But on arriving at the ticket-office I found, to my horror, that I had spent too much; had, in fact, bought ten or fifteen butter-cakes more than I should have done. As the Arabic proverb says, "The stomach is the origin of all troubles," and here was I in a sorry plight! What was to be done? With a disturbed countenance I told the clerk at the ticket-office of the plight I was in. He laughed, and advised me to ask in Latin for the missing sum from some gentlemen who were standing in a corner of the hall. As it was nearly time to start, I picked up courage and approached the group of gentlemen, saying in everyday Latin: "Domini spectabiles, rogo humillime, dignemini mihi dare aliquantos cruciferos qui iter ferrarium solvendi mihi carent" ("Honoured gentlemen, would you give me a few pence, as I have not enough to pay for my railway ticket?"). This Latin speech from a small, lame boy, such as I was, had its effect, and they soon collected about two shillings for me. So I took my ticket, and hopping gaily through the waiting-room, got into a compartment of the train for Lundenburg.
Those who know anything of the bond which draws Jewish families together, will not be astonished that my uncle, David Malavan, received the son of his sister, who had emigrated to Hungary years before, with open arms, and that my other relatives were kindness itself, and did all they could to make my holidays pleasant for me. They gave me a new suit of clothes and a few florins to take me home again, and I started just before the term began, travelling by Vienna to Presburg.
It was not long before I discovered that it was to be my fate in the old Hungarian coronation town to lead a life of martyrdom. I was never very much attracted by large towns; the narrow horizon, enclosed between two rows of high houses, and the hard pavement seemed to me to be in keeping with the narrow-mindedness and hardness of heart of the inhabitants, and the more I missed the blue sky the sadder I became inwardly. After many useless wanderings I came to the conclusion that there could be no question here of a free lodging, and was very glad when a certain Mr. Lövy, whose son had failed in his examination in the second class, offered me shelter in return for helping his son with his lessons. True it was only half of a folding-bed, which by day was pushed behind a bench, but I accepted it with delight.
As far as my board was concerned, I was destined by fate to go through all the torments of Tantalus. Mr. Lövy had a cookshop, and soon after midday the one room in our small lodging began to fill with poor students and tailors' journeymen, to whom, for the modest sum of threepence, a meal was served, consisting of soup, meat, and vegetables, not in very large quantities, it is true, and showing very primitive culinary skill, but all the same sufficient to satisfy the heroes of the thimble and the doctors-to-be. Custom there was plenty, and there would have been even more had not Mr. Lövy made a rule that any one failing to pay three times was not to enter the house again. Strangers, the length of whose purse was as yet unknown, could easily indulge in the luxury of one dinner, but my destitute state was well known to my landlord, and so I had no credit even for a single meal. The state of my feelings as I sat at dinner-time in a corner of the room, trying in vain to keep my eyes fixed on my book, and feeling all the gnawing pains of hunger, may well be imagined, and now and then I could not help stealing a glance at the students and tailors as they sat at table enjoying their meal.
This eager, hungry look of a starving lad seemed sometimes to appeal to them, for now and then one or other of them would make a sign to me to finish the vegetables he had left, or some one pressed a piece of bread into my hand; so that I generally managed to get a trifle to still the worst pangs of hunger, and partly to satisfy the inner man, which had already caused me so much trouble in my short life.
The reader will see from this that my position in Presburg was not of the most brilliant. In school matters I was not much better off. I was to study in the third class at the college of the Benedictine monks, and when I went to Father Aloysius Pendl to enter my name in the list, his fat reverence received me with the following words, "Well, Harshl, so you want to be a doctor, do you?" The fact that I had formerly been dubbed "Moshele," and now "Harshl," did not vex me in the least, but it was unpleasant as proving what treatment I had to expect in the future; and the three years I went to the college under the archway in Presburg will never be forgotten by me, recalling as they do endless instances of stupid priestly animosity and disgraceful intolerance.
Later on in life I again met that amiable director, Father Pendl, who ought to have been used as a pendulum on a village church spire, rather than have been placed at the head of a college. Our second meeting was under quite different circumstances. I was then an honoured traveller in the Monastery of Martinsberg, and although he did not remember me, I have never forgotten him. Unfortunately the personality of the teacher is not without influence on the subjects he teaches, and in the third class, and even more in the fourth, I found that my desire for study was rapidly decreasing, and that my visits to school partook more and more of the nature of forced labour, so that I was happiest when I was able, after having learnt my lessons, to read or study for my own pleasure, that is, when I could occupy my youthful mind in my own way, without control from others.
The ease with which I made use of the Latin tongue for general conversation, and also the fact that when I began my studies I knew four languages—Hungarian, German, Slav, and Hebrew—was the reason I turned my attention to the acquirement of other languages. I had heard that a knowledge of French was necessary in order to be considered bon ton, and that without it no one could pretend to any education worth speaking of. So I decided to learn the language at once, and bought a small grammar by a certain La Fosse, which possessed the advantage of giving the pronunciation of the words in German transcription, thus making the help of a teacher unnecessary. It was, of course, a miserable pronunciation, but I worked my way through the book the best way I could, and, as with the help of the Latin I knew, I was soon able to understand books written in a simple style, I was, after a few weeks' time, full of hope that I should soon be able to speak French.
When alone I used to make up sentences or carry on a conversation with myself, or read the most trivial things, declaiming them with great pathos; and in the space of a few months I had learnt so much that I had (especially in the lower class I was in) acquired a reputation for a much greater knowledge of French than I really had. Whether it was my own deceptive self-consciousness supported by the ignorance of those whom I associated with, or my natural talent for languages which was then beginning to show itself, I do not know; certain it is that I conversed in French without restraint, and by my volubility surprised not only myself but all who heard me. It developed to such a mania with me, that I addressed every one in French—peasants, tradespeople, merchants, Slavs, Germans, and Hungarians, it was all the same to me, and great was my delight if they stared at me and admired me for my learning(?). Such juvenile tricks were the only amusement I had in my otherwise very hard life. In every other respect I was excessively badly off, and there is not a stone in the little town on the Danube that could not tell pitiable tales of my extreme misery and suffering.
As long as I had half of the folding-bed at Mr. Lövy's I was at least sure of a shelter, and had only to fight against hunger. But one evening I had for a bedfellow a young man, just arrived from a foreign country, and from him I caught an illness which showed itself after some days in constant irritation of the skin, and in consequence of which I was immediately sent away by Mr. Lövy. As I owed that good man a few pence he retained all my personal effects as payment of the debt; so one dull autumn evening I left the house with my school-books under my arm, and wandered about in the streets, not daring to apply for shelter for fear of being turned out again on account of my disease.