“What, Abraham of the Horn?” exclaimed Fettmilch, and drew the hat over the Jew’s face. “Pray, leave this man alone; he is a friend of mine from Hamburg,” and taking the Jew’s arm he hurried off.
"Aye, the Burgomaster hath one Jew and Fettmilch another."
"And who's Fettmilch, to play the master?"
"Yes; who is this pastry cook? No one knows him."
And the crowd, dissatisfied, dispersed, to discuss at home and in the inns, the appearance in one day of two Jews on the Roemerberg.
CHAPTER II
A SPIRIT OF THE AGE
Born amidst the influences of the Gasse, Solomon ben Samuel had grown into maturity full of the learning of his people. Little of Jewish lore was strange, though many of the inexhaustible tomes were still unknown to him. Destined but for such common sphere of life as the laws permitted, his father gave him the average Rabbinic education. The Rabbis, teaching the Law for the love they bore it, imparted their knowledge to this lithe, olive-skinned youth, fondling the child who so easily lisped the Hebrew and who asked such posing questions when in doubt. All the deep casuistry of the Talmud and all its logic, and its fairy tales, he pored over during the long school hours. The Rabbis spun for the lad's edification many a story of the Apochrypha, and told many a mystic tale of the events that attended the rising of Bar Cochba and other pseudo Messiahs. Marveling, with his black eyes wide open, the growing lad listened to what the Cabalists said, how the "wonder" Rabbis did miracles. A face bright and intelligent, but pensive, was oft bent upon the pages that told of the horrors of the exile. Quivering with passion, with blood mounting to his cheeks, did the lad pore over the stories of times when blood flowed in the streets, and, anon, flushed with tears in his bright eyes, would he read how the enemy had been vanquished, or how at the stake the Jew had died indifferent to the tyrant's deeds.
Amongst the indwellers of the Gasse were some Sephardic families, proud and haughty even in this Jewry, receiving some homage from their fellow-brethren as descendants of even a harder persecuted branch of the nation than they. When there was a holiday at the school—and the minor feasts and fasts brought relaxation from study—Solomon, the son of Samuel, would repair to the house of one of these, Aaron, the Spanish priest, so called from his descent from the Cohanim and Spain. A pair of piercing eyes, set in a strong, swarthy face, would greet the lad and look benignly, whilst their possessor, disdainfully ignoring the Jew's badge, would tell, in a rich and melodious voice, of the glorious deeds of martyred ancestors, of how one hundred and thirty years previously, on the ninth of Ab, the fatal decree of expulsion had been executed in Spain. Hundreds of times did the listener hear the minute details of the exile repeated, and each time did the tears rise unbidden. . . .
Sometimes at night, when the candles were being put out in the Jew's houses,,the watchman at the Gasse gates, giving the closing call prior to locking up the in-