"He is indeed," Oswald affirmed, "he is a particular friend of mine--if any one among the people about here maltreats him, he always applies to me. Poor devil! The Jews are a very strange folk. I always divide them into two families, one related directly to Christ, the other to Judas Iscariot. Poesy, the Seer, has produced two immortal types of these families, Nathan and Shylock."
"Aha, Ella, I hope you are duly impressed by your lover, he really talks like a book," Truyn rallied his daughter who, her fair head slightly bent backward, was looking over her shoulder at Oswald, with rapt admiration in her large eyes. "I invited Fritz to dine with you, comrade, the day after to-morrow. He is almost as madly enthusiastic about your betrothed as you are yourself, and you can sing your Laudamus together."
CHAPTER V.
"There is nothing to be done with the fellow.--I never encountered such weakness of mind," exclaimed Capriani to his wife.
The hour was three, and just before dinner; in accordance with Austrian custom, or rather with the national bad habit, they dined at Schneeburg at half-past three, although the whole family, especially those of the second generation, accustomed to late foreign hours, found this earlier hour very inconvenient.
"Of whom are you talking?" Madame Capriani asked in her depressed tone; she was sitting erect upon a small gilt chair, she wore a gray, silk-muslin gown, rather over-trimmed, gants de Suéde, and an air of constraint.
"Of whom are you talking?" she asked a second time, smoothing her gloves.
"Of whom?--of that blockhead, Malzin," growled Capriani.
"I told you from the first that he would never be able to fill that position," his wife rejoined.
"Fill--!" Capriani shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, "fill--! it takes him two hours to write a business-letter. But I was prepared for that. His office is a sinecure; the salary that I pay him is an alms,--but Alfred Capriani can do as he pleases there,--and at least the fellow understands something about horses. What outrages me is to see how he squanders my money, the money that I give him. He ransacks the country round to buy back from the peasants relics of his parents. First an old clock, that struck twelve just as he was born, then an old piano, upon which his sisters used to strum the scales. 'Tis enough to drive one mad!"