d in those days when great men thought that
what is falling in decay must be built afresh. Great contention arose
therefrom, much knavery, much disillusion; finally the whole had to be
wiped out.

"Job's parents educated him at academies in Germany; there his soul
became filled with foreign freedom of thought; he became an enthusiastic
partisan of common human liberty. When he returned, this selfsame idea
was in strife with an equally great one, national feeling. He joined his
fortunes with the former idea, as he considered it the just one. In what
patriots called relics of antiquity he saw only the vices of the
departed. His elder brother stood face to face with him; they met on the
common field of strife, and then began between them the unending feud.
They had been such good brothers, never had they deserted each other in
time of trouble; and on this thorn-covered field they must swear eternal
enmity. Your great-grandfather belonged to the victorious, his brother
to the conquered army. But the victory was not sweet.

"Job gained a powerful, high position, he basked in the sunshine of
power, but he lost that which was--nothing; merely the smiles of his old
acquaintances. He was a seigneur, from afar they greeted him, but did
not hurry to take his hand; and those who of yore at times of meeting
would kiss his face from right and left, now after his change of dignity
would stand before him, and bow their greetings askance with cold
obeisance. Then there was one man who did not even bow, but sought a
meeting only that he might provoke him with his obstinate sullenness,
and gaze upon him with his piercing eyes--his own brother. Yet they were
both honorable, good men, true Christians, benefactors of the poor, the
darlings of their family, and once so fond of each other! Oh, this
sorrowful earth here below us!

"Then this new order of things that had been built up for ten years,
fell into ruins, and Joseph II. on his death-bed drew a red line through
his whole life-work; what had happened till then faded into mere
remembrance.

"The earth re-echoed with the shouts of rejoicing--this earth, this
bitter earth. Job for his part wended his way to the Turkish bath in
Buda, and, that he might meet with his brother no more, opened his
arteries and bled to death.

"Yet they were both good Christians; true men in life, faithful to
honor, no evil-doers, no godless men; in heart and deed they worshipped
God; but still the one bro