On one of these days old Trendellsohn went to the office of Karil Zamenoy, in the Ross Markt, with the full determination of learning in truth what there might be to be learned as to that deed which would be so necessary to him, or to those who would come after him, when Josef Balatka might die. He accused himself of having been foolishly soft-hearted in his transactions with this Christian², and reminded himself from time to time that no Jew in Prague would have been so treated by any Christian. And what was the return made to him? Among them they had now secreted³ that of which he should have enforced the rendering⁴ before he had parted with his own money; and this they did because they knew that he would be unwilling⁵ to take harsh legal proceedings⁶ against a bed-ridden old man! In this frame of mind he went to the Ross Markt, and there he was assured over and over again by Ziska Zamenoy — for Karil Zamenoy was not to be seen — that Nina Balatka had the deed in her own keeping. The name of Nina Balatka was becoming very grievous to the old man. Even he, when the matter had first been broached⁷ to him, had not recognised all the evils which would come from a marriage between his son and a Christian maiden⁸; but of late his neighbours had been around him, and he had looked into the thing, and his eyes had been opened, and he had declared to himself that he would not take a Christian girl into his house as his daughter-inlaw. He could not prevent the marriage. The law would be on his son’s side. The law of the Christian kingdom in which he lived allowed such marriages, and Anton, if he executed the contract which would make the marriage valid⁹, would in truth be the girl’s husband. But — and Trendellsohn, as he remembered the power which was still in his hands, almost regretted that he held it — if this thing were done, his son must go out from his house, and be his son no longer.

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