gard to whom he entertained tender feelings; but Souchey
forgave the something of coarse familiarity which the words displayed,
and, seating himself on the stool before the victuals, gave play to the
feelings of the moment. "There's no one to measure what's left of the
sausage," said Lotta, instigating him to new feats.

"Ain't there now?" said Souchey, responding to the sound of the
trumpet. "I always thought she had the devil's own eye in looking after
what was used in the kitchen."

"The devil himself winks sometimes," said Lotta, cutting another
half-inch off from the unconsumed fragment, and picking the skin from
the meat with her own fair fingers. Hitherto Souchey had been regardless
of any such niceness in his eating, the skin having gone with the rest;
but now he thought that the absence of the outside covering and the
touch of Lotta's fingers were grateful to his appetite.

"Souchey," said Lotta, when he had altogether done, and had turned his
stool round to the kitchen fire, "where do you think Nina would go if
she were to marry--a Jew?" There was an abrupt solemnity in the manner
of the question which at first baffled the man, whose breath was heavy
with the comfortable repletion which had been bestowed upon him.

"Where would she go to?" he said, repeating Lotta's words.

"Yes, Souchey, where would she go to? Where would be her eternal home?
What would become of her soul? Do you know that not a priest in Prague
would give her absolution though she were on her dying bed? Oh, holy
Mary, it's a terrible thing to think of! It's bad enough for the old
man and her to be there day after day without a morsel to eat; and I
suppose if it were not for Anton Trendellsohn it would be bad enough
with them--"

"Not a gulden, then, has Nina ever taken from the Jew--nor the value of
a gulden, as far as I can judge between them."

"What matters that, Souchey? Is she not engaged to him as his wife? Can
anything in the world be so dreadful? Don't you know she'll be--damned
for ever and ever?" Lotta, as she uttered the terrible words, brought
her face close to Souchey's, looking into his eyes with a fierce glare.
Souchey shook his head sorrowfully, owning thereby that his knowledge
in the matter of religion did not go to the point indicated by Lotta
Luxa. "And wouldn't anything, then, be a good deed that would prevent
that?"

"It's the priests that should do it among them."

"But the priests are not the men they used t