Israel Zangwill

“ Do you forget you are talking to your grandmother?'
'I think Mr. 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 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. ”

“ Yossel looked the picture of misery. The Bube unconsciously cut through the situation. 'A wicked man gave it to him,' she explained, 'to pray away his sins in Jerusalem.'
'Indeed!' murmured the artist. 'Anyone you know?'
'Heaven has spared her the pain of knowing him,' ambiguously interpolated her anxious protector.
'I don't even know his name,' added the Bube. 'Yossel keeps it hidden.'
'One must not shame a fellow-man,' Yossel urged. 'The sin of that is equal to the sin of shedding blood.'
The grandmother nodded her head approvingly. 'It is enough that the All-High knows his name. ”

“ The artist reflected a moment, but scarcely felt rich enough to guarantee that Yossel should live in Palestine, especially if he were an unconscionably long time a-dying. 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. ”

“ Schneemann did not find the question easy to answer. The more so as Yossel's eagerness to go and die in Palestine seemed to show that there was no reason for packing him off. However, he told himself that one must make assurance doubly sure and that, even if it was all empty gossip, still he had stumbled upon a way of making an old man happy.
'There is no reason why you should take my money,' he said with an artistic inspiration, 'but there is every reason why I should buy to myself the Mitzvah (good deed) of sending you to Jerusalem. ”

“ That is a strange saying for a Rabbi's daughter.'
'King Solomon tells us there is a time for everything,' returned the Rabbi's daughter. 'Yossel neglected what the wise King said, and so now he comes trying to wheedle your poor grandmother out of her money. If he wanted to marry, why didn't he marry before eighteen, as the Talmud prescribes?'
'He seems to do everything at the wrong time,' laughed her son. ”

“ They must build many houses in Rome.' Her notion that he was a house-painter he hardly cared to contradict, especially as picture-painting was contrary to the Mosaic dispensation.
'Oh, I haven't been only in Rome,' he said evasively. 'I have been in many lands.'
Fire came into her eyes, and flashed through the big spectacles. 'You have been to Palestine?' she cried. ”

“ Women are changeable, it is known, and even when they are old they do not change. But Yossel had stood up for his rights; he had demanded compensation. And his fare to Palestine was a concession for his injured affections. It was not many days before the artist met persons who had actually overheard the bargaining between the Bube and the hunchback. ”

“ She hastened to produce from the well-known cupboard home-made Kuchen and other dainties of his youth, with no sense of the tragedy that lay in his no longer being tempted by them.
'And how goes your trade?' she said. 'They say you have never been slack. ”