k, and found him lying dead on the road. We
afterwards learnt that even his past penances had not pacified his
conscience, and he wished to observe the penance of Weighing, which
proportions specific punishments to particular sins. But, finding by
careful calculation that his sins were too numerous to be thus atoned
for, he had decided to starve himself to death. Although, as I say, I
had not the strength for such asceticism, I admired it from afar. I
pored over the _Zohar_ and the _Gates of Light_ and the _Tree of Life_
(a work considered too holy to be printed), and I puzzled myself with
the mysteries of the Ten Attributes, and the mystic symbolism of
God's Beard, whereof every hair is a separate channel of Divine grace;
and once I came to comical humiliation from my conceit that I had
succeeded by force of incantations in becoming invisible. As this was
in connection with my wife, who calmly continued looking at me and
talking to me long after I thought I had disappeared, I am reminded to
say something of this companion of my boyish years. For, alas! it was
she that presently disappeared from my vision, being removed by God in
her fifteenth year; so that I, who--being a first-born son, and
allowed by the State to found a family--had been married to her by our
fathers when I was nine and she was eight, had not much chance of
offspring by her; and, indeed, it was in the bearing of our first
child--a still-born boy--that she died, despite the old family amulet
originally imported from Metz and made by Rabbi Eibeschuetz. When,
after her death, it was opened by a suspicious partisan of Emden, sure
enough it contained a heretical inscription: "In the name of the God
of Israel, who dwelleth in the adornment of His might, and in the name
of His anointed Sabbatai Zevi, through whose wounds healing is come to
us, I adjure all spirits and demons not to injure this woman." I need
not say how this contributed to the heat of the controversy in our own
little village; and I think, indeed, it destroyed my last tincture of
Sabbatianism. Looking back now from the brink of the grave, I see how
all is written in the book of fate: for had not my Peninah been taken
from me, or had I accepted one of the many daughters that were offered
me in her stead, I should not have been so free to set out on the
pilgrimage to my dear Master, by whom my life has been enriched and
sanctified beyond its utmost deserving.

At first, indeed, the loss of Pe