"We would not thus separate from our benefactor. We hastened after him to his room--it was closed against us: We sent by an old servant of the house to ask that we might as a favour be allowed to take farewell of his daughters, it was refused us. We almost succumbed to the unutterable grief of despair..... On the evening of that same day we proposed to leave Cologne, the inexhaustible goodness of Süss furnished us with an abundant outfit for our further journey--but he would never see us again. At night-fall we got into the travelling carriage, that waited for us at the back door of the house. We cast a sorrowful look at the window of that room which Miriam occupied.... two maiden faces looked forth into the gathering twilight, and the violent trembling of one of them, who pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, showed that she was sobbing impetuously--it was Miriam!
"Our hearts beat audibly, my brother's beautiful features were frightfully disfigured, he must have suffered as unutterable woe as I did.--I gazed into his face, visibly convulsed with sorrow. 'Brother,' I said, 'there is yet time.... I can renounce.... do thou return to Miriam. If Miriam wavers between us both, or even if she loves but one of us, thy return will be decisive in thy favour.... Thou, Miriam, our benefactor Süss, you all will be happy....'
"'And thou?' asked my brother in a tone of the woefullest reproach.
"'I go far away and strive to forget....' I tried hard to answer, but my voice shook, and tears rolled irrestrainably over my cheeks. My brother fell sobbing into my arms.--'I will never forsake thee, Brother!' he cried--'good brother! cast me not away from thy noble heart.'
"We went from one school to another; our name was already known far and wide, we met with a friendly reception everywhere: but we felt nowhere at home. We never mentioned Miriam, but the memory of this hapless love threw a gloom over our life. We plunged with unwearied industry into the study of God's word, we increased our stores of knowledge, but the thorn in our bleeding hearts did not therefore pain us the less.... We had acquired in the Talmudic world an unheard of renown for students, we were often honoured by letters from illustrious Rabbis, who desired our advice, our opinion upon scientific religious questions. The most important Rabbinates were offered to us, we might have obtained the highest aim of a Talmud-student. But neither of us could do so. Memory still drove us unquietly from place to place.
"A year had elapsed since our departure from Cologne, when in one of our wanderings we happened to hear that the younger daughter of the wealthy electoral physician Süss had given her hand to her cousin Joel Rottenberg of Worms, while the elder had previously absolutely refused to enter into the bond of matrimony. This news filled both of us with a strange sensation of sadness. To each of us, though he dared not allow it to himself--a ray of hope seemed to dawn:--and yet neither of us would have been made happy without the other. Once more, for the last time I asked my brother whether he would return to Miriam; but he saw my soul's infinite sorrow, after a short violent struggle his fraternal affection conquered, he stayed with me; we would never separate:
"Another year elapsed, we were then living in Germersheim, a community not far from Spires. We had in the course of our short residence there won the approval and respect of the Rabbi, and when he died soon after our arrival, he enjoined the community upon his death-bed to elect one of us as his successor, and it besieged us with petitions that one of us would accept the vacant chair of the Rabbi; and marry the daughter of the defunct who lived with her now widowed mother. I was still in no mood to accept these offers, however attractive and honourable they might be; my brother also decidedly refused them. We determined therefore to withdraw ourselves from all further discussion by a distant journey. I was busily occupied in my little room in the house of the Rabbi's widow packing my effects for the journey, when my brother suddenly entered. He was pale as a corpse, his looks were troubled.
"'Do you know what a foreign student has just been relating in the lecture-room?'
"'What?'
"'Miriam Süss has at length yielded to her father's entreaty and given her hand to her cousin Joseph Süss of Spires.--The wedding was solemnised magnificently at Cologne.'--