“Hold!” screamed the tailor. “He shall marry you! Please, oh, please! Marry them, rabbi! For my sake, marry them! I beg it of you! I cannot bear to see my precious glass under that horrible weight! Don’t let it fall! For God’s sake, hold it tight! Oh, rabbi, marry them, marry them, marry them! Let me have my glass!” The rabbi glared at Reuben, then at the tailor, who was almost on his knees before him, and then at the face of the connoisseur, who, somewhat embarrassed at finding himself observed in that exciting moment, said, apologetically, “I—I don’t mind being a witness.” The rabbi married them. “It is not for either of you that I am doing this,” he said, in stern accents. “You have disgraced yourselves—both of you. But for the sake of this old man, my friend, who holds that bauble so high that I fear he will lose his reason if any harm befall it, I yield.” They were married. And then—and not until then—Reuben raised the precious wine glass, glittering and sparkling with multi-coloured fire, gently from the floor and placed it upon the counter. But he held fast to the iron. Zalman pounced upon his heirloom, examined it carefully to see whether the faintest mishap had marred its beauty, held it tightly against his breast, and with upraised arm turned upon his daughter and her husband. With flashing eyes and pallid lips, he cried: “May the foul fiends curse you! May God, in His righteousness——” There was a sound of crashing glass. Whether in his excitement the tailor’s fingers had, for one instant, relaxed their grip; whether mysterious Fate, through some psychic or physical agency had playfully wrought a momentary paralysis of his nerves; whether—but who may penetrate these things? The glass had slipped from his hand. That exquisite creation of a skill that had perished centuries ago, that fragile relic of a forgotten art which, only a moment ago, had sparkled and glittered as though a hundred suns were imprisoned within its frail sides, now lay upon the floor in a thousand shapeless fragments. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Transcriber’s note: 1. Silently corrected typographical errors. 2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.