Page:Zangwill-King of schnorrers.djvu/134

120 120 THE KING OF SCHNORRERS.

Treasurer, guffawing grimly. He sat opposite Manasseh, and next to the Chancellor.

"Is it fines you are thinking of?" said Manasseh with a scornful glance across the table. " Very well, fine me — if you can afford it. You know that I am a student, a son of the Law, who has no resources but what you allow him. If you care to pay this fine it is your affair. There is always room in the poor-box. I am always glad to hear of fines. You had better make up your mind to the inevitable, gentlemen. Have I not had to do it? There is no Ascama to prevent my son-in-law having all the usual privileges — in fact, it was to ask that he might receive the bridegroom's call to the Law on the Sabbath before his marriage that I really came. By Section III., Paragraph I., you are empowered to admit any person about to marry the daughter of a Yahid." Again the sonorous Portuguese rang out, thrilling the Councillors with all that quintessential awfulness of ancient statutes in a tongue not understood. It was not till a quarter of a century later that the Ascamot were translated into English, and from that moment their authority was doomed.

The Chancellor was the first to recover from the quota- tion. Daily contact with these archaic sanctities had dulled his awe, and the President's impotent irritation spurred him to action.

" But you are not a Yahid," he said quietly. " By Para- graph V. of the same section, any one whose name appears on the Charity List ceases to be a Yahid."

" And a vastly proper law," said Manasseh with irony. " Everybody may vote but the Schnorrer." And, ignoring the Chancellor's point at great length, he remarked con- fidentially to the Chief of the Elders, at whose elbow he was still encamped, " It is curious how few of your Elders