Every now and then, unable to endure this pressure, he plunged into excesses. There seemed to be no other way out. The Christian world refused him. He no longer belonged to his own people. Their poverty disgusted him. People had no right to be so poor as that, to have no relief from the joyless daily grind for bread. . . . It was the fault of the Christians who prayed to the Lord for their daily bread and stole it from each other because they had forgotten that it was not given them except in return for daily work.
That was the one strand of sympathy he had left with his father—Jacob’s absolute refusal to receive his daily bread from any other hands than his own, and his almost crazy refusal to let Issy and Harry go out and work for other masters. They could work for their father because he had authority over them, but other masters had no authority except what they bought or stole.
But a talk with Harry decided Mendel that his people’s way, the Jewish way, was no longer his.
Harry was bored. He had bouts of boredom when he could not endure the workshop and refused to go near it, however great the pressure of business might be. Like his father, he said:—
“I want nothing.”
“Very well then,” said Mendel; “you’ve got nothing. What are you grumbling at?”
“But there is nothing.”
“Then it is easy to want nothing and you should be satisfied.”
“That’s it. It is too easy. Work, work, work. Play, play, play. How disgusting it all is!”
“Why didn’t you stay in Paris?”