"What treasure?"
"A treasure that has been buried for five hundred years—a thousand years—ever since the Jews came into this country, in the house of Ezofowich. The treasure is the writing of one of their ancestors, left as a legacy to his descendants."
"What does the writing say?"
"No one knows for certain."
All the inhabitants of the poorer streets had heard something about it from their fathers and grandfathers; but everybody bad heard it different. Some said it was the writing of a wise and saintly Israelite, who lived long ago, and who wanted to make his nation powerful and wise. Others maintained that this same ancestor of Ezofowich was an unbeliever, bribed by the stranger to destroy the name of Israel and the holy covenant from the face of the earth.
"The writing was to teach people how to make gold out of sand, and it tells poor people how to get rich."
"No! it teaches how to drive away the evil spirits, so that they cannot touch you, and how to transpose the letters of God's names into a word with which you can work miracles."
"The writing teaches how to make friends out of your enemies, and to enter into a covenant of peace with all nations. Somebody heard that it showed the way how to bring Moses back to life again, and call on him to bring his people out of bondage into the land that flows with gold and wisdom."
"Why did they not search for the treasure sooner?"
"They were afraid. It is said that whoever touches that writing will be scorched with fire and burned into powder. Serpents will twist themselves around his heart! His forehead will become as black as soot! Happiness and peace will go from him for ever! Stones will fall upon him like hail! His forehead will be branded with a red mark! Long, long ago, there still lived people who remembered it, the great merchant, Hersh Ezofowich, Saul's father, had touched that writing."