The emperor flung open his door. The guard pulled out the step, helped the emperor. There, surrounding the horsed guards was a great throng of people, and in front of the carriage was the rabbi of the Altneu Synagogue. Rudolph remembered him vaguely from the night at the castle when the multitudes had crowded into his room. He was a large man with a white beard, long hair, a forehead lined with creases, an impressive man, and yet, still and all, a Jew, and as that, as anybody else in his Empire so bold as to stop the royal progress, deserved no better than to be trampled to bits.