"Dost think she will remember me?"

"Remember thee, Benedict? Did she not send me to thee to-day? Thy name is ever on those rosy lips of hers—to lash dull pupils withal. How thou didst acquire half the tongues of Europe in less time that they master tupto." Spinoza allowed his standing desire to cough to find satisfaction. He turned his head aside and held his hand before his mouth. "We quarrel about thy Tractatus—she and I—for of course she recognized thine olden argumentations just as I recognized my tricks of style."

"She reads me then?"

"As a Lutheran his Bible. 'Twas partially her hope of threshing out certain difficulties with thee that decided us on Scheveningen. I do not say that the forest which poor Paul Potter painted was not a rival attraction."

A joy beyond the bounds of Reason was swelling the philosopher's breast. Unconsciously his step quickened. He encouraged his companion to chatter more about his daughter, how van Ter Borch had made of her one of his masterpieces in white satin, how she herself dabbled daintily in all the fine arts, but the old man diverged irrevocably into politics, breathed fire and fury against the French, spoke of his near visit to Paris on a diplomatic errand, and, growing more confidential, hinted of a great scheme, an insurrection in Normandy, Admiral Tromp to swoop down on Quilleboeuf, a Platonic republic to be reared on the ruins of the French monarchy. Had Spinoza seen the shadow of a shameful death hovering over the spirited veteran, had he foreknown that the poor old gentleman—tool of two desperate roues and a femme galante,—was to be executed in Paris for this very conspiracy, the words that sounded so tediously in his ear would have taken on a tragic dignity.

They approached the village, whose huts loomed solemnly between the woods and the dunes in the softening twilight. The van den Endes were lodged with the captain of a fishing-smack in a long, narrow wooden house with sloping mossy tiles and small-paned windows. The old man threw open the door of the little shell-decorated parlor and peered in. "Klaartje!" his voice rang out. A parrot from the Brazils screamed, but Spinoza only heard the soft "Yes, father," that came sweetly from some upper region.

"Guess whom I've brought thee?"

"Benedict!" She flew down, a vision of loveliness and shimmering silk and white pearls. Spinoza's hand trembled in hers that gleamed snowily from the ruffled half-sleeve; the soft warmth burnt away philosophy. They exchanged the commonplaces of the situation.

"But where is Kerkkrinck?" said the doctor.

"At his toilette." She exchanged a half-smile with Spinoza, who thrilled deliciously.

"Then I'll go make mine," cried her father. "We sup in half an hour, Benedict. Thou'lt stay, we go to-morrow. 'Tis the last supper." And, laughing as if he had achieved a blasphemy, and unconscious of the shadow of doom, the gay old freethinker disappeared.

As Klaartje spoke of his book with sparkling eyes, and discussed points in a low, musical voice, something crude and elemental flamed in the philosopher, something called to him to fuse himself with the universal life more tangibly than through the intellect. His doubts and vacillations fled: he must speak now, or the hour and the mood would never recur. If he could only drag the conversation from the philosophical. By a side door it escaped of itself into the personal; her father did not care to take her with him to Paris, spoke of possible dangers, and hinted it was time she was off his hands. There seemed a confession trembling in her laughing eye. It gave him courage to seize her fingers, to falter a request that she would come to him—to Heidelberg! The brightness died suddenly out of her face: it looked drawn and white.

After a palpitating silence she said, "But thou art a Jew!"

He was taken aback, he let her fingers drop. From his parched throat came the words, "But thou art—no Christian."

"I know—but nevertheless—oh, I never dreamed of anything of this with thee—'twas all of the brain, the soul."

"Soul and body are but one fact."

"Women are not philosophers. I—" She stopped. Her fingers played nervously with the pearl necklace that rose and fell on her bosom. He found himself noting its details, wondering that she had developed such extravagant tastes. Then, awaking to her distress, he said quietly, "Then there is no hope for me?"

Her face retained its look of pain.

"Not ever? You could never—?" His cough shook him.

"If there had been no other," she murmured, and her eyes drooped half-apologetically towards the necklace.

The bitterness of death was in his soul. He had a sudden ironic sense of a gap in his mathematical philosophy. He had fathomed the secret of Being, had analyzed and unified all things from everlasting to everlasting, yet here was an isolated force—a woman's will—that stood obstinately between him and happiness. He seemed to visualize it, behind her serious face, perversely mocking.

The handle of the door turned, and a young man came in. He was in the pink of fashion—a mantle of Venetian silk disposed in graceful folds about his handsome person, his neckcloth of Flanders lace, his knee-breeches of satin, his shoes gold-buckled, his dagger jewelled. Energy flashed from his eye, vigor radiated from his every movement.

"Ah, Diedrich!" she cried, as her face lit up with more than relief. "Here is Heer Spinoza at last. This is Heer Kerkkrinck!"

"Spinoza!" A thrill of awe was in the young man's voice, the reverence of the consciously stupid for the great brains of the earth. He did not take Spinoza's outstretched hand in his but put it to his lips.

The lonely thinker and the happy lover stood thus for an instant, envying and admiring each other. Then Spinoza said cordially, "And now that I have had the pleasure of meeting Heer Kerkkrinck I must hurry back to town ere the road grows too dark."

"But father expects thee to sup with us," murmured Klaartje.

"'Tis a moonless night, and footpads may mistake me for a Jew." He smiled. "Make my apologies to the doctor."

It was indeed a moonless night, but he did not make for the highroad. Instinctively he turned seawards.

A slight mist brooded over the face of all things, adding to the night, blurring the village to a few gleams of fire. On the broad sandy beach he could just see the outlines of the boats and the fishing-nets. He leaned against the gunwale of a pink, inhaling the scents of tar and brine, and watching the apparent movement seawards of some dark sailing-vessel which, despite the great red anchor at his feet, seemed to sail outwards as each wave came in.

The sea stretched away, soundless, moveless, and dark, save where it broke in white foam at his feet; near the horizon a pitch-black wall of cloud seemed to rise sheer from the water and join the gray sky that arched over the great flat spaces. And in the absence of stars, the earth itself seemed to gain in vastness and mystery, its own awfulness, as it sped round, unlessened by those endless perspectives of vaster planets. And from the soundless night and sea and sky, and from those austere and solemn stretches of sand and forest, wherein forms and colors were lost in a brooding unity, there came to Spinoza a fresh uplifting sense of the infinite, timeless Substance, to love and worship which was exaltation and ecstasy. The lonely thinker communed with the lonely Being.

"Though He slay me," his heart whispered, "yet will I trust in Him."

Yea, though the wheels of things had passed over his body, it was still his to rejoice in the eternal movement that brought happiness to others.

Others! How full the world was of existences, each perfect after its kind, the laws of God's nature freely producing every conception of His infinite intellect. In man alone how many genera, species, individuals—from saints to criminals, from old philosophers to gallant young livers, all to be understood, none to be hated. And man but a fraction of the life of one little globe, that turned not on man's axis, nor moved wholly to man's ends. This sea that stretched away unheaving was not sublimely dead—even to the vulgar apprehension—but penetrated with quivering sensibility, the exquisite fresh feeling of fishes darting and gliding, tingling with life in fin and tail, chasing and chased, zestfully eating or swiftly eaten: in the air the ecstasy of flight, on the earth the happy movements of animals, the very dust palpitating pleasurably with crawling and creeping populations, the soil riddled with the sluggish voluptuousness of worms; each tiniest creature a perfect expression of the idea of its essence, individualized by its conatus, its effort to persist in existence on its own lines, though in man alone the potentiality of entering through selfless Reason into the intellectual ecstasy of the love with which God loves Himself—to be glad of the strength of the lion and the grace of the gazelle and the beauty of the woman who belongs to another. Blessings on the happy lovers, blessings on all the wonderful creation, praise, praise to the Eternal Being whose modes body forth the everlasting pageant.

Beginningless aeons before his birth It had been—the great pageant to whose essence Being belonged—endless aeons after his ephemeral passing It would still throb and glow, still offer to the surrendered human soul the supreme uplift. He had but a moment to contemplate It, yet to understand Its essence, to know the great laws of Its workings, to see It sub specie aeternitatis, was to partake of Its eternity. There was no need to journey either in space or time to discover Its movement, everywhere the same, as perfect in the remotest past as in the farthest future, by no means working—as the vulgar imagined—to a prospective perfection; everywhere educed from the same enduring necessities of the divine freedom. Progress! As illusory as the movement of yon little vessel that, anchored stably, seemed always sailing out towards the horizon.

And so in that trance of adoration, in that sacred Glory, in that rapturous consciousness that he had fought his last fight with the enslaving affects, there formed themselves in his soul—white heat at one with white light—the last sentences of his great work:—

"We see, then, what is the strength of the wise man, and by how much he surpasses the ignorant who is driven forward by lust alone. For the ignorant man is not only agitated by eternal causes in many ways, and never enjoys true peace of soul, but lives also ignorant, as it were, both of God and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer, ceases also to be. On the other hand, the wise man is scarcely ever moved in his mind, but being conscious by a certain eternal necessity of himself, of God, and of things, never ceases to be, and always enjoys true peace of soul. If the way which leads hither seem very difficult, it can nevertheless be found. It must indeed be difficult since it is so seldom discovered: for if salvation lay ready to hand and could be discovered without great labor, how could it be possible that it should be neglected almost by everybody? But all noble things are as difficult as they are rare."

So ran the words that were not to die.

Suddenly a halo on the upper edge of the black cloud heralded the struggling through of the moon: she shot out a crescent, reddish in the mist, then labored into her full orb, wellnigh golden as the sun.

Spinoza started from his reverie: his doublet was wet with dew, he felt the mist in his throat. He coughed: then it was as if the salt of the air had got into his mouth, and as he spat out the blood, he knew he would not remain long sundered from the Eternal Unity.

But there is nothing on which a free man will meditate less than on death. Desirous to write down what was in his mind, Spinoza turned from the sea and pursued his peaceful path homewards.



THE MASTER OF THE NAME

I

Now that I have come to the close of my earthly days, and that the higher circles will soon open to me, whereof I have learned the secrets from my revered Master—where there is neither eating nor drinking, but the pious sit crowned and delight themselves with the vision of the Godhead—I would fain leave some chronicle, in these confused and evil days, of him whom I have loved best on earth, for he came to teach man the true life and the true worship. To him, the ever glorious and luminous Israel Baal Shem, the one true Master of the Name, I owe my redemption from a living death. For he found me buried alive under a mountain of ashes, and he drew me out and kindled the ashes to fire, so that I cheered myself thereat. And since now the flame is like to go out again, and the Master's teaching to be choked and concealed beneath that same ash-mountain, I pray God that He inspire my unready quill to set down a true picture of the Man and his doctrine.

Of my own history I do not know that it is needful to tell very much. My grandfather came to Poland from Vienna, whence he had been expelled with all the Jews of the Arch-Duchy, to please the Jesuit-ridden Empress Margaret, who thus testified her gratitude to Heaven for her recovery from an accident that had befallen her at a court ball. I have heard the old man tell how trumpeters proclaimed in the streets the Emperor's edict, and how every petition proved as futile as the great gold cup and the silver jug and basin presented by the Jews to the Imperial couple as they came out of church, after the thanksgiving ceremony.

It was an ill star that guided my grandfather's feet towards Poland. The Jews of Poland had indeed once been paramount in Europe, but the Cossack massacres and the disruption of the kingdom had laid them low, and they spawned beggars who wandered through Europe, preaching and wheedling with equal hyper-subtlety. My father at any rate escaped mendicancy, for he managed to obtain a tiny farm in the north-east of Lithuania, though what with the exactions of the Prince of the estate, and the brutalities of the Russian regiments quartered in the neighborhood, his life was bitter as the waters of Marah. The room in which I was born constituted our whole hut, which was black as a charred log within and without, and never saw the sunlight save through rents in the paper which covered the crossed stripes of pine that formed the windows. In winter, when the stove heated the hovel to suffocation, and the wind and rain drove back the smoke through the hole in the roof that served for chimney, the air was almost as noxious to its human inhabitants as the smoke to the vermin in the half-washed garments that hung across poles. We sat at such times on the floor, not daring to sit higher, for fear of suffocation in the denser atmosphere hovering over us; and I can still feel the drip, drip, on my head, of the fat from the sausages that hung a-drying. In a corner of this living and sleeping room stood the bucket of clean water, and alongside it the slop-pail and the pail into which my father milked the cow. Poor old cow! She was quite like one of the family, and often lingered on in the room after being milked.

My mother kneaded bread with the best, and was as pious as she was deft, never omitting to throw the Sabbath dough in the fire. Not that her prowess as a cook had much opportunity, for our principal fare was corn-bread, mixed with bran and sour cabbage and red beets, which lay stored on the floor in tubs. Here we all lived together—my grandfather, my parents, my brother and sister; not so unhappy, especially on Sabbaths and festivals, when we ate fish cooked with butter in the evening, and meat at dinnertime, washed down with mead or spirits. We children—and indeed our elders—were not seldom kicked and cudgelled by the Russian soldiers, when they were in liquor, but we could be merry enough romping about ragged and unwashed, and our real life was lived in the Holy Land, with patriarchs, kings, and prophets, and we knew that we should return thither some day, and inherit Paradise.

Once, I remember, the Princess, the daughter of our Prince, being fatigued while out hunting, came to rest herself in our mean hut, with her ladies and her lackeys, all so beautiful and splendid, and glittering with gold and silver lace. I stared at the Princess with her lovely face and rich dress, as if my eyes would burst from their sockets. "O how beautiful!" I ejaculated at last, with a sob.

"Little fool!" whispered my father soothingly. "In the world to come the Princess will kindle the stove for us."

I was struck dumb with a medley of feelings. What! such happiness in store for us—for us, who were now buffeted about by drunken Cossacks! But then—the poor Princess! How she would soil her splendid dress, lighting our fire! My eyes filled with tears at the sight of her beautiful face, that seemed so unconscious of the shame waiting for it. I felt I would get up early, and do her task for her secretly. Now I have learnt from my Master the mysteries of the World-To-Come, and I thank the Name that there is a sphere in heaven for princesses who do no wrong.

My brother and I did not get nearer heaven by our transference to school, for the Cheder was a hut little larger than and certainly as smoky as our own, where a crowd of youngsters of all ages sat on hard benches or on the bare earth, according to the state of the upper atmosphere. The master, attired in a dirty blouse, sat unflinchingly on the table, so as to dominate the whole school-room, and between his knees he held a bowl, in which, with a gigantic pestle, he brayed tobacco into snuff. The only work he did many a day was to beat some child black and blue, and sometimes in a savage fit of rage he would half wring off a boy's ear, or almost gouge out an eye. The rest of the teaching was done by the ushers—each in his corner—who were no less vindictive, and would often confiscate to their own consumption the breakfasts and lunches we brought with us. What wonder if our only heaven was when the long day finished, or when Sabbath brought us a whole holiday, and new moon a half.

Of the teaching I acquired here, and later in the Beth-Hamidrash—for I was destined by my grandfather for a Rabbi—my heart is too heavy to speak. Who does not know the arid wilderness of ceremonial law, the barren hyper-subtleties of Talmudic debate, which in my country had then reached the extreme of human sharpness in dividing hairs; the dead sea fruit of learning, unquickened by living waters? And who will wonder if my soul turned in silent longing in search of green pastures, and panted for the water-brooks, and if my childish spirit found solace in the tales my grandfather told me in secret of Sabbatai Zevi, the Son of God? For my grandfather was at heart a Shab (Sabbatian). Though Sabbatai Zevi had turned Turk, the honest veteran was one of those invincibles who refused to abandon their belief in this once celebrated Messiah, and who afterwards transferred their allegiance to the successive Messiahs who reincarnated him, even as he had reincarnated King David. For the new Sabbatian doctrine of the Godhead, according to which the central figure of its Trinity found successive reincarnation in a divine man, had left the door open for a series of prophets who sprang up, now in Tripoli, now in Turkey, now in Hungary. I must do my grandfather the justice to say that his motives were purer than those of many of the sect, whose chief allurement was probably the mystical doctrine of free love, and the Adamite life: for the poor old man became more a debauchee of pain than of pleasure, inflicting upon himself all sorts of penances, to hasten the advent of the kingdom of God on earth. He denied himself food and sleep, rolled himself in snow, practised fumigations and conjurations and self-flagellations, so as to overthrow the legion of demons who, he said, barred the Messiah's advent. Sometimes he terrified me by addressing these evil spirits by their names, and attacking them in a frenzy of courage, smashing windows and stoves in his onslaught till he fell down in a torpor of exhaustion. And, though he was so advanced in years, my father could not deter him from joining in the great pilgrimage that, under Judah the Saint, set out for Palestine, to await the speedy redemption of Israel. Of this Judah the Saint, who boldly fanned the embers of the Sabbatian heresy into fierce flame, I have a vivid recollection, because, against all precedent, he mounted the gallery of the village synagogue to preach to the women. I remember that he was clad in white satin, and held under his arm a scroll of the law, whose bells jingled as he walked; but what will never fade from my recollection is the passion of his words, his wailing over our sins, his profuse tears. Lad as I was, I was wrought up to wish to join this pilgrimage, and it was with bitter tears of twofold regret that I saw my grandfather set out on that disastrous expedition, the leader of which died on the very day of its arrival in Jerusalem.

My own Sabbatian fervor did not grow cold for a long time, and it was nourished by my study of the Cabalah. But, although ere I lay down my pen I shall have to say something of the extraordinary resurgence of this heresy in my old age, and of the great suffering which it caused my beloved Master, the Baal Shem, yet Sabbatianism did not really play much part in my early life, because such severe measures were taken against it by the orthodox Rabbis that it seemed to be stamped out, and I myself, as I began to reflect upon it, found it inconceivable that a Jewish God should turn Turk: as well expect him to turn Christian. But indirectly this redoubtable movement entered largely into my life by way of the great Eibeschuetz-Emden controversy. For it will not be stale in the memory of my readers that this lamentable controversy, which divided and embittered the Jews of all Europe, which stirred up Kings and Courts, originated in the accusation against the Chief Rabbi of the Three Communities that the amulets which he—the head of the orthodox tradition—wrote for women in childbirth, were tainted with the Sabbatian heresy. So bitter and widespread were the charges and counter-charges, that at one moment every Jewish community in Europe stood excommunicated by the Chief Rabbis of one side or the other—a ludicrous position, whereof the sole advantage was that it brought the Ban into contempt and disuse. It was not likely that a controversy so long-standing and so impassioned would fail to permeate Poland; and, indeed, among us the quarrel, introduced as it was by Baruch Yavan, who was agent to Bruhl, the Saxon Minister, raged in its most violent form. Every fair and place of gathering became a battle-field for the rival partisans. Bribery, paid spies, treachery, and violence—all the poisonous fruits of warfare—flourished, and the cloud of controversy seems to overhang all my early life.

Although I penetrated deeply into the Cabalah, I could never become a practical adept in the Mysteries. I thought at the time it was because I had not the stamina to carry out the severer penances, and was no true scion of my grandsire. I have still before me the gaunt, emaciated figure of the Saint, whom I found prostrate in our outhouse. I brought him to by unbuttoning his garment at the throat (thus discovering his hair shirt), but in vain did I hasten to bring him all sorts of refreshments. He let nothing pass his lips. I knew this man by repute. He had already performed the penance of Kana, which consisted in fasting daily for six years, and avoiding in his nightly breakfast whatever comes from a living being, be it flesh, fish, milk, or honey. He had likewise practised the penance of Wandering, never staying two days in the same place. I ran to fetch my father to force the poor man to eat, but when I returned the obstinate ascetic was gone. We followed his track, and found him lying dead on the road. We afterwards learnt that even his past penances had not pacified his conscience, and he wished to observe the penance of Weighing, which proportions specific punishments to particular sins. But, finding by careful calculation that his sins were too numerous to be thus atoned for, he had decided to starve himself to death. Although, as I say, I had not the strength for such asceticism, I admired it from afar. I pored over the Zohar and the Gates of Light and the Tree of Life (a work considered too holy to be printed), and I puzzled myself with the mysteries of the Ten Attributes, and the mystic symbolism of God's Beard, whereof every hair is a separate channel of Divine grace; and once I came to comical humiliation from my conceit that I had succeeded by force of incantations in becoming invisible. As this was in connection with my wife, who calmly continued looking at me and talking to me long after I thought I had disappeared, I am reminded to say something of this companion of my boyish years. For, alas! it was she that presently disappeared from my vision, being removed by God in her fifteenth year; so that I, who—being a first-born son, and allowed by the State to found a family—had been married to her by our fathers when I was nine and she was eight, had not much chance of offspring by her; and, indeed, it was in the bearing of our first child—a still-born boy—that she died, despite the old family amulet originally imported from Metz and made by Rabbi Eibeschuetz. When, after her death, it was opened by a suspicious partisan of Emden, sure enough it contained a heretical inscription: "In the name of the God of Israel, who dwelleth in the adornment of His might, and in the name of His anointed Sabbatai Zevi, through whose wounds healing is come to us, I adjure all spirits and demons not to injure this woman." I need not say how this contributed to the heat of the controversy in our own little village; and I think, indeed, it destroyed my last tincture of Sabbatianism. Looking back now from the brink of the grave, I see how all is written in the book of fate: for had not my Peninah been taken from me, or had I accepted one of the many daughters that were offered me in her stead, I should not have been so free to set out on the pilgrimage to my dear Master, by whom my life has been enriched and sanctified beyond its utmost deserving.

At first, indeed, the loss of Peninah, to whom I had become quite attached—for she honored my studies and earned our bread, and was pious even to my mother's liking—threw me into a fit of gloomy brooding. My longing for the living waters and the green pastures—partially appeased by Peninah's love as she grew up—revived and became more passionate. I sought relief in my old Cabalistic studies, and essayed again to perform incantations, thinking in some vague way that now that I had a dear friend among the dead, she would help me to master the divine mysteries. Often I summoned up her form, but when I strove to clasp it, it faded away, so that I was left dubious whether I had succeeded. I had wild fits of weeping both by day and night, not of grief for Peninah, but because I seemed somehow to live in a great desert of sand. But even had I known what I desired, I could not have opened my heart to my father-in-law (in whose house, many versts from my native village, I continued to reside), for he was a good, plain man, who expected me to do posthumous honor to his daughter by my Rabbinical renown. I was indeed long since qualified as a Rabbi, and only waited for some reputable post.

But a Rabbi I was never to be. For it was then that the luminous shadow of the Baal Shem fell upon my life.

II

There came to our village one winter day a stranger who had neither the air of a Schnorrer (beggar) nor of an itinerant preacher; nor, from the brief time he spent at the Beth-Hamidrash, where I sat pursuing droningly my sterile studies, did he appear to be a scholar. He was a lean, emaciated, sickly young man, but his eyes had the fire of a lion's, and his glance was as a god's. When he spoke his voice pierced you, and when he was silent his presence filled the room. From Eliphaz the Pedlar (who knew everything but the Law) I learnt at last that he was an emissary of Rabbi Baer, the celebrated chief of the Chassidim (the pious ones).

"The Chassidim!" I cried. "They died out with Judah the Saint."

"Nay, this is a new order. Have you not heard of the Baal Shem?"

Now, from time to time I had heard vague rumors of a new wonder-working saint who had apparently succeeded far better with Cabalah than I, and had even gathered a following, but the new and obscure movement had not touched our out-of-the-way village, which was wholly given over to the old Sabbatian controversy, and so my knowledge of it was but shadowy. I thought it better to feign absolute ignorance, and thus draw out the Pedlar.

"Why, the Baal Shem by much penance has found out the Name of God," said he; "and by it he works his will on earth and in heaven, so that there is at times confusion in the other world."

"And is his name Rabbi Baer?"

"No; Rabbi Baer is a very learned man who has joined him, and whom, with the other superiors of the Order, he has initiated, so that they, too, work wonders. I chanced with this young man on the road, and he told me that his sect therefore explains the verse in the Psalms, 'Sing unto God a new song; His praise is in the congregation of Saints,' in the following wise: Since God surpasses every finite being, His praise must surpass the praise of every such being. Hitherto the praise of Him consisted in ascribing miracles to Him, and the knowledge of the hidden and the future. But since all this is now within the capacity of the saints of the Order, the Almighty has no longer any pre-eminence over them in respect of the supernatural—'His praise is in the congregation of the saints,'—and therefore it is necessary to find for Him some new praise—'Sing unto God a new song'—suitable to Him alone."

The almost blasphemous boldness of this conception, which went in a manner further even than the Cabalah or the Sabbatians, startled me, as much as the novelty of the exegesis fascinated me.

"And this young man here—can he rule the upper and lower worlds?" I asked eagerly, mindful of my own miserable failures.

"Assuredly he can rule the lower worlds," replied Eliphaz, with a smile. "For to that I can bear witness, seeing that I have stayed with him in a town where there is a congregation of Chassidim, which was in his hands as putty in the glazier's. For, you see, he travels from place to place to instruct his inferiors in the society. The elders of the congregations, venerable and learned men, trembled like spaniels before him. A great scholar who would not accept his infallibility, was thrown into such terror by his menacing look that he fell into a violent fever and died. And this I witnessed myself."

"But there are no Chassidim in our place," said I, trembling myself, half with excitement, half with sympathetic terror. "What comes he to do here?"

"Why, but there are Chassidim, and there will be more—" He stopped suddenly. "Nay, I spoke at random."

"You spoke truly," said I sternly. "But speak on—do not fear me."

"You are a Rabbi designate," he said, shaking his head.

"What of it?"

"Know you not that everywhere the Rabbis fight desperately against the new Order, that they curse and excommunicate its members."

"Wherefore?"

"I do not know. These things are too high for me. Unless it be that this Rabbi Baer has cut out of the liturgy the Piutim (Penitential Poems), and likewise prays after the fashion of the Portuguese Jews."

"Nay," I said, laughing. "If you were not such a man-of-the-earth, you would know that to cut out one line of one prayer is enough to set all the Rabbis excommunicating."

"Ay," said he; "but I know also that in some towns where the Chassidim are in the ascendant, they depose their Rabbis and appoint a minion of Baer instead."

"Ha! so that is what the young man is after," said I.

"I didn't say so," said the Pedlar nervously. "I merely tell you—though I should not have said anything—what the young man told me to beguile the way."

"And to gain you over," I put in.

"Nay," laughed Eliphaz; "I feel no desire for Perfection, which is the catchword of these gentry."

Thus put upon the alert, I was easily able to detect a secret meeting of Chassidim (consisting of that minimum of ten which the sect, in this following the orthodox practice, considers sufficient nucleus for a new community), and to note the members of the conventicle as they went in and out again.

With some of these I spake privily, but though I allayed their qualms and assured them I was no spy but an anxious inquirer after Truth, desiring nothing more vehemently than Perfection, yet either they would not impart to me the true secrets of the Order, or they lacked intelligence to make clear to me its special doctrine. Nevertheless, of the personality of the Founder they were willing to speak, and I shall here set down the story of his life as I learnt it at the first from these simple enthusiasts. It may be that, as I write, my pen unwittingly adds episodes or colors that sank into my mind afterwards, but to the best of my power I will set down here the story as it was told me, and as it passed current then—nay, what say I?—as it passes current now in the Chassidic communities.

III

Rabbi Eliezer, the Baal Shem's father, lived in Moldavia, and in his youth he was captured by the Tartars, but his wife escaped. He was taken to a far country where no Jew lived, and was sold to a Prince. He soon found favor with his master by dint of faithful service, and was made steward of his estates. But mindful of the God of Israel, he begged the Prince to excuse him from work on Saturdays, which the Prince, without understanding, granted. Still the Rabbi was not happy. He prepared to take flight, but a vision appeared to him, bidding him tarry a while longer with the Tartars. Now it happened that the Prince desired some favor from the Viceroy's counsellor, so he gave the Rabbi to the counsellor as a bribe.

Rabbi Eliezer soon found favor with his new master. He was given a separate chamber to live in, and was exempt from manual labor, save that when the counsellor came home he had to go to meet him with a vessel of water to wash his feet, according to the custom of the nobility. Hence Rabbi Eliezer had time to serve his God.

It came to pass that the King had to go to war, so he sent for the counsellor, but the counsellor was unable to give any advice to the point, and the King dismissed him in a rage. When the Rabbi went out to meet him with the vessel of water, he kicked it over wrathfully. Whereupon the Rabbi asked him why he was in such poor spirits. The counsellor remained dumb, but the Rabbi pressed him, and then he unbosomed himself.

"I will pray to God," said Rabbi Eliezer, "that the right plan of campaign may be revealed to me."

When his prayer was answered he communicated the heavenly counsel to his master, who hastened joyfully to the King. The King was equally rejoiced at the plan.

"Such counsel cannot come from a human being," he said. "It must be from the lips of a magician."

"Nay," said the counsellor; "it is my slave who has conceived the plan."

The King forthwith made the slave an officer in his personal retinue. One day the monarch wished to capture a fort with his ships, but night was drawing in, and he said—

"It is too late. We shall remain here over night, and to-morrow we shall make our attack."

But the Rabbi was told from Heaven that the fort was almost impregnable in the daytime. "Send against it at once," he advised the King, "a ship full of prisoners condemned to death, and promise them their lives if they capture the fort, for they, having nothing to lose, are the only men for a forlorn hope."

His advice was taken, and the desperadoes destroyed the fort. Then the King saw that the Rabbi was a godly man, and on the death of his Viceroy he appointed him in his stead, and married him to the late Viceroy's daughter.

But the Rabbi, remembering his marriage vows and his duty to the house of Israel, made her his wife only in name. One day when they were sitting at table together, she asked him, "Why art thou so distant towards me?"

"Swear," he answered, "that thou wilt never tell a soul, and thou shalt hear the truth."

On her promising, he told her that he was a Jew. Thereupon she sent him away secretly, and gave him gold and jewels, of which, however, he was robbed on his journey home.

After he had returned to his joyful wife, who, though she had given him up for dead, had never ceased to mourn for him, an angel appeared unto him and said, "By reason of thy good deeds, and thy unshaken fidelity to the God of Israel throughout all thy sufferings and temptations, thou shalt have a son who will be a light to enlighten the eyes of all Israel. Therefore shall his name be Israel, for in him shall the words of scripture be fulfilled! 'Thou art my servant Israel, in whom I will be glorified.'"

But the Rabbi and his wife grew older and older, and there was no son born unto them. But when they were a hundred years old, the woman conceived and bore a son, who was called Israel, and afterwards known of men as the Master of the Name—the Baal Shem. And this was in the mystic year 5459, whereof the properties of the figures are most wonderful, inasmuch as the five which is the symbol of the Pentagon is the Key of the whole, and comes also from subtracting the first two from the last two, and whereas the first multiplied by the third is the square of five, so is the second multiplied by the fourth the square of six, and likewise the first added to the third is ten, which is the number of the Commandments, and the second added to the fourth is thirteen, which is the number of the Creeds. And even according to the Christians who count this year as 1700, it is the beginning of a new era.

The child's mother died soon after he was weaned, and Rabbi Eliezer was not long in following her to the grave. On his death-bed he took the child in his arms, and blessed him, saying, "Though I am denied the blessing of bringing thee up, always think of God and fear not, for he will ever be with thee." So saying, he gave up the ghost.

Now the people of Ukop in Bukowina, where the Master was born, though they knew nothing of his glorious destiny, yet carefully tended him for the sake of his honored father. They engaged for him a teacher of the Holy Law, but though in the beginnings he seemed to learn with rare ease, he often slipped away into the forest that bordered the village, and there his teacher would find him after a long search, sitting fearlessly in some leafy glade. His dislike for the customary indoor studies became so marked that at last he was set down as stupid, and allowed to follow his own vagrant courses. No one understood that the spirits of Heaven were his teachers.

As he grew older, he was given a post as assistant to the school-master, but his office was not to teach—how could such an ignorant lad teach?—but to escort the children from their homes to the synagogue and thence to the school. On the way he taught them solemn hymns, which he had composed and which he sang with them, and the sweet voices of the children reached Heaven. And God was as pleased with them as with the singing of the Levites in the Temple, and it was a pleasing time in Heaven. But Satan, fearing lest his power on earth would thereby be lessened, disguised himself as a werwolf, which used to appear before the childish procession and put it to flight. The parents thereupon kept their children at home, and the services of song were silenced. But Israel, recalling his father's dying counsel, persuaded the parents to entrust the children to him once more. Again the werwolf bounded upon the singing children, but Israel routed him with his club.

In his fourteenth year the supposed unlettered Israel was appointed caretaker in the Beth-Hamidrash, where the scholars considered him the proverbial ignoramus who "spells Noah with seven mistakes." He dozed about the building all day and got a new reputation for laziness, but at night when the school-room was empty and the students asleep, Israel took down the Holy Books; and all the long night he pored over the sacred words. Now it came to pass that, in a far-off city, a certain holy man, Rabbi Adam, who had in his possession celestial manuscripts (which had only before him been revealed to Abraham our Father, and to Joshua, the son of Nun) told his son on his death-bed that he was unworthy to inherit them. But he was to go to the town of Ukop and deliver them to a certain man named Israel whom he would find there, and who would instruct him, if he proved himself fit. After his father's death the son duly journeyed to Ukop and lodged with the treasurer of the synagogue, who one day asked him the purpose of his visit.

"I am in search of a wife," said he.

At once many were the suitors for his hand, and finally he agreed with a rich man to bestow it on his daughter. After the wedding he pursued his search for the heir to the manuscripts, and, on seeing the caretaker of the Beth-Hamidrash, concluded he must be the man. He induced his father-in-law to have a compartment partitioned off in the school, wherein he could study by himself, and to monopolize the services of the caretaker to attend upon him.

But when the student fell asleep, Israel began to study according to his wont; and when he fell asleep, his employer took one page of the mystic manuscript and placed it near him. When Israel woke up and saw the page he was greatly moved, and hid it. Next day the man again placed a page near the sleeping Israel, who again hid it on awaking. Then was the man convinced that he had found the inheritor of the spiritual secrets, and he told him the whole story and offered all the manuscripts on condition Israel should become his teacher. Israel assented, on condition that he should outwardly remain his attendant as before, and that his celestial knowledge should not be bruited abroad. The man now asked his father-in-law to give him a room outside the town, as his studies demanded still more solitude. He needed none but Israel to attend him. His father-in-law gave him all he asked for, rejoicing to have found so studious a son-in-law. As their secret studies grew deeper, the pupil begged his master to call down the Archangel of the Law for him to study withal. But Rabbi Israel dissuaded him, saying the incantation was a very dangerous one, the slightest mistake might be fatal. After a time the man returned to the request, and his master yielded. Both fasted from one week's end to the other and purified themselves, and then went through all the ceremony of summoning the Archangel of the Law, but at the crucial moment of the invocation Rabbi Israel cried out, "We have made a slip. The Angel of Fire is coming instead. He will burn up the town. Run and tell the people to quit their dwellings and snatch up their most precious things."

Thus did Rabbi Israel's pupil leap to consideration in the town, being by many considered a man of miracles, and the saviour of their lives and treasures. But he still hankered after the Archangel of the Law, and again induced Rabbi Israel to invoke him. Again they purified and prepared themselves, but Rabbi Israel cried out—

"Alas! death has been decreed us, unless we remain awake all this night."

They sat, mutually vigilant against sleep, but at last towards dawn the fated man's eyelids closed, and he fell into that sleep from which there could be no waking.

So the Baal Shem departed thence, and settled in a little town near Brody, and became a teacher of children, in his love for the little ones. Small was his wage and scanty his fare, and the room in which he lodged he could only afford because it was haunted. When the Baal Shem entered to take possession, the landlord peeping timidly from the threshold saw a giant Cossack leaning against the mantelpiece. But as the new tenant advanced, the figure of the Cossack dwindled and dwindled, till at last the dwarf disappeared.

Though Israel did not yet reveal himself, being engaged in wrestling with the divine mysteries, and having made oath in the upper spheres not to use the power of the Name till he was forty years old save four, and though outwardly he was clad in coarse garments and broken boots, yet all his fellow-townsmen felt the purity and probity that seemed to emanate from him. He was seen to perform ablutions far oftener than of custom; and in disputes men came to him as umpire, nor was even the losing party ever dissatisfied with his decision. When there was no rain and the heathen population had gone in a sacred procession, with the priests carrying their gods, all in vain, Israel told the Rabbi to assemble the Jewish congregation in the synagogue for a day of fasting and prayer. The heathen asked them why the service lasted so long that day, and, being told, they laughed mockingly. "What! shall your God avail when we have carried ours in vain?" But the rain fell that day.

And so the fame of Israel grew and reached some people even in Brody.

One day in that great centre of learning the learned Rabbi Abraham, having a difference with a man, was persuaded by the latter to make a journey to Rabbi Israel for arbitration. When they appeared before him, the Baal Shem knew by divine light that Rabbi Abraham's daughter would be his wife. However, he said nothing but delivered adequate judgment, according to Maimonides. So delighted was the old Rabbi with this stranger's learning that he said:

"I have a daughter who has been divorced. I should love to marry thee to her."

"I desire naught better," said the Baal Shem, "for I know her soul is noble. But I must make it a condition that in the betrothal contract no learned titles are appended to my name. Let it be simply Israel the son of Eliezer."

While returning to Brody, Rabbi Abraham died. Now his son, Rabbi Gershon, was the chief of the Judgment Counsel, and a scholar of great renown; and when he found among the papers of his dead father a deed of his sister's betrothal to a man devoid of all titles of learning he was astonished and shocked.

He called his sister to him: "Art thou aware thou art betrothed again?" said he.

"Nay," she replied; "how so?"

"Our father—peace be upon him—hath betrothed thee to one Israel the son of Eliezer."

"Is it so? Then I must needs marry him."

"Marry him! But who is this Israel?"

"How should I know?"

"But he is a man of the earth. He hath not one single title of honor."

"What our father did was right."

"What?" persisted the outraged brother; "thou, my sister, of so renowned a family, who couldst choose from the most learned young men, thou wouldst marry so far beneath thee."

"So my father hath arranged."

"Well, thank Heaven, thou wilt never discover who and where this ignoramus of an Israel is."

"There is a date on the contract," said his sister calmly; "at the stipulated time my husband will come and claim me."

When the appointed wedding-day drew nigh, the Baal Shem intimated to the people of his town that he was going to leave them. They begged him to remain with their children, and offered him a higher wage. But he refused and left the place. And when he came near to Brody, he disguised himself as a peasant in a short jacket and white girdle. And he appeared at the door of the House of Judgment while Rabbi Gershon was deciding a high matter. When the Judge caught sight of him, he imagined it was a poor man asking alms. But the peasant said he had a secret to reveal to him. The Judge took him into another room, where Israel showed him his copy of the betrothal contract. Rabbi Gershon went home in alarm and told his sister that the claimant was come. "Whatever our father—peace be upon him—did was right," she replied; "perchance pious children will be the offspring of this union." Rabbi Gershon, still smarting under this dishonor to the family, reluctantly fixed the wedding-day. Before the ceremony Israel sought a secret interview with his bride, and revealed himself and his mission to her.

"Many hardships shall we endure together, humble shall be our dwelling, and by the sweat of our brow shall we earn our bread. Thou who art the daughter of a great Rabbi, and reared in every luxury, hast thou courage to face this future with me?"

"I ask no better," she replied. "I had faith in my father's judgment, and now am I rewarded."

The Baal Shem's voice trembled with tenderness. "God bless thee," he said. "Our sufferings shall be but for a time."

After the wedding Rabbi Gershon wished to instruct his new brother-in-law, who had, of course, taken up his abode in his house. But the Baal Shem feigned to be difficult of understanding, and at length, in despair, the Judge went stormily to his sister and cried out: "See how we are shamed and disgraced through thy husband, who argues ignorantly against our most renowned teachers. I cannot endure the dishonor any longer. Look thou, sister mine, I give thee the alternative—either divorce this ignoramus or let me buy thee a horse and cart and send you both packing from the place."

"We will go," she said simply.

They jogged along in their cart till they came far from Jews and remote even from men. And there in a lonely spot, on one of the spurs of the Carpathian Mountains, honeycombed by caves and thick with trees, the couple made their home. Here Israel gave himself up to prayer and contemplation. For his livelihood he dug lime in the ravines, and his wife took it in the horse and cart, and sold it in the nearest town, bringing back flour. When the Baal Shem was not fasting, which was rarely, he mixed this flour with water and earth, and baked it in the sun. That was his only fare. What else needed he—he, whose greatest joy was to make holy ablutions in the mountain waters, or to climb the summits of the mountains and to wander about wrapt in the thought of God? Once the robbers who lurked in the caves saw him approaching a precipice, his ecstatic gaze heavenwards. They halloed to him, but his ears were lent to the celestial harmonies. Then they held their breath, waiting for him to be dashed to pieces. But the opposite mountain came to him. And then the two mountains separated, re-uniting again for his return. After this the robbers revered him as a holy man, and they, too, brought him their disputes. And the Baal Shem did not refuse the office,—"For," said he, "even amid the unjust, justice must rule." But one of the gang whom he had decided against sought to slay him as he slept. An invisible hand held back the axe as it was raised to strike the fatal blow, and belabored the rogue soundly, till he fell prone, covered with blood.

Thus passed seven years of labor and spiritual vision. And the Baal Shem learned the language of birds and beasts and trees, and the healing properties of herbs and simples; and he redeemed souls that had been placed for their sins in frogs and toads and loathsome creatures of the mountains.

But at length Rabbi Gershon was sorry for his sister, and repented him of his harshness. He sought out the indomitable twain, and brought them back to Brody, and installed them in an apartment near him, and made the Baal Shem his coachman. But his brother-in-law soon disgusted him again, for, one day, when they were driving together, and Rabbi Gershon had fallen asleep, the Baal Shem, whose pure thoughts had ascended on high, let the vehicle tumble into a ditch. "This fellow is good neither for heaven nor earth," cried Rabbi Gershon.

He again begged his sister to get a divorce, but she remained steadfast and silent. In desperation Rabbi Gershon asked a friend of his, Rabbi Mekatier, to take Israel to a mad woman, who told people their good and bad qualities, and whose stigmatization, he thought, might have an effect upon his graceless brother-in-law. The audience-chamber of the possessed creature was crowded, and, as each visitor entered, a voice issued from her lips greeting them according to their qualities. As Rabbi Mekatier came in: "Welcome, holy and pure one," she cried, and so to many others. The Baal Shem entered last. "Welcome, Rabbi Israel," cried the voice; "thou deemest I fear thee, but I fear thee not. For I know of a surety that thou hast been sworn in Heaven not to make use of the Name, not till thy thirty-sixth year."

"Of what speakest thou?" asked the people in bewilderment.

Then the woman repeated what she had said, but the people understood her not. And she went on repeating the words. At length Rabbi Israel rebuked her sharply.

"Silence, or I will appoint a Council of Judgment who will empower me to drive thee out of this woman. I ask thee, therefore, to depart from this woman of thine own accord, and we will pray for thee."

So the spirit promised to depart.

Then the Baal Shem said: "Who art thou?"

"I cannot tell thee now," replied the spirit. "It will disgrace my children who are in the room. If they depart, I will tell thee."

Thereupon all the people departed in haste and spread the news that Israel could cast out devils. The respect for him grew, but Rabbi Gershon was incredulous, saying such things could only be done by a scholar; and, becoming again out of patience with this ignorant incubus upon his honorable house, he bought his sister a small inn in a village far away on the border of a forest. While his wife managed the inn, the Baal Shem built himself a hut in the forest and retired there to study the Law day and night; only on the Sabbath did he go out, dressed in white, and many ablutions did he make, as becomes the pure and the holy.

It was here that he reached his thirty-sixth year, but still he did not reveal himself, for he had not meditated sufficiently nor found out his first apostles. But in his forty-second year he began freely to speak and to gather disciples, wandering about Podolia and Wallachia, and teaching by discourse and parable, crossing streams by spreading his mantle upon the waters, and saving his disciples from freezing in the wintry frosts by touching the trees with his finger-tips, so that they burnt without being consumed.

And now he was become the chief of a mighty sect, that ramified everywhere, and the head of a school of prophets and wonder-workers to whom he had unveiled the secret of the Name.

IV

So strange and marvellous a story, so full of minute detail, and for the possible truth of which my Cabalistic studies had prepared me, roused in me again the ever-smouldering hope of becoming expert in these traditional practices of our nation. Why should not I, like other Rabbis, have the key of the worlds? Why should not I, too, fashion a fine fat calf on the Friday and eat it for my Sabbath meal? or create a soulless monster to wait upon me hand and foot? The Talmudical subtleties had kept me long enough wandering in a blind maze. I would go forth in search of light. I would gird up my loins and take my staff in my hand and seek the fountain-head of wisdom, the great Master of the Name himself; I would fall at his feet and beseech him to receive me among his pupils.

Travelling was easy enough:—in every town a Beth-Hamidrash into which the wanderer would first make his way; in every town hospitable entertainers who would board and lodge a man of learning like myself, rejoicing at the honor. Even in the poorest villages I might count upon black bread and sheep's cheese and a bed of fir branches. But when I came to make inquiries I found that the village in Volhynia, which Rabbi Baer had made his centre, was far nearer than the forest where the Master, remote and inaccessible, retired to meditate after his missionary wanderings; nay, that my footsteps must needs pass through this Mizricz, the political stronghold of Chassidism. This discovery did not displease me, for I felt that thus I should reach the Master better prepared. In my impatience I could scarcely wait for the roads to become passable, and it was still the skirt of winter when, with a light heart and a wild hope, I set my face for the wild ravines of Severia and the dreary steppes of the Ukraine. Very soon I came into parts where the question of the Chassidim was alive and burning, and indeed into towns where it had a greater living interest than the quarrel of the amulets. And in these regions the rumor of the Baal Shem began to thicken. There was not a village of log-houses but buzzed with its own miracle. Everywhere did I hear of healings of the sick and driving out of demons and summoning of spirits, and the face of the Master shining.

Of these strange stories I will set down but two. The Master and his retinue were riding on a journey, and came to a strange road. His disciples did not know the way, and the party went astray and wandered about till Wednesday night, when they put up at an inn. In the morning the host asked who they were.

"I am a wandering preacher," replied the Baal Shem. "And I wish to get to the capital before the Sabbath, for I have heard that the richest man in the town is marrying there on the Friday, and perchance I may preach at the wedding."

"That thou wilt never do," said the innkeeper, "for the capital is a week's journey."

The Master smiled. "Our horses are good," he said.

The innkeeper shook his head: "Impossible, unless you fly through the air," he said. But, presently remembering that he himself had to go some leagues on the road to the capital, he begged permission to join the party, which was cheerfully given.

The Master then retired to say his morning prayers, and gave orders for breakfast and dinner.

"But why art thou delaying?" inquired the innkeeper. "How can you arrive for Sabbath?"

The Baal Shem did not, however, abate one jot of his prayers, and it was not till eve that they set out. All through the night they travelled, and in the morning the innkeeper found himself, to his confusion, not where he had reckoned to part with the others, but in the environs of the capital. The Baal Shem took up his quarters in a humble district, while the dazed innkeeper wandered about the streets of the great city, undecided what to do. All at once he heard screams and saw a commotion, and people began to run to and fro; and then he saw men carrying a beautiful dead girl in bridal costume, and in the midst of them one, who by his Sabbath garments and his white shoes was evidently the bridegroom, mazed and ghastly pale. He heard people telling one another that death had seized her as she stood under the canopy, before the word could be said or the glass broken that should have made her the wife of the richest man in the capital. The innkeeper ran towards them and he said—

"Do not despair. Last night I was hundreds of miles from here. I came here with a great wonder-worker. Mayhap he will be able to help you." The bridegroom went with him to seek out the Baal Shem at the far end of the town, and offered a vast sum for the restoration of his beloved.

"Nay, keep thy money," said the Master. And he fared back with the twain to see the corpse, which had been laid in an apartment.

As soon as he had looked upon the face of the bride he said: "Let a grave be dug; and let the washers prepare her for the tomb. And then let her be reclad in her marriage vestments. I will go to the graveyard and await her coming."

When her body was brought, he told the bearers to lay her in the grave, earth to earth. The onlookers wept to see how, for once, that shroud which every bride wore over her fur robe was become a fitting ornament, and how the marvellous fairness of the dead face, crowned with its myrtle garlands, gleamed through the bridal veil. The Master placed two stalwart men with their faces towards the grave, and bade them, the instant they noted any change in her face, take her out. Then he leaned upon his staff and gazed at the dead face. And those who were near said his face shone with a heavenly light of pity; but his brow was wrinkled as though in grave deliberation. The moments passed, but the Master remained as motionless as she in the grave. And all the people stood around in awed suspense, scarce daring to whisper. Suddenly a slight flush appeared in the dead face. The Baal Shem gave a signal, the two men lifted out the bride from the raw earth, and he cried: "Get on with the wedding," and walked away.

"Nay, come with us," besought the weeping bridegroom, falling at his feet and kissing the hem of his garment. "Who but thou should perform the ceremony?"

So the throng swept back towards the synagogue with many rejoicings and songs, and the extinguished torches were relighted, and the music struck up again, and the bride walked, escorted by her friends, seemingly unconscious that this was not the same joyous procession which had set out in the morning, or that she had already stood under the canopy. But, when they were arrived in the synagogue courtyard, and the Baal Shem began the ceremony, then as she heard his voice, a strange light of recollection leapt into her face. She tore off her veil and cried, "This is the man that drew me out of the cold grave."

"Be silent," reprimanded the Master sternly, and proceeded with the wedding formulae. At the wedding feast, the bride's friends asked her what she had seen and heard in the tomb. Whereupon she gave them the explanation of the whole matter. The former wife of her rich bridegroom was the bride's aunt, and when she fell ill and knew she would die, she felt that he would assuredly marry this young girl—his ward,—who was brought up in his house. She became madly jealous, and, calling her husband to her death-bed, she made him take an oath not to marry the girl. Nor would she trust him till he had sworn with his right hand in hers and his left hand in the girl's. After the wife's death neither of the parties to this oath kept faith, but wished to marry the other. Wherefore as they stood under the canopy at the marriage celebration the dead wife, seen only of the bride, killed her. While she was lying in the grave, the Baal Shem was occupied in weighing the matter, both she and the jealous woman having to state their case; and he decided that the living were in the right, and had only given their promise to the dead wife by force and out of compassion. And so he exclaimed, "Get on with the wedding!" The memory of this trial in the world of spirits had clean passed from her till she heard the Master's voice beginning to read the marriage service, when she cried out, and tore off her veil to see him plainly.

The Baal Shem spent the Sabbath in the capital; and on Sunday he was escorted out of the town with a great multitude doing him honor. And afterwards it was found that all the sick people, whose names happened to be scribbled by their relatives on the grave-stone which his robe had brushed, recovered. Nor could this be entirely owing to the merits of him who lay below, pious man though he was.

On the Tuesday night the Baal Shem and his disciples came to an inn, where he found the host sitting sadly in a room ablaze festally with countless candles and crowded with little boys, rocking themselves to and fro with prayer.

"Can we lodge here for the night?" asked the Baal Shem.

"Nay," answered the host dejectedly.

"Why art thou sad? Perchance I can help thee," said the Baal Shem.

"To-night, as thou seest, is watch-night," said the man; "for to-morrow my latest-born is to be circumcised. This is my fifth child, and all the others have died suddenly at midnight, although up to then there has been no sign of sickness. I know not why Lilith should have such a grudge against my progeny. But so it is, the devil's mother, she kills them every one, despite the many charms and talismans hung round my wife's bed. Every day since the birth, these children have come to say the Shemang and the ninety-first psalm. And to-night the elders are coming to watch and study all night. But I fear they will not cheat Lilith of her prey. Therefore am I not in the humor to lodge strangers."

"Let the little ones go home; they are falling asleep," said the Master. "And let them tell their fathers to stay at home in their beds. My pupils and I will watch and pray."

So said, so done. The Baal Shem told off two of his men to hold a sack open at the cradle of the child, and he instructed the rest of his pupils to study holy law ceaselessly, and on no account to let their eyelids close, though he himself designed to sleep. Should anything fall into the sack the two men were to close it forthwith and then awaken him. With a final caution to his disciples not to fall asleep, the Master withdrew to his chamber. The hours drew on. Naught was heard save the droning of the students and the sough of the wind in the forest. At midnight the flames of the candles wavered violently, though no breath of wind was felt within the hot room. But the watchers shielding the flames with their hands strove to prevent them being extinguished. Nevertheless they all went out, and a weird gloom fell upon the room, the firelight throwing the students' shadows horribly on the walls and ceiling. Their blood ran cold. But one, bolder than the rest, snatching a brand from the hearth, relit the candles. As the last wick flamed again, a great black cat fell into the sack. The two men immediately tied up the mouth of it and went to rouse the Baal Shem.

"Take two cudgels," said he, "and thrash the sack as hard as you can."

After they had given it a sound drubbing, he bade them unbind the sack and throw it into the street. And so the day dawned, and all was well with the child. That day they performed the ceremony of Initiation with great rejoicing, and the Baal Shem was made godfather or Sandek. But before the feasting began, the father of the child begged the Baal Shem to tarry, "for," said he, "I must needs go first to the lord of the soil and take him a gift of wine. For he is a cruel tyrant, and will visit it upon me if I fail to pay him honor on this joyous occasion."

"Go in peace," said the Baal Shem.

When the man arrived at the seigneur's house, the lackeys informed him that their master was ill, but had left instructions that he was to be told when the gift was brought. The man waited, and the seigneur ordered him to be admitted, and received him very affably, asking him how business was, and if he had guests at his inn.

"Ay, indeed," answered the innkeeper; "there is staying with me a very holy man who is from Poland, and he delivered my child from death."

"Indeed!" said the seigneur, with interest, and the man thereupon told him the whole story.

"Bring me this stranger," commanded the seigneur; "I would speak with him."

The innkeeper went home very much perturbed.

"Why so frightened an air?" the Baal Shem asked him.

"The seigneur desires thee to go to him. I fear he will do thee a mischief. I beseech thee, depart at once, and I will tell him thou hadst already gone."

"I will go to him," said the Baal Shem.

He was ushered into the sick-room. As soon as the seigneur had dismissed his lackeys he sat up in bed, thus revealing black-and-blue marks in his flesh, and sneered vengefully—

"Doubtless thou thinkest thyself very cunning to have caught me unawares."

"Would I had come before thou hadst killed the other four," replied the Baal Shem.

"Ho! ho!" hissed the magician; "so thou feelest sure thou art a greater wizard than I. Well, I challenge thee to the test."

"I have no desire to contend with thee," replied the Baal Shem calmly; "I am no wizard. I have only the power of the Holy Name."

"Bah! My witchcraft against thy Holy Name," sneered the wizard.

"The Name must be vindicated," said the Baal Shem. "I accept thy challenge. This day a month I will assemble my pupils. Do thou and thy brethren gather together your attendant spirits. And thou shalt learn that there is a God."

In a month's time the Baal Shem with all his pupils met the wizard with his fellows in an open field; and there, under the blue circle of Heaven, the Baal Shem made two circles around himself and one in another place around his pupils, enjoining them to keep their eyes fixed on his face, and, if they noticed any change in it, immediately to begin crying the Penitential Prayer. The arch-wizard also made a circle for himself and his fellow-wizards at the other end of the field, and commenced his attack forthwith. He sent against the Baal Shem swarms of animals, which swept towards the circle with clamorous fury. But when they came to the first circle, they vanished. Then another swarm took their place—and another—and then another—lions, tigers, leopards, wolves, griffins, unicorns, and unnameable creatures, all dashing themselves into nothingness against the holy circle. Thus it went on all the long day, every instant seeing some new bristling horde vomited and swallowed up again.

Towards twilight the arch-magician launched upon the Baal Shem a herd of wild boars, spitting flames; and these at last passed beyond the first circle. Then the pupils saw a change come over the Baal Shem's face, and they began to wail the Penitential Prayer.

Still the boars sped on till they reached the second circle. Then they vanished. Three times the wizard launched his boars, the flames of their jaws lighting up the gathering dusk, but going out like blown candles at the second circle. Then said the wizard, "I have done my all." He bowed his head. "Well, I know one glance of thine eyes will kill me. I bid life farewell."

"Nay, look up," said the Baal Shem; "had I wished to kill thee, thou wouldst long ago have been but a handful of ashes spread over this field. But I wish to show thee that there is a God above us. Come, lift up thine eyes to Heaven."

The wizard raised his eyes towards the celestial circle, in which the first stars were beginning to twinkle. Then two thorns came and took out his eyes. Till his death was he blind; but he saw that there was a God in Heaven.

V

Of Rabbi Baer I heard on my way nothing but eulogies, and his miracles were second only to those of his Master. He was a great man in Israel, a scholar profound as few. Even the enemies of the Chassidim—and they were many and envenomed—admitted his learning, and complained that his defection to the sect had greatly strengthened and drawn grave disciples to this ignorant movement. For, according to them, the Baal Shem was as unlettered as he gave himself out to be, nor did they credit the story of his followers that all his apparent ignorance was due to his celestial oath not to reveal himself till his thirty-sixth year. As for the followers, they were esteemed simply a set of lewd, dancing fanatics; and, of a truth, a prayer-service I succeeded in witnessing in one town considerably chilled my hopes. For the worshippers shouted, beat their breasts, struck their heads against the wall, tugged at their ear-curls, leaped aloft with wild yells and even foamed at the mouth, nor could I see any sublime idea behind these maniacal manifestations. They had their own special Zaddik (Saint) here, whom they vaunted as even greater than Baer.

"He talks with angels," one told me.

"How know you that?" I said sceptically.

"He himself admits it."

"But suppose he lies!"

"What! A man who talks with angels be capable of a lie!"

I did not pause to point out to him that this reasoning violated even Talmudical logic, for I feared if I received the doctrine from such mouths I should lose all my enthusiasm ere reaching the fountain-head, and hereafter in my journeyings I avoided hunting out the members of the sect, even as I strove to dismiss from my mind the malicious inuendoes and denunciations of their opponents, who said it was not without reason this sect had arisen in a country where only the eldest son in a Jewish family was allowed by the State to marry. I would keep my mind clear and free from prepossessions on either side. And thus at last, after many weary days and adventures which it boots not to recall here, such as the proposals of marriage made to me by some of my hosts—and they householders in Israel, albeit unillumined—I arrived at the goal of the first stage of my journey, the village of Mizricz.

I scarcely stayed to refresh myself after my journey, but hastened immediately to Rabbi Baer's house, which rose regal and lofty on a wooded eminence overlooking the river as it foamed through the mountain gullies on its way to the Dnieper. I crossed the broad pine-bridge without a second glance at the rushing water, but to my acute disappointment when I reached the great house I was not admitted. I was told that the Saint could not be seen of mortal eye till the Sabbath, being, I gathered, in a mystic transport. It was then Wednesday. Mine was not the only disappointment, for the door was besieged by a curious rabble of pilgrims of both sexes, some come from very far, some on foot and in rags, some in well-appointed equipages. One of the latter—a beautiful, richly dressed woman—by no means took her exclusion with good grace, bidding her coachman knock again and again at the door, and endeavoring to bribe the door-keeper with grocery, wine, and finally gold; but all in vain. I entered into conversation with members of the crowd, and discovered that some came for cures, and some for charms, and some for divine interpositions in their worldly affairs. One man, I found, desired that the price of wheat might go up, and another that it might fall. Another desired a husband for his elderly daughter, already nineteen. And an old couple were in great distress at the robbery of their jewels, and were sure the Saint would discover the thief and recover the booty. I found but one, who, like me, came from a consuming desire to hear new doctrine for the soul. And so I was to have the advantage of them, I learnt, not without chuckling; for whereas I should receive my wish on the Sabbath, being invited to attend "the Supper of the Holy Queen," these worldly matters could not be attended to till the Sunday. I whiled away the intervening days as patiently as I could, exploring the beautiful environs beyond the Saint's house, further than which nobody ever seemed to penetrate; and, indeed, it was but seldom that I had heard of a Jew's making the blessing over lofty mountains or beautiful trees. Perhaps because our country was for the most part only a great swamp. But often had I occasion in these walks to say, "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, who hast such things in Thy world." I scarcely ever saw a human creature, which somehow comforted and uplifted me. Only once were my meditations interrupted, and that by a shout which startled me, and just enabled me to get out of the way of an elegant, glittering carriage drawn by two white horses, in which a stout-looking man lolled luxuriously, smoking a hookah. My prayerful mood was broken, and I fell upon worldly thoughts of riches and ease.

On Friday night I ate with an elder of the Chassidim, who heard of my interest in his order, but whom I could not get to understand that I was come to examine, not to accept unquestioningly. I plied him with questions as to the ideas of his sect, but he for his part could make nothing clear to me except the doctrine of self-annihilation in prayer, by which the devout worshipper was absorbed into the Godhead; a doctrine from which flowed naturally the abrogation of stated hours of prayer, since the mood of absorption could not be had at command. Sometimes, indeed, silence was the better prayer, and this was the true explanation of the Talmudical saying: "If speech is worth one piece of silver, silence is worth two." And this, likewise, was the meaning of the verse in 2 Kings ch. iii. v. 15: "When the minstrel played, the spirit of God came upon him." That is to say, when the minstrel became an instrument and uttered music, it was because the spirit of God played upon him. So long as a man is self-active, he cannot receive the Holy Ghost.

The text in Kings seemed to me rather wrenched from its context in the fashion already nauseous to me in the orthodox schools, but as I had never in my life had such moments of grace as in my mountain-walks, I expressed so hearty an acquiescence in the doctrine itself—shocking to the orthodox mind trained in elaborate codification of the time-limits of the dawn-prayer or the westering-service—that mine host was more persuaded than ever I meant to become a Chassid.

"There is no rite," said he reassuringly. "That you desire Perfection suffices to ensure your reception into our order. At the Supper of the Holy Queen you will not be asked as to your past life, or your sins, because your heart is to the Saint as an open scroll, as you will discover when you have the bliss to see him face to face, for though he will address all the pilgrims in a body, yet you will find particular references designed only for you."

"But he has never heard of me before!"

"These things would be hard for one who preaches to his own glory. But he who lets the spirit play upon him is wiser than all the preachers."

With beating heart I entered the Saint's house on the long-expected Sabbath. I was ushered, with many other men, into a dining-room, richly carpeted and tapestried, with a large oak table, laid for about a score. A liveried attendant, treading with hushed footsteps, imparted to us his own awe, and, scarcely daring to whisper, we awaited the great man. At last he appeared, tall and majestic, in a flowing caftan of white satin, cut so as to reveal his bare breast. His shoes were white, and even the snuff-box he toyed with was equally of the color of grace. As I caught my first glimpse of his face, I felt it was strangely familiar, but where or when I had seen it I could not recall, and the thought of this haunted the back of my mind throughout.

"Peace be to you," he said to each in turn. We breathed back respectful response, and took our seats at the table. The same solemn silence reigned during the meal, which was wound up by Kuggol (Sabbath-pudding). By this time the room was full of new-comers, who had gradually dropped in for the levee, and who swarmed about the table, anxious for the merest crumb of the pudding. And great was the bliss on the faces of those who succeeded in snatching a morsel, as though it secured them Paradise.

When this unseemly scramble was over, the Saint—who, leaning his brow on his hands, had appeared not to notice these proceedings—struck up a solemn hymn-tune. Then he put his hands over his eyes, as if lost in an ecstasy; after which he suddenly began to call out our names, coupled with the places we came from, astonishing us all in turn. Each guest, when thus cried, responded with a verse from the Scriptures. When it came to my turn, I was so taken aback by the Saint's knowledge of me that I could not think of a verse. But at last, blushing and confused, I fell back upon my name-verse, which began with my initial to help me to remember my name (for so I had been taught) when the angel should demand it of me in my tomb. To my astonishment the Saint then began to deliver a discourse upon all these texts, so ingeniously dovetailed that one would have sworn no better texts could have been selected. "Verily have they spoken the truth of this man's learning," I thought, with a glow. Nor did this marvellous oration fail to evince that surprising knowledge of my past—even down to my dead wife—which mine host had predicted. I left this wonder-worker's house exalted and edified, though all I remember now of the discourse was the novel interpretation of the passage in the Mishna: "Let the honor of thy neighbor be as dear to thee as thine own."

"Thine own," said Baer, "means the honor thou doest to thyself; to take pleasure in the which were ridiculous. As little pleasure should the wise man take in his neighbor's honor—that is, in the honor which his neighbor doeth him." This seemed rather inconsistent with his own pomp, and I only appreciated the sentiment months later.

After this discourse was quite over, a member of the sect arrived. "Why so late?" he was asked.

"My wife was confined," he said shamefacedly. Facetiously uproarious congratulations greeted him.

"Boy or girl?" cried many voices.

"Girl," he said more shamefacedly.

"A girl!" cried the Saint, in indignant accents. "You ought to be whipped."

Immediately the company with great glee set upon the unfortunate man, tumbled him over, and gave him an hilarious but hearty drubbing. I looked at the Saint in astonishment. His muscles were relaxed in a grin, and I had another flash of elusive recollection of his face. But ere I could fix it, he stopped the horse-play.

"Come, brethren," he said, "let us serve the Lord with gladness," and he trolled forth a jocund hymn.

On the next day, with mingled feelings, I again sought the Zaddik's doorway, through which was pouring the stream of those who had waited so long; but access to the holy man was still not easy. In the spacious antechamber sat the Saint's scribe, at a table round which the crowd clustered, each explaining his or her want, which the scribe scribbled upon a scrap of paper for them to take in to the Saint. I listened to the instructions of the clamorous applicants. "I, Rachel, daughter of Hannah, wish to have children," ran the request of the beautiful rich woman whose coachman had knocked so persistently; and her gratuity to the scribe seemed to be of gold. I myself paid only a few kreutzer, and simply desired—and was alone in desiring—"Perfection." There was another money-receiving man at the Rabbi's door; but I followed in the golden wake of the rich lady, and was just in time to witness the parting gratitude of the vociferous old couple to whom the Rabbi had restored their jewels. The Saint, with no signs of satisfaction at his miraculous success, gravely dismissed the garrulous couple, and took the folded paper which the beautiful woman handed him, and which he did not even open, placing it to his forehead and turning his eyes heavenwards.

"You wish to have a child," he said.

The woman started. "O thou man of God!" she cried, falling at his feet.

The Saint placed his hand reassuringly upon her hair. And at this moment something in his expression at length unsealed my eyes, and I recognized, with a pang of pain, the man who had driven past me in that elegant equipage, lolling luxuriously and smoking his hookah. I was so perturbed that I fled unceremoniously from the audience-chamber. Perfection, indeed! Here was a teacher of humility who sat throned amid tapestries, a preacher of righteousness who, when he feigned to be absorbed in God, was wallowing in his carriage! Yea, these Rabbis of the Chassidim were whitewashed sepulchres; and, as the orthodox communities did not fail of such, it seemed a waste of energy to go out of the fold in search of more. All that I had heard against the sect on my route swept back into my mind, and I divided its members into rogues and dupes. And in this bitter mood a dozen little threads flew together and knitted themselves into a web of wickedness. I told myself that the hamlet must be full of Baer's spies, and that my host himself had cunningly extracted from me the facts of my history; and as for the restored jewels, I felt sure his own men had stolen them. I slung my knapsack across my shoulder and started for home.