“I am trying to get at Mr. Tikulski’s idea. Why should he send me that miniature? Whom does it represent?”
“You don’t mean to say that you haven’t recognized it?”
“Man alive, look in the glass.—Here.” Merivale held up the miniature in one hand and a pocket-mirror in the other. As closely as it is possible for one human countenance to resemble another, the face of the picture resembled my reflection in the glass.
“Are you satisfied?” demanded Merivale.—“Why, what ails you?” he continued presently, as I did not answer. “You look as if you had seen a ghost. Are you ill?”
“It has caused me quite a turn,” I replied. “It must indeed be a portrait of my father. But do you know—wait—let me tell you something.”
What I told Merivale I shall have also to tell the reader.
I could remember neither of my parents. As a child, I had lived in a dark old house with a good old rabbi and his wife—Dr. and Mrs. Hirsch. I had never stopped to ask whether or not they were my father and mother until I was eleven or twelve years of age. Then, the question having been suggested by a schoolmate, I had said, “Dr. Lesser”—Lesser being the rabbi’s given name—“are you my father?” To which the doctor, beaming at me over the rim of his spectacles, had responded, “No, my child: you are an orphan.”—“An orphan? That means?” I pursued. “That your papa and mamma are dead,” said he.—“Have they been dead long?” I asked indifferently. “Ever since you were the tiniest little tot,” he replied. And thereupon, as the subject did not prove especially interesting, I had let it drop.
Time went on. I was perfectly contented. The doctor and his wife were kindness personified. The present occupied me so pleasantly that I forgot to be curious about the past. But at length, when I was fifteen, the question of my parentage was again brought to my mind—this time by a lad with whom I had had a quarrel and who as a parting thrust had inquired significantly whether I knew the definition of the Hebrew noun Mamzer. Highly incensed, I ran home and burst into the doctor’s study. “Doctor,” I demanded, without ceremony, “am I a Mamzer?”—“What a notion! Of course you are not,” replied the rabbi.—“Then,” I continued, “what am I? Tell me all about my father and mother.”