My old friend grows perceptibly weaker. There are no symptoms of a definite trouble but _senectus morbus ipsa_. The nasty cold penetrates the chinks at door and window and settles in some corner of the room, however carefully warmed and provided against weather. The very time of year prepares mischief for an old, decaying body. If Simon were sitting in some sunny spot, who knows if his seventy-eight years would be oppressing him so? What remarkable old people I saw in the south, especially in Rome. They bore their eighty or ninety years with proud dignity and fine carriage. We of the north age much more rapidly; perhaps we are not even born young. Especially we Jews! Conditions have been bettered in the course of time, since our young people have been allowed to benefit by the sanitary, hygienic, and aesthetic achievements of modern life. They all devote themselves to sports, and the obligation to serve in the army has forced them--and the need therefor is highly significant--to practice gymnastic exercises to their advantage. Nevertheless they have something old, thoughtful, worldly-wise in their souls. It is the heritage of the many thousands of years of culture, the culture which has won us renown and singled us out among the nations, but has burdened us also and weighted us down with the over-thoughtfulness born of limitless life-experience. _Naivete_ and an easy mode of existence we have lost through this heritage; and that it manifests itself especially in spiritual matters is praiseworthy, though neither gratifying nor exhilarating. How difficult we are! How dependent upon tradition! What deep roots we have struck in the soil of the past! I believe we drag the chains of our long history more painfully than those put upon us by the other nations. And though these chains are wrought of the gold of fidelity and linked with the pearls of wisdom, they weight us down--they weight us down in a world where we are only tolerated--strangers! Simon Eichelkatz awakened these thoughts in me. Yesterday he told me a great deal again. Remarkable! It is as though he felt the need to unburden his soul of a few more matters before he sinks into the great, eternal silence. But he doesn't suspect my anxiety in his behalf. He chats on heedlessly into the twilight of the early winter evenings. The twilight makes people communicative and confidential. It is the time of intimate secrets. And at such a time Simon acquainted me with the most solemn experience of his life.