“Why does he treat you so cruelly, then?” Viola almost hissed the words.
Soon after fell the final crushing blow. Ascher had been away from home for some weeks, when one day Gudule received a letter, dated from a prison in the neighborhood of Vienna.
In words of genuine sympathy the writer explained that Ascher had been unfortunate enough to forge the signature to a bill. She would not see him again for the next five years. God comfort her! The letter was signed: “A fellow-sufferer with your husband.”
As it had been with her old father, after he had bidden her a last farewell, so it was now with Gudule. From that moment her days were numbered, and although not a murmur escaped her lips, hour by hour she wasted away.
One Friday evening, shortly after the seven-branched Sabbath lamp had been lit, Gudule, seated in her arm-chair, out of which she had not moved all day, called the two children to her. A bright smile hovered around her lips, an unwonted fire burned in her still beautiful eyes, her bosom heaved... in the eyes of her children she seemed strangely changed. “Children,” said she, “come and stand by me. Ephraim, you stand here on my right, and you, dear Viola, on my left. I would like to tell you a little story, such as they tell little children to soothe them to sleep. Shall I?”
“Mother!” they both cried, as they bent towards her.
“You must not interrupt me, children,” she observed, still with that strange smile on her lips, “but leave me to tell my little story in my own way.
“Listen, children,” she resumed, after a brief pause. “Every human being—be he ever so wicked—if he have done but a single good deed on earth, will, when he arrives above, in the seventh heaven, get his Sechûs, that is to say, the memory of the good he has done here below will be remembered and rewarded bountifully by the Almighty.” Gudule ceased speaking. Suddenly a change came over her features: her breath came and went in labored gasps; but her brown eyes still gleamed brightly.
In tones well-nigh inaudible she continued: “When Jerusalem, the Holy City, was destroyed, the dead rose up out of their graves... the holy patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob... and also Moses, and Aaron his brother... and David the King... and prostrating themselves before God's throne they sobbed: 'Dost Thou not remember the deeds we have done?... Wouldst Thou now utterly destroy all these our children, even to the innocent babe at the breast?' But the Almighty was inexorable.
“Then Sarah, our mother, approached the Throne... When God beheld her, He covered His face, and wept. 'Go,' said He, 'I cannot listen to thee.'... But she exclaimed... 'Dost Thou no longer remember the tears I shed before I gave birth to my Joseph and Benjamin... and dost Thou not remember the day when they buried me yonder, on the borders of the Promised Land... and now, must mine eyes behold the slaughter of my children, their disgrace, and their captivity?'... Then God cried: 'For thy sake will I remember thy children and spare them.'...”