I took his hand warmly and thanked him cordially.  It was impossible to longer doubt that frank and beaming face.

“But,” I said, “are we not in great danger?  Will not that hackman, for the sake of the reward, inform the police of our whereabouts?”

“No!” he said; “have no fears upon that score.  Did you not observe that I permitted about a dozen hacks to pass me before I hailed the one that brought us here?  That man wore on his dress a mark that told me he belonged to our Brotherhood.  He knows that if he betrays us he will die within twenty-four hours, and that there is no power on earth could save him; if he fled to the uttermost ends of the earth his doom would overtake him with the certainty of fate.  So have no uneasiness.  We are as safe here as if a standing army of a hundred thousand of our defenders surrounded this house.”

“Is that the explanation,” I asked, “of the policeman releasing his grip upon my coat?”

“Yes,” he replied, quietly.

“Now,” said I, “who is this Prince Cabano, and how does he happen to be called Prince?  I thought your Republic eschewed all titles of nobility.”

“So it does,” he replied, “by law.  But we have a great many titles which are used socially, by courtesy.  The Prince, for instance, when he comes to sign his name to a legal document, writes it Jacob Isaacs.  But his father, when he grew exceedingly rich and ambitious, purchased a princedom in Italy for a large sum, and the government, being hard up for money, conferred the title of Prince with the estate.  His son, the present Isaacs, succeeded, of course, to his estates and his title.”

“’Isaacs,” I said, “is a Jewish name?”

“Yes,” he replied, “the aristocracy of the world is now almost altogether of Hebrew origin.”

“Indeed,” I asked, “how does that happen?”

“Well,” he replied, “it was the old question of the survival of the fittest.  Christianity fell upon the Jews, originally a race of agriculturists and shepherds, and forced them, for many centuries, through the most terrible ordeal of persecution the history of mankind bears any record of.  Only the strong of body, the cunning of brain, the long-headed, the persistent, the men with capacity to live where a dog would starve, survived the awful trial.  Like breeds like; and now the Christian world is paying, in tears and blood, for the sufferings inflicted by their bigoted and ignorant ancestors upon a noble race.  When the time came for liberty and fair play the Jew was master in the contest with the Gentile, who hated and feared him.