“We shall see; we shall see,” said Guedalyah the greengrocer.

“No, we cannot leave it to the mob, we must settle it beforehand.  Shall we say done?”

He laid his finger cajolingly to the side of his nose.

“We shall see,” repeated Guedalyah the greengrocer, impatiently.

“No, say!  I love you like a brother.  Grant me this favor and I will never ask anything of you so long as I live.”

“Well, if the others—­” began Guedalyah feebly.

“Ah!  You are a Prince in Israel,” Pinchas cried enthusiastically.  “If I could only show you my heart, how it loves you.”

He capered off at a sprightly trot, his head haloed by huge volumes of smoke.  Guedalyah the greengrocer bent over a bin of potatoes.  Looking up suddenly he was startled to see the head fixed in the open front of the shop window.  It was a narrow dark bearded face distorted with an insinuative smile.  A dirty-nailed forefinger was laid on the right of the nose.

“You won’t forget,” said the head coaxingly.

“Of course I won’t forget,” cried the greengrocer querulously.

The meeting took place at ten that night at the Beth Hamidrash founded by Guedalyah, a large unswept room rudely fitted up as a synagogue and approached by reeking staircases, unsavory as the neighborhood.  On one of the black benches a shabby youth with very long hair and lank fleshless limbs shook his body violently to and fro while he vociferated the sentences of the Mishnah in the traditional argumentative singsong.  Near the central raised platform was a group of enthusiasts, among whom Froom Karlkammer, with his thin ascetic body and the mass of red hair that crowned his head like the light of a pharos, was a conspicuous figure.

“Peace be to you, Karlkammer!” said Pinchas to him in Hebrew.

“To you be peace, Pinchas!” replied Karlkammer.

“Ah!” went on Pinchas.  “Sweeter than honey it is to me, yea than fine honey, to talk to a man in the Holy Tongue.  Woe, the speakers are few in these latter days.  I and thou, Karlkammer, are the only two people who can speak the Holy Tongue grammatically on this isle of the sea.  Lo, it is a great thing we are met to do this night—­I see Zion laughing on her mountains and her fig-trees skipping for joy.  I will be the treasurer of the fund, Karlkammer—­do thou vote for me, for so our society shall flourish as the green bay tree.”

Karlkammer grunted vaguely, not having humor enough to recall the usual associations of the simile, and Pinchas passed on to salute Hamburg.  To Gabriel Hamburg, Pinchas was occasion for half-respectful amusement.  He could not but reverence the poet’s genius even while he laughed at his pretensions to omniscience, and at the daring and unscientific guesses which the poet offered as plain prose.  For when in their arguments Pinchas came upon Jewish ground, he was in presence of a man who knew every inch of it.