"How looked he?" Moshé asked in a whisper that strove in vain not to be one.
"Do not ask me," Rebecca replied, with another shudder. "A little crooked demon with red hair, and a fur cap, and a white forehead, and baleful eyes, and a cock's talons for toes."
Again Moshé laughed, a strange, hollow laugh. "Little fool!" he said, "I know the man. He is only a brother-Jew—a poor cutter or cigar-maker who laughs at Yiddishkeit (Judaism), because he has no wife like mine to show him the heavenly light. Why, didst thou not see him afterward? But no, thou must have been gone by the time he came inside."
"What I saw was no man," returned Rebecca, looking at him sternly. "No earthly being could have stopped my heart with his glances. It was the Satan Mekatrig himself, who goeth to and fro on the earth, and walketh up and down in it. I must have been having wicked thoughts indeed this Sabbath, thinking of my new dress, for my Sabbath Angel to have deserted me, and to let the Disturber and the Tempter assail me unchecked." The poor, conscience-stricken woman burst into tears.
"My Rivkoly have wicked thoughts!" said Moshé incredulously, as he smoothed her cheek. "If my Rivkoly puts on a new dress in honour of the Sabbath, is not the dear God pleased? Why, where is thy new dress?"
"I have changed it for an old one," she sobbed. "I do not want to see the demon again."
"The Satan Mekatrig has no real existence, I tell thee," said Moshé, irritated. "He only means our own inward thoughts, that distract us in the performance of the precepts; our own inward temptations to go astray after our eyes and after our hearts."
"Moshé!" Rebecca exclaimed in a shocked tone, "have I married an Epikouros after all? My father, the Rav, peace be unto him, always said thou hadst the makings of one—that thou didst ask too many questions."
"Well, whether there is a Satan or not," retorted her husband, "thou couldst not have seen him; for the person thou describest is the man I tell thee of."
"And thou keepest company with such a man," she answered; "a man who scoffs at Yiddishkeit! May the Holy One, blessed be He, forgive thee! Now I know why we have no children, no son to say Kaddish after us." And Rebecca wept bitterly—for the children she did not possess.