'You have made him a Hebrew?' cried Mieses, a pimply young poet.
'If he is to be the ideal thinker, let him belong to the nation of thinkers,' said Pinchas. 'In fact, the play is virtually an autobiography.'
'And do you call it "Hamlet" still?' asked the Heathen Journalist, producing his notebook, for he began to see his way to a Sunday scoop.
'Why not? True, it is virtually a new work. But Shakespeare borrowed his story from an old play called "Hamlet," and treated it to suit himself; why, therefore, should I not treat Shakespeare as it suits me. The cat eats the rat, and the dog bites the cat.' He laughed his sniggering laugh. 'If I were to call it by another name, some learned fool would point out it was stolen from Shakespeare, whereas at present it challenges comparison.'
'But you discovered Shakespeare cannot sustain the comparison,' said Benjamin Tuch, winking at the company.
'Only as the mediæval astrologer is inferior to the astronomer of to-day,' the poet explained with placid modesty. 'The muddle-headedness of Shakespeare's ideas—which, incidentally, is the cause of the muddle of Hamlet's character—has given way to the clear vision of the modern. How could Shakespeare really describe the thinker? The Elizabethans could not think. They were like our rabbis.'
The unexpected digression into contemporary satire made the whole café laugh. Gradually other atoms had drifted toward the new magnet. From the remotest corners eyes strayed and ears were pricked up. Pinchas was indeed a figure of mark, with somebody else's frock-coat on his meagre person, his hair flowing like a dark cascade under a broad-brimmed dusky hat, and his sombre face aglow with genius and cocksureness.
'Why should you expect thought from a rabbi?' said Grunbitz. 'You don't expect truth from a tradesman. Besides, only youth thinks.'
'That is well said,' approved Pinchas. 'He who is ever thinking never grows old. I shall die young, like all whom the gods love. Waiter, give Mr. Grunbitz a cup of chocolate.'
'Thank you—but I don't care for any.'