On the third day after Nina’s visit to her aunt, Ziska Zamenoy came across to the Kleinseite on a visit to old Balatka. In the mean time Nina had told the story of her love to her father, and the effect on Balatka had simply been that he had not got out of his bed since. For himself he would have cared, perhaps, but little as to the Jewish marriage, had he not known that those belonging to him would have cared so much. He had no strong religious prejudice of his own, nor indeed had he strong feeling of any kind. He loved his daughter, and wished her well; but even for her he had been unable to exert himself in his younger days, and now simply expected from her hands all the comfort which remained to him in this world. The priest he knew would attack him, and to the priest he would be able to make no answer. But to Trendellsohn, Jew as he was, he would trust in worldly matters, rather than to the Zamenoys; and were it not that he feared the Zamenoys, and could not escape from his close connection with them, he would have been half inclined to let the girl marry the Jew. Souchey, indeed, had frightened him on the subject when it had first been mentioned to him; and Nina, coming with her own assurance so quickly after Souchey’s suspicion, had upset him; but his feeling in regard to Nina had none of that bitter anger, no touch of that abhorrence¹ which animated² the breast of his sister-inlaw. When Ziska came to him he was alone in his bedroom. Ziska had heard the news, as had all the household in the Windberg-gasse, and had come over to his uncle’s house to see what he could do, by his own diplomacy³, to put an end to an engagement which was to him doubly calamitous⁴. “Uncle Josef,” he said, sitting by the old man’s bed, have you heard what Nina is doing?”

“What she is doing!” said the uncle. “What is she doing?” Balatka feared all the Zamenoys, down to Lotta Luxa; but he feared Ziska less than he feared any other of the household.

“Have you heard of Anton Trendellsohn?”

“What of Anton Trendellsohn? I have been hearing of Anton Trendellsohn for the last thirty years. I have known him since he was born.”

“Do you wish to have him for a son-inlaw?”

“For a son-inlaw?”

“Yes, for a son-inlaw — Anton Trendellsohn, the Jew. Would he be a good husband for our Nina? You say nothing, uncle Josef.”

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