“Erst es war onkel—und jetzt müsst er den Schlucken haben!”

He regarded Frederick a moment longer with cold hate, and then dismissed him.

“Schafskopf! Setzen sie,” he said.

Frederick sat down.

*   *   *   *   *

That day as the children were going away from school, he heard steps pounding after him and a voice calling to him, a word of command and warning raucous, surly, hoarse. He knew it was Albert Hartmann, and he did not stop. He quickened his step a little and walked on doggedly. Hartmann called again, this time with menace in his voice.

“Hey—Jack!” Frederick did not pause. “Excellenz! Onkel!” it cried with a jeering note.

“Ag—ag! Schafskopf!” At the last word, Frederick stopped abruptly and turned, his face flushed with anger. He was a small neat figure of a boy, well-kept, round-featured, with straight black hair and the dark liquid eyes of his race. His somewhat chubby face was ruddy and fresh colored, his neat blue jacket and his flat student’s cap were of far better cut and quality than Albert Hartmann’s, which were poorly made and of mean material, and his firm plump features had in them a touch of the worldly assurance and scornful complacency, the sense of material appraisal that the children of wealthy merchants sometimes have.

Hartmann pounded up, breathing thickly and noisily through the corners of his blunt ugly mouth. Then he seized Frederick roughly by the sleeve, and said:

“Well, Ag-ag, do you think you’ll know the word next time he asks you? Have you learned your lesson? Hey?”

Frederick detached his sleeve from Albert Hartmann’s grasp, and surveyed him coldly. He did not answer him. At this moment, Walter Grauschmidt, another of the boys in the class, came up and joined them. Albert Hartmann turned and spoke to him with an ugly grin.

“I was asking Ag—Ag here if he’d know the word for farmer the next time Kugel calls on him,” he said.

“No. He’ll never know the word for farmer,” Walter Grauschmidt answered calmly, and with assurance. “He’ll know the word for money. He’ll know the word for cash. He’ll know the word for interest and loan in every language in the world. But he’ll never know the word for farmer.”

“Why?” said Albert Hartmann looking at his more gifted and intelligent companion with a stupid stare.

“Why,” said Walter Grauschmidt deliberately, “because he is a Jew, that’s why. A farmer has to work hard with his hands. And there never was a Jew who would work hard with his hands if he could help it. He lets the others do that sort of work, while he sits back and takes the money in. They are a race of pawnbrokers and money lenders. My father told me.” He turned to Frederick and spoke quietly and insultingly to him. “That’s right, isn’t it? You don’t deny it, do you?”

“Ja! Ja!” cried Albert Hartmann excitedly, now furnished with the words and reasons he had not wit enough to contrive himself. “That’s it! That’s the way it is! A Jew! That’s what you are!” he cried to Frederick. “You never worked with your hands in your life! You wouldn’t know a farmer if you saw one!”

Frederick looked at them both silently, and with contempt. Then he turned and walked away from them.

“Yah! Pawnbroker! Your people got their start by cheating other people out of money! Yah!”

The hoarse and inept jibes followed him until he turned the corner of the street in which he lived. It was a narrow cobbled street of ancient gabled houses, some of which hung out with such a crazy Gothic overhang that they almost touched each other across the street. But the street was always neat and tidy. The houses were painted with bright rich colors and there were little shops with faded Gothic signs above them. The old irregular cobbles had a clean swept appearance, and the old houses were spotless in their appearance. The stones and brasses seemed always to have been freshly scrubbed and polished, the windows glittered like flat polished mirrors, and the curtains in the windows were always crisp, fresh and dainty looking.