Where is Miriam? she asks one peasant child after another. The Countess descends. Deborah approaches the carriage. The coachman with the silver buttons on his dark-blue livery sits so high that he can overlook everything. ‘Did you see where the little black-haired girl ran to?’ asks Deborah, her head stretched backward, her eyes blinded by the sun and by the coachman’s bright buttons. The coachman points with his white-gloved left hand towards the church. Miriam had gone in there.

Deborah considers a moment, then dashes into the church, into the midst of the golden shining, the full-voiced music, the organ’s roar. In the entrance stands Miriam. Deborah grabs the child, drags her towards the square, rushes down the hot, white steps, flees as before a conflagration. She wants to beat the child but she is afraid.

She runs, dragging the child behind her, into a narrow street. Now she is quieter. ‘Tell your father nothing of this,’ she pants. ‘Do you hear, Miriam?’

From this day on, Deborah knew that a misfortune was under way. She carried a misfortune in her womb. She knew it and was silent.

Now she pushes the bolt back, there is a knock on the door. Mendel is home.

His beard is prematurely grey. Prematurely withered were also the face, the body, and the hands of Deborah. Strong and slow as a bear was the oldest son, Jonas; sly and nimble as a fox was the younger son, Shemariah; thoughtless and coquettish as a gazelle, the sister Miriam.

When Miriam hurried through the streets on errands, slender and small, a shimmering shadow, a brown face, a wide red mouth, a golden-yellow shawl knotted in two flying wings under her chin, and with two old eyes in the midst of the brown youth of her countenance, she attracted the attention of the officers of the garrison, and remained in their careless, pleasure-seeking minds. Occasionally one would lie in wait for her. She noticed nothing about her pursuers except the impression they made upon her outer senses: a silver clinking and rustling of spurs and arms, a pervasive smell of pomade and shaving soap, a fulminating gleam of gold buttons, silver braid, and bright-red reins of Russia leather. It was little, it was enough. Just behind the outer portal of her senses curiosity lurked in Miriam, curiosity which is the sister of youth and the awakener of desire. The girl fled before her pursuers in sweet and hot anxiety, only, in order to drag out the painfully exciting pleasure, she fled through many by-ways, prolonging her flight many minutes. She fled in a roundabout fashion. Only, in order to flee again, Miriam would leave home oftener than was necessary. At the street corner she would stop and cast a glance backward, baiting her huntsmen.