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 Eibeschütz. 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 Sabbataï 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