A few minutes later another boy came in with a bowl of porridge and some bread: "Reb Yòsef sends the pupil some breakfast!" But the pupil did not remove his hands from his face. The teacher laid down his spoon and went up to the pupil. For a while he gazed at him with affectionate pride, then he wrapped his hand in the skirt of his kaftan, and touched him on the shoulder: "They have brought you something to eat," he said gently, by way of rousing him. Slowly and sadly the pupil uncovered his face. It was paler than ever, and the black-ringed eyes had grown wilder. "I know, Rebbe," he answered, "but I will not eat anything to-day." "The fourth fast?" asked the teacher, wondering, "and without me?" he added, with a playful pretense at being hurt. "It is another kind of fast," answered the pupil, "it is a penance." "What do you mean? _You_ and a penance?" "Yes, Rebbe! A penance. A minute ago, when you began to eat, I was tempted to break the commandment: 'Thou shalt not covet!'" * * * * * Late that night the pupil woke the teacher. They slept on the benches in the Kläus, opposite to one another. "Rebbe, Rebbe!" he called in a weak voice. "What is it?" and the teacher started up in alarm. "Just now I attained to a higher degree!" "How so?" inquired the teacher, still half asleep. "It sang within me!" The teacher sat up: "How so? how so?" "I don't know myself, Rebbe," replied the pupil in his feeble tones, "I couldn't sleep, and I thought over what you told me. I wanted to get to know the tune--and I was so sorrowful, because I could not, that I began to weep--everything in me wept; all my limbs wept before the Creator. "Then I made the invocations you taught me--and, wonderful to say, not with my lips, but somehow inside me--with my whole self. Suddenly it grew light; I shut my eyes, and still it was light to me, very light, brilliantly light." "There!" and the teacher sat bending toward him. "And I had such pleasant feelings as I lay in the light, and I seemed to weigh nothing at all, no more than if my body had been a feather, I felt as if I could fly." "You see, you see, you see!" "Then I felt merry and lively, I wanted to laugh--my face never moved, nor my lips either, and yet I laughed--and so heartily." "You see, you see, you see!" "Then there was a humming inside me like the beginning of a melody." The teacher sprang down from his bench, and was across the room. "Well, well?" "Then I heard something begin to sing within me." "What did you feel like? Tell me quick!" "I felt as though all the doors of sense in me were shut, and as though something sang within me--as it ought to do--without any words, like ... like...." "How was it? How was it?" "No, I can't! I knew, before--and then the singing turned into--into--" "Into what? What became of it?"