He goes through it all himself, and is covered with a cold sweat. But then, later on, he also shares the bliss of the righteous. The Garden of Eden, the angels, Leviathan, Behemoth, and all good things present themselves so vividly to his imagination that when the reader kisses the book previously to closing it, Chaïm starts as it were out of a dream, like one called back from the other world! "_Ach!_" he gasps, for wonder has held him breathless. "O Lord, just a tiny bit, just a scrap, just a morsel of the world to come--for me, for my wife, and for my little children!" And then he grows sad, wondering: After all, because of what? as a reward for what? Once, when the reading was over, he went up to the teacher: "Rabbi," he said, and his voice shook, "advise me! What must I do to gain the world to come?" "Study the Law, my son!" answered the teacher. "I can't." "Study Mishnayes, or some "Eye of Jacob," or even Perek." "I can't." "Recite the Psalms!" "I haven't time!" "Pray with devotion!" "I don't know what the prayers mean!" The teacher looks at him with compassion: "What are you?" he asks. "A street porter." "Well, then, do some service for the scholars." "I beg pardon?" "For instance, carry a few cans of water every day toward evening into the house-of-study, so that the students may have something to drink." "Rabbi," he inquired further, "and my wife?" "When a man sits on a chair in Paradise, his wife is his footstool." * * * * * When Chaïm went home to say Havdoleh, Hannah was sitting there reciting "God of Abraham." And when he saw her he felt a tug at his heart. "No, Hannah," he flung his arms around her, "I won't have you be my footstool! I shall bend down to you and raise you and make you sit beside me. We shall sit both on one chair, just as we are doing now. We are so happy like that! Do you hear, Hannah? You and I, we are going to sit in a chair together ... the Almighty will _have_ to allow it!" III IN THE POST-CHAISE He told me everything at once, in one breath. I learned in little over a minute that he was Chaïm, Yoneh Krubishever's son-in-law, Beril Konskivoler's son, and that the rich Meerenstein in Lublin was a relation on his mother's side, peace be upon her! But this relation lived almost like a Gentile; whether or not they ate forbidden food, he could not tell, but that they ate with unwashed hands ... so much he had seen with his own eyes. They had other queer ways beside: long colored cloths were lying on their stairs; before going in, one rang a bell; figured table-covers were spread about the rooms where people sat as if in jail ... stole across them like thieves ... altogether it was like being in a company of deaf-mutes. His wife has a family of a kind in Warsaw. But he never goes near them; they are as poor as himself, so what is the good of them to him, _ha?_