eparing for the
feast, what time the mail was bringing the news of the sudden death of
the bride from small-pox.

At the moment he had sorrowed as little for his unseen bride as his
father, who, having made four hundred guldens by his son in an
honorable way, might now hope to make another four hundred. "The cap
and the silver-clasped Bible are already mine," the child had told
himself, "and a bride will also not be long wanting, while my
wedding-disputation can serve me again." The mother alone had been
inconsolable, cakes and preserves being of a perishable nature,
especially when there is no place to hide them from the secret attacks
of a disappointed bridegroom. Only now did poor Maimon realize how his
life had again missed ease! For he had fallen at last into the hands of
the widow of Nesvig, with a public-house in the outskirts and an only
daughter. Merely moderately prosperous but inordinately ambitious, she
had dared to dream of this famous wonder-child for her Sarah. Refusal
daunted her not, nor did she cease her campaign till, after trying
every species of trick and manoeuvre and misrepresentation, every
weapon of law and illegality, she had carried home the reluctant
bridegroom. By what unscrupulous warfare she had wrested him from his
last chance of wealth, flourishing a prior marriage-contract in the
face of the rich merchant who unluckily staying the night in her inn,
had proudly shown her the document which betrothed his daughter to the
renowned Solomon! The boy's mother dying at this juncture, the widow
had not shrunk from obtaining from the law-courts an attachment on the
dead body, by which its interment was interdicted till the termination
of the suit. In vain the rich merchant had kidnapped the bridegroom in
his carriage at dead of night, the boy was pursued and recaptured, to
lead a life of constant quarrel with his mother-in-law, and exchange
flying crockery at meal-times; to take refuge in distant tutorships,
and in the course of years, after begetting several children, to drift
further and further, and finally disappear beyond the frontier.

Poor Sarah! He thought of her now with softness. A likeable wench
enough, active and sensible, if with something of her mother's
pertinacity. No doubt she was still the widow's right hand in the
public-house. Ah, how handsome she had looked that day when the
drunken Prince Radziwil, in his mad freak at the inn, had set
approving eyes upon her: "Really a pre