Once a rumor spread in Mouravanke that the Rav's eldest son had become celebrated in the great world because of a book he had written, and had acquired the title of "professor." When the old Rav was told of it, he at first remained silent, with downcast eyes. Then he lifted them and ejaculated: "Nu!" And not a word more. It was only remarked that he grew paler, that his look was even more piercing, more searching than before. This is all that was ever said in the town about the Rav's children, for no one cared to discuss a thing on which the old Rav himself was silent. Once, however, on the Great Sabbath, something happened in the spacious old house-of-study. The Rav was standing by the ark, wrapped in his Tallis, and expounding to a crowded congregation. He had a clear, resonant, deep voice, and when he sent it thundering over the heads of his people, the air seemed to catch fire, and they listened dumbfounded and spellbound. Suddenly the old man stopped in the midst of his exposition, and was silent. The congregation thrilled with speechless expectation. For a minute or two the Rav stood with his piercing gaze fixed on the people, then he deliberately pulled aside the curtain before the ark, opened the ark doors, and turned to the congregation: "Listen, Jews! I know that many of you are thinking of something that has just occurred to me, too. You wonder how it is that I should set myself up to expound the Torah to a townful of Jews, when my own children have cast the Torah behind them. Therefore I now open the ark and declare to you, Jews, before the holy scrolls of the Law, I have no children any more. I am the last Rav of our family!" Hereupon a piteous wail came from out of the women's Shool, but the Rav's sonorous voice soon reduced them to silence, and once more the Torah was being expounded in thunder over the heads of the open-mouthed assembly. Years, a whole decade of them, passed, and still the old Rav walked erect, and not one silver hair showed in his curly beard, and the town was still used to see him before daylight, a tall, solitary figure carrying a stick and a lantern, on his way to the large old Bes ha-Midrash, to study there in solitude--until Mouravanke began to ring with the fame of her Charif, her great new scholar. He was the son of a poor tailor, a pale, thin youth, with a pointed nose and two sharp, black eyes, who had gone away at thirteen or so to study in celebrated, distant academies, whence his name had spread round and about. People said of him, that he was growing up to be a Light of the Exile, that with his scholastic achievements he would outwit the acutest intellects of all past ages; they said that he possessed a brain power that ground "mountains" of Talmud to powder. News came that a quantity of prominent Jewish communities had sent messengers, to ask him to come and be their Rav.