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230 The person addressed quickly drew a red morocco case from his pocket, and took a jewelled opera-glass from it.

"Do you mean that one?" he then said. "He is of middle height and brown complexion; is he not a Jew?"

"Whatever he is," replied Olympia, "he comes of an honorable Spanish family. My father respects him highly, and I—I consider him one of my dearest friends. Just because he was born a Jew, whom the whole world is against, he has attained to an unprejudiced conscientiousness of judgment, an unswerving rectitude, which command our regard, and often put us to shame."

"But what do you say to my physiognomical guess?" continued the stranger as he curled his moustache round his first finger, and let his glance wander complacently to the window-glass in which he saw himself reflected. "I too find the Jews very interesting; they are a sort of historical relic, and I have to thank you for my taste for history. I look upon the Jews as a fragment of some Asiatic root which we can study in this strange form."

"Had you much intercourse with Jews in Hamburg?" inquired Olympia.

"You jest," was the reply, "but I know the Jews thoroughly. En détail, there may be many honorable men among them. In my native town there was an old rogue to whom I used to sell my old