Another week passed. The police and the gendarmes were still searching for Makar and the governess, as much in the dark as ever.
Yossl Parmet, Makar’s father, was brought to Miroslav a prisoner, but he was soon discharged. He was proud of his son. He now fully realised that his Feivish belonged to a secret society made up of educated people who preached economic equality and universal brotherhood as well as political liberty, and that they were ready to go to prison for their ideas. This made a strong appeal to his imagination and sympathies, and the fact that his Feivish had outwitted the authorities and escaped from prison inclined him to shouts of triumphant laughter. He searched the Talmud for similar sentiments, and he found no stint of passages which lent themselves to favourable interpretation. A new vista of thought and feeling had opened itself to Yossl.
CHAPTER XXVI.
ON SACRED GROUND.
IN 1648, when Chmyelnicki’s Cossacks slaughtered 40,000 Jews, Miroslav was among the cities that fell into their blood-dripping hands. It was a small town then; the Jewish population did not exceed eight hundred, but these unanimously decided to be slain rather than abandon their faith. Not a man, woman or child was spared. The scene of the slaughter, a small square in the vicinity of Cucumber Market, is sacred ground to the Jews of Miroslav. The Bloody Spot they call it reverently. A synagogue stands there and ten recluses find shelter under its roof, so that the Word of God may be heard with unbroken continuity within its walls. If this house of prayer and divine study were to fall silent for a single minute, say the children of the town, the blood of the slain Jews would burst into a roar of sobbing that could be heard for seven miles.
But the ten recluses were not the only Talmudists in the place. The Old Synagogue, as it was generally called, was the favourite haunt of scholars. It was here where Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara’s father, spent every day and evening in the week except Saturdays and holidays.
It was about eight o’clock of a warm evening, several days after the disappearance of the political prisoner. The Old Synagogue was filled with people. The evening service was over. Candles flickered on gaunt, tallow-stained reading-desks and blazing oil-lamps dangled from the ceiling. The recluses were freely gossiping or snoozing; there were so many others to do the holy work—a medley of voices and melodies—from the enthusiastic soprano of the schoolboy to the dignified drone of the elderly merchant; from the conscious, over-elaborate intonation of the newly-married young man to the absorbed murmur of the tattered old scholar. As to the Talmudists themselves, they found stimulating harmony in this chaos. To them it was as if the synagogue itself were singing in a hundred voices, an inspired choir that quickened one’s intellectual passions and poured fire into one’s gesticulations.