He turned away his eyes, partially closing them, and there appeared another form to him--in truth, very different from the first.It was that of a man whom he had known intimately, of a man whom he had deeply loved.In vain the lark sang aloud, in vain the peacock wailed --Abel Larinski no longer heard them.He was thinking of a certain Samuel Brohl; he was reviewing in his mind all the history of this Samuel, a man who never had had a secret from him.This history was quite as sad a one as that of Abel Larinski, but much less brilliant, much less heroic.Samuel Brohl prided himself neither on being a patriot nor a paladin; his mother had not been a noble woman with the smile of an angel, and the thought never had occurred to him of fighting for any cause or any person.He was not a Pole, although born in a Polish province of the Austrian Empire.His father was a Jew, of German extraction, as indicated by his name, which signifies a place where one sinks in the mire, a bog, swamp, or something of that nature; and he kept a tavern in a wretched little market-town near the eastern frontier of Galicia--a forlorn tavern, a forlorn tavern-keeper.Although always on the alert to sell adulterated brandy to his neighbour, and to seize the opportunity to lend him money on usury, he did not thrive: he was a coward of whose timidity every one took advantage to make him disgorge his ill-gotten gains.His creed consisted in three doctrines: he firmly believed that the arts of lying well, of stealing well, and of receiving a blow in the face without apparently noticing it, were the most useful arts to human life; but, of the three, the last was the only one that he practised successfully.His intentions were good, but his intellect deficient.
This arrant rogue was only a petty knave that any one could dupe.
Abel Larinski transported himself, in thought, to the tavern in which Samuel Brohl had spent his first youth, and which was as familiar to him as though he had lived there himself.The smoky hovel rose before him: he could smell the odour of garlic and tallow; he could see the drunken guests--some seated round the long table, others lying under it--the damp and dripping walls, and the rough, dirty ceiling.He remembered a panel in the wainscoting against which a bottle had been broken, in the heat of some dispute; it had left a great stain of wine that resembled a human face.He remembered, too, the tavern-keeper, a little man with a dirty, red beard, whose demeanour was at once timid and impudent.He saw him as he went and came, then saw him suddenly turn, lift the end of his caftan and wipe his cheek on it.What had happened? An insolvent debtor had spit in his face; he bore it smilingly.This smile was more repulsive to Count Abel than the great stain that resembled a human face.
"Children should be permitted to choose their fathers," he thought.
And yet this poor Samuel Brohl came very near living as happy and contented in the paternal mire as a fish in water.Habit and practice reconcile one even to dirt; and there are people who eat and digest it.What made Samuel Brohl think of reading Shakespeare? Poets are corrupters.
The way it happened was this.Samuel had picked up, somewhere, a volume which had dropped from a traveller's pocket.It was a German translation of /The Merchant of Venice/.He read it, and did not understand it; he reread it, and ended by understanding it.It produced a wild confusion of ideas in his mind; he thought that he was becoming insane.Little by little, the chaos became less tumultuous;order began to reign, light to dawn.Samuel Brohl felt that he had had a film over his eyes, and that it was now removed.He saw things that he never had seen before, and he felt joy mingled with terror.He learned /The Merchant of Venice/ by heart.He shut himself up in the barn, so that he might cry out with Shylock: "Hath not a Jew eyes?
hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" He repeated, too, with Lorenzo:
"Sit, Jessica.Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins:
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."Samuel sometimes rose at night to watch the heavens, and he fancied he heard the voices of the "young-eyed cherubins." He dreamed of a world where Jessicas and Portias were to be met, of a world where Jews were as proud as Shylock, as vindictive as Shylock, and, as Shylock, ate the hearts of their enemies for revenge.He also dreamed, poor fool, that there was in Samuel Brohl's mind or bosom an immortal soul, and that in this soul there was music, but that he could not hear it because the muddy vesture of decay too grossly closed it in.Then he experienced a feeling of disgust for Galicia, for the tavern, for the tavern-keeper, and for Samuel Brohl himself.An old schoolmaster, who owned a harpsichord, taught him to play on it, and, believing he was doing good, lent him books.One day, Samuel modestly expressed to his father a desire to go to the gymnasium at Lemberg to learn various things that seemed good to him to know.It was then that he received from the paternal hand a great blow, which made him see all the stars of heaven in broad daylight.Old Jeremiah Brohl had taken a dislike to his son Samuel Brohl, because he thought he saw something in his eyes that seemed to say that Samuel despised his father.
"Poor devil!" murmured Count Abel, picking up a pebble and tossing it into the air."Fate owes him compensation, it has dealt so roughly with him thus far.He fell from the frying-pan into the fire; he exchanged his servitude for a still worse slavery.When he left the land of Egypt, he fancied he saw the palms of the promised land.Alas!
