sciousness that dares to look on God face to face, not content,
with Moses, to see the back parts; nor, with the Israelites, to gaze
on Moses. _Ach_, why was I not made four-square like Moses
Mendelssohn, or sublimely one-sided like Savonarola; I, too, could
have died to save humanity, if I did not at the same time suspect
humanity was not worth saving. To be Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in
one, what a tragedy! No, your limited intellects are happier: those
that see life in some one noble way, and in unity find strength. I
should have loved to be a Milton--like one of your English cathedrals,
austere, breathing sacred memories, resonant with the roll of a great
organ, with painted windows, on which the shadows of the green boughs
outside wave and flicker, and just hint of Nature. Or one of your
aristocrats with a stately home in the country, and dogs and horses,
and a beautiful wife. In short, I should like to be your husband. Or,
failing that, my own wife, a simple, loving creature, whose idea of
culture is cabbages. _Ach_, why was my soul wider than the Ghetto I
was born in? why did I not mate with my kind?" He broke into a fit of
coughing, and "little Lucy" thought suddenly of the story that all his
life-sadness and song-sadness was due to his rejection by some Jewish
girl in his own family circle.

"I tire you," she said. "Do not talk to me. I will sit here a little
longer."

"Nay, I have tired _you_. But I could not but tell you my thoughts;
for you are at once a child who loves and a woman who understands me.
And to be understood is rarer than to be loved. My very parents never
understood me. Nay, were they my parents--the mild man of business,
the clever, clear-headed, romance-disdaining Dutchwoman, God bless
her? No, my father was Germany, my mother was the Ghetto. The brooding
spirit of Israel breathes through me that engendered the tender humor
of her sages, the celestial fantasies of her saints. Perhaps I should
have been happier had I married the first black-eyed Jewess whose
father would put up with a penniless poet. I might have kept a kitchen
with double crockery and munched Passover cakes at Easter. Every
Friday night I should have come home from the labors of the week and
found the table-cloth shining like my wife's face, and the Sabbath
candles burning, and the Angels of Peace sitting hidden beneath their
great invisible wings, and my wife, piously conscious of having thrown
the dough on the fire, wo