Samuel sometimes rose at night to watch the heavens, and he fancied he heard the voices of the “young-eyed cherubins.”  He dreamed of a world where Jessicas and Portias were to be met, of a world where Jews were as proud as Shylock, as vindictive as Shylock, and, as Shylock, ate the hearts of their enemies for revenge.  He also dreamed, poor fool, that there was in Samuel Brohl’s mind or bosom an immortal soul, and that in this soul there was music, but that he could not hear it because the muddy vesture of decay too grossly closed it in.  Then he experienced a feeling of disgust for Galicia, for the tavern, for the tavern-keeper, and for Samuel Brohl himself.  An old schoolmaster, who owned a harpsichord, taught him to play on it, and, believing he was doing good, lent him books.  One day, Samuel modestly expressed to his father a desire to go to the gymnasium at Lemberg to learn various things that seemed good to him to know.  It was then that he received from the paternal hand a great blow, which made him see all the stars of heaven in broad daylight.  Old Jeremiah Brohl had taken a dislike to his son Samuel Brohl, because he thought he saw something in his eyes that seemed to say that Samuel despised his father.

“Poor devil!” murmured Count Abel, picking up a pebble and tossing it into the air.  “Fate owes him compensation, it has dealt so roughly with him thus far.  He fell from the frying-pan into the fire; he exchanged his servitude for a still worse slavery.  When he left the land of Egypt, he fancied he saw the palms of the promised land.  Alas! it was not long before he regretted Egypt and Pharaoh!  Why was not this woman Portia? why was she neither young nor beautiful?” And he added:  “Ah! old fairy, you made him suffer!”

It seemed to Count Larinski that this woman, this ugly fairy who had made Samuel Brohl suffer so much, stood there, before him, and that she scanned him from head to foot, as a fairy, whether old or young, might scan a worm.  She had an imperious, contemptuous smile on her lips, the smile of a czarina; so Catharine II smiled, when she was dissatisfied with Potemkin, and said to herself, “I made him what he is, and to-morrow I can ruin him.”  “Yes, it was she, it was surely she,” thought Count Larinski.  “I cannot mistake.  I saw her five weeks ago, in the Vallee du Diable; she made me tremble!”

This woman who had taken Samuel Brohl from out of the land of Egypt, and had showered attentions upon him, was a Russian princess.  She owned an estate of Podolia, and chance would have it that one day, in passing, she stopped at the tavern where young Samuel was growing up in the shadow of the tabernacle.  He was then sixteen.  In spite of his squalid rags, she was struck by his figure.  She was a woman of intelligence, and had no prejudices.  “When he is well washed and cared for,” she thought, “when he is divested of his native impurities, when he has seen the world and had communication