Judith Trachtenberg: A Novel

by Karl Emil Franzos

The girl did not hear her, and the count had returned to the salon.

CHAPTER II.

The next day people were talking everywhere of the kiss and its consequences. In the drawing-room of the magistrate, in the café of Aaron Siebenschläfer, where the Christian dignitaries assembled, and in the court of the synagogue, where the public opinion of the Ghetto originated.

"That is the result," complained the Jews, "of allowing a Jewish child to frequent Christian balls. Why need she have been so irritable when the young gentleman made a joke about her father? But the innocent must expiate the sins committed by the guilty. Wladko and the count will have a duel, and if one is killed, or (may God forbid!) both of them, on whom will this blood rest? On us all; for a Jewish child was the cause!"

"The impudent thing!" said the Christians. "She certainly is beautiful, and her beauty has bewitched the count. That is his only excuse. What had he to do with it? He ought to have kissed her, too. But, in the first place, she ought not to have been invited."

Lady Anna had her excuse ready, and, when this was said to her, made answer: "She was invited at his express request. The little coquette attracted his attention at his entrée, and he immediately asked my husband her name, saying, when they parted, 'I shall be pleased to meet all those pretty ladies again to-night.' Tell me what else I could do? Now I suppose the little upstart is proud of what she has done."

There she made a mistake. The poor little beauty felt as if she could never show her face again to the world. Sorrow gnawed her heart, and tears poured over her pale cheeks. She had only left her own room once, early in the dawn, when the carriage drove up which was to carry her brother away.

Then she fell on his neck, and covered his face, clothes, and hand with her tears and kisses, until he, too, wept with her. "Pardon me!" she stammered again and again. "You meant it for the best; you are always right; you were right last night, and I will remember it my life long."

He had no knowledge of the painful scene of the preceding evening, nor had his father, who stood gazing affectionately on them. So they started on their journey with a light heart. Nathaniel was to accompany his son the first day, and would not be home until the next evening.

Till then Judith kept in her room; even Lady Anna knocked in vain. She had come to have a sensible talk with the girl before Nathaniel's return. The old Jew was clever, but one could not tell how he would take the affair; and this was of great importance, as Herr von Wroblewski was thinking of applying for a considerable loan.