A chaos of images clashed in my mind. I saw the mystic figure of the mighty Master of the Name standing in the cemetery judging betwixt the souls of the dead; I saw him in the upper world amid the angels; I saw him serene in the centre of his magic circle, annihilating with his glance the flaming hordes of demon boars; and even as the creatures shattered themselves into nothingness against the circle, so must these sublime visions vanish before this genial old man. And yet my disillusion was not all empty. There were still the cheers to exalt me, there was still my strange companion, to whose ideas I had already vibrated, and whose face was now transfigured to my imagination, gaining much of what the visionary figure had lost. And, amid all the tumult of the moment, theresang in my breast the divine assurance that here at last were the living waters, here the green pastures. "Master," I cried frantically, as I seized his hand and kissed it.
"My son," he said tenderly. "Those murderers have evidently informed the townspeople of my coming."
"It is well," said I, "I rejoice to witness your triumph over a town so rabbi-ridden."
"Nay, speak not ofmytriumph," reproved the Master. "Thank God for the change inthem, if change there be. It should be indifferent to man whether he be praised or blamed, loved or hated, reputed to be the wisest of mankind or the greatest of fools."
"They wish you to address them, Master," I cried, as the cheers continued. He smiled.
"Doubtless—a sermon full of hair-splitting exegesis and devil's webs. I pray you descend and see that my horse be not stolen."
I sprang down with alacrity to obey this his first wish, and, scrambling on the animal, had again a view of the sea of faces, all turned towards the Baal Shem. From the excited talk of the crowd, I gathered that the Baal Shem had just performed one of his greatest miracles. Two brothers had been journeying with their sister in the woods, and had been attacked by robbers. They had been on the point of death when the Baal Shem miraculously appeared, and by merely mentioning the Name, had caused the robbers to sink into the earth like Korah. The sister being too terrified to return with her brothers, the Baal Shem undertook to bring her to Brody himself in his own celestial chariot, which, to those not initiated into the higher mysteries, appeared like an ordinary cart.
Meantime the Master had refilled his pipe. "Is that my old friend David," he cried, addressing one with a cobbler's apron; "and how is business?"
The cobbler, abashed by this unexpected honor, flushed and stammered: "God is good."
"A sorry answer, David; God would be as good if he sent you a-begging. Ha, ha!" he went on cheerily, "I see Joseph the innkeeper has waxed more like a barrel than ever. Peace be to you, Joseph! Have you learnt to read yet? No! Then you are still the wisest man in the town."
By this time some of the Rabbis and magnates in the forefront of the crowd had begun to look sullen at being ignored, but even more pointedly than he ignored these pillars of the commonweal, did the Baal Shem ignore his public reception, continuing to exchange greetings with humble old acquaintances, and finally begging the men between the shafts either to give place again to his horse or to draw him to his daughter's house, whither he had undertaken to convey the woman they saw (who all this time had sat as one in a dream). But on the cries for a sermon persisting, he said:
"Friends, I cannot preach to you, more than my horse yonder. Everything preaches. Call nothing common or profane; by God's presence all things are holy. See there are the first stars. Is it not a glorious world? Enjoy it; only fools and Rabbis speak of the world as vanity or emptiness. But just as a lover sees even in the jewels of his beloved only her own beauty, so in stars and waters must we see only God." He fell a-puffing again at his pipe, but the expectant crowd would not yet divide for his passage. "Ye fools," he said roughly, "you would make me as you have made the Law and the world, a place for stopping at, when all things are but on the way to God. There was once a King," he went on, "who built himself a glorious palace. The King was throned in the centre of what seemed a maze of winding corridors. In the entrance—halls washeaped much gold and silver, and here the folk were content to stay, taking their fill of pleasure. At last the vizier had compassion upon them and called out to them: 'All these treasures and all these walls and corridors do not in truth exist at all. They are magical illusions. Push forward bravely and you shall find the King.'"
But as the crowd still raged about disappointed, pleading for a miracle, the Baal Shem whistled, and his horse flew towards him so suddenly that I nearly fell off, and the crowd had to separate in haste. A paralytic cripple dropped his crutch in a flurry and fell a-running, quite cured.
"A miracle! a miracle!" cried a hundred voices. "God be praised!"
The shout was taken up all down the street, and eager spectators surrounded the joyous cripple, interrogating him and feeling his limbs.
"You see, you see!" I heard them say to each other. "There is witchcraft even in his horse!"
As the animal came towards the shafts the human drawers scattered hastily. I hitched the wagon to and we drove through the throng that begged the Baal Shem's blessing. But he only waved them off smilingly.
"Bless one another by your deeds," he cried from time to time. "Then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will bless you." And so we came to the Ring-Place, and through it, into the structure we sought—a tall two-storied stone building.
When we arrived at his daughter's house we found that she rented only an apartment, so that none of us but the woman could be lodged, though we were entertained with food and wine. After supper, when the iron shutters were closed, the Baal Shem's daughter—a beautiful black-eyed girl—danced with such fire and fervor that her crimson head-cloth nearly dropped off, and I, being now in acheerful mood, fell to envying her husband, who for his part conversed blithely with the rescued woman. In the middle of the gaiety the Baal Sham retired to a corner, observing he wished to say hisMinchaprayer, and bidding us continue our merriment and not regard him.
"Mincha!" I ejaculated unthinkingly, "why, it is too late."
"Would you give a child regulations when he may speak to his Father?" rebuked the Baal Shem.
So I went on talking with his daughter, but of a sudden a smile curved my lips at the thought of how the foolish makers of legends had feigned his praying to be so fraught with occult operations that he who looked at him might die. I turned and stole a glance at him.
Then to my amaze, as I caught sight of his face, I realized for the first time that he was, indeed, as men called him, the Master of Divine Secrets. There were on his brow great spots of perspiration, and, as if from agony, tears trickled down his cheeks, but his eyes were upturned and glazed, and his face was as that of a dead man without soul, only it seemed to me that the nimbus of which men spoke was verily round his head. His form, too, which was grown rigid, appeared strangely taller. One hand grasped the corner of the dresser. I turned away my eyes quickly, fearing lest they should be smitten with blindness. I know not how many minutes passed before I heard a great sigh, and, turning, saw the Baal Shem's figure stirring and quivering, and in another moment he was facing me with a beaming smile. "Well, my son, do you feel inclined for bed?"
His question recalled to me how much I had gone through that day, and though I was in no hurry to leave this pleasant circle, yet I replied his wish was law to me. Whereupon he said, to my content, that he would tarry yetanother quarter of an hour. When we set out for the inn of Joseph where our horse and cart had preceded us, it was ten o'clock, but there was still a crowd outside the house, many of the great iron doors adown the street were still open, and men and women pressed forward to kiss the hem of the Master's garment.
On our walk I begged him to tell me what he had seen during his prayers.
"I made a soul-ascension," said he simply, "and saw more wonderful things than I have seen since I came to divine knowledge. Praise to the Unity!"
"CanIsee such things?" said I breathlessly, as all I had learnt of Cabalah and all my futile attempts to work miracles came rushing back to me.
"No—not you."
I felt chilled, but he went on: "Not you—theyoumust be obliterated. You must be reabsorbed in the Unity."
"But how?"
"Concentrate your thought on God. Forget yourself."
"I will try, dear Master," said I. "But tell me what you saw."
"What I saw and learnt up there it is impossible to communicate by word of mouth."
But I entreated him sore, and ere we had parted for the night he delivered himself as follows, speaking of these divine things in Hebrew:—
"I may only relate what I witnessed when I descended to the lower Paradise. I saw there ever so many souls both of living and of dead people, known and unknown to me, without measure and number, coming and going from one world to the other, by means of the Pillar which is known to those who know Grace. Great was the joy which the bodily breath can neither narrate nor the bodily ear hear. Many very wicked people came back in repentance,and all their sins were forgiven them, because this was a season of great Grace in Heaven. I wondered indeed that so many were received. They all begged and entreated me to come up with them to the higher regions, and on account of the great rejoicing I saw amongst them I consented. Then I asked for my heavenly teacher to go with me because the danger of ascending such upper worlds is great, where I have never been since I exist. I thus ascended from grade to grade till I came into the Temple of the Messiah, in which the Messiah teaches Torah with all the Tanaim and the Zaddikim and the Seven Shepherds; and there I saw a great rejoicing. I did not know what this rejoicing meant. I thought at first that this rejoicing might perhaps be on account of my speedy death. But they made known to me that I shall not die yet, because there is great rejoicing in Heaven when I make celestial unions below by their holy teaching. But what the rejoicing meant, I still did not know. I asked, 'When will the Master come?' I was answered: 'When thy teaching shall be known and revealed to the world, and thy springs shall spread abroad that which I have taught thee, and that which thou hast received here, and when all men will be able to make unions and ascensions like thee. Then all the husks of worldly evil will disappear, and it will be a time of Grace and Salvation.' I wondered very much, and I felt great sorrow because the time was to be so long delayed. Because when can this be? But in this my last ascent three words that be mighty charms and three heavenly names I learnt. They are easy to learn and to explain. This cooled my mind. I believe that through them people of my genius will reach soon my degree, but I have no permission to reveal them. I have been praying at least for permission to teach them to you, but I must keep to my oath. But this I make known to you, and God willhelp you. Let your ways be directed towards God, let them not turn away from Him. When you pray and study, in every word and utterance of your lips direct your mind to unification, because in every letter there are worlds and souls and Deity. The letters unify and become a word, and afterwards unify in the Deity, wherefore try to have your soul absorbed in them, so that all universes become unified, which causes an infinite joy and exaltation. If you understand the joy of bride and bridegroom a little and in a material way, how much more ecstatic is the unification of this celestial sort! O the wondrous day when Evil shall at last be worked out of the universe, and God be at one with His creation. May He be your help!"
I sat a while in dazed wonder.
"Dear Master," said I at last, "you to whom are unveiled the secrets of all the universes, cannot you readmyfuture?"
"Yes," he said. I looked at him breathlessly. "You will always be faithful to me," he said slowly.
My eyes filled with tears. I kissed his hand.
"And you will marry my daughter."
My heart beat: "Which?"
"She whom you have just seen."
"But she is married," I said, as the blood swirled deliciously in my veins.
"Her husband will give her a bill of divorcement."
"And what will become of him?"
"He will marry the woman we have saved. And she, too, will win many souls."
"But how know you?" I whispered, half incredulous.
"So it is borne in upon me," said the Baal Shem, smiling.
And so indeed after many days it came to pass. And so ended this first strange day with the beloved Master, whose light shines through the worlds.
It is now many years since I first saw the Baal Shem, and as many since I laid him in his grave, yet every word he spake to me is treasured up in my heart as gold, yea, as fine gold. But the hand of age is heavy upon me, and lest I may not live to complete even this briefer story, I shall set down here but the rough impression of his doctrine left in my mind, hoping to devote a separate volume to these conversations with my divine Master. And this is the more necessary, as I said, since every day the delusions and impostures of those who use his name multiply and grow ranker. Even in his own day, the Master's doctrine was already, as you will have seen, sufficiently distorted by souls smaller than his own, and by the refraction of distance—for how should a true image of him pass from town to town, by forest and mountain, throughout all that vast empire? The Master's life alone made clear to me what I had failed to gather from his followers. Just as their delirious dancings and shrieks and spasms were abortive attempts to produce his prayer-ecstasy, so in all things did they but caricature him. But now that he is dead, and these extravagances are no longer to be checked by his living example, so monstrous are the deeds wrought and the things taught in his name, that though the Chassidim he founded are become—despite every persecution by the orthodox Jews, despite the scourging of their bodies and the setting of them in the stocks, despite the excommunication of our order and the closing of our synagogues, and the burning of our books—a mighty sect throughout the length and the breadth of Central Europe, yet have I little pleasure in them, little joy in the spread of the teaching to which I devoted my life. And sometimes—now that myMaster's face no longer shines consolingly upon me, save in dream and memory—I dare to wonder if the world is better for his having lived. And indeed at times I find myself sympathizing with our chief persecutor, the saintly and learned Wilna Gaon.
And first, since there are now, alas! followers of his who in their perverted straining after simplicity of existence wander about naked in the streets, and even attend to the wants of nature in public, let me testify that though the Master considered the body and all its functions holy, yet did he give no countenance to such exaggerations; and though in his love for the sun and the water and bodily purity—to him a celestial symbol—he often bathed in retired streams, yet was he ever clad becomingly in public; and though he regarded not money, yet did he, when necessary, strive to earn it by work, not lolling about smoking and vaunting his Perfection, pretending to be meditating upon God, while others span and toiled for him.
For in his work too, my Master lived in the hourly presence of God; and of the patriarchs and the prophets, the great men of Israel, the Tanaim and the Amoraim, and all who had sought to bring God's Kingdom upon earth, that God and Creation, Heaven and Earth, might be at one, and the Messiah might come and the divine peace fall upon all the world. And when he prayed and wept for the sins of his people, his spirit ascended to the celestial spheres and held converse with the holy ones, but this did not puff him up with vanity as it doth those who profess to-day to make soul-ascensions, an experience of which I for my own part, alas! have never yet been deemed worthy. For when he returned to earth the Baal Shem conducted himself always like a simple man who had never left his native hamlet, whereas these heavenly travellers feign to despise this lower world, nay, some in their conceit and arrogance lose theirwits and give out that they have already been translated and are no longer mortal. My Master did, indeed, hope to be translated in his lifetime like Elijah, for he once said to me, weeping—'twas after we returned from his wife's funeral—"Now that my wife is dead I shall die too. Such a saint might have carried me with her to Heaven. She followed me unquestioningly into the woods, lived without society, summer and winter, endured pain and labor for me, and but for her faith in me I should have achieved naught." No man reverenced womankind more than the Master; in this, as in so much, his life became a model to mine, and his dear daughter profited by the lesson her father had taught me. We err grievously in disesteeming our women: they should be our comrades not our slaves, and our soul-ascensions—to speak figuratively—should be made in their loving companionship.
My Master believed that the breath of God vivified the universe, renewing daily the work of creation, and that hence the world of everyday was as inspired as the Torah, the one throwing light on the other. The written Law must be interpreted in every age in accordance with the ruling attribute of God—for God governs in every age by a different attribute, sometimes by His Love, sometimes by His Power, sometimes by His Beauty. "It is not the number of ordinances that we obey that brings us into union with God," said the Master; "one commandment fulfilled in and through love of Him is as effective as all." But this did not mean that the other commandments were to be disregarded, as some have deduced; nor that one commandment should be made the centre of life, as has been done by others. For, though the Zaddik, who gave his life to helping his neighbor's or his enemy's ass lying under its burden, as enjoined in Exodus xxiii. 5, was not unworthy of admiration—indeed he was my own disciple, and desiredthus to commemorate the circumstances of my first meeting with the Baal Shem,—yet he who made it his speciality never to tell the smallest falsehood was led into greater sin. For when his fame was so bruited that it reached even the Government officers, they, suspecting the Jews of the town of smuggling, said they would withdraw the charge if the Saint would declare his brethren innocent. Whereupon he prayed to God to save him from his dilemma by sending him death, and lo! when the men came to fetch him to the law-court, they found him dead. But a true follower of the Master should have been willing to testify for truth's sake even against his brethren, and in my humble judgment his death was not a deliverance, but a punishment from on high.
Had, moreover, the Saint practised the Humility—which my Master put as the first of the three cardinal virtues—he would not have deemed it so fatal to tell a lie once; for who can doubt there was in him more spiritual pride in his own record than pure love of truth? And had he practised the second of the three cardinal virtues—Cheerfulness—he would have known that God can redeem a man even from the sin of lying. And had he practised the third—Enkindlement—he would never have narrowed himself to one commandment, and that a negative one—not to lie. For where there is a living flame in the heart, it spreads to all the members.
"Service is its own reward, its own joy," said the Baal Shem. "No man should bend his mind onnotdoing sin: his day should be too full of joyous service." The Messianic Age would be, my Master taught, when every man did what was right and just of mere natural impulse, not even remembering that he was doing right, still less being uplifted on that account, for no man is proud because he walks or sleeps. Then would Righteousness be incarnatein the world, and the devil finally defeated, and every man would be able to make celestial unions and soul-ascensions.
Many sufferings did the Baal Shem endure in the years that I was with him. Penury and persecution were often his portion, and how his wife's death wounded him I have already intimated. But it was the revival of the Sabbatian heresy by Jacob Frank that caused him the severest perturbation. This Frank, who was by turns a Turk, a Jew, and a Catholic, played the rôle of successor of Zevi, as Messiah, ordered his followers to address him as the Holy Lord, and, later, paraded his beautiful daughter, Eve, as the female Godhead. Much of what my grandfather had told me of the first Pretender was repeated, save that as the first had made alliance with the Mohammedans, so the second coquetted with the Christians. Hence those public disputations, fostered by the Christians, in which the Frankists did battle with the Talmudists, and being accredited the victors, exulted in seeing the sacred books of the Rabbis confiscated. When a thousand copies of the Talmud were thrown into a great pit at Kammieniec, and burned by the hangman, the Baal Shem shed tears, and joined in the fast-day for the burning of the Torah. For despite his detestation of the devil's knots, he held that the Talmud represented the oral law which expressed the continuous inspiration of the leaders of Israel, and that to rely on the Bible alone was to worship the mummy of religion. Nor did he grieve less over the verbal tournament of the Talmudists and Frankists in the Cathedral of Lemberg, when the Polish nobility and burghers bought entrance tickets at high prices. "The devil, not God, is served by religious disputations," said the Master. And when at last the Frankists were baptized in their thousands, and their Messiah in pompous Turkish robes paraded the town in a chariot drawn by six horses, and surrounded by Turkishguards, the Baal Shem was more pleased than grieved at this ending. When these Jewish Catholics, however, came to grief, and, on the incarceration of Frank by the Polish Inquisition, were reduced to asking alms at church-doors, the Baal Shem was alone in refusing to taunt them for still gazing longingly towards "the gate of Rome," as they mystically called the convent of Czenstochow, in which Frank lay imprisoned. And when their enemies said they had met with their desert, the Baal Shem said: "There is no sphere in Heaven where the soul remains a shorter time than in the sphere of merit, there is none where it abides longer than in the sphere of love." Much also in these troublous times did the Baal Shem suffer from his sympathy with the sufferings of Poland, in its fratricidal war, when the Cossacks hung up together a nobleman, a Jew, a monk, and a dog, with the inscription: "All are equal." Although these Cossacks, and later on the Turks, who, in the guise of friends of Poland, turned the Southern provinces into deserts, rather helped than hindered the cause of his followers by diverting their persecutors, the Baal Shem palpitated with pity for all—dogs, monks, noblemen, and Jews. But, howsoever he suffered, the serene cheerful faith on which these were but dark shadows, never ceased altogether to shine in his face. Even on his death-bed his three cardinal virtues were not absent. For no man could face the Angel of Death more cheerfully, or anticipate more glowingly the absorption into the Divine, and as for Humility, "O Vanity! vanity!" were his dying words; "even in this hour of death thou darest approach me with thy temptations. 'Bethink thee, Israel, what a grand funeral procession will be thine because thou hast been so wise and good,' O Vanity, vanity, beshrew thee."
Now although I was his son-in-law, and was with him inthis last hour, it is known of all men that not I, but Rabbi Baer, was appointed by him to be his successor. For although my acquaintance with the Baal Shem did not tend to increase my admiration for his chief disciple, I never expressed my full mind on the subject to the Master, for he had early enjoined on me that the obverse side of the virtue of Humility is to think highly of one's fellow-man. "He who loves the Father, God, will also love the children."
But, inasmuch as he abhorred profitless learning, and all study for study's sake that does not lead to the infinite light, I did venture to ask him why he had allowed Baer, the Scholar, to go about as his lieutenant and found communities in his name.
"Because," he said with beautiful simplicity, "I saw that I had sinned in making ignorance synonymous with virtue. There are good men even among the learned—men whose hearts are uncorrupted by their brains. Baer was such a one, and since he had great repute among the learned I saw that the learned who would not listen to a simple man would listen to him."
Now, before I say aught else on this point, let this saying of the Master serve to rebuke his graceless followers who despise the learned while they themselves have not even holiness, and who boast of their ignorance as though it guaranteed illumination; but as to Rabbi Baer I will boldly say that it would have been better for the world and the Baal Shem's teachings had I been appointed to hand them down. For Baer made of the Master's living impulse a code and a creed which grew rigid and dead. And he organized his followers by external signs—noisy praying, ablutions, white Sabbath robes, and so forth—so that the spirit died and the symbols remained, and now of the tens of thousands who call themselves Chassidim and pray the prayers and perform the ceremonies and wear the robes,there are not ten that have the faintest notion of the Master's teaching. For spirit is volatile and flies away, but symbol is solid and is handed down religiously from generation to generation. But the greatest abuse has come from the doctrine of the Zaddik. Perhaps the logic of Baer is sound, that if God, as the Master taught, is in all things, then is there so much of Him in certain chosen men that they are themselves divine. I do not doubt that the Master himself was akin to divinity, for though he did not profess to perform miracles, pretending that such healing as he wrought was by virtue of his knowledge of herbs and simples, and saying jestingly that the Angel of Healing goes with the good physician, nor ever admitting to me that he had done battle with demons and magicians save figuratively; yet was there in him a strange power, which is not given to men, of soothing and redeeming by his mere touch, so that, laid upon the brow—as I can personally testify—his hands would cure headache and drive out ill-humors. And I will even believe that there was of this divinity in Rabbi Baer. But whereas the Baal Shem veiled his divinity in his manhood, Baer strove to veil his manhood in his divinity, and to eke out his power by arts and policies, the better to influence men and govern them, and gain of their gold for his further operations. Yet the lesson of his history to me is, that if Truth is not great enough to prevail alone, she shall not prevail by aid of cunning. For finally there will come men who will manifest the cunning without the Truth. So at least it has been here. First the Baal Shem, the pure Zaddik, then Rabbi Baer, the worldly Zaddik, and then a host of Zaddikim, many of them having only the outward show of Sainthood. For since our otherwise great sect is split up into a thousand little sects, each boasting its own Zaddik—superior to all the others, the only true Intermediarybetween God and Man, the sole source of blessing and fount of Grace—and each lodging him in a palace (to which they make pilgrimages at the Festivals as of yore to the Temple) and paying him tribute of gold and treasure; it is palpable that these sorry Saints have themselves brought about these divisions for their greater glory and profit. And I weep the more over this spoliation of my Chassidim, because there is so much perverted goodness among them, so much self-sacrifice for one another in distress, and such faithful obedience to the Zaddik, who everywhere monopolizes the service and the worship which should be given to God. Alas! that a movement which began with such pure aspiration, which was to the souls of me and so many other young students as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, that a doctrine which opened out to young Israel such spiritual vistas and transcendent splendors of the Godhead, should end in such delusions and distortions.
Woe is me! Is it always to be thus with Israel? Are we to struggle out of one slough only to sink into another? But these doubts dishonor the Master. Let me be humbler in judging others, cheerfuller in looking out upon the future, more enkindling towards the young men who are growing up around me, and who may yet pass on the torch of the Master. For them let me recall the many souls he touched to purer flame; let me tell them of those who gave up posts and dignities to spread his gospel and endured hunger and scorn. And let me not forget to mention Rabbi Lemuel, the lover of justice, who once when his wife set out for the Judgment House in a cause against her maidservant set out with her too.
"I need you not to speak for me," she said, in ill-humor; "I can plead my own cause."
"Nay, it is not for thee I go to speak," he answered mildly; "it is the cause of thy servant I go to plead—shewho hath none to defend her." And, bursting into tears, he repeated the verse of Job: "If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant, when they contended with me, what shall I do when God riseth up?"
These and many such things, both of learned men and of simple, I hope yet to chronicle for the youths of Israel. But above all let the memory of the Master himself be to them a melody and a blessing: he whose life taught me to understand that the greatest man is not he who dwells in the purple, amid palaces and courtiers, hedged and guarded, and magnified by illusive pomp, but he who, talking cheerfully with his fellows in the market-place, humble as though he were unworshipped, and poor as though he were unregarded, is divinely enkindled, so that a light shines from him whereby men recognize the visible presence of God.
Happy burghers of Berlin in their Sunday best trooped through the Rosenthaler gate in the cool of the August evening for their customary stroll in the environs: few escaped noticing the recumbent ragged figure of a young man, with a long dirty beard, wailing and writhing uncouthly just outside the gate: fewer inquired what ailed him.
He answered in a strange mixture of jargons, blurring his meaning hopelessly with scraps of Hebrew, of Jewish-German, of Polish, of Russian and mis-punctuating it with choking sobs and gasps. One good soul after another turned away helpless. The stout roll of Hebrew manuscript the swarthy, unkempt creature clutched in his hand grew grimier with tears. The soldiers on guard surveyed him with professional callousness.
Only the heart of the writhing wretch knew its own bitterness, only those tear-blinded eyes saw the pitiful panorama of a penurious Jew's struggle for Culture. For, nursed in a narrow creed, he had dreamt the dream of Knowledge. To know—to know—was the passion that consumed him: to understand the meaning of life and the causes of things.
He saw himself a child again in Poland, in days of comparative affluence, clad in his little damask suit, shocking his father with a question at the very first verse of the Bible, which they began to read together when he was six years old, and which held many a box on the ear in store for his ingenuous intellect. He remembered his early efforts to imitate with chalk or charcoal the woodcuts of birds or foliage happily discovered on the title-pages of dry-as-dust Hebrew books; how he used to steal into the unoccupied, unfurnished manor-house and copy the figures on the tapestries, standing in midwinter, half-frozen, the paper in one hand, the pencil in the other; and how, when these artistic enthusiasms were sternly if admiringly checked by a father intent on siring a Rabbi, he relieved the dreary dialectics of the Talmud—so tedious to a child uninterested in divorce laws or the number of white hairs permissible in a red cow—by surreptitious nocturnal perusal of a precious store of Hebrew scientific and historical works discovered in an old cupboard in his father's study. To this chamber, which had also served as the bedroom in which the child slept with his grandmother, the young man's thoughts returned with wistful bitterness, and at the image of the innocent little figure poring over the musty volumes by the flickering firelight in the silence of the night, the mass of rags heaved yet more convulsively. How he had enjoyed putting on fresh wood after his grandmother had gone to bed, and grappling with the astronomical treatise, ignoring the grumblings of the poor old lady who lay a-cold for want of him. Ah, the lonely little boy was, indeed, in Heaven, treading the celestial circles—and by stealth, which made it all the sweeter. But that armillary sphere he had so ably made for himself out of twisted rods had undone him: his grandmother, terrified by the child's interest in these mystic convolutions, had betrayedthe magical instrument to his father. Other episodes of the long pursuit of Knowledge—not to be impeded even by flogging pedagogues, diverted but slightly by marriage at the age of eleven,—crossed his mind. What ineffable rapture the first reading of Maimonides had excited,The Guide of the Perplexedsupplying the truly perplexed youth with reasons for the Jewish fervor which informed him. How he had reverenced the great mediæval thinker, regarding him as the ideal of men, the most inspired of teachers. Had he not changed his own name to Maimon to pattern himself after his Master, was not even now his oath under temptation: "I swear by the reverence which I owe my great teacher, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, not to do this act?"
But even Maimonides had not been able to allay his thirst. Maimonides was an Aristotelian, and the youth would fain drink at the fountain-head. He tramped a hundred and fifty miles to see an old Hebrew book on the Peripatetic philosophy. But Hebrew was not enough; the vast realm of Knowledge, which he divined dimly, must lie in other languages. But to learn any other language was pollution to a Jew, to teach a Jew any other was pollution to a Christian.
In his facile comprehension of German and Latin books, he had long since forgotten his first painful steps: now in his agony they recurred to mock him. He had learnt these alien alphabets by observing in some bulky Hebrew books that when the printers had used up the letters of the Hebrew alphabet to mark their sheets, they started other and foreign alphabets. How he had rejoiced to find that by help of his Jewish jargon he could worry out the meaning of some torn leaves of an old German book picked up by chance.
The picture of the innkeeper's hut, in which he had oncebeen family-tutor, flew up irrelevantly into his mind—he saw himself expounding a tattered Pentateuch to a half-naked brood behind the stove, in a smoky room full of peasants sitting on the floor guzzling whisky, or pervaded by drunken Russian soldiery hacking the bedsteads or throwing the glasses in the faces of the innkeeper and his wife. Poor Polish Jews, cursed by poverty and tyranny! Who could be blamed for consoling himself with liquor in such a home? Besides, when one was paid only five thalers, one owed it to oneself not to refuse a dram or so. And then there came up another one-room home in which a youth with his eyes and hair had sat all night poring over Cabalistic books, much to the inconvenience of the newly married Rabbi, who had consented to teach him this secret doctrine. For this had been his Cabalistic phase, when he dreamed of conjurations and spells and the Mastership of the Name. A sardonic smile twitched the corners of his lips, as he remembered how the poor Rabbi and his pretty wife, after fruitless hints, had lent him the precious tomes to be rid of his persistent all-night sittings, and the smile lingered an instant longer as he recalled his own futile attempts to coerce the supernatural, either by the incantations of the Cabalists or the prayer-ecstasy he had learnt later from the Chassidim.
Yes, he had early discovered that all this Cabalistic mysticism was only an attempt at a scientific explanation of existence, veiled in fable and allegory. But the more reasonable he pronounced the Cabalah to be, the more he had irritated the local Cabalists who refused to have their "divine science" reduced to "reason." And so, disillusioned, he had rebounded to "human study," setting off on a pilgrimage in the depth of winter to borrow out-of-date books on optics and physics, and making more enemies by his obtrusive knowledge of how dew came and howlightning. It was not till—on the strength of a volume of Anatomical tables and a Medical dictionary—he undertook cures, that he had discovered the depths of his own ignorance, achieving only the cure of his own conceit. And it was then that Germany had begun to loom before his vision—a great, wonderful country where Truth dwelt, and Judaism was freer, grander. Yes, he would go to Germany and study medicine and escape this asphyxiating atmosphere.
His sobs, which had gradually subsided, revived at the thought of that terrible journey. First, the passage to Königsberg, accorded him by a pious merchant: then the voyage to Stettin, paid for by those young Jewish students who, beginning by laughing at his ludicrous accent in reading Herr Mendelssohn'sPhœdon—the literary sensation of the hour that had dumfoundered the Voltaireans—had been thunderstruck by his instantaneous translation of it into elegant Hebrew, and had unanimously advised him to make his way to Berlin. Ah, but what a voyage! Contrary winds that protracted the journey to five weeks instead of two, the only other passenger an old woman who comforted herself by singing hymns, his own dialect and the Pomeranian German of the crew mutually unintelligible, his bed some hard stuffed bags, never anything warm to eat, and sea-sickness most of the time. And then, when set down safely on shore, without a pfennig or even a sound pocket to hold one, he had started to walk to Frankfort, oh, the wretched feeling of hopelessness that had made him cast himself down under a lime-tree in a passion of tears! Why had he resumed hope, why had he struggled on his way to Berlin, since this fate awaited him, this reception was to be meted him? To be refused admission as a rogue and a vagabond, to be rejected of his fellow-Jews, to be hustled out of his dream-city by the overseer of the Jewish gate-house!
Woe! Woe! Was this to be the end of his long aspiration? A week ago he had been so happy. After parting with his last possession, an iron spoon, for a glass of sour beer, he had come to a town where his Rabbinical diploma—to achieve that had been child's play to him—procured him the full honors of the position, despite his rags. The first seat in the synagogue had been given the tramp, and the wealthy president had invited him to his Sabbath dinner and placed him between himself and his daughter, a pretty virgin of twelve, beautifully dressed. Through his wine-glass the future had looked rosy, and his learned eloquence glowed responsively, but he had not been too drunk to miss the wry faces the girl began to make, nor to be suddenly struck dumb with shame as he realised the cause. Lying on the straw of inn-stables in garments one has not changed for seven weeks does not commend even a Rabbi to a dainty maiden. The spell of good luck was broken, and since then the learned tramp had known nothing but humiliation and hunger.
The throb of elation at the sight of the gate of Berlin had been speedily subdued by the discovery that he must bide in the poorhouse the Jews had built there till the elders had examined him. And there he had herded all day long with the sick and cripples and a lewd rabble, till evening brought the elders and his doom—a point-blank refusal to allow him to enter the city and study medicine.
Why? Why? What had they against him? He asked himself the question between his paroxysms. And suddenly, in the very midst of explaining his hard case to a new passer-by, the answer came to him and still further confused his explanations. Yes, it must have been that wolf in Rabbi's clothing he had talked to that morning in the poorhouse! the red-bearded reverend who had lent so sympathetic an ear to the tale of his life in Poland, his journeyhither; so sympathetic an eye to his commentary on the great Maimonides'Guide of the Perplexed. The vile spy, the base informer! He had told the zealots of the town of the new-comer's heretical mode of thinking. They had shut him out, as one shuts out the plague.
So this was the free atmosphere, the grander Judaism he had yearned for. The town which boasted of the far-famed Moses Mendelssohn, of the paragon of wisdom and tolerance, was as petty as the Rabbi-ridden villages whose dust he had shaken off. A fierce anger against the Jews and this Mendelssohn shook him. This then was all he had gained by leaving his wife and children that he might follow only after Truth!
Perhaps herein lay his punishment. But no! He was not to blame for being saddled with a family. Marriage at eleven could by no stretch of sophism be called a voluntary act. He recalled the long, sordid, sensational matrimonial comedy of which he had been the victim; the keen competition of the parents of daughters for the hand of so renowned an infant prodigy, who could talk theology as crookedly as a graybeard. His own boyish liking for Pessel, the rich rent-farmer's daughter, had been rudely set aside when her sister fell down a cellar and broke her leg. Solomon must marry the damaged daughter, the rent-farmer had insisted to the learned boy's father, who had replied as pertinaciously, "No, I want the straight-legged sister."
The poor young man writhed afresh at the thought of his father's obstinacy. True, Rachael had a hobble in her leg, but as he had discovered years later when a humble tutor in her family, she was an amiable creature, and as her father had offered to make him joint heir to his vast fortune, he would have been settled for life, wallowing in luxury and learning. But no! his father was bent uponhaving Pessel, and so he, Solomon, had been beggared by his father's fastidious objection to a dislocated bone.
Alas, how misfortune had dogged him! There was that wealthy scholar of Schmilowitz who fell in love with his fame, and proposed for him by letter without ever having seen him. What a lofty epistle his father had written in reply, a pastiche of Biblical verses and Talmudical passages, the condition of consent neatly quoted from "The Song of Solomon," "Thou, O Solomon, must have a thousand pieces of silver, and those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred!" A dowry of a thousand guldens for the boy, and two hundred for the father! The terms of the Canticles had been accepted, his father had journeyed to Schmilowitz, seen his daughter-in-law, and drawn up the marriage-contract. The two hundred guldens for himself had been paid him on the nail, and he had even insisted on having four hundred.
In vain, "Here is your letter," the scholar had protested, "you only asked for two hundred."
"True," he had replied; "but that was only not to spoil the beautiful quotation."
How joyously he had returned home with the four hundred guldens for himself, the wedding-presents for his little Solomon—a cap of black velvet trimmed with gold lace, a Bible bound in green velvet with silver clasps, and the like.
The heart-broken tramp saw the innocent boy that had once been he, furtively strutting about in his velvet cap, rehearsing the theological disputation he was to hold at the wedding-table, and sniffing the cakes and preserves his mother was preparing for the feast, what time the mail was bringing the news of the sudden death of the bride from small-pox.
At the moment he had sorrowed as little for his unseenbride as his father, who, having made four hundred guldens by his son in an honorable way, might now hope to make another four hundred. "The cap and the silver-clasped Bible are already mine," the child had told himself, "and a bride will also not be long wanting, while my wedding-disputation can serve me again." The mother alone had been inconsolable, cakes and preserves being of a perishable nature, especially when there is no place to hide them from the secret attacks of a disappointed bridegroom. Only now did poor Maimon realize how his life had again missed ease! For he had fallen at last into the hands of the widow of Nesvig, with a public-house in the outskirts and an only daughter. Merely moderately prosperous but inordinately ambitious, she had dared to dream of this famous wonder-child for her Sarah. Refusal daunted her not, nor did she cease her campaign till, after trying every species of trick and manœuvre and misrepresentation, every weapon of law and illegality, she had carried home the reluctant bridegroom. By what unscrupulous warfare she had wrested him from his last chance of wealth, flourishing a prior marriage-contract in the face of the rich merchant who unluckily staying the night in her inn, had proudly shown her the document which betrothed his daughter to the renowned Solomon! The boy's mother dying at this juncture, the widow had not shrunk from obtaining from the law-courts an attachment on the dead body, by which its interment was interdicted till the termination of the suit. In vain the rich merchant had kidnapped the bridegroom in his carriage at dead of night, the boy was pursued and recaptured, to lead a life of constant quarrel with his mother-in-law, and exchange flying crockery at meal-times; to take refuge in distant tutorships, and in the course of years, after begetting several children, to drift further and further, and finally disappear beyond the frontier.
Poor Sarah! He thought of her now with softness. A likeable wench enough, active and sensible, if with something of her mother's pertinacity. No doubt she was still the widow's right hand in the public-house. Ah, how handsome she had looked that day when the drunken Prince Radziwil, in his mad freak at the inn, had set approving eyes upon her: "Really a pretty young woman! Only she ought to get a white chemise." A formula at which the soberer gentlemen of his train had given her the hint to clear out of the way.
Now in his despair, the baffled Pilgrim of Knowledge turned yearningly to her image, wept weakly at the leagues that separated him from all who cared for him. How was David growing up—his curly-haired first-born; child of his fourteenth year? He must be nearly ten by now, and in a few years he would be confirmed and become "A Son of the Commandment." A wave of his own early religious fervor came over him, bringing with it a faint flavor of festival dishes and far-away echoes of synagogue tunes. Fool, fool, not to be content with the Truth that contented his fathers, not to rest in the bosom of the wife God had given him. Even his mother-in-law was suffused with softer tints through the mist of tears. She at least appreciated him, had fought tooth and nail for him, while these gross Berliners—! He clenched his fists in fury: the full force of the injustice came home to him afresh; his palms burnt, his brow was racked with shooting pains. His mind wandered off again to Prince Radziwil and to that day in the public-house. He saw this capricious ruler marching to visit, with all the pomp of war, a village not four miles from his residence; first his battalions of infantry, artillery and cavalry, then his body-guard of volunteers from the poor nobility, then his kitchen-wagons, then his bands of music, then his royal coach in which he snored, overcomeby Hungarian wine, lastly his train of lackeys. Then he saw his Serene Highness thrown on his mother-in-law's dirty bed, booted and spurred; for his gentlemen, as they passed the inn, had thought it best to give his slumbers a more comfortable posture. Here, surrounded by valets, pages, and negroes, he had snored on all night, while the indomitable widow cooked her meals and chopped her wood in the very room as usual. And here, in a sooty public-house, with broken windows, and rafters supported by undressed tree-stems, on a bed swarming with insects—the prince had awoke, and, naught perturbed, when the thing was explained, had bidden his menials prepare a banquet on the spot.
Poor Maimon's parched mouth watered now as he thought of that mad bacchanal banquet of choice wines and dishes, to which princes and lords had sat down on the dirty benches of the public-house. Goblets were drained in competition to the sound of cannon, and the judges who awarded the prize to the Prince, were presented by him with estates comprising hundreds of peasants. Maimon began to shout in imitation of the cannon, in imagination he ran amuck in a synagogue, as he had seen the prince do, smashing and wrecking everything, tearing the Holy Scrolls from the Ark and trampling upon them. Yes, they deserved it, the cowardly bigots. Down with the law, to hell with the Rabbis. A-a-a-h! He would grind the phylacteries under his heel—thus. And thus! And—
The soldiers perceiving he was in a violent fever, summoned the Jewish overseer, who carried him back into the poorhouse.