n
her finger, and says, solemnly, "I hereby take thee to be my wife,
according to the laws of God and of Israel." "But now," he adds, with a
trembling voice, "now I must go to Spain. Farewell! For seven years thou
must wait for me." With that he hurried away, and Sara, weeping, told
the tale to her father, who roared and raged, "Cut off thy hair, for
thou art now a married woman." Then he wanted to ride after Abraham to
compel him to write a letter of divorce; but Abraham was over the hills
and far away, and the father silently returned to his house. And when
Beautiful Sara was helping him to draw off his boots, and trying to
soothe him, saying that Abraham would return in seven years, he cursed,
and cried, "Seven years shalt thou be a beggar," and shortly after he
died.

And so old memories swept through her soul like a hurried play of
shadows, the images intermixing and blending strangely, while between
them came and went half-familiar, half-strange bearded faces, and large
flowers with marvelously spreading foliage. Then the Rhine seemed to
murmur the melodies of the _Agade_, and from its waters the pictures, as
large as life, but wild and distorted, came forth one by one. There was
Father Abraham anxiously breaking the idols into pieces which
immediately flew together again; Mizri defending himself fiercely
against the maddened Moses; Mount Sinai flashing and flaming; King
Pharaoh swimming in the Red Sea, holding his pointed gold crown tightly
in his teeth, while frogs with human faces swam along behind, in the
foaming, roaring waves, and a dark giant-hand rose up threatening from
below.

Yonder was the Mouse Tower of Bishop Hatto, and the boat was just
shooting through the Bingen Eddy. By this time Beautiful Sara had
somewhat awakened from her dreams, and she gazed at the hills on the
shore, on the summits of which lights of castles were gleaming, and at
the foot of which the mist, shimmering in the moonlight, was beginning
to rise. Suddenly she seemed to see her friends and relatives, as they,
with corpse-like faces and flowing shrouds, passed in awful procession
along the Rhine.... The world grew dark before her eyes, an icy current
ran through her soul, and, as if in sleep, she only heard the Rabbi
repeating the night-prayer slowly and painfully, as if at a deathbed.
Dreamily she stammered the words, "Ten thousand to the right, ten
thousand to the left, to protect the king from the terrors of the
night."

T