ptures in Hebrew; and the teaching of Hebrew, Mathias
said to Joseph, takes me away from my important work, but it may amuse
you to teach them. Our father may accept you as a sufficient teacher: go
to him for examination.

A little talk and a few passages read from the Scriptures satisfied the
president that Joseph was the assistant teacher that had been so long
desired in the community, and he spoke to Joseph soothingly of Mathias,
whose life work was the true interpretation of the Scriptures. But did
the Scriptures need interpretation? Joseph asked himself, not daring to
put questions to the president; and on an early occasion he asked
Mathias what the president meant when he spoke of a true interpretation
of the Scriptures, and was told that the true meaning of the Scriptures
lay below the literal meaning. There can be no doubt, he said, that the
Scriptures must be regarded as allegories; and he explained to Joseph
that he devoted all his intellect to discovering and explaining these
allegories, a task demanding extraordinary assiduity, for they lay
concealed in what seemed to the vulgar eye mere statements of fact: as
if, he added scornfully, God chose the prophets for no better end than a
mere relation of facts! He was willing, however, to concede that his
manner of treating the Scriptures was not approved by the entire
community, but in view of his learning, the proselytes were admitted to
his lectures--one of the innovations of the prior, who, in spite of all,
remained one of his supporters.

To the end of his life Joseph kept in his memory the moment when he sat
in the corner of the hall, his eyes fixed upon Mathias's young and
beautiful profile, clear cut, hard and decisive as the profiles of the
young gods that decorated the Greek coins which shocked him in Caesarea.
His memory of Mathias was as partial; but he knew the president's full
face, and while pondering on it he remembered that he had never seen him
in profile. Nor was this all that set the two men apart in Joseph's
consciousness. The prior's simple and homely language came from the
heart, entered the heart and was remembered, whereas Mathias spoke from
his brain. The heart is simple and always the same, but the brain is
complex and various; and therefore it was natural that Mathias should
hold, as if in fee, a great store of verbal felicities, and that he
should translate all shades of thought at once into words.

His mind moved in a rich, erudite