized society, that is, accept baptism and be done with it.”
Thus did Ottilie reason and plead with her husband to renounce his ancestral faith. The argument, thus seriously begun, lasted long, and was carried on with intense earnestness on both sides. The thought of accepting Christianity was no new one to Franz. His wife’s constant perusal of that theme had made it familiar to him, but he had never yet seriously contemplated the step. The memory of pious parents and of the religious zeal and piety of youthful days, though long since discarded, had had force enough to render the thought of apostasy utterly repugnant and prevent its serious consideration. But Ottilie’s nature was stronger than his; her’s was the masterful character, his the subord............