ttered at the
handsome M. Rochez's attentions to herself. But there it all ended.
And whenever I questioned Rochez on the subject, he flew into a temper
and consigned all middle-aged Jewesses to perdition, and all the
lovely and young ones to a comfortable kind of Hades to which he alone
amongst the male sex would have access. From which I gathered that I
was not wrong in my surmises, that the fair Leah had been smitten by
my personality and my appearance rather than by those of my friend,
and that he was suffering the pangs of an insane jealousy.

This, of course, he never would admit. All that he told me one day was
that Leah, with the characteristic timidity of her race, refused to
marry him unless she could obtain her father's consent to the union.
Old Goldberg, duly approached on the matter, flatly forbade his
daughter to have anything further to do with that fortune-hunter, that
parasite, that beggarly pick-thank--such, Sir, were but a few
complimentary epithets which he hurled with great volubility at his
daughter's absent suitor.

It was from Mlle. Goldberg, senior, that my friend and I had the
details of that stormy interview between father and daughter; after
which, she declared that interviews between the lovers would
necessarily become very difficult of arrangement. From which you will
gather that the worthy soul, though she was as ugly as sin, was by
this time on the side of the angels. Indeed, she was more than that.
She professed herself willing to aid and abet them in every way she
could. This Rochez confided to me, together with his assurance that he
was determined to take his Fate into his own hands and, since the
beautiful Leah would not come to him of her own accord, to carry her
off by force.

Ah, my dear Sir, those were romantic days, you must remember! Days
when men placed the possession of the woman they loved above every
treasure, every consideration upon earth. Ah, romance! Romance, Sir,
was the breath of our nostrils, the blood in our veins! Imagine how
readily we all fell in with my friend's plans. I, of course, was the
moving spirit in it all; mine was the genius which was destined to
turn gilded romance into grim reality. Yes, grim! For you shall see! . . .

Mlle. Goldberg, senior, who appropriately enough was named Sarah, gave
us the clue how to proceed, after which my genius worked alone.

You must know that old Goldberg's house in the Rue des Medecins--a
large apartment house in wh