He followed them through Fourth Street back to the Bowery and down the rumbling thoroughfare, till--"a lamentation!"--they entered a Christian restaurant! A terrific pang smote Asriel's heart. It was as if he saw his temple, the embodiment of many years of labor, the object of his fondest cares, just completed and ready to be dedicated, suddenly enveloped in flames. The prodigy, _his_ prodigy, his Kaddish, his glory in this and the other world, plunged into the very thick of impurity! He made to rush after them, but checked himself to wait till the _treife_[10] food was served them. A few minutes later he made his entry, cool and collected as a regular customer. [10] Unclean; not prepared according to the laws of Moses. Each of the two young men was bent on a veal cutlet. The collegian was dispatching his with the nonchalant appetite and ease of manner of an habitué, whereas poor Shaya looked like one affecting to relish his first plate of raw oysters. The smells proceeding from the kitchen made him dizzy, and the cutlet itself, partly because he was accustomed to meat of a better quality, but mainly through the consciousness of eating treife, inclined him to nausea. Asriel took a vacant chair at the same table. "Bless the sitter,[11] Shaya!" he said. [11] Form of greeting when the host is found at table. The two young men were petrified. "How is the pork--does it taste well?" Asriel pursued. "It is not pork. It is veal cutlet," the teacher found tongue to retort. "I am not speaking to you, am I?" Asriel hissed out. Murder was swelling in his heart. But at this point the waiter came up to his side. "Vot'll ye have?" "Notink!" Asriel replied, suddenly rising from his seat and rushing out, as if this were the most terrible sort of violence he could conceive. XI Asriel found his daughter playing. "Stop that or I'll smash your Gentile piano to pieces!" he commanded her, feeling as though the instrument had all along been in the conspiracy and were now bidding him defiance. "Why, what's the matter?" she questioned, getting up from her stool in stupefaction. "Matter? Bluff a dead rooster, not me--my head is still on my shoulders. Here it is, you see?" he added, taking himself by the head. "It's all up, Flora." "What do you mean?" she made out to inquire. "I mean that if Shayke[12] ever enters this house I'll murder both of you. You thought your papa was a fool, didn't you? Well, you are a poor hand at figuring, Flora. I knew everything, but I wanted some particulars. I have got them all now here, in my pocket, and a minute ago I took the pleasure of bidding him 'bless the sitter' in a Gentile restaurant--may he be choked with his treife gorge!" [12] Contemptuous diminutive of Shaya. "You've got no business to curse him like that!" she flamed out, coloring violently. "_I_ have no business? And who is to stop me, pray?" "_I_ am. It ain't my fault. You know I did not care at first."