“Schmidt, Sec’y.”
Franz sat for a full minute as one petrified, glaring at the curt official note which announced the end of all his hopes and ambitions, hardly able to realize its significance. Then a sudden resolution came into his mind. He would face the Herr Ober-Director; he would demand the meaning of this utterly inexplicable and outrageous action; he would reproach him with his hypocritical professions of friendship at last night’s celebration; he would shame him into continuing his services. He rose from his seat, went to the door of the Ober-Director’s private office and knocked. His chief’s deep-voiced “Herein!” was heard and he entered. The Herr Ober-Director was seated at his desk, and gazed at Franz with a grave countenance as he entered.
“Your Excellency,” said Franz, in a voice almost choked with emotion, showing the fatal letter as he spoke, “I have just received this communication, which informs me of my discharge. Is it correct? Am I really dismissed from the road after a service of over twenty-five years?” The Herr Ober-Director bowed in corroboration. “Your Excellency will pardon me,” continued Franz, “if I ask you, is this just? Have I not always done my duty faithfully? Am I not fully conversant with all the requirements of my position? I believe these reasons would have justified you in retaining me.”
“What you say is true, Herr Levy,” answered the Ober-Director, “and I regret extremely to have to dispense with your services; but the fact is, the business of the road has declined, and does not warrant us in retaining so many officials. The Government is urgent that I must reduce expenses. I am, therefore, obliged to abolish the second secretariat altogether; and since your post thus ceases to exist, there is no choice but for you to go.”
“Your Excellency will further pardon me,” said Franz, with increasing agitation, “if I say that this action comes with especial harshness just at this time when I have joined your faith, and been initiated into the church under your kind patronage. It does seem strange, to say the least, that during all these years, when I was a Jew, I was retained, and no complaint or hint of prospective discharge ever reached my ears; and now that I have become a Christian, you immediately discover that there is no need for my services and I am summarily dismissed.”
“That is the very reason, strange as it may seem,” said the Herr Ober-Director. “You see, we had already contemplated dismissing you some time ago, as the need for your services had really ceased. But there is so much talk nowadays of official anti-Semitism, of anti-Jewish prejudice on the part of the Government, that we hesitated to discharge you, since you were a Jew and an employee of many years’ standing. We knew that if you were discharged, it would immediately be made the basis of accusations of anti-Semitic tendencies on the part of the Government; and since the Government has no such tendencies, and does not wish to be considered as having them, we felt ourselves obliged to retain you. But now that you are a Christian, and a member of the State church, no such accusation of anti-Semitism can be made, and we therefore have felt at liberty to dispense with your services, which, as I have said, have really become superfluous. And, now, permit me to conclude this interview, which is time-robbing and unprofitable, and to wish you a very good day.”
As Franz went out through the Ober-Director’s door he said to himself, with grim emphasis: “I think Ottilie will have to revise her favorite quotation from Heine. As far as we are concerned, not Judaism but Christianity has been the misfortune.”
THE RABBI’S GAME OF CARDS.
“Rabbi, why do you not come to supper? Everything is getting spoiled; and if you do not come soon, your meal will not be fit to eat.”
It was the voice of Rebecca the rebbetzin, or wife of the rabbi of Galoschin, in the province of Posen; and she was endeavoring to induce her lord and master, Rabbi Akiba Erter, to leave his sanctum, where he had been busy all afternoon solving profound intellectual problems, and to turn his attention to the less ideal but equally necessary task of eating his evening meal. It was nothing unusual for the good rabbi to be so absorbed in his studies as to be utterly oblivious to all other matters, and to disregard utterly such insignificant trifles as a call to a meal. Rabbi Akiba was a noble specimen of the old-time rabbi. He was a Talmudic scholar of extraordinary erudition and dialectic keenness, a pietist of rigidly scrupulous observance, and charitable in the extreme. Of the three elements which go to make up the ideal man, the head, the heart, and the soul, it was hard to say with which he was more liberally endowed. Whatever he did, he did with all his power. When engaged in study, his absorption was absolute and his concentration complete; when worshipping, his whole being poured itself out before his Maker; and, when engaged in performing an act of benevolence, he had no other thought in his mind until it was accomplished.