Dreamers of the Ghetto Part 38

III

But superst.i.tion and ignorance were not yet unhorsed. The Jewish police-officers, though they allowed coach-gentry to enter and take up their quarters where they pleased, did not fail to pry into their affairs the next day, as well for the protection of the Jewish community against equivocal intruders as in accordance with its responsibility to the State.

In his modest lodging on the New-Market, Maimon had to face the suspicious scrutiny of the most dreaded of these detectives, who was puzzled and provoked by a belief he had seen him before, "evidently looking on me," as Maimon put it afterwards, "as a comet, which comes nearer to the earth the second time than the first, and so makes the danger more threatening."

Of a sudden this lynx-eyed bully espied a Hebrew Logic by Maimonides, annotated by Mendelssohn. "Yes! yes!" he shrieked; "that's the sort of books for me!" and, glaring threateningly at the philosopher, "Pack,"

he said. "Pack out of Berlin as quick as you can, if you don't wish to be led out with all the honors."

Maimon was once more in desperate case. His money was all but exhausted by the journey, and the outside of the Rosenthaler gate again menaced him. All his sufferings had availed him nothing: he was back almost at his starting-point.

But fortune favors fools. In a countryman settled at Berlin he found a protector. Then other admirers of talent and learning boarded and lodged him. The way was now clear for Culture.

Accident determined the line of march. Maimon rescued Wolff's _Metaphysics_ from a b.u.t.terman for two groschen. Wolff, he knew, was the pet philosopher of the day. Mendelssohn himself had been inspired by him--the great brother-Jew with whom he might now hope some day to talk face to face.

Maimon was delighted with his new treasure--such mathematical exposition, such serried syllogisms--till it came to theology. "The Principle of Sufficient Reason"--yes, it was a wonderful discovery.

But as proving G.o.d? No--for that there was _not_ Sufficient Reason.

Nor could Maimon harmonize these new doctrines with his Maimonides or his Aristotle. Happy thought! He would set forth his doubts in Hebrew, he would send the ma.n.u.script to Herr Mendelssohn. Flushed by the hope of the great man's acquaintance, he scribbled fervidly and posted the ma.n.u.script.

He spent a sleepless night.

Would the lion of Berlin take any notice of an obscure Polish Jew?

Maimon was not left in suspense. Mendelssohn replied by return. He admitted the justice of his correspondent's doubts, but begged him not to be discouraged by them, but to continue his studies with unabated zeal. O, judge in Israel! _Nathan Der Weise_, indeed.

Fired with such encouragement, Maimon flung himself into a Hebrew dissertation that should shatter all these theological cobwebs, that by an uncompromising Ontology should bring into doubt the foundations of Revealed as well as of Natural Theology. It was a bold thing to do, for since he was come to Berlin, and had read more of his books, he had gathered that Mendelssohn still professed Orthodox Judaism. A paradox this to Maimon, and roundly denied as impossible when he first heard of it. A man who could enter the lists with the doughtiest champions of Christendom, whose German prose was cla.s.sical, who could philosophize in Socratic dialogue after the fas.h.i.+on of Plato--such a man a creature of the Ghetto! Doubtless he took his Judaism in some vague Platonic way; it was impossible to imagine him the literal bond-slave of that minute ritual, winding phylacteries round his left arm or shaking himself in a praying-shawl. Anyhow here--in logical lucid Hebrew--were Maimon's doubts and difficulties. If Mendelssohn was sincere, let him resolve them, and earn the blessings of a truly Jewish soul. If he was unable to answer them, let him give up his orthodoxy, or be proved a fraud and a time-server. _Amicus Mendelssohn sed magis amica veritas._

In truth there was something irritating to the Polish Jew in the great German's att.i.tude, as if it held some latent reproach of his own. Only a shallow thinker, he felt, could combine culture and spiritual comfort, to say nothing of worldly success. He had read the much-vaunted _Phdon_ which Lutheran Germany hailed as a counterblast to the notorious "Berlin religion," restoring faith to a despondent world mocked out of its Christian hopes by the fas.h.i.+onable French wits and materialists under the baneful inspiration of Voltaire, whom Germany's own Frederick had set on high in his Court. But what a curious a.s.sumption for a Jewish thinker to accept, that unless we are immortal, our acts in this world are of no consequence! Was not he, Maimon, leading a high-minded life in pursuit of Truth, with no such hope? "If our soul were mortal, then Reason would be a dream, which Jupiter has sent us in order that we might forget our misery; and we should be like the beasts, only to seek food and die." Nonsense!

Rhetoric! True, his epistles to Lavater were effective enough, there was courage in his public refusal of Christianity, n.o.bility in his sentiment that he preferred to shame anti-Jewish prejudice by character rather than by controversy. He, Maimon, would prefer to shame it by both. But this _Jerusalem_ of Mendelssohn's! Could its thesis really be sustained? Judaism laid no yoke upon belief, only on conduct? was no reason-confounding dogma? only a revealed legislation? A Jew gave his life to the law and his heart to Germany! Or France, or Holland, or the Brazils as the case might be? Palestine must be forgotten. Well, it was all bold and clever enough, but was it more than a half-way house to a.s.similation with the peoples? At any rate here was a Polish brother's artillery to meet--more deadly than that of Lavater, or the stupid Christians.

Again, but with acuter anxiety, he awaited Mendelssohn's reply.

It came--an invitation for next Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Aha! The outworks were stormed. The great man recognized in him a worthy foe, a brother in soul. Grat.i.tude and vanity made the visit a delightful antic.i.p.ation. What a wit-combat it would be! How he would marshal his dialectic epigrams! If only Lapidoth could be there to hear!

As the servant threw open the door for him, revealing a suite of beautiful rooms and a fine company of gentlefolks, men with powdered wigs and ladies with elegant toilettes, Maimon started back with a painful shock. An under-consciousness of mud-stained boots and a clumsily cut overcoat, mixed itself painfully with this impression of pretty, scented women, and the clatter of tongues and coffee-cups. He stood rooted to the threshold in a sudden bitter realization that the great world cared nothing about metaphysics. Ease, fine furniture, a position in the world--these were the things that counted. Why had all his genius brought him none of these things? Wifeless, childless, moneyless, he stood, a solitary soul wrestling with problems. How had Mendelssohn managed to obtain everything? Doubtless he had had a better start, a rich father, a University training. His resentment against the prosperous philosopher rekindled. He shrank back and closed the door. But it was opened instantly again from within. A little hunchback with s.h.i.+ning eyes hurried towards him.

"Herr Maimon?" he said inquiringly, holding out his hand with a smile of welcome.

Startled, Maimon laid his hand without speaking in that cordial palm.

So this was the man he had envied. No one had ever told him that "Nathan der Weise" was thus afflicted. It was as soul that he had appealed to the imagination of the world; even vulgar gossip had been silent about his body. But how this deformity must embitter his success.

Mendelssohn coaxed him within, complimenting him profusely on his writings: he was only too familiar with these half-shy, half-aggressive young Poles, whose brains were bursting with heretical ideas and sick fantasies. They brought him into evil odor with his orthodox brethren, did these "Jerusalem Werthers," but who should deal with them, if not he that understood them, that could handle them delicately? What was to Maimon a unique episode was to his host an everyday experience.

Mendelssohn led Maimon to the embrasure of a window: he brought him refreshments--which the young man devoured uncouthly--he neglected his fas.h.i.+onable guests, whose unceasing French babble proclaimed their ability to get on by themselves, to gain an insight into this gifted young man's soul. He regarded each new person as a complicated piece of wheelwork, which it was the wise man's business to understand and not be angry with. But having captured the secret of the mechanism, it was one's duty to improve it on its own lines.

"Your dissertation displays extraordinary ac.u.men, Herr Maimon," he said. "Of course you still suffer from the Talmudic method or rather want of method. But you have a real insight into metaphysical problems. And yet you have only read Wolff! You are evidently not a _Chamor nose Sefarim_ (a donkey bearing books)." He used the Hebrew proverb to make the young Pole feel at home, and a half smile hovered around his sensitive lips. Even his German took on a winning touch of jargon in vocabulary and accentuation, though to kill the jargon was one of the ideals of his life.

"Nay, Herr Mendelssohn," replied Maimon modestly; "you must not forget _The Guide of the Perplexed_. It was the inspiration of my youth!"

"Was it?" cried Mendelssohn delightedly. "So it was of mine. In fact I tell the Berliners Maimonides was responsible for my hump, and some of them actually believe I got it bending over him."

This charming acceptance of his affliction touched the sensitive Maimon and put him more at ease than even the praise of his writings and the fraternal vocabulary. "In my country," he said, "a perfect body is thought to mark the fool of the family! They believe the finest souls prefer to inhabit imperfect tenements."

Mendelssohn bowed laughingly. "An excellently turned compliment! At this rate you will soon s.h.i.+ne in our Berlin society. And how long is it since you left Poland?"

"Alas! I have left Poland more than once. I should have had the honor and the happiness of making your acquaintance earlier, had I not been stopped at the Rosenthaler gate three years ago."

"At the Rosenthaler gate! If I had only known!"

The tears came into Maimon's eyes--tears of grat.i.tude, of self-pity, of regret for the lost years. He was on his feet now, he felt, and his feet were on the right road. He had found a powerful protector at last. "Think of my disappointment," he said tremulously, "after travelling all the way from Poland."

"Yes, I know. I was all but stopped at the gate myself," said Mendelssohn musingly.

"You?"

"Yes--when I was a lad."

"Aren't you a native of Berlin, then?"

"No, I was born in Dessau. Not so far to tramp from as Poland. But still a goodish stretch. It took me five days--I am not a Hercules like you--and had I not managed to stammer out that I wished to enrol myself among the pupils of Dr. Frankel, the new Chief Rabbi of the city, the surly Cerberus would have slammed the gate in my face. My luck was that Frankel had come from Dessau, and had been my teacher. I remember standing on a hillock crying as he was leaving for Berlin, and he took me in his arms and said I should also go to Berlin some day. So when I appeared he had to make the best of it."

"Then you had nothing from your parents?"

"Only a beautiful handwriting from my father which got me copying jobs for a few groschens and is now the joy of the printers. He was a scribe, you know, and wrote the Scrolls of the Law. But he wanted me to be a pedlar."

"A pedlar!" cried Maimon, open-eyed.

"Yes, the money would come in at once, you see. I had quite a fight to persuade him I would do better as a Rabbi. I fear I was a very violent and impatient youngster. He didn't at all believe in my Rabbinical future. And he was right after all--for a member of a learned guild, Jewish or Christian, have I never been."

"You had a hard time, then, when you came to Berlin?" said Maimon sympathetically.

Mendelssohn's eyes had for an instant an inward look, then he quoted gently, "Bread with salt shalt thou eat, water by measure shalt thou drink, upon the hard earth shalt thou sleep, and a life of anxiousness shalt thou live, and labor in the study of the law!"

Maimon thrilled at the quotation: the fine furniture and the fine company faded, and he saw only the soul of a fellow-idealist to which these things were but unregarded background.

"Ah yes," went on Mendelssohn. "You are thinking I don't look like a person who once notched his loaf into sections so as not to eat too much a day. Well, let it console you with the thought that there's a comfortable home in Berlin waiting for you, too."

Poor Maimon stole a glance at the buxom, blue-eyed matron doing the honors of her salon so gracefully, a.s.sisted by two dazzling young ladies in Parisian toilettes--evidently her daughters--and he groaned at the thought of his peasant-wife and his uncouth, superst.i.tion-swaddled children: decidedly he must give Sarah a divorce.

"I can't delude myself with such day-dreams," he said hopelessly.

"Wait! Wait! So long as you don't day-dream your time away. That is the danger with you clever young Poles--you are such dreamers.

Everything in this life depends on steadiness and patience. When we first set up hospitality, Fromet--my wife--and I, we had to count the almonds and raisins for dessert. You see, we only began with a little house and garden in the outskirts, the main furniture of which," he said, laughing at the recollection, "was twenty china apes, life-size."

"Twenty china apes!"

"Yes, like every Jewish bridegroom, I had to buy a quant.i.ty of china for the support of the local manufactory, and that was what fell to me. Ah, my friend, what have not the Jews of Germany to support! The taxes are still with us, but the _Rishus_ (malice)"--again he smiled confidentially at the Hebrew-jargon word--"is less every day. Why, a Jew couldn't walk the streets of Berlin without being hooted and insulted, and my little ones used to ask, 'Father, is it wicked to be a Jew?' I thank the Almighty that at the end of my days I have lived to see the Jewish question raised to a higher plane."

"I should rather thank _you_," cried Maimon, with sceptical enthusiasm.