"Ah, yes, of course," assented Abraham. Then, seized with a sudden revulsion of feeling, he pitied the man in whose house his nose had gained its rosy hue, and added more gently: "Perhaps the Almighty may forgive Gawriel after all. How could the poor father ever have guessed that she would do such a horrible thing? None of Jewish birth could ever have thought it! But as for Ruben--that's different; he is certainly condemned!" "Was the crime really so terrible?" "Terrible, did you say?--most abominable! Didn't you hear of it? An extraordinary story!--a most remarkable and unheard-of story!" They then told me this "remarkable and unheard-of story." And truly it deserved the adjectives they applied to it, although in a different sense from that in which they used them. I can hardly describe my feelings as I write down what I then heard. In the first place, the whole affair sounds so incredible. Only those few people in the West who have a slight knowledge of this ignorant fanatical Eastern Judaism, will be able to comprehend that such things can really be. All others will shake their heads. I can only say that it is a true story; I did not invent it: it really took place. Besides that, the story is a very sad one. It fills one with sorrow when one thinks of it.... Lea was a very lovely girl. She did not inherit her beauty from either of her parents; for her mother was a dumpy, little red-faced woman, and Gawriel Rendar, landlord of the large yellow inn on the way to Old Barnow, was an awkward giant with a muddy complexion, and a face much pitted with small-pox. The two sons, who hung about the house, were by no means ornamental members of society. In short, they were a rascally-looking lot, and their chief occupation was to provide bad spirits for the thirsty, and fling those who had imbibed too much of the villainous compound they sold out-of-doors in a rough-and-ready manner. It was in this house and among these people that the loveliest, merriest child grew up into a gentle modest girl. Lea Bergheimer was more like a sunbeam than any one I ever knew. Her head was crowned with a wealth of shining golden hair. A Jewess is seldom fair; and when she happens to be so, is, as a general rule, anything but good-looking. The beautiful women of this race have either brown or black hair. But Lea was an exception. Indeed, she was not at all of the Jewish type except in her slender, upright, graceful figure. Her face was of the highest Germanic type: small, delicate features, rosy cheeks, and deep violet eyes. The expression of her face was bright and intelligent. There is a seventeenth-century picture in one of the side rooms of the Belvedere at Vienna of a Viennese burgher maiden painted by an Italian. The original was a German girl, but the artist has given her face the impress of the "spirit, fire, and dew" that animate so many Southern natures. That picture might have been a portrait of Lea, the resemblance to her was so strong.