All this I understood very well, and therefore I never thought of demanding that the work I had prepared should be printed; I asked merely remuneration for the labour spent on it in vain. In this dispute Mendelssohn remained neutral, because he thought that both parties had right on their side. He promised to use his influence with my friends, to induce them to provide for my subsistence in some other way. But when even this was not done, I became impatient, and resolved to quit Berlin once more, and go to Breslau. I took with me some letters of introduction, but they were of little service; for before I reached Breslau myself, letters in the spirit of those which Uriah carried had preceded me, and made a bad impression on the most of those to whom my letters of introduction were addressed. As a natural result, therefore, I was coldly received; and as I knew nothing of the later letters, I found it impossible to explain my reception, and had made up my mind to quit Breslau.
By chance, however, I became acquainted with the celebrated Jewish poet, the late Ephraim Kuh. This learned and high-minded man took so much interest in me, that, neglecting all his former occupations and enjoyments, he confined himself entirely to my society. To the wealthy Jews he spoke of me with the greatest enthusiasm, and praised me as a very good fellow. But when he found that all his complimentary remarks failed to make any impression on these gentlemen, he took some trouble to find out the cause of this, and at last discovered that the reason lay in those friendly letters from Berlin. Their general tenor was, that I was seeking to spread pernicious opinions. Ephraim Kuh, as a thinking man, at once saw the reason of this charge; but with all the efforts he made, he could not drive it out of the heads of these people. I confessed to him that, during my first sojourn in Berlin as a young man without experience or knowledge of the world, I had felt an irresistible impulse to communicate to others whatever truth I knew; but I assured him that, having for some years become wise by experience, I went to work with great caution, and that therefore this charge was now wholly without foundation.