Gabriel struck into the shortest way to his dwelling by the Old-Synagogue, he found the gate of the Ghetto still open and passed through the gate in the street called "golden" into it.--He had walked a short distance sunk in deep thought, when suddenly some words struck his ear: "I thank you, dear lady, I cannot accept your company, it is here, I think, quite safe in the streets and I shall soon be at home."
The melodious ringing tone of this voice made an extraordinary impression upon Gabriel. A violent terror for a moment thrilled through him. The strong colossal man was obliged to lean against a wall in order to save himself from falling, his breast heaved with mighty respirations, it seemed as if he did not dare to look about him, as if he was afraid that the form to which that voice belonged would melt before his eyes into nothing. But at the next moment a woman passed quickly by him, and the moon, gliding at that moment from behind a cloud, threw its pale trembling light upon a face that was, as it chanced, but half concealed by a floating veil. He could recognise the features, his ear had not deceived him.--"Found," he cried almost aloud after a pause of speechless rapture; "Gabriel! thou hast drained the cup of sorrow to the dregs! But thy revenge will be sweet, will be fearful!" ... then he followed, unobserved, with hasty step, the woman's form. She stopped for the first time breathless at the Hahnpass before an apparently quite uninhabited dilapidated three-storied house. She opened the house-door with a key that she drew out of a pocket in her dress, and shortly afterwards Gabriel saw a ray of light shooting from a garret-window. Gabriel wiped the perspiration from his forehead, rubbed his eyes, looked about him, laid his hands upon the cold walls of the house in order to convince himself that it was no dream, that filled him with lying phantoms, that this moment had really and truly an actual existence. He might have stood there for some few minutes when again the clear accents of a woman's voice pierced his ear.--"Why do you stand dreaming there, Reb Gabriel?"
Gabriel awoke as from a heavy sleep; a group of women stood before him, among them, his hostess Schöndel. "Why do you stand in the street like this, what are you waiting for? Why have you been neither home nor to service in the Old-Synagogue since mid-day?"
Gabriel recovered himself quickly; he found himself in the neighbourhood of Jacob's house; he had frequently excused his staying away so long from Schlome's house on the plea of his visits to the lunatic; he, unsociable as he was, never conversed with anyone, and Gabriel could feel sure that he would not be betrayed by him at any rate.
"Cannot you see," he said, "I have just come from the poor lunatic, who enlists my sympathies in the highest degree. One should visit those who are afflicted with spiritual infirmities, as well as those who suffer bodily ailment, and, perhaps, to do so is a more excellent work of charity."
"We too return from doing a good action," replied Schöndel; "I belong to the society of 'devout women.' We have been praying at the death-bed of a departing sister, have closed the eyes of a poor forsaken old woman.--It is sad to die solitary and forsaken."--Schöndel dried her beautiful eyes, which were wet with emotion.
"We must make haste," said a woman, a neighbour of Schöndels', "or the gate will be shut, we are the only people who live outside...."
"Reb Gabriel, if you are going home too, give us your company," said Schöndel.
Gabriel walked silently and rapt in meditation by the side of the two women, while they, full of the recollection of the sad duty which they had just performed, did not attempt to resume the conversation.
Arrived at home Schöndel told her husband, how she had found Gabriel at the door of the lunatic's house, with whom he had spent the afternoon and evening.--Gabriel threw himself, as soon as he reached his room, in a more than feverish state of excitement into a chair. The manifold events of the day all disappeared before the extraordinary impression that the discovery of that woman had made upon him.--He staid awake the whole night, pacing the room backwards and forwards and only towards morning could make up his mind to write the report which Ensign Michalowitz was to carry back to Count Mannsfield.