Saying this, he stooped in order to enter the low doorway, and then looked around.
Opposite him, near the wall, sat a man with a mass of coal-black hair, slightly tinged with gray, about him a worn-out garment, and with a yellow, wrinkled face, who, looked at the intruder with amazed and piercing eyes. In a far corner squatted another man, only dimly visible; upon him the young gentleman bestowed only a passing glance. It did not even enter his mind that the man in the tattered clothes and with the piercing eyes could be the celebrated Rabbi, whose fame, spreading over the Jewish communities, had sent a faint echo into the Christian world.
He approached the man very politely. "Could I see the Rabbi of Szybow for a few minutes?"
There was no answer.
The man sitting near the wall craned his long yellow neck, and opened his eyes and mouth wider.
The sudden amazement, or perhaps other feelings, gave him the appearance of stupidity, almost idiotism.
No wonder that Isaak Todros looked like one turned to stone at the sight of the nobleman standing before him. He was the first Edomite who had ever crossed his threshold—the first he had ever seen closely, and the first time he had heard the sonorous language, which sounded strange and unintelligible to his ears. If the angel Matatron, the heavenly patron and defender of Israel, or even the foremost of the evil spirits had stood before him, he would have been less appalled: with supernatural beings he was in constant though not direct communication. He studied them—their nature and their functions. But this tall, stately man, in his abominable garment which reached barely to his knees, with the white, effeminate forehead and unintelligible language, who was he? Was he a Philistine? a cruel Roman, or perhaps a Spaniard—one of those that murdered the famous Abrabanel family, and drove his ancestor Todros out of Spain?
The lord waited a few minutes, and not getting an answer, repeated the question:
"Could I speak with the Rabbi of Szybow?"
At the sound of the somewhat raised voice the squatting figure in the corner moved and rose slowly. Reb Moshe, with open mouth and stupid, glaring eyes, came into the light, and in his hoarse voice uttered the monosyllable "Hah!"