"Oh no," was the reply; "I have been at the University, and as it is not easy for a young man of my creed to get a government appointment, and I can live with my family, I occupy myself with my books." And, casting a loving glance at his book-shelves, he rose as if to introduce his guest to them.
Anton looked at their titles, and said, "They are too learned for me."
Bernhard smiled. "Through the Hebrew I have gone on to the other Asiatic languages. There is much beauty in them, and in their Old-World legends. I am now engaged upon a translation from the Persian, and some day or other, when you have a few idle minutes, I should like to inflict a short specimen upon you."
Anton had the politeness to beg to hear it at once. It was one of those countless poems in which a votary of the grape compares his beloved to all fair things in heaven and earth. Its complicated structure impressed Anton a good deal, but he was somewhat amazed at Bernhard exclaiming, "Beautiful! is it not? I mean the thought, for I am unable to give the beauty of language;" and he looked inspired, like a man who drinks Schiraz wine, and kisses his Zuleika all day long.
"But must one drink in order to love?" said Anton; "with us the one is very possible without the other."
"I do not think so," Anton replied, with fervor. "We have the sunshine and the roses, the joy in existence, the great passions and strange destinies of which poets sing."
"Our present time is too cold and uniform," rejoined Bernhard.
"So I read in books, but I do not believe it. I think that whoever is discontented with our life would be so still more with life in Teheran or Calcutta, if he remained there long enough. It is only novelty that charms the traveler."
"But how poor in vivid sensations our civilized existence is," rejoined Bernhard. "I am sure you must often feel business very prosaic."
"That I deny," was the eager reply; "I know nothing so interesting as business. We live amid a many-colored web of countless threads, stretching across land and sea, and connecting man with man. When I place a sack of coffee in the scales, I am weaving an invisible link between the colonist's daughter in Brazil, who has plucked the beans, and the young mechanic who drinks it for his breakfast; and if I take up a stick of cinnamon, I seem to see, on the one side, the Malay who has rolled it up, and, on the other, the old woman of our suburb who grates it over her pudding."