Later on it occurred to him that Balaam too was mounted on an ass, and he derived a measure of consolation from the thought that Schiller was a prophet as well.  Would it be venturesome to say that in Kalimann there was the stuff for poet or prophet?

In addition to his trade, our bookbinder carried on another pursuit which was quite lucrative in its way, and one universally well established among all Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.  Kalimann was Cupid’s secretary:  in other words, he wrote love-letters for those who could neither read nor write.  The opportunity thus vouchsafed his native tendency toward sentiment helped not only to swell the hearts of his clients with gratitude, but also to swell his own slender income.  Thus it was that the fire of his poetic genius was enkindled, and thus it was he became the Petrarch of Hort.

One day Gutel Wolfner, Mrs. Barkany’s cook, came to him with the request that he would write a letter for her to a friend at Gyongos.

“Well, well, little one,” said the scribe, “so Love’s arrow has reached you at last!”

“Heaven preserve me!” cried the girl, “he is not named Love, but Mendel Sucher, and he has never drawn a bow in his life.”

Gutel now gave the bookbinder a general idea of the letter she wished written, and inquired the price.

“That will not depend upon the length of the epistle,” he replied, “but upon its quality.”  Thereupon he read aloud to her his tariff.

1st.  A friendly letter ....................10 kreutzers
2d.  A kind and well-intentioned letter.15  "
3d.  A tender letter ...................... 20  "
4th.  A touching letter ..................30  "
5th.  A letter that goes straight to the
heart .............................. 1/2 florin

“Very good; a friendly letter will do well enough this time,” said the girl, as she deposited her ten kreutzers on the table.

“I will write a kind and well-intentioned letter for you for the same price as a friendly one,” said Kalimann, gallantly.

Mendel Sucher received the missive the following day, and as his scholarship was as limited as Gutel’s, he forthwith sought out Saul Wahl, a lawyer’s clerk at Gyongos, likewise a member of the same erotic profession as the bookbinder of Hort.  Wahl read Kalimann’s letter to the smiling recipient with such pathos that Mendel was completely overcome.  Placing twenty kreutzers on the table, the happy swain begged the clerk to write as finely turned a letter to Gutel as the one she had sent him.

Saul, who had at a glance recognized Kalimann’s calligraphy, said to himself:  “It will go hard with me but I will show the bookbinder that they know how to write letters at Gyongos, and can also quote from the classic authors.”

He at once wrote Gutel a missive so thickly interlarded with quotations from the Song of Solomon, from Goethe, Petofi, Heine, and Chateaubriand, that when Kalimann read the billet-doux to the blushing girl her head was quite turned.