y the woman we have saved. And she, too, will win many
souls."

"But how know you?" I whispered, half incredulous.

"So it is borne in upon me," said the Baal Shem, smiling.

And so indeed after many days it came to pass. And so ended this first
strange day with the beloved Master, whose light shines through the
worlds.

VIII

It is now many years since I first saw the Baal Shem, and as many
since I laid him in his grave, yet every word he spake to me is
treasured up in my heart as gold, yea, as fine gold. But the hand of
age is heavy upon me, and lest I may not live to complete even this
briefer story, I shall set down here but the rough impression of his
doctrine left in my mind, hoping to devote a separate volume to these
conversations with my divine Master. And this is the more necessary,
as I said, since every day the delusions and impostures of those who
use his name multiply and grow ranker. Even in his own day, the
Master's doctrine was already, as you will have seen, sufficiently
distorted by souls smaller than his own, and by the refraction of
distance--for how should a true image of him pass from town to town,
by forest and mountain, throughout all that vast empire? The Master's
life alone made clear to me what I had failed to gather from his
followers. Just as their delirious dancings and shrieks and spasms
were abortive attempts to produce his prayer-ecstasy, so in all things
did they but caricature him. But now that he is dead, and these
extravagances are no longer to be checked by his living example, so
monstrous are the deeds wrought and the things taught in his name,
that though the Chassidim he founded are become--despite every
persecution by the orthodox Jews, despite the scourging of their
bodies and the setting of them in the stocks, despite the
excommunication of our order and the closing of our synagogues, and
the burning of our books--a mighty sect throughout the length and the
breadth of Central Europe, yet have I little pleasure in them, little
joy in the spread of the teaching to which I devoted my life. And
sometimes--now that my Master's face no longer shines consolingly
upon me, save in dream and memory--I dare to wonder if the world is
better for his having lived. And indeed at times I find myself
sympathizing with our chief persecutor, the saintly and learned Wilna
Gaon.

And first, since there are now, alas! followers of his who in their
perverted straining after simplicity of