I was astonished, not so much about the particular circumstances of this incident, as about somnambulism in general, of which till then I had known nothing. My friend, on the other hand, assured me that somnambulism was a common occurrence with him, and that it meant nothing, but that the circumstance of the _Hilchoth Abheloth_ made him forebode some misfortune. Thereupon he rode off, arrived at his mother's house, and found her seated at her frame for needlework. She asked him the reason of his coming, when he replied that he had come merely to pay her a visit, as he had not seen her for a long time. After he had rested for a good while, he rode back; but his disquietude was by no means wholly removed, and the thought of the _Hilchoth Abheloth_ he could not get out of his head. The third day after, a fire broke out in the town where his mother lived, and the poor woman perished in the flames. Scarcely had the son heard of the conflagration, when he began to lament that his mother had so miserably perished. He rode off in all haste to the town, and found what he had foreboded. CHAPTER XIX. Also on a Secret Society, and therefore a Long Chapter. About this time I became acquainted with a sect of my nation, called the _New Chasidim_, which was then coming into prominence. _Chasidim_ is the name generally given by the Hebrews to the _pious_, that is, to those who distinguish themselves by exercising the strictest piety. These were, from time immemorial, men who had freed themselves from worldly occupations and pleasures, and devoted their lives to the strictest exercise of the laws of religion and penance for their sins. As already mentioned, they sought to accomplish this object by prayers and other exercises of devotion, by chastisement of the body and similar means.