The bridegroom is Reb Zeinwill, and they lead me round him seven times, but my feet are as if paralyzed, and they carry me in their hands.
Then I am taken home.
My mother comes to meet me with a cake, and they are bringing the golden broth.[14]
I am afraid to raise my eyes. I feel sure I shall see before me a blind man, both eyes gone, with a dreadfully long nose—a cold shudder runs through me—but someone whispers in my ear:
"Leah, what a pretty girl you are!" And the voice is not that of an old man; it is his voice. I open my eyes a little way; it is his face: "Sst!" he whispers; "don't tell! I enticed Reb Zeinwill into the wood, put him into a sack, tied it up, and threw it into the river (this was out of a story my mother once told me), and I am here in his place!"
I woke trembling.
Pale moonshine was lighting the whole room through a chink in the shutter, and I noticed, for the first time, that the lamp was once more hanging from the ceiling, and that my parents were sleeping in bed-clothes. Father smiled in his sleep; mother breathed quietly, and the good angel said to me:
"If you are obedient and pious, your father will recover his health; your mother will not have to toil into her old age, and your little brothers will become learned men—rabbis, authorities in the Law, great, great Jews. Their school fees will be paid."
"Only," put in the bad angel, "Reb Zeinwill will kiss you with his damp whiskers, and clasp you in his bony arms; and he will torment you as he did the other wives, and send you to an early grave, and he will come back and grieve, and he will teach you no more songs, or sit with you evening after evening—you will be sitting with Reb Zeinwill!"
No! not if the heavens should fall about the earth! Tear up the contract!