"If some one were to bash in your top hat in the Ringstrasse because, if you will allow me to say so, you have a somewhat Jewish nose, you'd realise pretty quick that you were insulted because you were a Yiddisher fellow. You take my word for it."
"But, papa, how excited you are getting," said Else, and stroked him on his bald reddish shiny head.
Old Ehrenberg took her hand, stroked it and asked, apparently without any connection with what he had been saying before: "By-the-bye, shall I have the pleasure of seeing my son and heir before I leave?"
Frau Ehrenberg answered: "Oskar's bound to be home soon."
Ehrenberg turned to Nürnberger. "You will doubtless be glad to know that my son Oskar is an Anti-Semite as well."
Frau Ehrenberg sighed gently. "It's a fixed idea of his," she said to Nürnberger. "He sees Anti-Semites everywhere, even in his own family."
"That is the latest Jewish national disease," said Nürnberger. "I myself have only succeeded up to the present in making the acquaintance of one genuine Anti-Semite. I'm afraid I am bound to admit, dear Herr Ehrenberg, that it was a well-known Zionist leader."
Ehrenberg could only make an eloquent gesture.
Demeter Stanzides and Willy Eissler came in and immediately spread an atmosphere of vivid brilliancy around them. Demeter wore his uniform lightly and magnificently, as though it were a fancy costume rather than a military dress; Willy stood there in a dinner jacket looking tall and pale and as if he had been keeping late hours, and then immediately gathered up the reins of the conversation, while his pleasantly hoarse voice rasped through the air with amiable imperiousness.
He gave an account of the preparations for an aristocratic theatrical performance in which he was adviser, producer and actor, just as he had been last year, and described a meeting of the young lords, where, if his account was to be believed, every one had behaved as though they were in a lunatic asylum, and then went on to treat them to a humorous dialogue between two countesses whose mannerisms he managed to take off in a most delightful way. Ehrenberg was always very amused by Willy Eissler. The vague feeling that this Hungarian Jew managed somehow or other to outwit and make a fool of that whole feudal set, whom personally he hated so much, filled him with respect for the young man.