"Well," she says with her childlike, silvery voice, "and suppose the result of your inquiries were not favorable for the Jews, shall you he able to say: 'Thy people are all righteous?'" I feel as if her kind, blue, dove-like eyes rested soothingly on my hot forehead.
I fell asleep beneath them, and I dreamt of the two angels, the good inclination and the evil one. I saw them flying earthward before day-break, enveloped in a thin, pink mist. The evil inclination carried, in one hand, a blue paper with a large, black eye in the top left-hand corner, evidently a deed relating to a house or some property ... expensive dresses, besides fur caps, braided kaftans, silk sashes, also a top-hat and frock-coat as if for one person; also handkerchiefs, head-kerchiefs, kerchiefs with tinsel, pearl necklaces, as well as silk and satin trains of all colors—all that in one hand, and in the other—potato peelings....
The good inclination—naked, without clothes or things to carry, as God made him....
Both fly ... it seems as if the good inclination wanted to tell me something, he opens his pretty mouth ... but not his voice, a cry of alarm wakes me. Fire! I spring out of bed, there is a fire just opposite!
A long tongue of flame stretches out toward me and seems to say:
"Don't be frightened: it's insured!"
——
THE FIRE
The fiery tongue was put out at me by Reb Chaïm Weizensang's house. The tongue grew larger and the house smaller till it fell in, into a sea of wails and screams of terror. There was fortunately no wind at the time of the conflagration.
When the sun rose from out the mist, blushing red like a beautiful and innocent maiden after the bath, she saw nothing but long, black, male heads turning over the ruins with sticks. They were looking for the remnants of Weizensang's riches in the remnants of his house.