Ah yes! these were strange, very strange, crimes. On that autumn day, as I stood beside the two graves, I felt inclined to stoop down and say to the dead: "Forgive your poor brothers; do not be angry with them, for they know not what they do!..." What a peculiar history the Jews have had! Their strong religion, founded on a rock, was once a protection to them, and saved them from the axes and clubs of their enemies. They would have been destroyed without that protection, for the blows aimed at them were heavy and hard to parry; and for that very reason, they clung to it the more tenaciously, until at last, instead of enlightening their hearts, they made of it a bandage for their eyes. They were not so much to be pitied for this long ago, for then all the world went about with their eyes bandaged. But now, when the light of day is shining in the West, and the dawn has at last broken in the East, they have not raised the bandage one inch. I do not want them to do it too quickly, nor do I want them to throw away their faith; I only desire that they should open their eyes to the light which is shining more and more around them.... It must be so; and it will be so. Necessity is the only divinity in which one can believe without doubting or despairing. Light will come to them; but no one can tell how long the light will last, or count the victims it will destroy. It is only by accident one hears of them. The living are silent, and the graves are silent, especially those that are nameless. The history of those nameless graves may be shown by a mark of interrogation, hard but not impossible to decipher. My curiosity was excited by the last of those blank headstones set up in the cemetery at Barnow. I found it the last time I went there on the beautiful September afternoon I have before described. It was a solitary grave standing apart from the rest. It lay in the hollow near the river, and close to the broken hedge. This in itself was strange, for the dead are generally buried next to each other as their turn comes to die. A family seldom has a plot of ground set apart for itself--very seldom; for all who sleep here are members of the same family. An exception had been made with regard to this grave. Not another headstone was to be seen far and wide; but to the right and left of it, as close to it as possible, were two other graves--small graves, unmarked by aught save the tiny hillocks they made. So small were they, that one could scarcely see them under their covering of juniper-bushes and red heather. It was easy to guess who slept there: little boys who had died before they were eight days old, before they had been given a name; and she who lay between them must have been their mother, for the headstone was that of a woman--one could tell that from its shape.