Blanka, however, was feeling so heavy of heart and, in a vague way, so fearful of impending misfortune, that she was in no mood to enjoy the splendours around her. She crossed her hands on her bosom and, in the half-light of this mysterious subterranean cathedral, yielded to the awe-inspiring influence of the place and gave utterance, in a subdued chant, to these words of the psalmist:
"Hear me, O God, nor hide thy face,
But answer, lest I die."
Aaron could control his feelings no longer. Throwing himself down on his face, he began to sob as only a strong man can when he is at last moved to tears, not by any selfish grief, but by the very burden of his love and anxiety for others.
But at that moment the psalm was broken off, and Aaron heard himself called three times by name. He rose to his knees and looked toward the opening of the grotto, where a glad and unexpected sight met his eyes. Glorified by the flood of light that poured in from without, appeared the forms of three men, the middle one being the tallest and stateliest. They were Manasseh and his two brothers, David and Simon.
Aaron sprang up and threw himself on them with an inarticulate cry like that of a lioness recovering her lost cubs. Embraces and kisses were not enough: he bore them to the ground and thumped them soundly on the back in the excess of his emotion.
"You rascal, you good-for-nothing, you shameless rogue, to worry me like that!" he exclaimed, accosting now one, now the other of his two lost brothers, after which he embraced them both once more.
"And am I of no account?" asked Manasseh. "Have I no share in all this?"
"You are your brothers' father," Aaron made answer, "before whom they prostrate themselves, even as the sheaves of Joseph's brethren bowed before his sheaf. We are all your humble slaves." So saying, he threw himself at Manasseh's feet and embraced his knees. "Torda Gap is, indeed, a place of wonders, but the greatest wonder of all you have wrought in rescuing your brothers."
This unrestrained outburst of joy opened Blanka's eyes and made her see that there was far more behind the meeting of these brothers than she had at first suspected. She knew now that the vague dread which had oppressed her, and from which she had sought relief in sacred song, had not been unfounded. Thus it was that she felt all the more impelled to take up the psalm where she had broken off, and to pour out her gladness in the concluding lines:
"He hears his saints, he knows their cry,
And by mysterious ways
Redeems the prisoners doomed to die,
And fills their tongues with praise."