worked out of the universe, and God be at one with His creation. May He be your help!" I sat a while in dazed wonder. "Dear Master," said I at last, "you to whom are unveiled the secrets of all the universes, cannot you read _my_ future?" "Yes," he said. I looked at him breathlessly. "You will always be faithful to me," he said slowly. My eyes filled with tears. I kissed his hand. "And you will marry my daughter." My heart beat: "Which?" "She whom you have just seen." "But she is married," I said, as the blood swirled deliciously in my veins. "Her husband will give her a bill of divorcement." "And what will become of him?" "He will marry the woman we have saved. And she, too, will win many souls." "But how know you?" I whispered, half incredulous. "So it is borne in upon me," said the Baal Shem, smiling. And so indeed after many days it came to pass. And so ended this first strange day with the beloved Master, whose light shines through the worlds. VIII It is now many years since I first saw the Baal Shem, and as many since I laid him in his grave, yet every word he spake to me is treasured up in my heart as gold, yea, as fine gold. But the hand of age is heavy upon me, and lest I may not live to complete even this briefer story, I shall set down here but the rough impression of his doctrine left in my mind, hoping to devote a separate volume to these conversations with my divine Master. And this is the more necessary, as I said, since every day the delusions and impostures of those who use his name multiply and grow ranker. Even in his own day, the Master's doctrine was already, as you will have seen, sufficiently distorted by souls smaller than his own, and by the refraction of distance--for how should a true image of him pass from town to town, by forest and mountain, throughout all that vast empire? The Master's life alone made clear to me what I had failed to gather from his followers. Just as their delirious dancings and shrieks and spasms were abortive attempts to produce his prayer-ecstasy, so in all things did they but caricature him. But now that he is dead, and these extravagances are no longer to be checked by his living example, so monstrous are the deeds wrought and the things taught in his name, that though the Chassidim he founded are become--despite every persecution by the orthodox Jews, despite the scourging of their bodies and the setting of them in the stocks, despite the excommunication of our order and the closing of our synagogues, and the burning of our books--a mighty sect throughout the length and the breadth of Central Europe, yet have I little pleasure in them, little joy in the spread of the teaching to which I devoted my life. And sometimes--now that my Master's face no longer shines consolingly upon me, save in dream and memory--I dare to wonder if the world is better for his having lived. And indeed at times I find myself sympathizing with our chief persecutor, the saintly and learned Wilna Gaon.