hampered her all her life. His brother Mattathias, a Rabbinical student,
was a man of parts.

In brief, it was misery itself, the life he knew, but the misery once
surmounted, and vain desires eliminated, it was a life that tended to
bind closer the ties of family love. Being a sickly child, Mapu did not
begin to study the elementary branches until he was five years old, an
advanced age among people whose children were usually sent to the
_Heder_ at four, to spend years upon years there that brought no
joy to the student as he sat all day long bent over the great folios of
the Talmud, except the joy that comes from success in study. Rational
instruction in the Bible and in Hebrew grammar, scorned by the Talmudic
dialecticians as superficial studies, was banished from the
_Heder_. Happily for the future writer, his father taught him the
Bible, and awakened love in his sensitive heart for the Hebrew language
and for the glorious past of his people. At the same time, his Talmudic
education went on admirably. At the age of twelve, he had the reputation
of being a scholar, at the age of thirteen, an _'Illui_, a
"phenomenon", and from that time on he was at liberty to devote himself
to his studies at his own free will, without submitting himself to the
discipline of a master.

Like all young Talmudists, he was soon sought after as a desirable son-
in-law, and it was not long before his father affianced him to the
daughter of a well-to-do burgher. At the age of seventeen, he was
married. Marriage, however, did not change his life. As before, he
pursued his studies, while his father-in-law provided for his wants. But
soon his studies took a new direction. His pensive mind, stifled by
Rabbinic scholasticism, turned to the Kabbalah. Mystical exaltation more
and more took possession of him, and the day came when he all but