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On the third day our sufferings became almost insupportable, and the Russian cold seized on our bodies, and our strength began to fail. We looked upon the cell as our tomb, and on Kazelia as the Angel of Death. Here, it seemed, we were to die of hunger. We lost hope of seeing the sun. For well we know Russia. Who seeks Truth finds Death more easily.
But I saw I should be twenty-five roubles short of what was required to finish the journey. Said Kazelia: 'I can do you a favour: I can borrow twenty-five roubles on your luggage at the railway, and when you get to London you can repay. And he took the bundle, and conveyed it to the railway. What he did there I know not. He came back, and told me he had done me a turn.
'The world does not contain a sea of Kazelias, said he. Then he continued: 'Shake out your money on the table, and we will see how much you have, and I will change it for you. 'Oh, said I, 'I want first to find out the rate of exchange. When Kazelia heard this, he gave a great spring and shrieked 'Hoi, hoi!
It was bitter to think that a stranger should have the care of my children, and that they should shun me as one shuns a forest-robber. After Yomtov I went to Grunbach, the shipping agent, to see whether my luggage had arrived, as I had understood from Kazelia that it would get here in a month's time. I showed my pawn-ticket, and inquired concerning it.
I calculated my loss, and only took what was due to me. I showed the letter to Grunbach, and he wrote again to Rotterdam, and they answered that they knew nothing of a Kazelia. I must pay the £8 13s. if I wanted my bundle. Well, what was to be done? The weather grew colder. Hunger we had become inured to. But how could we pass the winter nights on the bare boards?
And so, gradually softer thoughts came to me, and less unmingled feelings. I could not doubt the general accuracy of his melancholy wanderings between Russia and Rotterdam, between London and Brighton. And were he spotless as the dove, that only made surer the blackness of Kazelia and the partner his brethren in Israel and in the Exile. And so the new Man of Sorrows shaped himself to my vision.
Afterwards I found that he had swindled me to the extent of fifteen roubles. Elzas Kazelia is like to the Russian forest robber, who waylays even the peasant. We began to talk further about the frontier. Thereupon I became sorely troubled, because I had understood it would only cost us twenty roubles for all of us, and so I told him.
If your life and the lives of your family are dear to you, we advise you to give the police seventy roubles, and we want ten roubles for our kindness, and you must employ Kazelia to take you over the frontier for eighty roubles, otherwise the police will not be bribed. If you refuse, you are lost. Well, how could I answer?
Nor was it open to me to repeat the device of Solomon and have them hacked in two to see whose heart would be moved. And then, if Israel's story was false here, what of the rest? Was Kazelia also a myth? Did the second daughter ever go to Hamburg? Was the landlord's detaining me in the parlour a ruse to gain time for the attics to be emptied of any comforts? Where were the silver candlesticks?
When we got to the ship, they led us all into a shed like cattle. One of the Kazelia conspirators for his arm reaches over Europe called us into his office, and said: 'How much money have you? I shook out the money from the envelopes on the table. Said he: 'The amount is twelve marks short. He had had advices, he said, from Kazelia that I would bring a certain amount, and I didn't have it.
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