“Remember now,” said the angel as he barred the window. “Remember--two more offerings.” “The Lord will aid me”--thinks the soul, grown hopeful; and joyously flies down again. However, her gladness lasts but a little while. Again, years follow years and she can find nothing that is surpassingly beautiful. And her melancholy returns to her. “The world has, it seems, forsaken the way of the Lord, and like a spring ever runs out and out. The more the water that flows into the soil, the more sucked in--the more the soil becomes foul and unclean. Fewer are the gifts for heaven then. Men become ever petty and more petty. Their good deeds grow tiny; their evil deeds blacker and blacker dust--their deeds are hardly visible to the eye!...” And thus speaking to herself she seems to think that should the Lord command all the evil deeds and the good of the world to be weighed in the Balance, that the needle would hardly move, yea, not even tremble. The earth can hardly rise or fall now, she is but a wanderer from the empyrean above to the black abyss of Sheol below. A splendid cause for an eternal disputation between the spirits of good and of evil; just such a one as the eternal dispute between darkness and light, heat and cold, life and death.... The earth rocks to and fro. She can neither ascend nor descend. Thus we ever have weddings and divorces, parties and funerals, love and hate--ever, forever. Suddenly the blare of trumpets and of horns resounds. The soul looks down--and beholds an ancient German town. All sorts of roofs, narrow and bent, surround the courthouse. A motley crowd fills the place. People peer out of the windows; others throng the roofs, and some sit astride the beams at the edge, where they are propped up by the wall. A table, covered with a green cloth stands at the head of the court-hall. The cloth has golden tassels and fringes. The men of the court are held with golden hooks. They wear sable caps and large feathers stick from the shining buttons to which they are sewed. At the head of the table, the President of the court is seated. An Eagle hovers overhead.... A young Jewess, all bound, stands on one side. Ten slaves hold a white horse firmly near her. The president has risen and with his eyes towards the market-place, he reads the paper he has in his hand--her sentence. “This Jewess,” he says, “is guilty of a monstrous sin. Even the Lord, in his graciousness and great mercy, could not forgive her that.... “On our last and most sacred holiday, she slunk out of her ghetto and walked through the clean streets of our town.... “She has sullied the Holy procession. Her eyes have defiled the sacred images that we bore with hymnal song and music through the streets....