“Personally you are blossoming,” said Sidney, with a mock bow.  “But nobody can deny that our recent religious history has been a series of dissolving views.  Look at that young masher there, who is still ogling your fascinating friend; rather, I suspect, to the annoyance of the young lady in pink, and compare him with the old hard-shell Jew.  When I was a lad named Abrahams, painfully training in the way I wasn’t going to go, I got an insight into the lives of my ancestors.  Think of the people who built up the Jewish prayer-book, who added line to line and precept to precept, and whose whole thought was intertwined with religion, and then look at that young fellow with the dyed carnation and the crimson silk handkerchief, who probably drives a drag to the Derby, and for aught I know runs a music hall.  It seems almost incredible he should come of that Puritan old stock.”

“Not at all,” said Esther.  “If you knew more of our history, you would see it is quite normal.  We were always hankering after the gods of the heathen, and we always loved magnificence; remember our Temples.  In every land we have produced great merchants and rulers, prime-ministers, viziers, nobles.  We built castles in Spain (solid ones) and palaces in Venice.  We have had saints and sinners, free livers and ascetics, martyrs and money-lenders.  Polarity, Graetz calls the self-contradiction which runs through our history.  I figure the Jew as the eldest-born of Time, touching the Creation and reaching forward into the future, the true blase of the Universe; the Wandering Jew who has been everywhere, seen everything, done everything, led everything, thought everything and suffered everything.”

“Bravo, quite a bit of Beaconsfieldian fustian,” said Sidney laughing, yet astonished.  “One would think you were anxious to assert yourself against the ancient peerage of this mushroom realm.”

“It is the bare historical truth,” said Esther, quietly.  “We are so ignorant of our own history—­can we wonder at the world’s ignorance of it?  Think of the part the Jew has played—­Moses giving the world its morality, Jesus its religion, Isaiah its millennial visions, Spinoza its cosmic philosophy, Ricardo its political economy, Karl Marx and Lassalle its socialism, Heine its loveliest poetry, Mendelssohn its most restful music, Rachael its supreme acting—­and then think of the stock Jew of the American comic papers!  There lies the real comedy, too deep for laughter.”

“Yes, but most of the Jews you mention were outcasts or apostates,” retorted Sidney.  “There lies the real tragedy, too deep for tears.  Ah, Heine summed it up best:  ’Judaism is not a religion; it is a misfortune.’  But do you wonder at the intolerance of every nation towards its Jews?  It is a form of homage.  Tolerate them and they spell ‘Success,’ and patriotism is an ineradicable prejudice.  Since when have you developed this extraordinary enthusiasm for Jewish history?  I always thought you were an anti-Semite.”