He was thinking of a certain Samuel Brohl; he was reviewing in his mind all the history of this Samuel, a man who never had had a secret from him.

This history was quite as sad a one as that of Abel Larinski, but much less brilliant, much less heroic.
Samuel Brohl prided himself neither on being a patriot nor a paladin; his mother had not been a noble woman with the smile of an angel, and the thought never had occurred to him of fighting for any cause or any person.

He was not a Pole, although born in a Polish province of the Austrian Empire.

His father was a Jew, of German extraction, as indicated by his name, which signifies a place where one sinks in the mire, a bog, swamp, or something of that nature; and he kept a tavern in a wretched little market-town near the eastern frontier of Galicia--a forlorn tavern, a forlorn tavern-keeper.

Although always on the alert to sell adulterated brandy to his neighbour, and to seize the opportunity to lend him money on usury, he did not thrive: he was a coward of whose timidity every one took advantage to make him disgorge his ill-gotten gains.