The more the teacher talked, the more gloomy the picture he drew, the greater became the enthusiasm of the pupil, the firmer his determination to emulate the example of the men of whom he now heard for the first time. The Rabbi at last consented to instruct the boy in the elements of the Russian and German languages.
While the old man did not for a moment close his eyes to the perils which his pupil invited by his pursuit of knowledge; while he did not conceal from himself the fact that his own position would be endangered if the nature of his teachings was suspected, he was happy in the thought of having before him a youthful mind, brave to seek truth. Rabbi Jeiteles was a learned man; his youth had been spent in travel. He had seen much and read more, and even in the bigoted community in which he lived he kept abreast of the knowledge of the times.
The first lesson was mastered then and there. It was a hard and tedious task and progress was necessarily slow, but Mendel possessed two great essentials to progress, indomitable perseverance and an active intellect, and his teacher displayed the painstaking care and patience with which love for his pupil inspired him.
Day by day, Mendel added to his store of knowledge. He was still the most industrious Talmud scholar of the college; his remarkable aptitude and zeal for the studies of his fathers was in nowise diminished; but when the hours at the jeschiva were at an end, instead of returning to his uncle's home, or of spending his time upon the streets with his boisterous playmates, he would walk with Rabbi Jeiteles in the fields, or remain closeted with him, pursuing his investigations in new fields of knowledge. Nor were his labors at an end when he had retired to his bed-room. In the still hours of the night, when every noise was hushed and he deemed himself safe from intrusion, he would rise, silently open his closet for his carefully concealed volume and creep back to bed. Then, by the aid of secretly purloined candle ends, he would read hour after hour, and often the dawn found him still at his books.
CHAPTER XIII.
PERSECUTIONS IN TOGAROG.
The flight of time brings us to the year 1855—the epoch of the Crimean War.
Ever since the days when Bonaparte was driven from burning Moscow, there was a popular belief that the Russian soldiery was superior to that of the western nations. The Emperor Nicholas was a thorough soldier as well as a tyrant, possessing an enormous and well-equipped army, which he deemed invincible. This boasted superiority was now to be tested. For years the Russians had been groaning under heavy taxes. During this period they had been finding fault with their central government in a mild, Siberia-fearing manner. To keep them from brooding on their oppressed condition, visions of glory and conquest were to be opened to them by a foreign war. As the patriotic enthusiasm and military fervor increased, the praises of Nicholas were sounded throughout the vast dominion. "The coming war was regarded by many as a kind of crusade, and the most exaggerated expectations were entertained of its results. The old Eastern question was at last to be solved in accordance with Russian ideals, and Nicholas was about to realize Catherine's grand scheme of driving the Turks out of Europe. That the enemy could prevent the accomplishment of these schemes was regarded as impossible. 'We have only to throw our hats at them,' became a favorite expression."[10]
The greater portion of the army was concentrated at the Southern extremity of Russia, for it was here that the fleets of the allied powers would be encountered. Like devastating swarms of locusts the semi-barbarous warriors descended upon the fertile fields, destroying all that lay in their path. Great was the misery of the peasantry in that section of the Empire; greater still the hardships endured by the Jews, who were despoiled of their possessions and driven from their homes.