CHAPTER II.
HERR SCHNEUZEL AND HIS SON-IN-LAW
The next morning--it was a Sunday--Antonius Schneuzel, member of the National Assembly, the Municipal Council, the Board of Overseers of the Poor, and the Board of Trade, appeared at the family breakfast table a good deal the worse for his zealous celebration of the victory; and immediately he sensed trouble in the air. His wife’s nose seemed longer than ever--a signal of approaching storm; the eyes of his daughter, Frau Corroni, were swollen; her husband, the young business man Alois Corroni, greeted his father-in-law with an impudent and scornful smile; and when Herr Schneuzel, worried and confused, let his little eyes rove about the table, his two grandchildren, Lintschi and Hansl, burst into a fearful howl.
“Why, what in the world is the matter?”
Frau Schneuzel held her arms akimbo.
“What’s the matter, you idiot? Nothing’s the matter, except that you, you old fool, have helped drive your daughter and your grandchildren out of the country!”
“Why, how in the world--” stammered Herr Schneuzel. But the horrible truth began to dawn upon him. Quite right,--in the course of the years he had entirely forgotten that in his early youth his son-in-law, Herr Alois Corroni, had borne the name of Sami Cohn,--that he had been able to stand on his own feet when he was received into the arms of the Church. And now he would have to get out, and with him would go the children, who were of Jewish origin!
“It’s a mean trick,” Frau Corroni sobbed into her handkerchief. “What’ll I do with the children now? Perhaps you want me to emigrate to Jerusalem, you unnatural father, you?”
“It really is going a little too far,” Herr Corroni now declared, emphasizing every word, “to chase a man of my sort out of the country like a mad dog. I dare say I am at least as good a Christian as a thousand others who spend all day in the barroom.--To drive out a man like me, whose children are growing up in the Christian faith!”
Herr Schneuzel wanted to reply, and muttered something about a great and sacred cause, about principles that could give no consideration to individual cases. But no sooner had he begun than he felt his spouse seizing him by his thin hair; nor did she relax her grip before she had pulled out a good handful of the ever scantier foliage.
“Imbeciles, that’s what you are, all of you! You can go to the devil, you and your Christianity! Hasn’t Loisl always been good to our Annerl? Didn’t he give her a muskrat coat, doesn’t he raise the children like princes? You should thank God she got a Jew, and not a fellow like you, a drunkard and rowdy!”
“I ain’t a-goin’ to Jerusalem,” Lintschi now wailed, while Hans grasped the opportunity to snatch the sugar roll from grandfather’s plate.
When the uproar was at its height Pepik, the cook, came in, resolutely cleared the table, and calmly announced:
“I’m goin’! I’m goin’ to marry my Isidor, as is a clerk in the co-op’rative store, an’ if he has to get out I’ll get out with him. I wouldn’t care if the dep’ties and the Chancer would all hang theirselves.”
After the excitement had died down Herr Corroni gave a calm exposition of the situation.
“Of course I’m not even dreaming of emigrating to Palestine, if for no other reason than that they wouldn’t let me in, since I’m a converted Jew. No; I have a brother in Hamburg,--Uncle Eduard, you know; and though he is angry with me because of my conversion, he won’t leave me in the lurch now. Jews don’t forget family ties, thank God,” (these words were punctuated by a cutting glance at Schneuzel). “And there I will build up a new future for myself and my family--unless Annerl would prefer to stay with you.”
Whereupon Frau Anna, tired and faded as is usual after fifteen years of married life, suddenly recovered the pink cheeks of her youth, and, fondly throwing her arms about the neck of Alois Corroni, (née Sami Cohn), kissed him as a bride kisses her bridegroom, and really looked like a girl again. And finally Herr Schneuzel, desperate and altogether upset, had to promise to give his son-in-law a million to take along to Hamburg as a sort of cornerstone for his new future.
In the afternoon Schneuzel, member of the National Assembly, the Municipal Council, and the Board of Overseers of the Poor, went alone to a Sievering bar, and began to fight with a crowd that was still shouting “Throw out the Jews!” And he broke his bottle over the head of one of the shouting celebrants, wherefor he received a most terrible thrashing.