“So! you are in league!... So, ‘it goes!’... You, M. Pums, you make up a pair with M. Herschstein.... And you, M. Herschstein, you come to give account!... Congratulations! It must have been a fine massacre!... Write it down, M. Pums. I shall dictate: Profits of September 2nd: M. Cyprien Raindal, one hundred and ten thousand francs.... Hah! M. Pums, how much of that do you get? Ten thousand? Fifteen thousand?” He chuckled, then suddenly his face fell under an intolerable sadness.
“Malediction!” he groaned, prowling about the room. “Malediction and misery!... Yes, ever since Sinai, there has been the same eternal misunderstanding!... God gives His People supreme intelligence and His People prostitute it to the basest works, and then God exacts vengeance because His People ignore Him! It is the whole history of Israel, all their unhappiness.... Malediction! Malediction!... When shall this cease?... You are not a fool, M. Pums, nor you either, M. Herschstein!... But you believe, do you, that the Lord has given you this power of mind so that you can manipulate the markets, and pile up gold.... Madmen that you are! I see the hand of the Lord over you!... It was because they had betrayed His law that your ancestors went to Babylon, to Nineveh and to Egypt! And for the same reason, you will have to go elsewhere!”
He stretched out his arm towards mysterious far distant places.
“Yes! the Lord will make you sleep under tents once more and, with you, there may be some who are innocent, meek and lowly ones, toilers ... unless, beforehand, they all break away from you!”
“Enough, M. Schleifmann!” dryly declared Herschstein, who was gradually recovering his arrogance. “Enough of your jeremiads! We know your ideas.... You are an anti-Semite, a renegade! It is well known!”
Schleifmann lifted his arms again and looked up at the ceiling.
“A renegade!” he repeated, “Anti-Semite!... Adonaï! Adonaï! Hearest thou what this man is saying to me?”
“Moreover,” added Pums who, like Herschstein, had recovered his ease, “moreover, when it comes to people being expelled, you might very well be before we are, M. Schleifmann! For we are French, we ... while you....”
A frantic laugh cut him short. Schleifmann exploded with bitter merriment, a prey to a fit of wild hilarity.
“French! You French!” he exclaimed, between two sobs of laughter. “But you are neither French, nor German, nor Austrians, nor anything at all—least of all Jews!... Your Jewry oppresses you under your clothing.... It oppresses you in drawing-rooms, in clubs, everywhere you go! It makes you itch, like a haircloth.... You wear it without good grace, without good nature, without pride! You only acknowledge it with regret.... It makes you pale!... You are unacquainted with its most elementary dogmas.... And, were it not that you fear it might hurt you in your business, I wager that, to-morrow morning, you would all seek to be naturalized as Catholics!”