maid-servant when she saw them come home together, and sit down to their
dinner as usual.
Nathan soon rose, saying, "Be not afraid. I am going to speak to him
now. You shall know our decision in half an hour."
He went up-stairs to the rooms occupied by Herr von Negrusz. The
district judge was seated at his writing-table. He seemed confused when
he saw the husband of the woman he loved. He expected a painful scene.
Nathan's manner was very quiet, and after a courteous greeting, he said:
"Herr von Negrusz, your confusion shows that you know the reason of my
visit. You wrote this letter to my wife, but before I give you the
answer, tell me--why did you do it? Is not the commandment, 'Thou shalt
not covet thy neighbor's wife,' as binding upon you as upon me?"
"Yes," answered Herr von Negrusz, "I know that I am guilty of a great
sin--I love your wife. I make no excuse for myself."
"I am glad you have answered so candidly," said Nathan. "I have nothing
further to say, except to give you the answer to your letter. My wife
returns your love, therefore she can not be my wife any longer; and I
shall take the proper steps to obtain a divorce. What shall you do then,
Herr von Negrusz?"
"So help me God, I will marry her!" he replied, earnestly.
Nathan looked at him keenly. "Good," he said. "I have no doubt that you
intend to do so, for you are an honorable man; but you are a Government
official, a Christian, and of noble birth. She is only a Jewess. You are
educated; Chane is not. You may afterward be influenced by these
considerations, and repudiate your present plan of action. I must guard
against your doing so; for Chane was my wife, and the moment she leaves
me for your sake, her father and the whole Jewish community will cast
her off. Should you break your promise, I shall take her back, for
I--but enough of that. I tell you plainly, if you do not marry her, _I
will kill you, so help me God_! You are the district judge, and I am
nothing but a Jew. You have a hundred means at your disposal of getting
rid of me, but I will keep my word."
Herr von Negrusz raised his hand, and was about to protest, but Nathan
interrupted him hastily: "Do not swear," he said, "but keep your word,
so that I may not have to keep mine. Chane and I will be divorced in a
few days, and if she is not your wife before the end of two months, you
are a dead man. Farewell."
He went home and said to his wife: "We will go to the Rabbi to-morrow,
and tell him that we have an insurmountable dislike to each other, and
he will at once give us a divorce on that account. The Christian has
promised to marry you. Had that not been his intention before, it is
now...."
"Nathan!" she cried, throwing herself at his feet, and covering his hand
with tears and kisses--"Nathan, how good you are!"
"No," he answered, "I am not good. I am only doing what I consider to be
my duty. I am atoning for a sin that was committed through no fault of
mine. We were married without our feelings being consulted. That was a
sin, and it is expiated now; for I love you, although perhaps I did not
know it until yesterday, and you do not love me--but another. I can not
doom you to misery; rather than do that, I suffer myself. This is the
plain state of the case, and I claim no merit for what I am doing. What
distresses me most is that you will leave our faith, and that I enable
you to do so. I have prayed so earnestly to God for pardon, that I hope
He will forgive me. He sees my heart, and He knows that I have no
choice."
* * * * *
There is little more to tell.
Nathan obtained a divorce in the course of a few days, and a few weeks
after, Chane--now Christine--married Herr von Negrusz.
There had not been such a scandal in the neighborhood for years. Curses
and malevolence followed Chane to her new home; and even those who
wished her well, shook their heads over the marriage.
The reader already knows that the curses were fruitless, and the fears
of the benevolent unfounded. That Chane lived, a happy wife and mother,
in the same house, on the threshold of which Esther Freudenthal had died
because she had loved a Christian. This time love had triumphed over
creed. It seemed to work miracles: for not only did it overlap barriers,
but in spite of the objectionable features of the case, and the
dissimilarity of the husband and wife, theirs was a happy marriage. For
theirs was true love, and true love is a mighty power, a divine gift,
without which it is a sin against God and man to enter into any
marriage.
Christine von Negrusz has only one sorrow. It is not that Frau Emilie
will hardly speak to her, or that the three elderly "Graces" look the
other way when they chance to meet; nor is it the sardonic smile with
which Herr von Bolwinski accompanies the words--"I was the first to
notice it, ho, ho!" whenever he has the opportunity. None of these
things distress her; but a real shadow lies upon her otherwise happy
life.
This is the wrath of her father, which will probably never cease until
the lonely, disappointed old man finds peace in the grave.
Nathan took great pains to save her this one sorrow, but he was not
successful. He does not yet give up hope of a reconciliation, and every
time he revisits Barnow, he tries to soften the old man's heart.
But Nathan is seldom at Barnow, and when he returns there two or three
times in the year, his visits are short. His business in the little town
is managed for him by a cousin, and he travels to distant countries. He
is no longer a small shop-keeper, but one of the richest wine-merchants
in the country.
He has never married again. Once it was supposed that he was engaged to
a girl in Czernowitz, but it was not the case. Only one person knew the
reason of his solitude, and this was Frau Christine.
This she learned the only time she ever saw him to speak to after their
separation. Nathan and Herr von Negrusz always met with friendly
feelings, and when the former was at home, the two boys were continually
with him; but he had avoided any meeting with Christine until now. It
was at the time that people said that he was going to be married again.
The boys were sitting with Nathan on the bench at the house-door, and as
it was late, their mother came to fetch them. They ran to meet her,
showed her the presents Nathan had brought for them, and dragged her up
to the bench.
"I must thank you, Herr Silberstein," she said, in a trembling voice;
but she corrected herself quickly, and went on--"I must thank you,
Nathan, for being so kind to the children."
"They are such dear little boys," he said, hastily. "I am very glad,
Chane, to see you so happy."
"Yes," she answered, "I am very happy--and you?"
"Thank you," he said, quietly; "the business is prospering."
"The other day I heard some good news about you--from Czernowitz."
"There is nothing in it," he answered.
"Oh, why? She is said to be a good and pretty girl."
He looked at her, and then on the ground. "I found that I could not love
her," he said.
Many years have passed since then, and Nathan is one of the richest men
in the country. People wonder why he works so hard when he has no one to
leave his riches to. But Nathan smiles at such questions--he knows that
he is working for some one.
TWO SAVIOURS OF THE PEOPLE.
(1870.)
Any one who was ever in Barnow was sure to make the acquaintance of Frau
Hanna, mother of the chief of the Jewish session; and no one could know
her without honestly liking and admiring her, she was so good and kind,
and so very quick in understanding and entering into the thoughts and
feelings of others. But it would be difficult to convey an adequate idea
of her loving-kindness and wisdom to those who never knew her. She was
called _Babele_ (grannie) by everybody who lived in the little town, and
not merely by her own grandchildren; and no wonder. She was never too
busy or too tired to help those who needed her assistance either in word
or deed; and even those who did not require money or advice used to
delight in going to see her, and in hearing her stories of old times;
for her renown as a story-teller was as great as her reputation for
benevolence. Any one passing the old synagogue or _judenburg_ about the
third hour on a Sabbath afternoon in summer, might see with his own eyes
what a crowd of attentive listeners she had, and might hear with his own
ears how well worth listening to her stories always were. She used to
sit on a rug spread out in the shade with her silent eager auditors, who
sometimes numbered fifty men and women, grouped closely around her for
fear of losing a single word that fell from her lips. Her stories were
all about old days in Barnow--about things that had happened within her
own memory, or that she had heard from others. Any attempt to reproduce
her stories as she used to relate them would be very difficult, and if I
try to do so, it is only because the tale I have chosen is the one she
related far oftener than any other. I have heard her tell it scores of
times, and will now endeavor to translate it from the Jewish-German in
which she used to speak as faithfully as I can:
"Who is great," began Frau Hanna, "and who is small? Who is mighty, and
who is weak? We poor short-sighted mortals are seldom capable of
deciding this question rightly. The rich and strong are mighty and great
in our eyes, while the poor and feeble are regarded as weak and small.
But in very truth it is not so. Greatness does not lie in riches or in
brute strength, but a strong will and a good heart. And, my friends, God
sometimes shows us this very clearly; indeed, we Jews of Barnow can tell
how our eyes were opened to this truth. On two different occasions our
community was plunged in great danger and suffering from the oppression
of the Gentiles around us, and on each of these occasions a saviour came
forward from among us, and delivering us from our distresses, turned our
mourning into joy. Who were these saviours of the people? Were they the
strongest or the richest of the congregation?... Listen to me and I will
tell you how it all happened.
"When you cross the market-place, you see a great big block of wood
sticking out of the ground in front of the Dominican monastery. It is
weather-beaten and decayed, and would have been taken away long ago,
were it not kept as a memorial of a time of terror and despair.
"You know nothing of those old days, and you may be thankful for it! If
I tell you about that time of misery, it is not that I wish to make your
hearts heavy with grief for what is past and gone, or to fill them with
bitter anger or hate. No; the sorrows of which I speak are over and done
with, and those who suffered from them are dead and buried. It is
written among the sayings of one of our wise and holy men: 'Forgive
those who have trespassed against you, and return good for evil.' What I
am going to tell you is the history of a great and noble deed that was
done by one who lived and suffered during that time of dire distress--a
deed that should make your hearts beat high when you hear of it, for it
is as heroic, good, and great as was ever done on the face of the earth.
"Its author was a simple Jewish woman, whose heart had been steeled to
heroism by the force of circumstances. Her name was Lea, and she was the
wife of a rich and pious man called Samuel. The family was afterward
given the surname of Beermann when the Austrians came into the country,
and made it the law that our people should have German names as well as
their old ones; for at the time when these events took place we had no
such names. It was more than a hundred years ago, and we were still
living under the rule of the Polish nobles.
"The single-headed white eagle was indeed a cruel bird of prey! Long
ago, when it was full-plumaged, when its eyes were clear and piercing,
and its talons firm and relentless in their grip, it was a proud and
noble bird that held its own against both West and North, and protected
all who took refuge under its wing most generously. For three hundred
years we lived a free and happy life under the shadow of its wings; but
when the eagle grew old and weak, and the other birds of prey round
about had deprived it of many of its feathers, it became cowardly, sly,
and cruel; and because it did not dare to attack its enemies, it turned
its wrath upon the defenseless Jews. The power of the kings of Poland
became a subject for children to jest about, and then the letters of
freedom we had been given of old were no longer of any avail. The nobles
became our masters. They oppressed us, extorted money from us, and
disposed of our lives and property as it seemed good in their eyes. Oh,
that was a time of unspeakable tribulation!
"Barnow belonged even then to the noble family of Bortynski, to whom the
good Emperor Joseph afterward gave the title of Graf. Young Joseph
Bortynski had entered into possession of his estate that very year. He
was a quiet, pious, humble-minded man, and had been educated in a
cloister. His ways were different from those of the other young men of
his position in the neighborhood, for he hated wine, cards, and women,
looked after the management of his property, and prayed four hours a
day. He was just and kind in his dealings with his serfs; but we
experienced very little of his kindness and justice, for he was hard and
cruel to us. He once gave Samuel, the leader of the synagogue, his
reason for treating us so badly: 'You crucified my God,' he said.
Whenever he was inclined to act toward us with less harshness, he was
prevented doing so by his private chaplain, a man who had formerly been
his tutor, and who had great influence over him. His name has not come
down to us, but he was always talked of as the 'black priest.'
"We Jews used to be very careful of our conduct in those days, and even
those of our number who were evil-disposed refrained from deeds of
wickedness. 'You crucified my God,' the Graf had said to Samuel, and had
then added in a threatening tone: 'I give you fair warning, that if I
find any of your people guilty of a crime, I shall burn your town as
your God once did to Sodom and Gomorrah.' Our fears may be better
imagined than described.
"So the spring of 1773 began. The Easter festival was about to commence,
when it was rumored that the Empress-Queen at Vienna intended to deprive
the Poles of their remaining power, and to govern the land hence-forward
by means of her own officials. But so far as we could see, there was no
sign of this intention being carried out.
"Samuel, the leader of the synagogue, and his wife Lea, lived in the old
house in the market-place that is still known as the 'yellow house.'
They were both very much respected by the community: the husband,
because of his riches, wisdom, and piety; and the beautiful young wife,
because of her gentleness and beneficence. They were in great trouble
that Easter, for their only child, a little boy of a year and a half
old, had died suddenly a few days before.
"Late one Sunday evening they were sitting together in silent grief. The
Easter festival was to begin on the following evening, and Lea was very
tired, for she had been busy all day long cleaning and dusting the whole
house from top to bottom. Suddenly they were startled by a loud knocking
at the house-door. Samuel opened the window and looked out. An old
peasant-woman was standing at the door with a bundle on her back. On
seeing the master of the house, she moaned out a piteous entreaty for
admittance. She was too weak, she said, to walk home to her village that
evening, and so she begged Samuel to give her shelter for the night.
"'This isn't an inn,' answered Samuel, shortly, at the same time
shutting the window.
"'Poor thing,' said Lea, 'ought we to send her away?'
"'We're living in dangerous times,' replied Samuel; 'I don't like to
admit a stranger into my house.'
"'But this poor creature is ill and weak,' said Lea.
"And as the old woman outside continued to make an appeal to his pity,
Samuel gave way and let her in. The maid-servants were all in bed and
asleep, so Lea took her guest to a garret-room, and, after providing her
with food and wine, wished her good-night, and left her.
"Next morning the stranger took leave of her hostess very early, and
with many expressions of gratitude. Lea was so busy all day making the
final preparations for the feast, that she had not time to visit the
room that had been occupied by the old woman until late in the
afternoon, when she was making a last round of the house to see that no
leavened bread was anywhere to be found. The room was perfectly neat and
tidy, but she was astonished to find it pervaded by a most disagreeable
smell. She opened the window, but that had no effect. She hunted about
for the cause of the horrible odor. At length, on looking under the bed,
she saw what made her blood run cold and her hair stand on end with
terror. For under the bed there lay the naked corpse of a half-starved
little child, with great wounds in its neck and chest. Lea at once
understood what had happened, and struggled hard against the faintness
that threatened to overpower her. The old woman had brought the corpse
to the house, and had concealed it there, in order that the hideous old
story might be revived that the Jews were in the habit of killing
Christian children before the feast of the Passover; and terrible would
be the vengeance taken by the Christians of the neighborhood. Lea
recognized the full horrors of her position, and remembered the Graf's
warning to her husband. She was nearly overwhelmed with the weight of
her misery. For was it not she, and she alone, who, by inducing her
husband to admit the woman into the house, had brought all the sorrow,
persecution, and death that would surely come upon her home and upon the
whole Jewish community? While she sat there shivering with fever and
anguish, she heard wild cries, shrieks, and the sound of weeping in the
street, and also the clank of swords. 'They are coming,' she muttered,
and at the same moment a thought flashed into her mind, far more strange
and horrible than a woman's brain had ever before conceived, and yet so
noble and self-sacrificing that a woman alone could have entertained it.
'It was my fault,' she said to herself, 'and I alone must bear the
consequences.' She rose to her feet, pressed her lips firmly together,
and after a struggle regained her composure. Then taking up the child's
corpse, she wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid it on her knee.
"She listened; ... the minutes seemed to drag. Then she heard the young
Graf's voice outside speaking passionately to her husband and another
member of the session in these words: 'The woman heard the death-rattle
distinctly. I will not leave one stone upon another if I find the body.'
She heard the men going through all the rooms in the house. As their
steps approached the one in which she was seated, she rose and went to
the window, below which the roof fell away steeply, and overhung the
paved courtyard of the house.
"The door was thrown open violently; the Graf entered, accompanied by
the two members of session, and followed by his men-at-arms. Lea sprang
forward to meet them with a wild laugh, showed them the child's body,
and then flung it out of the window on to the court beneath....
"'I am a murderess,' she cried out to the Graf; 'yes, I am, I am. Take
me, bind me, kill me! I murdered my own child last night; I don't deny
it. You've come to fetch me; here I am!'
"The men stared at her in speechless amazement.
"Then came furious cries, shouts, and questions. Samuel, strong man as
he was, fainted away. The other Jews, at once perceiving the true state
of the case, and seeing no other way of saving the whole community from
certain death, supported her in her statement. Lea remained firm. The
Graf looked at her piercingly, and she returned his gaze without
flinching: 'Listen, woman,' he said; 'if you have really committed the
crime of which you have confessed yourself guilty, you shall die a death
of torture far more terrible than any one has ever yet suffered; but if
the other Jews killed the child in order to drink its blood at the
feast, you and your husband shall go unpunished, and the others shall
alone expiate their crime. I swear this by all that is holy!
Now--choose!'
"Lea did not hesitate for a moment. 'It was my child,' she said.
"The Graf had Lea taken to prison and confined in a solitary cell. He
quite saw all the improbability of her story, but he did not believe in
any greatness of soul in one of our people. 'If it were not true,' he
thought, 'why should the woman have given herself up?'
"The trial threw no light upon the subject.
"All the Jewish witnesses bore testimony against Lea. One told how she
had hated her child; another how she had threatened to kill it. Fear of
death forced these lies from their lips. The only Christian witness was
the black priest's housekeeper--the same woman who had gone to Samuel's
house on that fatal evening in the disguise of a peasant to bring
destruction on the Jewish community. She told how she had heard the
death rattle of the child during the night. She could not say more
without betraying herself, and so her story tallied with Lea's
confession. The 'black priest' took no apparent interest in the trial.
He probably thought that one victim would suffice for the time, or it
may be that he feared the discovery of his crime.
"The Graf's judges pronounced Lea guilty, and condemned her to be broken
on the wheel in the market-place, and there beheaded. The wooden block
in front of the Dominican monastery was placed there for this purpose.
"But Lea did not die on the scaffold; she died peacefully in her own
house forty years later, surrounded by her children and grandchildren;
for Austrian military law was proclaimed in the district before Graf
Bortynski's people had had time to execute the sentence pronounced upon
Lea, and an Austrian Government official, whose duty it was to try
criminal cases, examined the evidence against her. Samuel went to him
and told him the whole story, and he, after due inquiry, set Lea free.
"The wooden block is still standing. It reminds us of the old dark days
of our oppression. But it also reminds us of the noble and heroic action
by which a weak woman saved the community....
"And eighty years after that, my friends--eighty years after that--when
we were once more in danger of losing our lives, who was it that saved
us? Not a woman this time; but a timid little man whom no one could have
imagined capable of a courageous action, and whose name I have only to
mention to send you into a fit of laughter. It was little Mendele....
Ah, see now how you are chuckling! Well, well, I can't blame you, for he
is a very queer little man. He knows many a merry tale, and tells them
very amusingly. And then it is certainly a very strange thing to see a
gray-haired man no taller than a child, and with the ways and heart of a
child. He used to dance and sing all day long. I don't think that any
one ever saw him quiet. Even now he does not walk down a street, but
trots instead; he does not talk, but sings, and his hands seem to have
been given him for no other use but to beat time. But--what of that? It
is better to keep a cheerful heart than to wear a look of hypocritical
solemnity. Mendele Abenstern is a great singer, and we may well be proud
of having him for our _chazzan_ (deacon). It is true that he sometimes
rattles off a touching prayer as if it were a waltz, and that when
reading the Thorah he fidgets about from one leg to the other as if he
were a dancer at a theatre. But these little peculiarities of his never
interfere with our devotions, for we have been accustomed to Mendele and
his ways for the last forty years, and if any one happens to get
irritated with him now and then, he takes care not to vent it on the
manikin. He can not help remembering, you see, that little Mendele can
be grave enough at times, and that the poor _chazzan_ once did the town
greater service by his gift of song than all the wise and rich could
accomplish by their wisdom or their wealth.
"I will tell you how that came to pass.