and that the mingling
speeches of the actors, now shrill in angry altercation, now hissing
in low, fierce whisper, were really formed upon Unorna's lips and made
audible through her tones, as the chorus of indistinct speech proceeded
from the swaying trees. It was to him an illusion of which he understood
the key and penetrated the secret, but it was marvellous in its way,
and he was held enthralled from the first moment when it began to unfold
itself. He understood further that Israel Kafka was in a state different
from this, that he was suffering all the reality of another life, which
to the Wanderer was but a dream. For the moment all his faculties had a
double perception of things and sounds, distinguishing clearly between
the fact and the mirage that distorted and obscured it. For the moment
he was aware that his reason was awake though his eyes and his ears
might be sleeping. Then the unequal contest between the senses and the
intellect ceased, and while still retaining the dim consciousness that
the source of all he saw and heard lay in Unorna's brain, he allowed
himself to be led quickly from one scene to another, absorbed and taken
out of himself by the horror of the deeds done before him.

At first, indeed, the vision, though vivid, seemed objectless and of
uncertain meaning. The dark depths of the Jews' quarter of the city
were opened, and it was towards evening. Throngs of gowned men, crooked,
bearded, filthy, vulture-eyed, crowded upon each other in a narrow
public place, talking in quick, shrill accents, gesticulating, with
hands and arms and heads and bodies, laughing, chuckling, chattering,
hook-nosed and loose-lipped, grasping fat purses in lean fingers,
shaking greasy curls that straggled out under caps of greasy fur,
glancing to right and left with quick, gleaming looks that pierced the
gloom like fitful flashes of lightning, plucking at each other by the
sleeve and pointing long fingers and crooked nails, two, three and four
at a time, as markers, in their ready reckoning, a writhing mass of
humanity, intoxicated by the smell of gold, mad for its possession, half
hysteric with the fear of losing it, timid, yet dangerous, poisoned to
the core by the sweet sting of money, terrible in intelligence, vile
in heart, contemptible in body, irresistible in the unity of their
greed--the Jews of Prague, two hundred years ago.

In one corner of the dusky place there was a little light. A boy stood
there, besid