The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Vi Part 16

In profane poetry we find, as I have already signified, first the cycle of sagas of the _Nibelungen_ and the _Heldenbuch_, or _Book of Heroes_.

In them prevails all the pre-Christian manner of thought and of feeling; in them rude strength has not as yet been softened by chivalry. There the stern Kempe-warriors of the North stand like stone images, and the gentle gleam and the more refined breath of Christianity have not as yet penetrated their iron armor. But little by little a light dawns in the old Teutonic forest; the ancient idolatrous oak-trees are felled, and we see a brighter field of battle where Christ wars with the heathen. This appears in the saga-cycle of Charlemagne, in which what we really see is the Crusades reflecting themselves with their religious influences. And now from the spiritualizing power of Christianity, chivalry, the most characteristic feature of the Middle Ages, unfolds itself, and is at last sublimed into a spiritual knighthood. This secular knighthood appears most attractively glorified in the sagacycle of King Arthur, in which the sweetest gallantry, the most refined courtesy, and the most adventurous pa.s.sion for combat prevail. Among the charmingly eccentric arabesques and fantastic flower-pictures of this poem we are greeted by the admirable Iwain, the all-surpa.s.sing Lancelot du Lac, and the bold, gallant, and true, but somewhat tiresome, Wigalois. Nearly allied and interwoven with this cyclus of sagas is that of the Holy Grail, in which the spiritual knighthood is glorified; and in this epoch we meet three of the grandest poems of the Middle Ages, the _t.i.turel_, the _Parsifal_, and the _Lohengrin_. Here indeed we find ourselves face to face with Romantic Poetry. We look deeply into her great sorrowing eyes; she twines around us, unsuspectingly, her fine scholastic nets, and draws us down into the bewildering, deluding depths of medieval mysticism.

At last, however, we come to poems of that age which are not unconditionally devoted to Christian spiritualism; nay, it is often indirectly reflected on, where the poet disentangles himself from the bonds of abstract Christian virtues and plunges delighted into the world of pleasure and of glorified sensuousness; and it is not the worst poet, by any means, who has left us the princ.i.p.al work thus inspired. This is _Tristan and Isolde_; and I must declare that Gottfried von Stra.s.sburg, the composer of this most beautiful poem of the Middle Ages, is perhaps also its greatest poet, towering far above all the splendor of Wolfram von Eschenbach, whom we so admire in _Parsifal_ and the fragments of _t.i.turel_. We are at last permitted to praise Gottfried unconditionally, though in his own time his book was certainly regarded as G.o.dless, and similar works, among them the _Lancelot_, were considered as dangerous.

And some very serious results did indeed ensue. The fair Francesca da Polenta and her handsome friend had to pay dearly for the pleasure of reading on a summer day in such a book; but the trouble came not from the reading, but from their suddenly ceasing to read.

There is in all these poems of the Middle Ages a marked character which distinguishes them from those of Greece and Rome. We characterize this difference by calling the first Romantic and the other Cla.s.sic. Yet these appellations are only uncertain rubrics, and have led hitherto to the most discouraging, wearisome entanglements, which become worse since we give to antique poetry the designation of "Plastic," instead of "Cla.s.sic." From this arose much misunderstanding; for, justly, all poets should work their material plastically, be it Christian or heathen; they should set it forth in clear outlines; in short, plastic form should be the main desideratum in modern Romantic art, quite as much as in the ancient. And are not the figures in the _Divina Commedia_ of Dante or in the pictures of Raphael as plastic as those in Virgil? The difference lies in this, that the plastic forms in ancient art are absolutely identical with the subject or the idea which the artist would set forth, as, for example, that the wanderings of Ulysses mean nothing else than the journeyings of a man named Odysseus, who was son of Laertes and husband of Penelope; and further, that the Bacchus which we see in the Louvre is nothing else than the graceful, winsome son of Semele, with audacious melancholy in his eyes and sacred voluptuousness on his soft and arching lips. It is quite otherwise in Romantic art, in which the wild wanderings of a knight have ever an esoteric meaning, symbolizing perhaps the erring course of life. The dragon whom he overcomes is sin; the almond which from afar casts comforting perfume to the traveler is the Trinity, G.o.d the Father, G.o.d the Son, and G.o.d the Holy Ghost, which are three in one, as sh.e.l.l, fibre, and kernel make one nut. When Homer describes the armor of a hero, it is a good piece of work, worth such and such a number of oxen; but when a monk of the Middle Ages describes in his poems the garments of the Mother of G.o.d, one may be sure that by this garb he means as many virtues, and a peculiar significance lies hidden under this holy covering of the immaculate virginity of Maria, who, as her son is the almond-kernel, is naturally sung as the almond-flower. That is the character of the medieval poetry which we call Romantic.

Cla.s.sic art had only to represent the finite or determined, and its forms could be one and the same with the idea of the artist. Romantic art had to set forth, or rather signify, the infinite and purely spiritual, and it took refuge in a system of traditional, or rather of parabolistic symbols, as Christ himself had sought to render clear his spiritualistic ideas by all kinds of beautiful parables. Hence the mystical, problematic, marvelous, and transcendental in the artwork of the Middle Ages, in which fantasy makes her most desperate efforts to depict the purely spiritual by means of sensible images, and invents colossal follies, piling Pelion on Ossa and _Parsifal_ on _t.i.turel_ to attain to heaven.

Among other races where poetry attempted to display the infinite, and where monstrous fancies appeared, as, for instance, among the Scandinavians and Indians, we find poems which, being romantic, are given that cla.s.sification.

We cannot say much as to the music of the Middle Ages, for original doc.u.ments, which might have served for our guidance, are wanting. It was not till late in the sixteenth century that the masterpieces of Catholic church music, which cannot be too highly praised, appeared. These express in the most exquisite manner pure Christian spirituality. The recitative arts, which are spiritual from their very nature, could indeed flourish fairly in Christianity, yet it was less favorable to those of design, for as these had to represent the victory of mind over matter, and yet must use matter as the means wherewith to work, they had to solve a problem against Nature. Hence we find in sculpture and painting those revolting subjects--martyrdoms, crucifixions, dying saints, and the flesh crushed in every form. Such themes were martyrdom for sculpture; and when I contemplate those distorted images in which Christian asceticism and renunciation of the senses are expressed by distorted, pious heads, long thin arms, starveling legs, and awkwardly fitting garments, I feel an indescribable compa.s.sion for the artists of that time. The painters were indeed more favored, for the material for their work, because of its susceptivity to varied play of color, did not antagonize spirituality so obstinately as the material of the sculptors, and yet they were obliged to load the sighing canvas with the most repulsive forms of suffering. In truth, when we regard many galleries which contain nothing but scenes of bloodshed, scourging, and beheading, one might suppose that the old masters had painted for the collection of an executioner.

But human genius can transform and glorify even the unnatural; many painters solved this problem of making what was revolting beautiful and elevating--the Italians, especially, succeeding in paying tribute to beauty at the expense of spirituality, and in rising to that ideality which attained perfection in so many pictures of the Madonna. As regards this subject the Catholic clergy always made some concession to the physical. This image of immaculate beauty which is glorified by maternal love and suffering had the privilege of being made famous by poets and painters, and adorned with all charms of the sense, for it was a magnet which could attract the mult.i.tude to the lap of Christianity. Madonna Maria was the beautiful _dame du comptoir_ of the Catholic Church, who, with her beautiful eyes, attracted and held fast its customers, especially the barbarians of the North.

Architecture had in the Middle Ages the same character as the other arts, as indeed all the manifestations of life then harmonized so marvelously with one another. The tendency to parable shows itself here, as in poetry. When we now enter a Gothic cathedral, we hardly suspect the esoteric sense of its stone symbolism; only a general impression pierces our soul; we realize an elevation of feeling and mortification of the flesh. The interior is a hollow cross, and we wander among the instruments of martyrdom itself; the variegated windows cast on us red and green light, like blood and corruption; funeral songs wail about us; under our feet are mortuary tablets and decay; and the soul soars with the colossal columns to a giddy height, tearing itself with pain from the body, which falls like a weary, worn-out garment to the ground.

But when we behold the exteriors of these Gothic cathedrals, these enormous buildings which are wrought so aerially, so finely, delicately, transparently, cut as it were into such open work that one might take them for Brabant lace in marble, then we feel truly the power of that age which could so master stone itself that it seems spectrally transfused with spiritual life, and thus even the hardest material declares Christian spirituality.

But arts are only the mirror of life, and, as Catholicism died away, so its sounds grew fainter and its lights dimmer in art. During the Reformation Catholic song gradually disappeared in Europe, and in its place we see the long-slumbering poetry of Greece re-awakening to life.

But it was only an artificial spring, a work of the gardener, not of the sun, and the trees and flowers were in close pots, and a gla.s.s canopy protected them from cold and northern winds.

In the world's history no event is the direct result of another; all events rather exert a mutual influence. It was by no means due only to the Greek scholars who emigrated to Europe after the fall of Byzantium that a love for Grecian culture and the desire to imitate it became so general among us; a similar Protestantism prevailed then in art as well as in life. Leo X., that splendid Medici, was as zealous a Protestant as Luther, and as there was a Latin prose protest in Wittenberg, so they protested poetically in Rome in stone, color, and _ottaverime_. And do not the mighty marble images of Michelangelo, the laughing nymphs of Giulio Romano, and the joyous intoxication of life in the verses of Ludovico Ariosto form a protesting opposition to the old, gloomy, worn-out Catholicism? The painters of Italy waged a polemic against priestdom which was perhaps more effective than that of the Saxon theologian. The blooming rosy flesh in the pictures of t.i.tian is all Protestantism. The limbs of his Venus are more thorough _theses_ than those which the German monk pasted on the church door of Wittenberg.

Then it was that men felt as if suddenly freed from the force and pressure of a thousand years; the artists, most of all, again breathed freely as the nightmare of Christianity seemed to spin whirling from their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and they threw themselves with enthusiasm into the sea of Greek joyousness from whose foam rose to them G.o.ddesses of beauty.

Painters once more limned the ambrosial joys of Olympus; sculptors carved, with the joy of yore, old heroes from the marble; poets again sang the house of Atreus and Laius; and so the age of new cla.s.sic poetry began.

As modern life was most perfectly developed in France under Louis XIV., so the new cla.s.sic poetry received there its most finished perfection, and, in a measure, an independent originality. Through the political influence of that great king this poetry spread over Europe; in Italy, its home, it a.s.sumed a French color, and thence the heroes of French tragedy went with the Anjous to Spain; it pa.s.sed with Henrietta Maria to England, and we Germans, as a matter of course, built our clumsy temples to the powdered Olympus of Versailles. The most famous high-priest of this religion was Gottsched, that wonderful long wig whom our dear Goethe has so admirably described in his memoirs.

Lessing was the literary Arminius who delivered our theatre from this foreign rule. He showed us the nothingness, the laughableness, the flat and faded folly of those imitations of the French theatre, which were in turn imitated from the Greek. But he became the founder of modern German literature, not only by his criticism, but by his own works of art. This man pursued with enthusiasm and sincerity art, theology, antiquity, and archaeology, the art of poetry, history--all with the same zeal and to the same purpose. There lives and breathes in all his works the same great social idea, the same progressive humanity, the same religion of reason, whose John he was, and whose Messiah we await. This religion he always preached, but, alas! too often alone and in the desert. And there was one art only of which he knew nothing--that of changing stones into bread, for he consumed the greatest part of his life in poverty and under hard pressure--a curse which clings to nearly all great German geniuses, and will last, it may be, till ended by political freedom.

Lessing was more inspired by political feelings than men supposed, a peculiarity which we do not find among his contemporaries, and we can now see for the first time what he meant in sketching the duo-despotism in _Emilia Galotti_. He was regarded then as a champion of freedom of thought and against clerical intolerance; for his theological writings were better understood. The fragments _On the Education of the Human Race_, which Eugene Rodrigue has translated into French, may give an idea of the vast comprehensiveness of Lessing's mind. The two critical works which exercised the most influence on art are his _Hamburg Dramatic Art (Hamburgische Dramaturgie)_, and his _Laokoon, or the Limits of Painting and Poetry_. His most remarkable theatrical pieces are _Emilia Galotti, Minna von Barnhelm,_ and _Nathan the Wise_.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born at Camenz in Lausitz, January 22, 1729, and died in Brunswick, February 15, 1781. He was a thorough-going man who, when he destroyed something old in a battle, at the same time always created something new and better. "He was," says a German author, "like those pious Jews, who, during the second building of the Temple, were often troubled by attacks of the enemy, and so fought with one hand while with the other they worked at the house of G.o.d." This is not the place where I can say more of Lessing, but I cannot refrain from remarking that he is, of all who are recorded in the whole history of literature, the writer whom I love best.

I will here mention another author who worked in the same spirit, with the same object, as Lessing, and who may be regarded as his successor.

It is true that his eulogy is here also out of place, since he occupies an altogether peculiar position in literature, and a unique relation to his time and to his contemporaries. It is Johann Gottfried Herder, born in 1744 at Mohrungen, in East Prussia, and who died at Weimar in the year 1803.

Literary history is the great "Morgue" where every one seeks his dead, those whom he loves or to whom he is related. When I see there, among so many dead who were of little interest, a Lessing or a Herder, with their n.o.ble, manly countenances, my heart throbs; I cannot pa.s.s them by without hastily kissing their dead lips.

Yet if Lessing did so much to destroy the habit of imitating French second-hand Greekdom, he still, by calling attention to the true works of art of Greek antiquity, gave an impulse to a new kind of ridiculous imitations. By his battling with religious superst.i.tion he advanced the sober search for clearer views which spread widely in Berlin, which had in the late blessed Nicolai its chief organ, and in the General German Library its a.r.s.enal. The most deplorable mediocrity began to show itself more repulsively than ever, and flatness and insipidity blew themselves up like the frog in the fable.

It is a great mistake to suppose that Goethe, who had already come before the world, was at once universally recognized as a writer of commanding genius. His _Gotz von Berlichingen_ and his _Werther_ were received with a degree of enthusiasm, to be sure; but so, too, were the works of common bunglers, and Goethe had but a small niche in the temple of literature. As I have said, _Gotz_ and _Werther_ had a spirited reception, but more on account of the subject-matter than their artistic merits, which very few appreciated in these masterworks. _Gotz_ was a dramatized romance of chivalry, and such writings were then the rage. In _Werther_ the world saw the reproduction of a true story, that of young Jerusalem, who shot himself dead for love, and thereby, in those dead-calm days, made a great noise. People read with tears his touching letters; some shrewdly observed that the manner in which Werther had been banished from aristocratic society had increased his weariness of life. The discussion of suicide caused the book to be still more discussed; it occurred to several fools on this occasion to make away with themselves, and the book, owing to its subject, went off like a shot. The novels of August Lafontaine were just as much read, and, as this author wrote incessantly, he was more famous than Wolfgang von Goethe. Wieland was the great poet then, with whom perhaps might be cla.s.sed the ode-maker, Rambler of Berlin. Wieland was honored idolatrously, far more at that time than Goethe. Iffland ruled the theatre with his dreary _bourgeois_ dramas, and Kotzebue with his flat and frivolously witty jests.

It was in opposition to this literature that there sprang up in Germany, at the end of the last century, a school which we call the Romantic, and of which August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel have presented themselves as managing agents. Jena, where these and many other souls in like accord found themselves "off and on," was the centre from which the new esthetic doctrine spread. I say doctrine, for this school began with judgments of the art-works of the past and recipes for art-works of the future, and in both directions the Schlegel school rendered great service to esthetic criticism. By judging of such works of art as already existed, either their faults and failures were indicated, or their merits and beauties brought to light. In controversy and in indicating artistic shortcomings, the Schlegels were entirely imitators of old Lessing; they obtained possession of his great battle-blade, but the arm of August William Schlegel was too tenderly weak and the eyes of his brother Friedrich too mystically clouded for the former to strike so strongly and the latter so keenly and accurately as Lessing. True, in descriptive criticism, where the beauties of a work of art are to be set forth--where it came to a delicate detection of its characteristics and bringing them home to our intelligence--then, compared to the Schlegels, old Lessing was nowhere. But what shall I say as to their recipes for preparing works of art? There we find in the Schlegels a weakness which we think may also be detected in Lessing; for the latter is as weak in affirming as he is strong in denying. He rarely succeeds in laying down a fundamental principle, still more seldom a correct one.

He wants the firm basis of a philosophy or of a philosophical system.

And this is still more sadly the case with the brothers Schlegel.

Much is fabled as to the influence of Fichtean Idealism and Sch.e.l.ling's Philosophy of Nature on the Romantic school, which is even declared to have sprung from it. But I see here, at the most, only the influence of certain fragments of thoughts from Fichte and Sch.e.l.ling, and not at all that of a philosophy. This may be explained on the simple ground that Fichte's philosophy had lost its hold, and Fichte himself had made it lose its interest by a mingling of tenets and ideas from Sch.e.l.ling; and because, on the other hand, Sch.e.l.ling had never set forth a philosophy, but only a vague philosophizing, an unsteady, vacillating improvisation of poetical philosophemes. It may be that it was from the Fichtean Idealism--that deeply ironical system, where the I is opposed to the not--I and annihilates it--that the Romantic school took the doctrine of irony which the late Solger especially developed, and which the Schlegels at first regarded as the soul of art, but which they subsequently found to be fruitless and exchanged for the more positive axioms of the Theory of Ident.i.ty of Sch.e.l.ling. Sch.e.l.ling, who then taught in Jena, had indeed a great personal influence on the Romantic school; he is, what is not generally known in France, also a bit of a poet; and it is said that he was in doubt whether he should not deliver all his philosophical doctrines in a poetic or even metrical form. This doubt characterizes the man.

THE RABBI OF BACHARACH[59] (1840)

With kindly greeting, the Legend of the Rabbi of Bacharach is dedicated to his friend HENRY LAUBE by the AUTHOR

A FRAGMENT

TRANSLATED BY CHARLES G.o.dFREY LELAND

TRANSLATION REVISED BY PAUL BERNARD THOMAS

CHAPTER I

On the Lower Rhine, where its banks begin to lose their smiling aspect, where the hills and cliffs with their romantic ruined castles rise more defiantly, and a wilder, sterner majesty prevails, there lies, like a strange and fearful tale of olden times, the gloomy and ancient town of Bacharach. But these walls, with their toothless battlements and blind turrets, in whose nooks and niches the winds whistle and the sparrows build their nests, were not always so decayed and fallen, and in these poverty-stricken, repulsive muddy lanes which one sees through the ruined gate, there did not always reign that dreary silence which only now and then is broken by the crying of children, the scolding of women, and the lowing of cows. These walls were once proud and strong, and these lanes were alive with fresh, free life, power and pomp, joy and sorrow, much love and much hate. For Bacharach once belonged to those munic.i.p.alities which were founded by the Romans during their rule on the Rhine; and its inhabitants, though the times which came after were very stormy, and though they had to submit first to the Hohenstaufen, and then to the Wittelsbach authority, managed, following the example of the other cities on the Rhine, to maintain a tolerably free commonwealth.

This consisted of an alliance of separate social elements, in which the patrician elders and those of the guilds, who were subdivided according to their different trades, both strove for power; so that while they were bound in union to resist and guard against outside robber-n.o.bles, they were, nevertheless, constantly having domestic dissensions over disputed interests. Consequently there was but little social intercourse, much mistrust, and not infrequently actual outbursts of pa.s.sion. The ruling governor sat in his lofty castle of Sareck, and swooped down like his falcon, whenever he was called, and often when not called. The clergy ruled in darkness by darkening the souls of others.

One of the most forsaken and helpless of the social elements, which had been gradually bound down by local laws, was the little Jewish community. This had first settled in Bacharach in the days of the Romans, and during the later persecution of the Jews it had taken in many a flock of fugitive co-religionists.

The great oppression of the Jews began with the crusades, and raged most furiously about the middle of the fourteenth century, at the end of the great pestilence, which, like all other great public disasters, was attributed to the Jews, because people declared they had drawn down the wrath of G.o.d, and, with the help of the lepers, had poisoned the wells.

The enraged populace, especially the hordes of Flagellants, or half-naked men and women, who, lashing themselves for penance and singing a mad hymn to the Virgin, swept over South Germany and the Rhenish provinces, murdered in those days many thousand Jews, tortured others, or baptized them by force. There was another accusation which in earlier times and all through the Middle Ages, even to the beginning of the last century, cost much blood and suffering. This was the ridiculous story, recurring with disgusting frequency in chronicle and legend, that the Jews stole the consecrated wafer, and pierced it with knives till blood ran from it; and to this it was added that at the feast of the Pa.s.sover the Jews slew Christian children to use their blood in the night sacrifice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BACHARACH ON THE RHINE]

Consequently on the day of this festival the Jews, hated for their wealth, their religion, and the debts due to them, were entirely in the hands of their enemies, who could easily bring about their destruction by spreading the report of such a child-murder, and perhaps even secretly putting a b.l.o.o.d.y infant's corpse in the house of a Jew thus accused. Then at night they would attack the Jews at their prayers, and murder, plunder, and baptize them; and great miracles would be wrought by the dead child aforesaid, whom the Church would eventually canonize.

Saint Werner is one of these holy beings, and in his honor the magnificent abbey of Oberwesel was founded. The latter is now one of the most beautiful ruins on the Rhine, and with the Gothic grandeur of its long ogival windows, proud and lofty pillars, and marvelous stone-carving, it strangely enchants us when we wander by it on some bright, green summer's day, and do not know the story of its origin. In honor of this saint there were also three great churches built on the Rhine, and innumerable Jews murdered and maltreated. All this happened in the year 1287; and in Bacharach, where one of these Saint Werner's churches stood, the Jews suffered much misery and persecution. However, they remained there for two centuries after, protected from such outbreaks of popular rage, though they were continually subject to spite and threats.

Yet the more they were oppressed by hate from without, the more earnestly and tenderly did the Jews of Bacharach cherish their domestic life within, and the deeper was the growth among them of piety and the fear of G.o.d. An ideal example of a life given to G.o.d was seen in their Rabbi Abraham, who, though still a young man, was famed far and wide for his learning. He was born in Bacharach, and his father, who had been the rabbi there before him, had charged him in his last will to devote his life to that office and never to leave the place unless for fear of life. This command, except for a cabinet full of rare books, was all that his parent, who had lived in poverty and learning, left him.

Rabbi Abraham, however, was a very rich man, for he had married the only daughter of his father's brother, who had been a prosperous dealer in jewelry, and whose possessions he had inherited. A few gossips in the community hinted now and then that the Rabbi had married for money. But the women all denied this, declaring that the Rabbi, long ere he went to Spain, had been in love with "Beautiful Sara," and recalling how she had awaited his return for seven years, while, as a matter of fact, he had already wedded her against the will of her father, and even without her own consent, by the betrothal-ring. For every Jew can make a Jewish girl his lawful wife, if he can succeed in putting a ring on her finger, and say at the same time: "I take thee for my wife, according to the law of Moses and Israel." And when Spain was mentioned, the same gossips were wont to smile in the same significant manner, all because of a vague rumor that Rabbi Abraham, though he had studied the holy law industriously enough at the theological school in Toledo, had nevertheless followed Christian customs and become imbued with habits of free thinking, like many of the Spanish Jews who at that time had attained a very remarkable degree of culture.

And yet in the bottom of their hearts these gossips put no faith in such reports; for ever since his return from Spain the daily life of the Rabbi had been pure, pious, and earnest in every way. He performed every detail of all religious customs and ceremonies with painstaking conscientiousness; he fasted every Monday and Thursday--only on Sabbaths and feast days did he indulge in meat or wine; his time was pa.s.sed in prayer and study; by day he taught the Law to students, whom his fame had drawn to Bacharach; and by night he gazed on the stars in heaven, or into the eyes of Beautiful Sara. His married life was childless, yet there was no lack of life or gaiety in his home. The great hall in his house, which stood near the synagogue, was open to the whole community, so that people went in and out without ceremony, some to offer short prayers, others to gather news, or to hold a consultation when in trouble. Here the children played on Sabbath mornings while the weekly "section" was being read; here people met for wedding and funeral processions, and quarreled or were reconciled; here, too, those who were cold found a warm stove, and those who were hungry, a well-spread table.

And, moreover, the Rabbi, as well as his wife, had a mult.i.tude of relatives, brothers and sisters, with their wives and children, and an endless array of uncles and cousins, all of whom looked up to the Rabbi as the head of the family, and so made themselves at home in his house, never failing to dine with him on all great festivals.

Special among these grand gatherings in the Rabbi's house was the annual celebration of the Pa.s.sover, a very ancient and remarkable feast which the Jews all over the world still hold every year in the month Nissen, in eternal remembrance of their deliverance from Egyptian servitude.

This takes place as follows:

As soon as it is dark the matron of the family lights the lamps, spreads the table-cloth, places in its midst three flat loaves of unleavened bread, covers them with a napkin, and places on them six little dishes containing symbolical food, that is, an egg, lettuce, horse-radish, the bone of a lamb, and a brown mixture of raisins, cinnamon, and nuts. At this table the father of the family sits with all his relatives and friends, and reads to them from a very curious book called the _Agade_, whose contents are a strange mixture of legends of their forefathers, wondrous tales of Egypt, disputed questions of theology, prayers, and festival songs. During this feast there is a grand supper, and even during the reading there is at specified times tasting of the symbolical food and nibbling of Pa.s.sover bread, while four cups of red wine are drunk. Mournfully merry, seriously gay, and mysteriously secret as some old dark legend, is the character of this nocturnal festival, and the traditional singing intonation with which the _Agade_ is read by the father, and now and then reechoed in chorus by the hearers, first thrills the inmost soul as with a shudder, then calms it as mother's lullaby, and again startles it so suddenly into waking that even those Jews who have long fallen away from the faith of their fathers and run after strange joys and honors, are moved to their very hearts, when by chance the old, well-known tones of the Pa.s.sover songs ring in their ears.

And so Rabbi Abraham once sat in his great hall surrounded by relatives, disciples, and many other guests, to celebrate the great feast of the Pa.s.sover. Everything was unusually brilliant; over the table hung the gaily embroidered silk canopy, whose gold fringes touched the floor; the plates of symbolic food shone invitingly, as did the tall wine goblets, adorned with embossed pictures of scenes in holy legends. The men sat in their black cloaks and black low hats, and white collars, the women, in wonderful glittering garments of Lombard stuffs, wore on their heads and necks ornaments of gold and pearls, while the silver Sabbath lamp cast its festive light on the cheerful, devout faces of parents and children.

On the purple velvet cushions of a chair, higher than the others, reclined, as custom requires, Rabbi Abraham, who read and sang the _Agade_, while the gay a.s.sembly joined in, or answered in the appointed places. The Rabbi also wore the prescribed black festival garment, his n.o.bly-formed, but somewhat severe features had a milder expression than usual, his lips smiled through his dark-brown beard as if they would fain say something kind, while in his eyes one could see happy remembrances combined with some strange foreboding. Beautiful Sara, who sat on the high velvet cushion with her husband, as hostess, had on none of her jewelry--nothing but white linen enveloped her slender form and innocent face. This face was touchingly beautiful, even as all Jewish beauty is of a peculiarly moving kind; for the consciousness of the deep wretchedness, the bitter ignominy, and the evil dangers amid which their kindred and friends dwell, imparts to their lovely features an expression of soulful sadness and watchful, loving anxiety, which particularly charms our hearts. So on this evening Beautiful Sara sat looking into the eyes of her husband, yet glancing ever and anon at the beautiful parchment book of the _Agade_ which lay before her, bound in gold and velvet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOUSE IN BACHARACH]

It was an old heirloom, with ancient wine stains on it, and had come down from the days of her grandfather; and in it there were many boldly and brightly-colored pictures, which as a little girl she had often looked at so eagerly on Pa.s.sover evenings. They represented all kinds of Bible incidents--Abraham breaking with a hammer the idols of his father and the angels appearing to him; Moses slaying Mizri; Pharaoh sitting in state on his throne, and the frogs giving him no peace even at the table; his death by drowning--the Lord be praised!--the children of Israel cautiously crossing the Red Sea, and then standing open-mouthed, with their sheep, cows, and oxen, before Mount Sinai; pious King David playing the harp; and, finally, Jerusalem, with its towers and battlements, shining in the splendor of the setting sun.

The second wine-cup had been served, the faces and voices of the guests were growing merrier, and the Rabbi, as he took a loaf of unleavened bread and raised it with a cheerful smile, read these words from the _Agade_: "Behold! This is the food which our fathers ate in Egypt! Let every one who is hungry come and enjoy it! Let every one who is sorrowful come and share the joy of our Pa.s.sover! This year we celebrate it here, but in years to come in the land of Israel. This year we celebrate it as servants, but in the years to come as sons of freedom!"

Then the hall door opened, and two tall, pale men, wrapped in very loose cloaks, entered and said:

"Peace be with you. We are men of your faith on a journey, and wish to share the Pa.s.sover-feast with you!" And the Rabbi replied promptly and kindly: