our quarter; but at the day's end--doors
shut, candles lit--aha! then we became the Chosen again.'

He paced back and forth through the wood as he talked. The rattle of
the shot-guns never ceased, and the dogs whimpered a little and lay
flat on the leaves. 'I was a Prince. Yes! Think of a little Prince
who had never known rough words in his own house handed over to
shouting, bearded Rabbis, who pulled his ears and filliped his nose,
all that he might learn--learn--learn to be King when his time came.
He! Such a little Prince it was! One eye he kept on the
stone-throwing Moorish boys, and the other it roved about the streets
looking for his Kingdom. Yes, and he learned to cry softly when he was
hunted up and down those streets. He learned to do all things without
noise. He played beneath his father's table when the Great Candle was
lit, and he listened as children listen to the talk of his father's
friends above the table. They came across the mountains, from out of
all the world, for my Prince's father was their counsellor. They came
from behind the armies of Sala-ud-Din: from Rome: from Venice: from
England. They stole down our alley, they tapped secretly at our door,
they took off their rags, they arrayed themselves, and they talked to
my father at the wine. All over the world the heathen fought each
other. They brought news of these wars, and while he played beneath
the table, my Prince heard these meanly dressed ones decide between
themselves how, and when, and for how long King should draw sword
against King, and People rise up against People. Why not? There can
be no war without gold, and we Jews know how the earth's gold moves
with the seasons, and the crops, and the winds; circling and looping
and rising and sinking away like a river--a wonderful underground
river. How should the foolish Kings know that while they fight and
steal and kill?'

The children's faces showed that they knew nothing at all as, with open
eyes, they trotted and turned beside the long-striding old man. He
twitched his gown over his shoulders, and a square plate of gold,
studded with jewels, gleamed for an instant through the fur, like a
star through flying snow.

'No matter,' he said. 'But, credit me, my Prince saw peace or war
decided not once, but many times, by the fall of a coin spun between a
Jew from Bury and a Jewess from Alexandria, in his father's house, when
the Great Candle was lit. Such power had we Je