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But Yossel was not to be found so easily, and the artist's resolution strengthened with each false scent. Yossel was ultimately run to earth, or rather to Heaven, in the Beth Hamedrash, where he was shaking himself studiously over a Babylonian folio, in company with a motley assemblage of youths and greybeards equally careless of the demands of life.
Twenty years ago she could have had her pick of a dozen well-to-do widowers, yet now that she has one foot in the grave, madness has entered her soul, and she has cast her eye upon this pauper. 'But I thought his father left him his inn, said the artist. 'His inn yes. His sense no. Yossel ruined himself long ago paying too much attention to the Talmud instead of his business.
He did not ask me to go with him to Palestine; it was I that asked him. 'Do you mean that you asked him to marry you? 'It is the same thing. There is no other way. How different would it have been had there been any other woman here who wanted to die in Palestine! But the women nowadays have no fear of Heaven; they wear their hair unshorn they 'Yes, yes. So you asked Yossel to marry you.
As he lifted the latch he heard her voice giving orders, and the door opened, not on the peaceful scene he expected of the spinster at her ingle nook, but of a bustling and apparently rejuvenated old lady supervising a packing menial. The greatest shock of all was that this menial proved to be Yossel himself squatted on the floor, his crutches beside him.
Yet, on the other hand, he longed to know what lay behind all this philandering, which in any case had been compromising her, and he felt it his duty as his grandmother's protector and the representative of the family to ask Yossel straight out whether his intentions were honourable.
'Yes, old blood's way is sometimes worse than young blood's, said Frau Schneemann, unsmiling. 'You must not forget that Yossel is still a bachelor. 'Yes, and therefore a sinner in Israel I remember, quoth the artist with a twinkle. How all this would amuse his bachelor friends, Leopold Barstein and Rozenoffski the pianist! 'Make not mock.
And at last the All-High sent him the fare, and he was able to come to me and invite me to go with him. Here the artist became aware that Yossel's eyes and lips were signalling silence to him. As if, forsooth, one published one's good deeds! He had yet to learn on whose behalf the hunchback was signalling. 'So! You came into a fortune? he asked Yossel gravely.
'Tis high time you, too, should lead a maiden under the Canopy. 'I am so shy there are few so forward as grandmother. 'Heaven be thanked! said his mother fervently. 'When I refused to cover my tresses she spoke as if I were a brazen Epicurean, but I had rather have died than carry on so shamelessly with a man to whom I was not betrothed. 'Perhaps they are betrothed. 'We betrothed to Yossel!
Surely, he thought, struggling between tears and laughter, no undesirable lover had ever thus been got rid of by the head of the family. Not to speak of an undesirable grandfather. The news that Yossel was leaving the village bound for the Holy Land, produced a sensation which quite obscured his former notoriety as an aspirant to wedlock.
The postman was not a Child of the Covenant, but Yossel's landlady was, and within an hour all Jewry knew that Yenta had sent Yossel a phylacteries-bag the very symbol of love offered by a maiden to her bridegroom. Could shameless passion further go? The artist, at least, determined it should go no further. He put on his hat, and went to find Yossel Mandelstein.
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