I am lost in thought; I wonder what my end will be; when I shall have the strength to tear myself out of Satan's grasp. I call my own soul to account; I reproach it; I scold it. Suddenly I receive a fillip on the nose, "Soul-boy." I wish to forget my troubles and plunge into a deep problem of Rabbinical dialectics; I yoke together a difficult explanation of the Tossafot with a hard passage in the Rambam, mix in a piece from the P'ne Yehoshuah, and top it off with an argument from Eibeschütz. I am in another world, forgotten are the teacher, Gütele, the soul. Things are fitting one into the other in my brain; I nearly "have it," the solution is at the tip of my tongue--a whistle in my ear--"Soul-boy!" It rings through my head, something bursts in my brain. Forgotten Tossafot, forgotten Rambam--I am back on the earth! I stand repeating the Eighteen Benedictions, my heart and my eyes are alike full of tears, "Heal us, O Eternal, and we shall be healed!" I say with devotion, and I mean not the body, heaven forbid, I mean the soul: "Heal me, Almighty; heal my poor soul!" "That's the soul-boy," says one to another, pointing at me. And it is all over with my devotion. Thus I suffered day and night. 15 Gütele was held to be very clever; her father never called her anything but "my little wisdom," and the neighbors said she was as bright as the day, and that if she were as pious as she was clever, she would rejoice the heart of her mother in Paradise. My mother, too, used to praise her cleverness, and, if only Gütele had known more about koshering meat, she would not have wished for a better daughter-in-law. And one day, when I found the teacher out, and Gütele alone, it occurred to me to ask her opinion about the soul. My knees shook, my hands twitched, my heart fluttered; my eyes were fixed on the floor, and yet I asked: "They all say, Gütele, that you are so wise. Tell me, please, what is the soul?" She smiled and answered: "I'm sure, I don't know." Then she grew suddenly sad and tears came into her eyes: "I just remember," she said to me, "that when my mother was alive (on whom be peace), my father always said, she was his soul--they loved one another so dearly." I don't know what came over me, but that same instant I took her hand and said, trembling: "Gütele, will you be my soul?" And she answered me quite softly: "Yes!" X IN TIME OF PESTILENCE 1 THE TOWN TAKES FRIGHT It is coming! _öi_, it is already near! In the villages round about people are in peril of death! Lord of the world, what is to be done? "Thou shalt not open thy mouth for Satan"--the name of the pestilence may not cross the lips, but fear descends on every heart like a stone.