"Praise be the Lord, and blessed be His Holy Name! Ah, God! God! Blessed be the Lord! and praised be His Holy Name!"
They fluttered about me. They looked at me. Each one came and felt my head. They prayed over me, and buzzed around me. They licked my forehead, and spat out, by way of a charm. They poured hot soup down my throat, and filled my mouth with spoonfuls of preserves. Every one flew around me. They cared for me as if I were the apple of their eye. They fed me with broths and tiny chickens, as if I were an infant. They did not leave me alone. My mother sat by me always, and told me over and over again the whole story of how they had lifted me up from the ground, almost dead, and how I had been lying for two weeks on end, burning like a fire, croaking like a frog, and muttering something about whippings and little knives. They already imagined I was dead, when suddenly I sneezed seven times. I had practically come to life again.
"Now we see what a great God we have, blessed be He, and praised be His Name!" That was how my mother ended up, the tears springing to her eyes. "Now we can see that when we call to Him He listens to our sinful requests and our guilty tears. We shed a lot, a lot of tears, your father and I, until the Lord had pity on us.... We nearly, nearly lost our child through our sinfulness. May we suffer in your stead! And through what? Through a boy who was a thief, a certain Berrel whom the teacher flogged at 'Cheder,' almost until he bled. When you came home from 'Cheder' you were more dead than alive. May your mother suffer instead of you! The teacher is a tyrant, a murderer. The Lord will punish him for it—the Lord of the Universe. No, my child, if the Lord lets us live, when you get well, we will send you to another teacher, not to such a tyrant as is the 'Angel of Death,'—may his name be blotted out for ever!"
These words made a terrible impression on me. I threw my arms around my mother, and kissed her.
"Dear, dear mother."
And my father came over to me softly. He put his cold, white hand on my forehead, and said to me kindly, without a trace of anger:
"Oh, how you frightened us, you heathen you! Tkeh-heh-heh-heh!"
Also the Jewish German, or the German Jew, Herr Hertz Hertzenhertz, his cigar between his teeth, bent down and touched my cheek, with his clean-shaven chin. He said to me in German:
"Good! Good! Be well—be well!"
. . . . .