"More meshuggas!" cried the Red Beadle huskily. "Much the English Jews care about ideas! Did they even acknowledge your book in their journals? But probably they couldn't read it," he added with a laugh. "A fat lot of Hebrew little Sampson knows! You know little Sampson—he came to report the boot-strike for The Flag of Judah. I got into conversation with him—a rank pork-gorger. He believes with me that Nature makes herself."
But Zussmann was scarcely eating, much less listening.
"You have given me a new scheme, Hulda," he said, with exaltation. "I will send my book to the leading English Jews—yes, especially to the ministers. They will see my Idea, they will spread it abroad, they will convert first the Jews and then the Christians."
"Yes, but they will give it as their own Idea," said Hulda.
"And what then? He who has faith in an Idea, his Idea it is. How great for me to have had the Idea first! Is not that enough to thank God for? If only my Idea gets spread in English! English! Have you ever thought what that means, Hulda? The language of the future! Already the language of the greatest nations, and the most on the lips of men everywhere—in a century it will cover the world." He murmured in Hebrew, uplifting his eyes to the rain-streaked sloping ceiling. "And in that day God shall be One and His name One."
"Your supper is getting cold," said Hulda gently.
He began to wield his knife and fork as hypnotized by her suggestion, but his vision was inwards.
IV
Fifty copies of The Brotherhood of the Peoples went off by post the next day to the clergy and gentry of the larger Jewry. In the course of the next fortnight seventeen of the recipients acknowledged the receipt with formal thanks, four sent the shilling mentioned on the cover, and one sent five shillings. This last depressed Zussmann more than all the others. "Does he take me for a Schnorrer?" he said, almost angrily, as he returned the postal order.