'Then are there very few Jews here?'
'Those here? Do you call them Jews, Sir? They're such low fellows, not one of them keeps the Law strictly.'
Fearing another outburst, I would not, however, allow him to finish, and decided to change the conversation by asking him straight out what he wanted to talk to me about now.
'I should like to know the news from there, Sir. I have been here so many years, and I have never yet heard what is going on there.'
'You are asking a good deal, for I can't exactly tell you everything. I don't know what interests you,—politics perhaps?'
The Jew was silent.
I concluded that my present guest, like many of the others, was interested in politics; but as I myself did not understand the very elements of the subject, I began to give the stereotyped account I had already composed with a view to frequent repetition of the situation of European politics, our own,[13] and so forth. But the Jew fidgeted impatiently.
'Then this does not interest you?' I asked.
'I have never thought about it,' he answered candidly.
'Ah, now I know why you have come! I am sure you wish to know how the Jews are doing, and how trade is going?'