In a circle of laughing Bohemians and Germans stood a Jewish pedlar with a bundle of brightly coloured kerchieves and ribbons which he was offering for sale to the women and girls alighting from the carriages. I recognized the man right away: it was Baruch Loew, Jemimah's father, and one minute later I was standing in front of him and holding his arm in a vice-like grip.
"Is it still going? Is it still going strong? It hasn't packed up yet? You haven't buried it like Mahalath's, have you?"
"What the devil!" cried the street hawker, taken aback by being accosted so crazily. "What's up?"
Then he knew me and, naturally enough, thought only of the watch I had once left in hock at his house and never been back to reclaim. He looked me in the face with an apologetic smile.
"Blow me down with a feather if it isn't that handsome clever clogs of a medical student. Well, this is a surprise and no mistake. Why shouldn't it still be going strong then? It keeps time to the minute even now, but I'm sorry to say I don't have it any more. What can I do for you apart from that?"
I pushed the man out of the courtyard of the 'Golden Goose' into the site of the old horse fair. There I repeated my question to him, mentioning his daughter by name, and now his face altered so dramatically, and he looked at me so stunned and stony-faced and crestfallen that there was no need to wait for his answer. A procession that was even then making its way over that very spot separated us from each other and I apathetically allowed myself to be shoved, dragged along and borne away by the crowd.
In the Jewish quarter it was as quiet as the grave. The silence was unnerving. Once again I rang the bell at the entrance to Beth Chaim and once again a grille was opened in the gate and the wrinkled, nearly centenarian face of the guardian of this 'house of life' appeared in the opening and, at the same time, the bolt was pulled back.
"So it's you!" said the old man. "I knew that somehow I'd see you again. Come through!"
He walked in front of me and I followed him down the shadowy graveyard paths and the festive exultations of a thousand clamouring voices in the great city of Prague were blotted out by the silence. The elder flowers in bloom made a splendid show over the graves but there were no birds to sing in them.
"Have they already told you she's passed on?" said the greybeard.