He shrugged his shoulders quite discouraged. The young girl murmured with compassion:
“Poor mother!... She is so kind!...”
CHAPTER III
AT about a quarter to six, Uncle Cyprien went to his small dark kitchenette to polish his shoes before going out.
He intended to go to the Klapproth Brasserie in the rue Vavin to join his old friend, Johann Schleifmann, and talk for an hour with him while drinking an apéritif.
People who knew the younger M. Rainda antisemitism were surprised at his intimacy with that Galician Jew.
But when he was asked about it, Cyprien showed not the slightest embarrassment. Far from it! He eyed his inquirer from head to foot, shrugged his shoulders and then informed him—if he cared to know—that Schleifmann was the best man in the world. He had associated with him for ten years and never had had any cause to complain of him. These inquiries, moreover, seemed to him futile, because, he could vouch for it, Schleifmann, although a Jew, was as “much of an anti-semite as you or I.”
Cyprien voiced an exaggeration when he said this, or at least, he was misinterpreting his frien feelings.
Schleifmann could not be classified among those cautious Jews who deny their Jewry through fear of prejudice, or because they cringe before the majority, or through worldly or professional self-interest.
His anti-semitism, on the contrary, was made up of sheer love for his race and atavistic pride. If he appeared anti-semitic, it must have been in the fashion of a Jeremiah, an Isaiah or an Amos. In sooth, the bitter spirit of the ancient prophets animated his heart. He cursed the men of his religion merely because they were shirking the destinies of Israel and let themselves be corrupted by trifling vanities instead of ruling the world by the influence of thought. This Semitic pride had even been the cause of all the difficulties of his adventurous life.