Pinchas was aware of this fact:  had he not written to the lad (in response to a crude Hebrew eulogium and a crisp Bank of England note):  “I and thou are the only two people in England who write the Holy Tongue grammatically.”

He replied now:  “It is true; soon he will vie with me and you.”

The old scholar took snuff impatiently.  The humors of Pinchas were beginning to pall upon him.

“Good-bye,” he said again.

“No, wait, yet a little,” said Pinchas, buttonholing him resolutely.  “I want to show you my acrostic on Simon Wolf; ah!  I will shoot him, the miserable labor-leader, the wretch who embezzles the money of the Socialist fools who trust him.  Aha! it will sting like Juvenal, that acrostic.”

“I haven’t time,” said the gentle savant, beginning to lose his temper.

“Well, have I time?  I have to compose a three-act comedy by to-morrow at noon.  I expect I shall have to sit up all night to get it done in time.”  Then, anxious to complete the conciliation of the old snuff-and-pepper-box, as he mentally christened him for his next acrostic, he added:  “If there is anything in this manuscript that you cannot decipher or understand, a letter to me, care of Reb Shemuel, will always find me.  Somehow I have a special genius for filling up lacunae in manuscripts.  You remember the famous discovery that I made by rewriting the six lines torn out of the first page of that Midrash I discovered in Cyprus.”

“Yes, those six lines proved it thoroughly,” sneered the savant.

“Aha!  You see!” said the poet, a gratified smile pervading his dusky features.  “But I must tell you of this comedy—­it will be a satirical picture (in the style of Moliere, only sharper) of Anglo-Jewish Society.  The Rev. Elkan Benjamin, with his four mistresses, they will all be there, and Gideon, the Man-of-the-Earth, M.P.,—­ah, it will be terrible.  If I could only get them to see it performed, they should have free passes.”

“No, shoot them first; it would be more merciful.  But where is this comedy to be played?” asked Hamburg curiously.

“At the Jargon Theatre, the great theatre in Prince’s Street, the only real national theatre in England.  The English stage—­Drury Lane—­pooh!  It is not in harmony with the people; it does not express them.”

Hamburg could not help smiling.  He knew the wretched little hall, since tragically famous for a massacre of innocents, victims to the fatal cry of fire—­more deadly than fiercest flame.

“But how will your audience understand it?” he asked.

“Aha!” said the poet, laying his finger on his nose and grinning.  “They will understand.  They know the corruptions of our society.  All this conspiracy to crush me, to hound me out of England so that ignoramuses may prosper and hypocrites wax fat—­do you think it is not the talk of the Ghetto?  What!  Shall it be the talk of Berlin, of Constantinople, of Mogadore, of Jerusalem,