uarter, like lepers
separate and alone in some loathed corner of a city otherwise clean.
These men went abroad into the world as men, using the wealth with
which their industry had been blessed, openly as the Christians used
it. And they lived among Christians as one man should live with his
fellow-men--on equal terms, giving and taking, honouring and honoured.
As yet it was not so with the Jews of Prague, who were still bound to
their old narrow streets, to their dark houses, to their mean modes
of living, and who, worst of all, were still subject to the isolated
ignominy of Judaism. In Prague a Jew was still a Pariah. Anton's father
was rich--very rich. Anton hardly knew what was the extent of his
father's wealth, but he did know that it was great. In his father's
time, however, no change could be made. He did not scruple to speak to
the old man of these things; but he spoke of them rather as dreams, or
as distant hopes, than as being the basis of any purpose of his own.
His father would merely say that the old house, looking out upon the
ancient synagogue, must last him his time, and that the changes of
which Anton spoke must be postponed--not till he died--but till such
time as he should feel it right to give up the things of this world.
Anton Trendellsohn, who knew his father well, had resolved that he
would wait patiently for everything till his father should have gone to
his last home, knowing that nothing but death would close the old man's
interest in the work of his life. But he had been content to wait--to
wait, to think, to dream, and only in part to hope. He still communed
with himself daily as to that House of Trendellsohn which might,
perhaps, be heard of in cities greater than Prague, and which might
rival in the grandeur of its wealth those mighty commercial names which
had drowned the old shame of the Jew in the new glory of their great
doings. To be a Jew in London, they had told him, was almost better
than to be a Christian, provided that he was rich, and knew the ways
of trade--was better for such purposes as were his purposes. Anton
Trendellsohn believed that he would be rich, and was sure that he knew
the ways of trade; and therefore he nursed his ambition, and meditated
what his action should be when the days of his freedom should come to
him.

Then Nina Balatka had come across his path. To be a Jew, always a Jew,
in all things a Jew, had been ever a part of his great dream. It was as
impossible