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Updated: May 28, 2025
It was the first time in his five years of office that one of his congregants had suggested such authoritativeness on his part. Elected by their vote, he was treated as their servant, his duties rigidly prescribed, his religious ideas curbed and corrected by theirs. What wonder if he could not suddenly rise to dictatorship? Even at home Mrs. Gabriel was a congregation in herself.
The presiding cardinal in his solemn sermon congratulated the congregants on the miracle which had taken place under their very eyes, and then, attired in white satin, the neophyte was slowly driven through the streets of Rome that all might witness how a soul had been saved for the true faith.
The congregants, standing in groups about the canal-bridge, still discussing the terrible scene, moved aside, shuddering, silenced, as like a somnambulist that strange figure went by, the shoulders thrown back, the head high, in superb pride, the nostrils quivering, but the face as that of the dead. Never more was he seen of men.
I may perhaps have a little more prestige than the bulk of my fellows though even that is partly due to my congregants being rich and fashionable but at bottom everybody knows I am taken like a house on a three years' agreement. And I dare not speak, I cannot, while I wear the badge of office; it would be disloyal; my own congregation would take alarm.
Many a Sabbath he saw his father, a tragic, white-haired wreck, touched up with a playful whip to urge him faster towards the church door. It was Joseph whom that whip stung most. When the official who was charged to see that the congregants paid attention, and especially that they did not evade the sermon by slumber, stirred up Rachel with an iron rod, her unhappy son broke into a cold sweat.
When the last of the congregants had passed over his body, Uriel arose and went through the pillared portico, speaking no word.
They dropped in, mostly in their work-a-day garments and grime, and rumbled and roared and chorused prayers with a zeal that shook the window-panes, and there was never lack of minyan the congregational quorum of ten. In the West End, synagogues are built to eke out the income of poor minyan-men or professional congregants; in the East End rooms are tricked up for prayer.
It set a clammy horror in the breasts of the congregants, distracted their prayers, gave an unreal tone to the cantor's roulades, brought a tremor of insecurity into the very foundations of their universe.
'And why wasn't Simon in synagogue? he inquired of his wife, as she came down the gallery stairs to meet her lord in the lobby, where the congregants loitered to chat. 'Do I know? murmured Mrs. Cohn, flushing beneath her veil. 'When I left the house he said he was coming on. 'He didn't know you were to be "called up." 'It isn't that, Hannah, he grumbled.
A ram's horn sounded shrill and terrible, and to its elemental music the anathema was launched, the appalling curse withdrawing every human right from the outlaw, living or dead, and the congregants, extinguishing their torches, cried, "Amen."
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