Beltrezzor took possession of my father’s estate, and to our great joy determined to reside at Bethany during our minority. Under his judicious and liberal management everything soon blossomed like the rose. He adorned our residence with all the chaste and beautiful treasures of architecture and art. He surrounded my charming sisters with every luxury that the most cultivated fancy could suggest. He devoted himself especially to our education, and our house became the favorite resort of all that was most learned and brilliant in Jewish society. Thus several years passed happily away, overshadowed by no cloud. If a tear ever came into our eyes, it was consecrated to the memory of our dear father, and to the reflection that he had perished so sadly in the wilderness, without knowing the good fortune which was in store for his children. [Illustration: Ornament] [Illustration: Ornament] VIII. _BREAD ON THE WATERS._ [Illustration: Initial] The impression made upon our minds by these extraordinary events was ineffaceable. After three days and nights of perilous adventure and suffering, from a youth I became a man. From little girls, my sisters became women. There was ever afterward about us a pensiveness, a gravity of manner, a too early maturity of thought, which excited the pity of those who had known us during our father’s life, when a happy childhood broke forth into smiles and pleasures, like a genial spring blossoming out into perfumes and flowers. Our six months of domestic life under the management of Magistus, with its gloom, its neglect, its suspicions, its want of love and liberty, stood in painful contrast with the merry sports, the delightful peace and the religious sunshine of our father’s household. It was night compared with day. But the unmasking of the characters of Caiaphas and Magistus was a rude shock to our tender spirits. We had revealed to us at one view the utmost depths of human depravity. We had stood consciously amid the hideous and revolting spheres of hypocrisy, sensuality, robbery and murder. There was a leprosy of the soul as well as of the body; there were wild beasts of the spirit; there was a wilderness of the mind; there was a death masquerading in the garments of life; and we had seen them all. We had looked into hell. This early and deep insight into the fearful connection between evil spirits and wicked men, and their combined influence over the world, was in one sense salutary. The recoil from the bottomless abyss into which we had peeped, produced a rapid and unusual development of the moral nature. In my sisters it took a religious, in myself a philosophical turn.