Very few cared to enter into discussion with him. They would give a fatherly pat to the obstinate Galician and ask him whether it was really himself, M. Schleifmann, a wise and learned man, who prattled such nonsense. Anti-semitism! That was all very well in Germanic lands, or in Slavic countries where—they had to say it, but with no desire to offend him personally—the Jews were ... well, he knew well enough what! But in France, in the land of all the liberties, on the beautiful soil of France, the mother of Revolutions and of the sublime Declaration of the Rights of Man, never, never, never at all, he ought to know, would anti-semitism flourish. Thereupon they would burst out laughing and offer him a cigar.
These unfortunate rebuffs were not the only punishment met by Schleifmann. Many parents became alarmed at his theories and withdrew their children from his care. He was left with barely a third of his patrons, making just enough to live on, or rather enough not to perish of want.
The wreck was thorough, but he faced it with courage.
In order to prepare for such possible contingencies as sickness, he sold all his furniture, all his books but a hundred odd volumes which he termed indispensable. He kept his Bible, the Imitation of á Kempis, Goethe, Spinoza, Shakespeare, Mendelssohn, Renan, Taine, Victor Hug poetical works and the writings of socialist leaders.
Then he took a large, well-lighted room on the sixth floor of a house in the rue de Fleurus and waited, while reading, for fortune and humanity to change.
Three whole years passed by and he was beginning to doubt his own prophetic acumen when, suddenly, the events occurred that restored to him his faith.
Despite what he had been told, anti-semitism was beginning to germinate and blossom in the beautiful land of France. It had come through the fertilizing agency of the envy and resentments of some, of the clumsiness and the extortions of others. The ardent crop was growing daily in spite of regulations and legal fences, in spite of the laws and the proclaimed Rights of Man.
Johann Schleifmann was joyfully complacent at first, then deeply sorrowful. He followed the affair, always divided between these opposite feelings.
He deplored the cruel, partial attacks levelled at his co-religionists; but he could not free himself from a certain feeling of pride that he had predicted them. The more unfairly they were abused, the more his anger rose against them. Fools! Poor wretches! Had they but been willing! When the social columns told of their magnificent garden-parties, of their deer-and fox-hunting and of their raouts, he sneered wickedly, yet with sadness. He repeated the words aloud in a sarcastic tone or uttered them as so many curses: “Garden-parties! Raouts! Fox-hunting!...” Yes, they could “receive” and “dance” and “ride out.” Those fellows were making the most of it! He was carried away, indignant, at the thought that so much money was stupidly thrown away, when, had they with a kind hand but given a portion of it to the people, it would have served a generous cause and settled and repaired everything.
It was about that time that he had become acquainted with M. Cyprien Raindal at the Brasserie Klapproth where they both took their meals.