uld recite the
morning Tefils and Shems.

Then he opened his window and contemplated the pink glow of the dawn.
In one direction was the far Orient, Jerusalem, the invisible ruins
of Solomon's Temple, Palestine weeping for her sons and the withering
palms of Zion.

Sometimes the fire shining in the Rabbi's eyes was quenched by a
tear, cooling his cheeks which burned with the heat of interior
fires. Sometimes they were cooled also by the cold winds and misty
fogs, but Isaak Todros looked every morning through the mists and
fogs, toward the Orient. Then he bent and took from the bench the
food prepared for him by pious hands. He did not eat it alone. He
broke the bread and cake into crumbs and threw it in handfuls to the
birds which came to his window in great flocks. Some of them seized
the food and carried it to their nests, chirping joyfully. Others
after having eaten enough flew in through the window and perched on
the bent shoulders of their friend. Then the Rabbi's dark face grew a
little less dark, and sometimes--though very seldom--a smile played
about his close shut lips. He was very well known, not only to the
birds living in the town, but also to those who filled the birch
grove.

Isaak Todros often went to the grove, and sometimes penetrated the
neighbouring pine forest. What did he do there? He fed the birds,
who, on seeing him, immediately flew to him, and accompanied him in
his walk. Sometimes he prayed in a loud voice, raising his trembling
hands, and awakening by the sounds of his passionate cries the choir
of wood echoes. He also gathered different herbs and plants, which he
brought in great bunches to his hut. These plants possessed curative
properties, whose knowledge was a heritage in the Todros family. All
the members of this family belonged to that class of primitive
physicians with which the Middle Ages was filled, and who learned
their art of healing not from academies, but from wild nature,
studied more with fantastical inquiring, than with learned thought.
One of Isaak Todros' ancestors was, however, a very learned physician
in Spain at the time when there was a short interval in prosperity in
the bad fortunes of the Hebrew nation, and they were permitted to
draw with the other nations all possible good from every source.
However, the interval was but a short one, and after it the
world-famous and really scholarly Hebrew physicians disappeared from
the world; but one, by the name of Todros