The Jews of Barnow: Stories

by Karl Emil Franzos

He drew himself up to his full height, and stretched out his hand toward heaven: "Though my heart and hers should break, Thy name shall not be dishonored, my Lord and my God."

His hand fell slowly, and he paused. "Alas!" he whispered, "has not Thy name even now been dishonored? Has she not spread her hands out to Thee above the lights in my house, with the image of the Christian in her heart? Could any sin be greater? Is it Thy will that this wickedness should go on for the rest of our lives? Is it Thy will, O God?"

He sat down, and bent his head upon the table. "I do not know what to do," he exclaimed aloud. "Help me, O God! Thou hast revealed Thy will through Thy priests and Thy prophets. I will study the law."

He went to the bookcase and took out a large folio. As he did so, a little book that had been lying behind it fell on the floor. He did not observe it, and carried the folio to the table, opened it, and began to read.

He read for a long time, consulting different parts of it. At last he closed the book sharply, stood up, and resting his clinched fist heavily upon it, said, mournfully:

"The law does not help me; there is nothing in it at all applicable to a case such as this. The oldest law ordains that 'she should be stoned.' And the law of the Talmud is this: 'Let her die because of her sin, if the laws of the land in which ye live permit. If not, let the guilty woman be thrust out of her husband's house, and let her return to her father, who shall then punish and correct her as shall seem good in his eyes. She shall be without honor and without rights, excluded from all inheritance, and deprived of family ties....'

"The law does not apply to us," he repeated. "She has been weak, not criminal. She has not deceived me—she is mine; but, alas! her heart does not belong to me. It never did, and I never thought of trying to make it mine. The law does not apply; and who can show me a higher law?"

Sighing deeply, he replaced the folio on the shelf, but when he tried to close the doors of the bookcase, he found that the little volume which had fallen unobserved prevented his doing so. He picked it up and looked at it. Memories of the past came back in a flood as he recognized the German book he had read so often as a youth. He had never quite understood its contents, and yet had studied it again and again, because of the sympathetic emotion it aroused in him. Schiller's poems, which he had laid aside for so many years, came into his hands again at this dark hour of his life....

He sat down at the table, opened the book, and began to read. His youthful days returned vividly to his mind. One poem he had read beneath the old oak-tree in the park, and another he had surreptitiously studied in a corner of the cellar when he was overlooking his father's workmen. As he read on, he found to his surprise that he understood the whole meaning of the poems, and yet he had learned nothing new since these old days, except perhaps the secrets of the wine-trade. Each poem made a deep impression on him. It was so different from all that he had found in it before! Whether better or worse he did not stop to inquire; but the influence must have been good, for his heart felt relieved of the load that had oppressed it.

He rose and walked about the room in the stillness of the early Sabbath, repeating in a whisper some of the words he had just read. The only sound that was to be heard was the sputtering of one or other of the numerous wax-lights, or the fall of a heavy rain-drop against the window-pane.