sacred lamp, while our Jewish cicerone reached down the Book of the Law,
and read to us in its ancient tongue--I felt a shuddering impression that
this strange building, with its shrunken lights, this surviving withered
remnant of medieval Judaism, was of a piece with my vision. Those
darkened dusty Christian saints, with their loftier arches and their
larger candles, needed the consolatory scorn with which they might point
to a more shrivelled death-in-life than their own.

As I expected, when we left the Jews' quarter the elders of our party
wished to return to the hotel. But now, instead of rejoicing in this, as
I had done beforehand, I felt a sudden overpowering impulse to go on at
once to the bridge, and put an end to the suspense I had been wishing to
protract. I declared, with unusual decision, that I would get out of the
carriage and walk on alone; they might return without me. My father,
thinking this merely a sample of my usual "poetic nonsense," objected
that I should only do myself harm by walking in the heat; but when I
persisted, he said angrily that I might follow my own absurd devices, but
that Schmidt (our courier) must go with me. I assented to this, and set
off with Schmidt towards the bridge. I had no sooner passed from under
the archway of the grand old gate leading an to the bridge, than a
trembling seized me, and I turned cold under the midday sun; yet I went
on; I was in search of something--a small detail which I remembered with
special intensity as part of my vision. There it was--the patch of
rainbow light on the pavement transmitted through a lamp in the shape of
a star.




CHAPTER II