"I do not understand you, and I am surprised!" said the millionaire. "You call Shund a usurer, and you say that the indignation of the whole town is upon him. Might I request from you the definition of a usurer?"
"They are commonly called usurers who put out money at exorbitant, illegal interest."
"You forget, my dear Mr. Schwefel, that speculation is no longer confined to the five per cent. rate. A correct insight into the circumstances of the times has induced our legislature to leave the rate of interest altogether free. Consequently, a usurer has gotten to be an impossibility. Were Shund to ask fifty per cent, and more, he would be entitled to it."
"That is so; for the moment I had overlooked the existence of the law," said the manufacturer, somewhat humiliated. "Yet I have not told you all concerning the usurer. Beasts of prey and vampires inspire an involuntary disgust or fear. Nobody could find pleasure in meeting a hungry wolf, or in having his blood sucked by a vampire. The usurer is both vampire and wolf. He hankers to suck the very marrow from the bones of those who in financial straits have recourse to him. When an embarrassed person borrows from him, that person is obliged to mortgage twice the amount that he actually receives. The usurer is a heartless strangler, an insatiable glutton. He is perpetually goaded on by covetousness to work the material ruin of others, only so that the ruin of his neighbor may benefit himself. In short, the usurer is a monster so frightful, a brute so devoid of conscience, that the very sight of him excites horror and disgust. Just such a monster is Shund in the eyes of all who know him-and the whole city knows him. Hence the man is the object of general aversion."
"Why, this is still worse, still more astonishing!" rejoined the millionaire with animation. "I thought our city enlightened. I should have expected from the intelligence and judgment of our citizens that they would have deferred neither to the sickly sentimentalism of a bigoted morality nor to the absurdity of obsolete dogmas. If your description of the usurer, which might at least be styled poetico-religious, is an expression of the prevailing spirit of this city, I shall certainly have to lower my estimate of its intelligence and culture."
The leader hastened to correct the misunderstanding.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Greifmann! You may rest assured that we can boast all the various conquests made by modern advancement. Religious enthusiasm and foolish credulity are poisonous plants that superannuated devotees are perhaps still continuing to cultivate here and there in pots, but which the soil will no longer produce in the open air. The sort of education prevailing hereabout is that which has freed itself from hereditary religious prejudices. Our town is blessed with all the benefits of progress, with liberty of thought, and freedom from the thraldom of a dark, designing priesthood."
"How comes it, then, that a man is an object of contempt for acting in accordance with the principles of this much lauded progress?" asked the millionaire, with unexpected sarcasm. "We are indebted to progress for the abolition of a legal rate of interest. Shund takes advantage of this conquest, and for doing so citizens who boast of being progressive look upon him with aversion. A further triumph secured by progress is freedom from the tyranny of dogmas and the tortures of a conscience created by a contracted morality. This beautiful fruit of the tree of enlightened knowledge Shund partakes of and enjoys; and for this he has the distinction of passing for a vampire. And because he displays the spirit of an energetic business man, because his capacity for speculating occasionally overwhelms blockheads and dunces, he is decried as a ravenous wolf. It is sad! If your statements are correct, Mr. Schwefel, our city ought not to boast of being progressive. Its citizens are still groping in the midnight darkness of religious superstition, scarcely even united with modern intellectual advancement. And to me the consciousness is most uncomfortable of breathing an atmosphere poisoned by the decaying remnants of an age long since buried."
"My own personal views accord with yours," protested Schwefel candidly. "The subversion of the antiquated, absurd articles of faith and moral precept necessarily entails the abrogation of the consequences that flow from them for public life. For centuries the cross was a symbol of dignity, and the doctrine of the Crucified resulted in holiness. Paganism, on the contrary, looked upon the gospel as foolishness, as a hallucination, and upon the cross as a sign of shame. I belong to the classic ranks, and so do millions like myself-among them Mr. Shund. Viewed in the light of progress, Shund is neither a vampire nor a wolf; at the worst, he is merely an ill used business man. They who suffer themselves to be humbugged and fleeced by him have their own stupidity to thank for it. This exposition will convince you that I stand on a level with yourself in the matter of advanced enlightenment. Nevertheless, you overlook, Mr. Greifmann, that, so far as the masses of the people are concerned, reverence for the cross and the holiness of its doctrines continue to prevail. The acquisitions of progress are not yet generally diffused. The mines of modern intellectual culture are being provisionally worked by a select number of independent, bold natures. The multitude, on the other hand, still continue folding about them the winding-sheet of Christianity. The views, customs, principles, and judgments of men are as yet widely controlled by Christian elements. Our city does homage to progress, pretty nearly, however, in the manner of a blind man that discourses of colors."
"I do not catch the drift of your simile of the blind man and colors," interrupted Greifmann.
"I wanted to intimate that thousands swear allegiance to progress without comprehending its nature. Very many imagine progress to be a struggle in behalf of Germany against the enfeebling system of innumerable small states, or a battling against religious rigorism and priest-rule in secular concerns. In unpretending guises like these, the spirit of the age circulates among the crowd travestied in the fashionable epithet progressive. Were you, however, to remove the shell from around the kernel of progress, were you to exhibit it to the multitude undisguised as the nullification of religion, as the denial of the God of Christians, as the rejection of immortality, and of an essential difference between man and the beast-were you to venture thus far, you would see the millions flying in consternation before the monster Progress. Now, just because the multitude, although progressive-minded, everywhere judges men by Christian standards, very often, too, unconsciously, therefore Shund has to pass, not for an able speculator, but for a miserable usurer and an unconscionable scoundrel."
"For this very cause, the liberal leaders of this city should stand up for Shund," opposed the banker. "Just appreciation and respect should not be denied a deserving man. To speak candidly, Mr. Schwefel, what first accidentally arrested my attention, now excites my most lively interest. I wish to see justice done Mr. Shund, to see his uncommon abilities recognized. You must set his light upon a candlestick. You must have him elected mayor and member of the legislature; in both capacities he will fill his position with distinction. I repeat, our deeply indebted city stands in want of a mayor that will reckon closely and economize. And in the legislative assembly Shund's fluency will talk down all opposition, his readiness of speech will do wonders. Were it only to spite the stupid mob, you must put Shund in nomination."
"It will not do, Mr. Greifmann! it is impracticable! We have to proceed cautiously and by degrees. Our policy lies in conducting the unsophisticated masses from darkness into light, quite gradually, inch by inch, and with the utmost caution. A sudden unveiling of the inmost significance of the spirit of the age would scare the people, and drive them back heels over head into the clerical camp."
"I do not at all share your apprehensions," contended the millionaire. "Our people are further advanced than you think. Make the trial. Your vast influence will easily manage to have Shund returned mayor and delegate."
"Undoubtedly, but my standing would be jeopardized," rejoined Schwefel.
"That is a mistake, sir! You employ four hundred families."
"Four hundred and seventy now," said the manufacturer, correcting him blandly.
"Four hundred and seventy families, therefore, are getting a living through you, consequently you