"He was. I live but to point out to the working-man how he is exploited by capitalists like you."
"And ruin your own sister!"
"Ha, ha! So you're afraid I shall succeed. Good!" His blue eyes blazed. He stood still, an image of triumphant Will.
"You will succeed only in disgracing your relatives," said Friedland sullenly.
His brother-in-law broke into Homeric laughter. "Ho, ho," he cried. "Now I see. You are afraid that I'll come to Prague, that I'll visit you and cry out to your fashionable circle: 'I, Ferdinand Lassalle, the pernicious demagogue of all your journals, Governmental and Progressive alike, the thief of the casket-trial, the Jew-traitor, the gaol-bird, I am the brother-in-law of your host,' And so you've rushed to Berlin to break off with me. Ho, ho, ho!"
Friedland gave him a black look and rushed from the room. Lassalle laughed on, scarcely noticing his departure. His brain was busy with that comical scene, the recall of which had put the enemy to flight. On his migration from Berlin to Prague, when he got the gas-contract, Friedland, by a profuse display of his hospitality, and a careful concealment of his Jewish birth, wormed his way among families of birth and position, and finally into the higher governmental circles. One day, when he was on the eve of dining the élite of Prague, Lassalle's old father turned up accidentally on a visit to his daughter and son-in-law. Each in turn besought him hurriedly not to let slip that they were Jews. The old man was annoyed, but made no reply. When all the guests were seated, old Lassalle rose to speak, and when silence fell, he asked if they knew they were at a Jew's table. "I hold it my duty to inform you," he said, "that I am a Jew, that my daughter is a Jewess, and my son-in-law a Jew. I will not purchase by deceit the honor of dining with you." The well-bred guests cheered the old fellow, but the host was ghastly with confusion, and never forgave him.
III
But Lassalle's laughter soon ceased. Another recollection stabbed him to silence. The old man was dead—that beautiful, cheerful old man. Never more would his blue eyes gaze in proud tenderness on his darling brilliant boy. But a few months ago and he had seemed the very type of ruddy old age. How tenderly he had watched over his poor broken-down old wife, supporting her as she walked, cutting up her food as she ate, and filling her eyes with the love-light, despite all her pain and weakness. And now this poor, deaf, shrivelled little mother, had to totter on alone. "Father, what have you to do to-day?" he remembered asking him once. "Only to love you, my child," the old man had answered cheerily, laying his hand on his son's shoulder.
Yes, he had indeed loved him. What long patience from his childhood upwards; patience with the froward arrogant boy, a law to himself even in forging his parents' names to his school-notes, and meditating suicide because his father had beaten him for demanding more elegant clothes; patience with the emotional volcanic youth to whose grandiose soul a synod of professors reprimanding him seemed unclean crows and ravens pecking at a fallen eagle that had only to raise quivering wings to fly towards the sun; patience with his refusal to enter a commercial career, and carry on the prosperous silk business; patience even with his refusal to study law and medicine. "But what then do you wish to study, my boy? At sixteen one must choose decisively."
"The vastest study in the world, that which is most closely bound up with the most sacred interests of humanity—History."