al man, a little doctor without practice, asked fifteen
thousand. It was true, they said, that Regina was a pretty girl and a
credit to her parents, but how many pretty, bright girls had more money
than Regina, and sat waiting?

It was above all the mothers of the young ladies present who talked low
in this way among themselves.

The bride sat on a chair at the end of the room, ladies and young girls
on either side of her; Gittel, the bridegroom's mother in her watered
silk dress, with the large green satin flowers, was seated between two
ladies with dresses cut so low that Gittel could not bear to look at
them--women with husbands and children daring to show themselves like
that at a wedding! Then she could not endure the odor of their bare
skin, the powder, pomade, and perfumes with which they were smeared,
sprinkled, and wetted, even to their hair. All these strange smells
tickled Gittel's nose, and went to her head like a fume. She sat
between the two ladies, feeling cramped and shut in, unable to stir, and
would gladly have gone away. Only whither? Where should she, the
bridegroom's mother, be sitting, if not near the bride, at the upper end
of the room? But all the ladies sitting there are half-naked. Should she
sit near the door? That would never do. And Gittel remained sitting, in
great embarrassment, between the two women, and looked on at the
reception, and saw nothing but a room full of _decolletees_, ladies and
girls.

Gittel felt more and more uncomfortable, it made her quite faint to look
at them.

"One can get over the girls, young things, because a girl has got to
please, although no Jewish daughter ought to show herself to everyone
like that, but what are you to do with present-day children, especially
in a dissolute city like Warsaw? But young women, and women who have
husbands and children, and no need, thank God, to please anyone, how are
they not ashamed before God and other people and their own children, to
come to a wedding half-naked, like loose girls in a public house? Jewish
daughters, who ought not to be seen uncovered by the four walls of their
room, to come like that to a wedding! To a Jewish wedding!... Tpfu,
tpfu, I'd like to spit at this newfangled world, may God not punish me
for these words! It is enough to make one faint to see such a display
among Jews!"

After the ceremony under the canopy, which was erected in the centre of
the room, the company sat down to the table, and Gitt