Marzio—Beast! Do you speak like that to a gentleman of my station?
[This character of Don Marzio the slanderer is the most effective one in the comedy. He finally brings upon himself the bitterest ill-will of all the other characters, and feels himself driven out of Venice, "a land in which all men live at ease, all enjoy liberty, peace, and amusement, if only they know how to be prudent, discreet, honorable.">[
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by William C. Lawton
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
(1819-1887)
n the first line of his memoirs Goldschmidt states that he was of "the tribe of Levi," a fact of which he was never unconscious, and which has given him his peculiar position in modern Danish literature as the exponent of the family and social life of the orthodox Jew. Brandes writes of Goldschmidt that: "In spite of his cosmopolitan spirit, he has always loved two nationalities above all others and equally well,—the Jewish and the Danish. He has looked upon himself as a sort of noble-born bastard; and with the bat of the fable he has said alternately to the mice, 'I am a mouse' and to the birds, 'I have wings.' He has endeavored to give his answer to the questions of the Jew's place in modern culture."
