[CHAPTER XIV].
A STRUGGLE FOR FAME.
The two young men walked slowly up the street in the direction of the Bon-Bon Theatre, passing into Swanston Street just as the Town Hall clock struck eleven. It was a beautiful moonlight night, but no breeze was blowing, and the heat which the earth had drawn to her bosom during the day was now exhaled from the warm ground in a faint humid vapour. Crowds of people were in the streets sauntering idly along, evidently unwilling to go to bed. The great buildings stood up white and spectral-like on the one side of the street, while on the other they loomed out black against the clear sky. The garish flare of the innumerable street lamps seemed out of place under the serene splendour of the heavens, and the frequent cries of the street boys, and noisy rattling of passing cabs, jarred on the ear. At least Keith thought so, for, after walking in silence for some time, he turned with a gesture of irritation to his companion.
"Isn't this noise disagreeable?" he said impatiently; "under such a perfect sky the city ought to lie dead like a fantastic dream of the Arabian Nights, but the gas lamps and incessant restlessness of Melbourne vulgarises the whole thing."
"Poetical, certainly," replied Ezra, rousing himself from his abstraction; "but I should not care to inhabit an enchanted city. To me there is something grand in this restless crowd of people, all instinct with life and ambition--the gas lamps jar on your dream, but they are evidences of civilisation, and the hoarse murmur of the mob is like the mutterings of a distant storm, or white waves breaking on a lonely coast. No, my friend, leave the enchanted cities to dreamland, and live the busy life of the nineteenth century."
"Your ideas and wishes are singularly at variance," said Keith smiling. "The city suggests poetical thoughts to you, but you reject them and lower yourself to the narrow things of everyday."
"I am a man, and must live as one," replied the Jew, with a sigh; "it's hard enough to do so--Heaven knows!--without creating Paradises at whose doors we must ever stand like lost Peris."
"What's the matter with you to-night?" asked Keith abruptly.
"Nothing particular; only I've had a quarrel with my father."
"Is that all? My dear Lazarus, your father lives in an atmosphere of quarrelling--it's bread and meat to him--so you needn't fret over a few words. What was the quarrel about?"