“What goal?” the table companions asked in unison.
“Why, he wanted to be made a professor, but people had objected.” Why had they objected? came the question from more than one throat. “Well, you see it was this way: the man is a Jew, and the authorities are not going to appoint a Jew to an official position in a university without raising objections. That is to be taken as a matter of course.” That this was in very truth to be taken as a matter of course was also the opinion of Herr Carovius, who, however, insisted that Benda didn’t exactly look like a Jew; he looked more like a tolerably fat Dutchman. He was in truth not quite blond, but he was not dark either, and his nose was as straight as a rule.
“That is just the point: that’s the Jewish trick,” remarked the Judge, and took a mighty draught from his beer glass. “In olden times,” he said, “the Jews all had the yellow spots, aquiline noses, and hair like bushmen. But to-day no Christian can be certain who is Jew and who is Gentile.” To this the whole table agreed.
Herr Carovius at once began a system of espionage. He studied the faces of the new tenants, and was particularly careful to note when they went out and when they came in and with whom they associated. He knew precisely when they turned the lights out at night and when they opened the windows in the morning. He could tell exactly how many rugs they had, how much coal they burned, how much meat they ate, how many letters they received, what walks they preferred, what people they spoke to, and who recognised them. As if this were not enough, he went down to the bookstore, bought the complete works of Dr. Benda, and read these heavy scientific treatises in the sweat of his brow. He was annoyed at the thought that they had not been critically reviewed. He would have embraced any one who would have told him that they were all perfectly worthless compilations.
One evening, along towards spring, he chanced to go into the backyard to feed Cæsar. He looked up, and saw Marguerite standing on the balcony. She did not see him, for she was also looking up. On the balcony of the second floor, across the court from her, stood Friedrich Benda, responding to some mute signals Marguerite was giving him. Finally they both stopped and merely looked at each other, until Marguerite caught sight of her brother, when she quickly disappeared behind the glass door draped with green curtains.
“Aha,” thought Carovius, “there’s something up.” The scene warmed his very blood.
From that day on he avoided the court. He sat instead for hours at a time in a room from which he could look out through a crack and see everything that was taking place at the windows and on the balconies. He discovered that signals were being sent from the first floor up to the second by changing the position of a flower pot on the railing of the balcony, and that these signals were answered by having a yellow cloth flutter on now a vertical, now a horizontal pole.
At times Marguerite would come out quite timidly, and look up; at times Benda appeared, and stood for a while at the window completely absorbed, as it seemed, in melancholy thoughts. Herr Carovius caught them together but on one single occasion. He opened the window as quickly as he could, and placed his ear so that he could hear what was being said, but it so happened that over in the adjoining yard some one was just then nailing a box together. As a result of the noise it was impossible for him to understand their remarks.
Since that day they exchanged no more signals, and never again appeared on the balcony.
Carovius rubbed his hands at the thought that the majestic Andreas Döderlein had after all grown horns. But his joy waned when he reflected that two other people were deriving profit from the situation. That should not be; that had to be corrected.