“I remembered his asking, 'Wilt thou take this woman, Christine, to thy wedded wife?' and the glow of joy and pride and triumph, with which I prepared to answer. I remembered that then, just as I was opening my lips to speak, it seemed as though suddenly a dazzling disk of light rose before my eyes, changing color in rapid pulsations from white through yellow to scarlet; a sudden, tingling pain, like a powerful electric current, starting in the back of my head, shot through my body; a hard, sharp lump stuck in my throat; I felt that I was losing my ability to stand upright. I tried with might and main to keep my feet, and to speak the two necessary words. But I could not. My limbs contracted spasmodically. I heard a sharp explosion, like the report of a pistol, which sounded and felt as though somehow it came from within my own head. I cried out. I believed that I was surely dying. There was a second of immense agony--fear of death. I fell. Up to that point, I remembered every thing perfectly. But _at_ that point, my memory broke short off.” And remembering these things in this way, what did he conclude? He jumped to a conclusion which was most unwarrantable and most deplora-able, but which, considering all the circumstances, considering the fact that he was a Jew, born a Jew, bred a Jew, and the fact that for countless generations his ancestors upon every side had been Jews of the Jews, can scarcely be regarded as unnatural. He concluded that what the rabbi had prophesied had come to pass. He concluded that the God of Israel had indeed interfered. The wild, black chaos, into which this conclusion hurled all his faculties, all his ideas, all his emotions, who shall describe? Was it not unspeakable even to himself? With horror-struck soul, the horror quivering through every atom and fiber of his being, he could only lie there upon his bed, shuddering, and moaning out, “Oh, God! oh, God! oh, God!” In wonder-tales and mystical romances, we are accustomed to see the supernatural dealt with composedly enough. Surprise, amazement even, it may inspire in the fictitious personages confronted by it. But when, outside of literature, in what we call real life, a man of ordinary sensitiveness persuades himself that he has felt the contact of that awful, questionable Something which lies beyond the limits of common experience, his revulsion of feeling does not stop at amazement or surprise. All his theories and principles of life, tacit, unconscious perhaps, though many of them may be, are shaken from their foundations, disorganized, thrown into confusion; and his predominant sensation, we may be sure, is one of blood-curdling, panic horror. Such, at least, was the truth with Elias. His heart seemed to have frozen in his bosom; and he was sick with fear from head to foot.