“You have, then, already made your plan?”

“I have made my plan, and if you will allow me to escort you to your hotel, I will disclose it to you, so that we may arrange the particulars together.”

“Come, then,” said she, grasping his hand warmly, “and may God assist us, and restore to you your bride, and to me my lover!”

* * * * *

CHAPTER XI.

THE JEW EPHRAIM.

Much sorrow and tribulation were suffered during this time by the inhabitants of Berlin.  But the saddest lot of all fell to the Jews, who were threatened with the greatest danger.  In Berlin, as everywhere else, they only led a tolerated, reviled, and derided existence.  They possessed no rights, only duties; no honor, only insults; no dignities, but humiliation and disgrace.  Now they were called on to give up the last and only thing which shed some gleam of brightness on their poor, down-trodden existence—­their gold and their treasures.

The Russian commander had imposed upon the Jewish community in Berlin a special tax; and as they hesitated about paying it, and declared themselves incapable of raising such a large sum, General von Tottleben had the three elders of the Jews arrested and strictly guarded in the Vincenti House in Brueder Street.

But who could despise or blame the poor Jews for not wishing to give up their gold?  Gold was to them a condition of existence, their future, their happiness, their family.  Gold enabled some of them to raise themselves from the dust and degradation to which the cruel severity of Christian charity had condemned them, and to indulge in human aspirations, human happiness, and human feelings.  Only those among them who possessed wealth were tolerated, and dared hope by strenuous industry, ceaseless activity, and fortunate speculation, to amass sufficient fortune to found a family or beget children.  The happiness of domestic life was only allowed to them on condition of their being rich.

Frederick the Great had learned with indignation that the Jewish families in Berlin far exceeded the number of one hundred and fifty-two allowed by law, and that there were fifty-one too many.  Consequently a stringent decree was issued that they should no longer be counted by families, but by heads, and that when the poll exceeded the permitted number, the poorest and lowest of them should be shipped off.[1] Gold was therefore to the rich Jew a certificate of naturalization, while the poorer ones had no certainty of a home.  They could at any moment be turned off, driven out of Berlin, if a richer one should by his wealth and trading acquire the right to take to himself a wife, and by her have a child.  But even he, the rich one, could only have one child; only one child was allowed to him by law.  For one child only could he obtain legal protection, and only in exceptional cases, as when their factories and firms succeeded remarkably well, did the king, in the fulness of his grace, allow a second child to inherit its guardianship.[2]