He devoted all his days and all his nights to the Holy Law, studying it himself and expounding it to others. The number of his disciples was a veritable army, and whoever heard the Torah from his lips felt that he drank from the very source of life. Not only did he teach the Torah’s word, but also how to live its very spirit, how to purge oneself of gaiety; for laughter, play and mirth all led to sin. He, too, dwelt in all simplicity, renouncing every earthly pleasure. He was deeply in love with his wife, the beautiful Rachel, the wise and learned daughter of Kalba-Sabua. But in order to belong entirely to the Torah he even parted from his sweet beloved and became an ascetic. This was a sore burden to him. He longed deeply for his wife, and he was still a man in the very prime of life. In order not to weaken, and to make sure of maintaining this separation and his pious seclusion, he made a vow to himself that he should not return to his wife until he acquired twelve thousand disciples. This he did because he held that an oath was as a wall around holy retirement. He would have to keep his word and his absence from his wife would thus be ensured. This fortitude, however, caused him to be unrelenting toward every one else. What he could do, all must be able to do. And he demanded of all the strictest abstention from the sins of the flesh, excoriating with barbed words the desire for women in the hearts of men. Whereupon the weaklings—those who could not withstand the woman-lust in their hearts and were wracked by the sins of the flesh—spoke thus of Akiba: “Merely because he was able to part from his wife is no proof that he is above temptation. Let Satan but approach him in the form of a naked woman and lust will suddenly befall him like an enemy from ambush, and rob him of all his senses, even as a thief robs his victim in the night.” And they added to their prayers an entreaty that God should lead the Rabbi into such temptation. And, to their own punishment, God heard their prayers. * * * * * When Rabbi Akiba left his wife he also left the city in which she dwelt. This he did, not so much from personal choice, lest the proximity of his wife allure him, but rather for her sake, lest his nearness too much affect her. And in order that his wife, in her feminine weakness, should not follow him to the new place in which he intended to settle, he did not for a long time establish himself anywhere, journeying from city to city and from land to land. And once, in his peregrinations, he came to a land in which remarkable customs and manners prevailed. One of these customs was to sweeten the nights of the honoured guests with the company of women.