ORTHODOX.*

IN Orthodox we have a strong and dramatic story, characters drawn with nnflinehing power, no scenery, no setting, except -what is absolutely necessary ; no softness, no beauty, and only the sad and stern side of what we call romance. Count Ortenegg's love-story cannot be called attractive ; it is, in fact, told with a certain reticence, not to say coldness, which makes it more like a man's work than a woman's. There is hardly one superfluous word in the book, and every slightest touch is in its right place, leading up to the catastrophe. This masterly directness is uncommon ; it is like walking on a high- road across a moor, with a sea-wind blowing, to people accus- tomed to wade through the damp lanes, the dusty streets, the endless turns and shiftings, of an ordinary three-volume novel. The story is told by a young Austrian officer, Zultowski by name, and Polish by birth. He makes himself out a thoroughly matter-of-fact and worldly character; but for all that, we are inclined to like him better than his romantic friend Ortenegg, whose fortunes he follows and whose troubles he shares so faithfully. Ortenegg himself, with his persistent self-deception, his proud, unswerving faith in human nature, even in Jewish nature, generous and noble hero as he is meant to be, has the common weakness of heroes : he is a little unnatural. How- ever, on considering him more deeply, one sees that without his almost ideal perfection, leading on to the weakness which results in the catastrophe, Zultowski would not have had any story to tell of "how my friend and comrade, Rudolph von Ortenegg, fell into the hands of the Jews, and the experience lie gained therefrom."

It is the Orthodox Jews of a town in Austrian Poland who give the story its name. They are the chorus of the drama. In the background of each scene their greasy kaftans rustle.

• Orthodox. By Dorothea Gerard. London : Longman, Green, and Co. 1888.

Old Berisch Marmorstein, with his long white beard and black piercing eyes, stands in his ghastly cellar full of hides and bones, bowing low before the Christian gentlemen, while treating them with scorn and mockery. His son David, the ladies' tailor, with his carroty-red locks and his mouth full of pins; T.ammle Blauweiss, the old-clothes dealer, in his usual frantic haste, loaded with bird-cages, pewter pots, old dressing- gowns, and moth-eaten fur cloaks, the only words we ever hear him say, "Seine Zeit, keine Zeit;" the old Jewesses in their Sabbath brocades, with wigs of brown satin or yellow

thread,—all these, and many more, form the unsavoury society among which young Count Ortenegg finds the love of his life.

They are all wonderfully drawn, but Lammle Blauweiss especially, as he dashes wildly across the scene at unexpected moments—never far off, yet never showing his real importance to the story—seems to us to be managed with quite unusual cleverness. The most striking scenes in the story are perhaps those where the Jews appear in companies, where the peculiarities of these extraordinary people are brought strongly before us, and we are reminded of the strange fact—which yet ought not to seem so strange to Christians—that they are literally of " one heart and one mind," that they all suffer or rejoice together. But then come the faults of these qualities,— that their own nation, their own race, is to them absolutely everything; that they are the greatest example of corporate selfishness to be found in the world ; and that, at least among these Orthodox Jews of Poland, "a Jew has got two consciences, one for his fellow-Jew and one for the Christian. It is right to cheat you, it is right to rob you, it is right to break word with you Under such conditions, a fair battle is out of the question. Ever since the world has begun to go round, poisoned arrows have had the advantage of un- poisoned ones." With such arguments as these, Zultowski tried to make his friend understand the danger of trusting the Jews. But -Ortenegg, with his pity for the oppressed, his ignorance of the world, and his trust in human nature, answers

to all that can be said to him :—"' I shall treat them exactly as I treat Christians.' And they will treat you as they

treat Christians—exactly,' I replied. Well, may you never know better." The really tragic figure of the story, the victim around whom the clouds gather darkly, carrying her on to a fate far more dreadful than that of her lover, is the Jewish girl Salome, the would-be renegade, with her golden hair. She, like the other Jews, is wonderfully well drawn ; her terror her superstition, her helpless love, the tremendous bonds of custom and obedience that tie her down, paralysing all her faculties, and leaving her nothing but despair.

But of all the characters in the story, the cleverest and most original is Surchen, imp of darkness as she is, the lovely little incarnation of all the vices that have ever been ascribed to the Jewish character. From her first meeting with the two friends in the beech-wood, wrapped in her precious bargain of a cow-

hide, all through her many Geschafte, and futile attempts at Geschtifte, down to the supreme moment when she tries to sell to Ortenegg that tress of golden, shining hair, Surchen is

perfectly brilliant and perfectly consistent. No superstition for her, the little materialist, in whose eyes the value of every- thing in human life, spiritual or temporal, is to be measured by its worth in florins.

In short, Orthodox is an extremely clever story. It will be perceived that it is also a painful story, and many readers, no

doubt, will feel themselves injured by the end of it. For our part, we admire the courage of a writer who dares to bring her story to its most likely and natural end. "Happiness ever after " is not so often met with in real life ; there are many circumstances and situations which can only end in tragedy ; and a German Count who wishes to convert and marry an

Orthodox Jewess of Poland, the daughter of a dealer in bones and skins, is likely to find himself in one of these situations. Novelists who esteem their art do not shrink from the natural end of a story. Moat men, it is true, would not have arranged their after-lives like Ortenegg; but he was peculiar.

Though in losing the fellow-worker of her previous stories the joint author of Beata seems to have lost some picturesque-

ness, attractiveness, and tenderness of touch and feeling, and to find herself in a barer, harder world than she lived in before, there can be no doubt that she is more than capable of standing alone. The Orthodox Jews will not love her; but let us hope they are not a very large sect;—also that this spirited story may not find its way into Poland, or be translated into the language of the Jews.