for a while: Is it possible that IT had reached him, too? Who
knows? So many strange things happened during the great days.

I looked at the walls, at the bread, at the candle, at the flame which
had kept flickering, and took my wife by the hand.

"Well--'till we meet again!"

"Yes--'till we meet again!"

That was all. I went out. It was dark on the stairway and there was
the odour of old filth. Surrounded on all sides by the stones and the
darkness, groping down the stairs, I was seized with a tremendous,
powerful and all-absorbing feeling of the new, unknown and joyous
something to which I was going.

ON THE DAY OF THE CRUCIFIXION

On that terrible day, when the universal injustice was committed and
Jesus Christ was crucified in Golgotha among robbers--on that day, from
early morning, Ben-Tovit, a tradesman of Jerusalem, suffered from an
unendurable toothache. His toothache had commenced on the day before,
toward evening; at first his right jaw started to pain him, and one
tooth, the one right next the wisdom tooth, seemed to have risen
somewhat, and when his tongue touched the tooth, he felt a slightly
painful sensation. After supper, however, his toothache had passed, and
Ben-Tovit had forgotten all about it--he had made a profitable deal on
that day, had bartered an old donkey for a young, strong one, so he was
very cheerful and paid no heed to any ominous signs.

And he slept very soundly. But just before daybreak something began to
disturb him, as if some one were calling him on a very important matter,
and when Ben-Tovit awoke angrily, his teeth were aching, aching openly
and maliciously, causing him an acute, drilling pain. And he could no
longer understand whether it was only the same tooth that had ached on
the previous day, or whether others had joined that tooth; Ben-Tovit's
entire mouth and his head were filled with terrible sensations of pain,
as though he had been forced to chew thousands of sharp, red-hot nails,
he took some water into his mouth from an earthen jug--for a minute the
acuteness of the pain subsided, his teeth twitched and swayed like a
wave, and this sensation was even pleasant as compared with the other.

Ben-Tovit lay down again, recalled his new donkey, and thought how
happy he would have been if not for his toothache, and he wanted to fall
asleep. But the water was warm, and five minutes later his toothache
began to rage more severely than ever; Ben-Tovit sat up in