ce and--and protection."

"How? Do you imagine, sir, that I shall take your part?" bawled the
judge, as if he were speaking to some one who was stone deaf.

"I fancied," stammered the unfortunate pater-familias, "that the old
kindliness which you formerly showed to my house----"

Bordacsi did not let him finish. "Yes, your house! In those days your
house was a respectable house, but now your house is a Sodom and
Gomorrah which opens its doors wide to all the fools of the town. You
have devoted your four girls to the bottomless pit, and you are a
scandal to every pure-minded man. You are the corrupter of the youth of
this city, and your name is a by-word throughout the kingdom wherever
dissolute youths and outraged fathers are to be found."

Here Mr. Meyer burst into tears, and murmured something to the effect
that he did not know anything about it.

"With what a handsome family did not God bless you! and, sir, you have
made it the laughing-stock of the world. You have traded with the
innocence, the love, and the spiritual welfare of your daughters; you
have sold, you have bartered them away to the highest bidder; you have
taught them that they must catch passers-by in the street with an ogle
or a stare, that they must smile, laugh, and make love to men whom they
see for the first time in their lives, that they must make money by
lying!"

The wretched man was understood to say, amidst his sobs, that he had
done none of these things.

"And now, sir, you have one daughter left, the last, the prettiest, the
most charming of them all. When I used to visit at your house, sir, she
was a little child no higher than my knee, whom every one loved, every
one fondled. Don't you remember, sir? And now, sir, you would abandon
her also. And you are angry, you storm and rave when a respectable
person wants to save the unfortunate child from having her innocence
corrupted, save her from withering away profitlessly in the claws of a
pack of gross, rowdy, street-lounging, rake-hell young profligates, from
living a life of wretchedness and shame, from dying abandoned and
accursed, to say nothing of the fire of hell after death. And you even
raise objections, sir! But, of course, I understand, they would be
depriving you of a great treasure, of something you can sell at a high
price, something that you can calculate upon making a handsome profit
out of, eh?"

Meyer gnashed his teeth with rage and horror.

"Let me tell you, sir, i