h living, for me at all events.

My object, then, was to return to my country; it was as if I struggled to
undo all that I had done. All I could hope for was to soften the
hardships of the slow but certain passage to the grave.

These are the thoughts of declining years and not of youth. The young man
looks only to the present, believes that the sky will always smile upon
him, and laughs at philosophy as it vainly preaches of old age, misery,
repentance, and, worst of all, abhorred death.

Such were my thoughts twenty-six years ago; what must they be now, when I
am all alone, poor, despised, and impotent. They would kill me if I did
not resolutely subdue them, for whether for good or ill my heart is still
young. Of what use are desires when one can no longer satisfy them? I
write to kill ennui, and I take a pleasure in writing. Whether I write
sense or nonsense, what matters? I am amused, and that is enough.

'Malo scriptor delirus, inersque videri,
Dum mea delectent mala me vel denique fallunt,
Quam sapere.'

When I came back I found Mardocheus at supper with his numerous family,
composed of eleven or twelve individuals, and including his mother--an
old woman of ninety, who looked very well. I noticed another Jew of
middle age; he was the husband of his eldest daughter, who did not strike
me as pretty; but the younger daughter, who was destined for a Jew of
Pesaro, whom she had never seen, engaged all my attention. I remarked to
her that if she had not seen her future husband she could not be in love
with him, whereupon she replied in a serious voice that it was not
necessary to be in love before one married. The old woman praised the
girl for this sentiment, and said she had not been in love with her
husband till the first child was born.

I shall call the pretty Jewess Leah, as I have good reasons for not using
her real name.

While they were enjoying their meal I sat down beside her and tried to
make myself as agreeable as possible, but she would not even look at me.

My supper was excellent, and my bed very comfortable.

The next day my landlord told me that I could give my linen to the maid,
and that Leah could get it up for me.

I told him I had relished my supper, but that I should like the foie gras
every day as I had a dispensation.

"You shall have some to-morrow, but Leah is the only one of us who eats
it."

"Then Leah must take it with me, and you can tell her that I shall give
her s