Chapter III: The Second Gift

“Remember now,” said the angel as he barred the window. “Remember--two more offerings.”

“The Lord will aid me”--thinks the soul, grown hopeful; and joyously flies down again. However, her gladness lasts but a little while. Again, years follow years and she can find nothing that is surpassingly beautiful. And her melancholy returns to her. “The world has, it seems, forsaken the way of the Lord, and like a spring ever runs out and out. The more the water that flows into the soil, the more sucked in--the more the soil becomes foul and unclean. Fewer are the gifts for heaven then. Men become ever petty and more petty. Their good deeds grow tiny; their evil deeds blacker and blacker dust--their deeds are hardly visible to the eye!...”

And thus speaking to herself she seems to think that should the Lord command all the evil deeds and the good of the world to be weighed in the Balance, that the needle would hardly move, yea, not even tremble. The earth can hardly rise or fall now, she is but a wanderer from the empyrean above to the black abyss of Sheol below. A splendid cause for an eternal disputation between the spirits of good and of evil; just such a one as the eternal dispute between darkness and light, heat and cold, life and death....

The earth rocks to and fro. She can neither ascend nor descend. Thus we ever have weddings and divorces, parties and funerals, love and hate--ever, forever.

Suddenly the blare of trumpets and of horns resounds. The soul looks down--and beholds an ancient German town. All sorts of roofs, narrow and bent, surround the courthouse. A motley crowd fills the place. People peer out of the windows; others throng the roofs, and some sit astride the beams at the edge, where they are propped up by the wall.

A table, covered with a green cloth stands at the head of the court-hall. The cloth has golden tassels and fringes. The men of the court are held with golden hooks. They wear sable caps and large feathers stick from the shining buttons to which they are sewed. At the head of the table, the President of the court is seated. An Eagle hovers overhead....

A young Jewess, all bound, stands on one side. Ten slaves hold a white horse firmly near her. The president has risen and with his eyes towards the market-place, he reads the paper he has in his hand--her sentence.

“This Jewess,” he says, “is guilty of a monstrous sin. Even the Lord, in his graciousness and great mercy, could not forgive her that....

“On our last and most sacred holiday, she slunk out of her ghetto and walked through the clean streets of our town....

“She has sullied the Holy procession. Her eyes have defiled the sacred images that we bore with hymnal song and music through the streets....

“The hymns of our innocent children, or our young, clad in snow-white garments, her ears have sucked in--and the beating of the holy drum likewise ... who knows whether the devil, the foul fiend, has not transformed himself into this image of the Jewess, of this cursed Rabbi’s daughter? Who knows whether thus, he has not touched and polluted a holy treasure of ours?

“What was the fiend up to, in this fair disguise? We need not equivocate. Undoubtedly, she is fair; a devilish beauty is hers--Do but look at the wicked sparkle of her eyes, and the modest and humble pose of her silken eyelashes....

“See you her alabaster face? It has indeed grown paler since her imprisonment, but duller not a whit!... Look at her fingers. How thin and long and how transparent they seem in the sunlight!...

“What could the fiend have wanted but to dissuade a soul from its Holy faith, and that he has done indeed:

“What a beautiful maiden!” exclaimed one of our own Knighthood--a member of one of our best families....

“It was more than patience could endure. The crowd noticed her and lay hands upon her--The fiend did not even stir for defense--How could she? There were all pure of sin. They had been absolved. He had no power over them.

“Let this then be the sentence of the devil--of the fiend disguised in this form of a Jewish maiden:

“Bind her hair, her fiendishly long hair, to the tail of this savage horse....

“Let the horse fly over the streets and drag her like a ‘corpse’ across the very streets she has polluted in defiance of our sacred laws.

“May her blood besprinkle them and wash those that her feet have besmirched!”

Savage cries of joy fill the market-place and when the great din is over the convicted woman is asked her last wish.

She answers calmly: “I have one wish. Give me but a few pins.”

“Her grief has made her mad!” think the men of the court.

“Not so,” she answers serenely and frigidly: “This is my last wish; my last desire.”

They gratified her in that.

“Now, bind her!” commands the President of the Court.

The hands of the servants tremble as they bind her long dark braids to the tail of the horse, which is so wild that he can hardly be controlled....

“Make room!” the command is heard. There is a wild rush forward. The crowd huddles close to the walls of the buildings. All raise their hands. All are ready to goad the horse along. Some have whips, some have cords, others wiretips. Their breath is stifled for the moment; their faces are aflame, their eyes sparkle and in all this hubbub no one notices how the convicted maiden bends down and pins her skirts at the seam and pushes the pins deep into her body, so that it may be covered absolutely when she is dragged about in the streets. Only the exiled soul notices it all....

“Free the horse,” the command is heard again. The slaves have leaped away. The horse bounds forward. A deafening shout fills the air. Whips and cords and wires are whirled about and whistle loudly. The horse, wild with terror, rushes across the market-place, across the streets, over the alley and far, far out of the town....

The vagrant soul has drawn a blood-stained pin out of the victim’s body and is on her way to heaven with it!

And the angel at the little window soothes her, saying: “But _one_ more gift!”