Schlome spoke with honest warmth, this was no pleasant self-deception, it was his clear, mature, and veritable intuition. When he had ended, a pause ensued. The oil-lamps began to go out one by one, and Schöndel remarked, that grace had not yet been said. A quarter of an hour afterwards Gabriel took his leave and retired to his room. Here the careful housewife even before the break of the Sabbath had lit a well-filled lamp, that still burned clear. Gabriel shut the door rapidly and tossing off cloak and cap, cried with gnashing teeth and fists spasmodically clenched, "Tear pitilessly at the ever bleeding wounds of my heart, keen was your aim and sure the blow, you could not have rent my raging soul with a pang of greater anguish! Did you gaze into the secrets of my breast? Is a Cain's sign imprinted on my forehead, that every one at his will may read upon it my ignominious past? As this woman with flashing eyes spoke to me of that day of atonement, of that knight, of that Jewish maiden and her blind mother--and how they cast him forth with mockery and scorn--did it not seem as if she would have unfolded before me a detested period of my own life? And when she looked at me and asked if I had ever stood solitary and forsaken by the death-bed of a mother? If I had yet a tender father? that was no chance, that cannot have been a chance.--Chance can decide battles. Chance can let me fall alive into the hands of the Imperialists--but that is no chance, that is a presentiment, a dark impulse, an instinct, to hate me, to mortify me. But you are right, I hate you too, with the most unbridled strength of a sore, provoked tiger--revenge, to revenge myself, that is now the only thought that keeps me alive.--I must find the woman, the woman, that might have saved me as I hovered on the brink of a bottomless abyss--and that let me be dashed to pieces--I must find her, she cannot escape me--she is here in Prague, shut up within the gates of the Ghetto! Oh, how I gloat upon a sweet revenge--to take sweet and fearful vengeance, and then to perish for ever.--But what if I should die first, if the trumpet summoned me to battle, if I perished on the field,--if the outlaw fell alive into the hands of the Imperialists! No, no, that cannot be or--there is in sooth a God."
Gabriel paced his chamber impetuously--visions of the past filling him with the most torturing recollections, passed over his soul.--To die? He said at length suddenly stopping, "I fear not death, I have looked it in the face motionless and unconcerned in the whirl of battle, but before I die, oh, that I might find him, whom I have sought for ten long years, whom I might, perhaps, even yet embrace in these arms.--Thou, whom men call all-mighty and all-merciful," he suddenly cried, opening the window and lifting his gaze to the starry heaven, "Thou! give me my father, give me him though it be at my life's last breath--let him rest one moment, and may it be my last, on my breast--and I will acknowledge Thee, and I will bend my proud spirit even in death before Thee! But where to seek him, where to find him! I am sure of nothing, am sure of nothing but that I hate them all with a nameless hatred, and have good reason to hate them!"--
III.
On Saturday Gabriel had gone to early prayers with his landlord in the Old-synagogue. The service had lasted till near mid-day. Reb Schlome had then paid a visit to the chief Rabbi. At the midday meal, which was shared by two guests, they met again.
"How were you pleased with us in the old synagogue?" asked Reb Schlome.
"It is a beautiful building, quiet and order prevails among you. I must express my thanks to you, I know I am only endebted to you for it, that I, a stranger student, was called upon to expound, an honour that this Saturday was only conceded to distinguished persons.... I obtained the names of all who were called upon to expound, they were universally men of weight and character, but with regard to the last, who was called upon just before me, no one would or could give me precise information, though all seemed to know him."
"I will explain that to you," said Schlome; "that man is a member of the well-known family of Nadler, a family that, even now I scarcely dare to say so, fifty years ago in spite of their wealth and prosperity was shunned by everyone. People would not associate with them. No one would marry their daughters, no one would converse with them, every one kept away from them in the houses of prayer; they could obtain no tenants; the very poor despised the alms which they would have lavished in abundant measure. You can easily divine the cause,--there rested on the grandfather of this unhappy family the weight of a suspicion which afterwards proved to be groundless, that he was one of those who cannot be received in the congregation of the Lord. The family suffered fearfully under this foregone conclusion. It was that great thinker, the high Rabbi Löw, who first devised a means of once for all dispelling the clouds of obloquy, in that he--it is this very Saturday exactly six-and-thirty years ago--in a lecture, with the approval of the ten chief personages of the then community, uttered a solemn curse against all those who should dare any longer to injure the reputation of the family, to speak evil of the dead, or to apply the name of Nadler as a contumelious epithet to any one in the Jewish community. From that day no one ventured to withdraw himself from intercourse with them, and all the more honour was shown to them that they consumed their wealth for the benefit of the poor and afflicted, lived strictly in accordance with the Law, and moreover people wished to make them forget the humiliation and injustice of many a long year. On this account people do not like to talk about them, and avoid everything that might lead to further explanations about this family."
Gabriel had listened in silence with the deepest sympathy. "See, Schöndel," Reb Schlome suddenly exclaimed, "I notice a very remarkable resemblance between Reb Gabriel and you, a resemblance, about which I yesterday by lamplight thought that I had been deceiving myself. In the middle of his forehead too a fiery spot is wont at times to gather."
"That is strange," said Gabriel earnestly and thoughtfully.
"Not so strange as you believe," struck in one of the guests, "it is a not uncommon appearance I have heard of one of the Imperialist officers who has a mark on his forehead, I think two crossed swords--probably your mother, when she carried you under her heart, saw a sudden conflagration, or is it an inherited family-mark; had your father also such a mark on his forehead?"