oul alone counts.
No--this cream is just as sour as the other--my play will be the
internal tragedy of the thinker.'

'The internal tragedy of the thinker is indigestion,' laughed the
ex-_Badchan_; 'you'd better be more careful with the cream-tarts.'

The Heathen Journalist broke through the laughter. 'Strikes me,
Pin-cuss, you're giving us Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.'

'Better than the Prince of Denmark without Hamlet,' retorted the poet,
cramming cream-tart down his throat in great ugly mouthfuls; 'that is
how he is usually played. In my version the Prince of Denmark indeed
vanishes, for Hamlet is a Hebrew and the Prince of Palestine.'

'You have made him a Hebrew?' cried Mieses, a pimply young poet.

'If he is to be the ideal thinker, let him belong to the nation of
thinkers,' said Pinchas. 'In fact, the play is virtually an
autobiography.'

'And do you call it "Hamlet" still?' asked the Heathen Journalist,
producing his notebook, for he began to see his way to a Sunday scoop.

'Why not? True, it is virtually a new work. But Shakespeare borrowed
his story from an old play called "Hamlet," and treated it to suit
himself; why, therefore, should I not treat Shakespeare as it suits
_me_. The cat eats the rat, and the dog bites the cat.' He laughed his
sniggering laugh. 'If I were to call it by another name, some learned
fool would point out it was stolen from Shakespeare, whereas at
present it challenges comparison.'

'But you discovered Shakespeare cannot sustain the comparison,' said
Benjamin Tuch, winking at the company.

'Only as the mediaeval astrologer is inferior to the astronomer of
to-day,' the poet explained with placid modesty. 'The muddle-headedness
of Shakespeare's ideas--which, incidentally, is the cause of the muddle
of Hamlet's character--has given way to the clear vision of the modern.
How could Shakespeare really describe the thinker? The Elizabethans
could not think. They were like our rabbis.'

The unexpected digression into contemporary satire made the whole cafe
laugh. Gradually other atoms had drifted toward the new magnet. From
the remotest corners eyes strayed and ears were pricked up. Pinchas
was indeed a figure of mark, with somebody else's frock-coat on his
meagre person, his hair flowing like a dark cascade under a
broad-brimmed dusky hat, and his sombre face aglow with genius and
cocksureness.

'Why should you expect thought from a rabbi?' said Grunbitz. 'You
don't ex