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The dusky home of holy learning seemed an awkward place in which to broach the subject of love. In a whisper he besought the oscillating student to come outside. Yossel started up in agitation. 'Ah, your grandmother is dying, he divined, with what seemed a lover's inaccuracy. 'I will come and pray at once.
A happy thought came to him. 'But there is the Chalukah, he reminded Yossel. 'But that is charity. 'No it is not charity, it is a sort of university endowment. It is just to support such old students as you that these sums are sent from all the world over. The prayers and studies of our old men in Jerusalem are a redemption to all Israel. And yours would be to me in particular.
'Well, why not go and see it? suggested the artist. Yossel stared. 'Is it for that you tore me away from my Talmud? 'N no, not exactly for that, stammered Schneemann. 'Only seeing you glued to it gave me the idea what a pity it was that you should not travel and sit at the feet of great Rabbis? 'But how shall I travel to them? My crutches cannot walk so far as Prague.
Besides, how had Yossel known that the heroine was ill? His eye must have roved over the women's gallery, and disentangled her absence even from the huddled mass of weeping and swaying womanhood. One day came the crowning item of evidence. The grandmother had actually asked the village postman to oblige her by delivering a brown parcel at Yossel's lodgings.
But a decree like that was more than boys could stand, especially in those beautiful summer days. Meanwhile the Catcher came to town, and set his eye on the son-in-law of the rich Reb Yossel, peace be unto him. The name of the young man was Avremel Hourvitz a fine, genteel young man.
'Where else shall a man live? answered Yossel. 'But have you never had any curiosity to see other parts? Would you not like to go and see Vienna? A little gleam passed over Yossel's dingy face. 'No, not Vienna it is an unholy place but Prague! Prague where there is a great Rabbi and the old, old underground synagogue that God has preserved throughout the generations.
He used crutches, too, to help himself along with, so that he seemed less the hunchback of yore than the conventional contortion of time, and but for the familiar earlocks pendent on either side of the fur cap, but for the great hooked nose and the small chin hidden in the big beard, the artist might have doubted if this was indeed the Yossel he had sometimes mocked at in the crude cruelty of boyhood.
Yossel Mandelstein looked even less of a hero than the artist had remembered. There had been something wistful and pathetic in the hunchback's expression, some hint of inner eager fire, but this if he had not merely imagined it seemed to have died of age and hopelessness.
Mandelstein forgets it, the artist retorted, turning upon the heroic hunchback. 'Do you mean to say you are going to marry my grandmother? 'And why not? asked Yossel. 'Is there a greater lover of God in all Galicia? 'Hush, Yossel, I am a great sinner. But her old face was radiant. She turned to her grandson. 'Don't be angry with Yossel all the fault is mine.
He had run away from his home in Poland and come to our town, and was spending his time at the Klaus studying the Torah. And Reb Yossel, may he rest in peace, had to spend a pile of money before he got Avremel for his daughter. From the same Polish town came the Catcher, to take Avremel as the recruit of the family Hourvitz due to the Jewish community of his city.
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