ninah, to whom I had become quite
attached--for she honored my studies and earned our bread, and was
pious even to my mother's liking--threw me into a fit of gloomy
brooding. My longing for the living waters and the green
pastures--partially appeased by Peninah's love as she grew up--revived
and became more passionate. I sought relief in my old Cabalistic
studies, and essayed again to perform incantations, thinking in some
vague way that now that I had a dear friend among the dead, she would
help me to master the divine mysteries. Often I summoned up her form,
but when I strove to clasp it, it faded away, so that I was left
dubious whether I had succeeded. I had wild fits of weeping both by
day and night, not of grief for Peninah, but because I seemed somehow
to live in a great desert of sand. But even had I known what I
desired, I could not have opened my heart to my father-in-law (in
whose house, many versts from my native village, I continued to
reside), for he was a good, plain man, who expected me to do
posthumous honor to his daughter by my Rabbinical renown. I was indeed
long since qualified as a Rabbi, and only waited for some reputable
post.

But a Rabbi I was never to be. For it was then that the luminous
shadow of the Baal Shem fell upon my life.

II

There came to our village one winter day a stranger who had neither
the air of a _Schnorrer_ (beggar) nor of an itinerant preacher; nor,
from the brief time he spent at the Beth-Hamidrash, where I sat
pursuing droningly my sterile studies, did he appear to be a scholar.
He was a lean, emaciated, sickly young man, but his eyes had the fire
of a lion's, and his glance was as a god's. When he spoke his voice
pierced you, and when he was silent his presence filled the room.
From Eliphaz the Pedlar (who knew everything but the Law) I learnt at
last that he was an emissary of Rabbi Baer, the celebrated chief of
the Chassidim (the pious ones).

"The Chassidim!" I cried. "They died out with Judah the Saint."

"Nay, this is a new order. Have you not heard of the Baal Shem?"

Now, from time to time I had heard vague rumors of a new
wonder-working saint who had apparently succeeded far better with
Cabalah than I, and had even gathered a following, but the new and
obscure movement had not touched our out-of-the-way village, which was
wholly given over to the old Sabbatian controversy, and so my
knowledge of it was but shadowy. I thought it better to feign absolute