CHAPTER III


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 abhorrence which animated the
breast of his sister-in-law. 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