And the more bigoted he is, the more my heart faints within me for the simple, sublime faith of my people. Behind all the tangled network of ceremony and ritual, the larger mind of the man who has lived and loved sees the outlines of a creed grand in its simplicity, sublime in its persistence. The spirit has clothed itself on with flesh, as it must do for human eyes to gaze on it and live with it; and if, in addition, it has swaddled itself with fold on fold of garment, even so the music has not gone out of its voice, nor the love out of its eyes. As soon as Paul is gone to-morrow, I must plan out my future life. His book will doubtless launch him on the road to fame and fortune. But what remains for me? To live on as I am doing would be intolerable. To do nothing for my people, either with voice or purse, to live alone in this sleepy hamlet, cut off from all human fellowship, alienated from everything that makes my neighbours' lives endurable--better death than such a death-in-life. And yet is it possible that I can get into touch again with my youth, that after a sort of Rip Van Winkle sleep, I can take up again and retwine the severed strands? How shall my people receive again a viper into its bosom? Well, come what may, there must be an end to this. Even at this moment reproachful voices haunt my ear; and in another moment, when I put down my pen to go to my sleepless bed, I shall take care to light my bed-room candle before extinguishing my lamp, for the momentary darkness would be filled with impalpable solemnity bordering on horror. Flashes and echoes from the ghostly world of my youth, the faces of my dead parents, strange fragments of sound and speech, the sough of the wind in the trees of the "House of the Living," the far-away voice of the Chazan singing some melancholy tune full of heart-break and weirdness, the little crowded Cheder where the rabbi intoned the monotonous lesson, the whizz of the stone little Ivanovitch flung at my forehead because I had "killed Christ"--. No, my nerves are not strong enough to bear these visions and voices. All my life long I see now I have been reserved and solitary. Never has any one been admitted to my heart of hearts--not even Caterina. But now I must unburden my soul to some one ere I die. And to another living soul. For this dead sheet of paper will not, I perceive, do after all. _Saturday Night._--Nearly a week has passed since I wrote the above words, and I am driven to your pages again. I would have come to you last night, but suddenly I recollected that it was the Sabbath. I have kept the Sabbath. I have prayed a few broken fragments of prayer, recovered almost miraculously from the deeps of memory. I have rested from every toil. I stayed myself from stirring up the fire, though it was cold and I was shivering. And a new peace has come to me.