"Ezofowich!" he exclaimed in a voice which was neither so hoarse nor so trembling as before, "why have you come here and passed the threshold of my house? You are a Rabbinit—foe—persecutor. Your great-grandfather cast an anathema at my ancestors and turned their temple into dust. Go from here. My old eyes shall not be poisoned by looking at you."
While speaking the last words he stretched his trembling hand toward the door through which the young man had entered.
But Meir stepped forward slowly, and bending his head before the angry old man said:
"Peace to you!"
Under the influence of those sweet words, pronounced with sonority and expressing a prayer for a blessing and concord, the old man became silent, fell back on his seat, and only after a long while did he begin to speak in a plaintive, pitiful voice:
"Why did you come here? You are a Rabbinit, and the great-grandson of the powerful Senior. Your people will curse you if they see you pass my threshold, for I am the last Karaite who remained here to watch the ruins of our temple and the ashes of our ancestors. I am a beggar! I am cursed by your people! I am the last of the Karaites!"
Meir listened to the old man's words in respectful silence.
"Reb," said he after a while, "I bend my head low before you because it is necessary that justice be done in the world, and that the great-grandson of the one who cursed should bow before the great-grandson of the accursed."
Abel Karait listened attentively to these words. Then he was silent for a while, as though he was pondering in his tired mind, over the meaning of them. Finally he understood them entirely, and whispered:
"Peace be to you!"