of Paris, and here it shall not be known?  Besides, the leading actress will speak a prologue.  Ah! she is beautiful, beautiful as Lilith, as the Queen of Sheba, as Cleopatra!  And how she acts!  She and Rachel—­both Jewesses!  Think of it!  Ah, we are a great people.  If I could tell you the secrets of her eyes as she looks at me—­but no, you are dry as dust, a creature of prose!  And there will be an orchestra, too, for Pesach Weingott has promised to play the overture on his fiddle.  How he stirs the soul!  It is like David playing before Saul.”

“Yes, but it won’t be javelins the people will throw,” murmured Hamburg, adding aloud:  “I suppose you have written the music of this overture.”

“No, I cannot write music,” said Pinchas.

“Good heavens!  You don’t say so?” gasped Gabriel Hamburg.  “Let that be my last recollection of you!  No!  Don’t say another word!  Don’t spoil it!  Good-bye.”  And he tore himself away, leaving the poet bewildered.

“Mad!  Mad!” said Pinchas, tapping his brow significantly; “mad, the old snuff-and-pepper-box.”  He smiled at the recollection of his latest phrase.  “These scholars stagnate so.  They see not enough of the women.  Ha!  I will go and see my actress.”

He threw out his chest, puffed out a volume of smoke, and took his way to Petticoat Lane.  The compatriot of Rachel was wrapping up a scrag of mutton.  She was a butcher’s daughter and did not even wield the chopper, as Mrs. Siddons is reputed to have flourished the domestic table-knife.  She was a simple, amiable girl, who had stepped into the position of lead in the stock jargon company as a way of eking out her pocket-money, and because there was no one else who wanted the post.  She was rather plain except when be-rouged and be-pencilled.  The company included several tailors and tailoresses of talent, and the low comedian was a Dutchman who sold herrings.  They all had the gift of improvisation more developed than memory, and consequently availed themselves of the faculty that worked easier.  The repertory was written by goodness knew whom, and was very extensive.  It embraced all the species enumerated by Polonius, including comic opera, which was not known to the Danish saw-monger.  There was nothing the company would not have undertaken to play or have come out of with a fair measure of success.  Some of the plays were on Biblical subjects, but only a minority.  There were also plays in rhyme, though Yiddish knows not blank verse.  Melchitsedek accosted his interpretess and made sheep’s-eyes at her.  But an actress who serves in a butcher’s shop is doubly accustomed to such, and being busy the girl paid no attention to the poet, though the poet was paying marked attention to her.

“Kiss me, thou beauteous one, the gems of whose crown are foot-lights,” said the poet, when the custom ebbed for a moment.

“If thou comest near me,” said the actress whirling the chopper, “I’ll chop thy ugly little head off.”