"Somebody at Barnow," I said, "is very much interested in your career. Can you guess who it is?"
"No." And so saying he blew a cloud of tobacco-smoke nonchalantly in the air. "My dear boy, you have no idea how much trouble I have given myself to forget the people at Barnow, entirely--absolutely."
"Even your guardian angel, little Rachel?"
"What, was it Rachel?" he exclaimed, eagerly. And then resuming his indifferent manner: "What has become of the little girl? She must be pretty big now, though--sixteen years old or thereabout."
I then proceeded to give him such an enthusiastic description of her beauty and intelligence, that he could not help smiling. But when I had finished, he said, gravely--"I am very sorry to hear it--very!"
"I am very grateful to the little guardian angel of my boyhood, and should like her to be happy. But there's very small hope of that, if she is really as beautiful and intelligent as you say. She will either be tempted beyond her power of resistance, and fall a prey to some Polish or Hungarian swell in spite of all her wisdom...."
"Or else she will remain the good obedient child of a father who will one day give her to wife, whether she will or not, to some rude illiterate member of the Chassidim. And as she possesses more intelligence than most women, she will sooner or later feel the whole misery and humiliation of her lot very keenly, and will at length die a poor broken-hearted creature in some corner of a Podolian Ghetto."
"You take too black a view of the subject."
"I see things as they are. You need not tell me what the Chassidim are. Don't let us discuss the matter further. Good-by for the present."
So we parted, and although we spoke of meeting again, our words were cool.
We did not give ourselves any trouble to bring about another meeting. But accident at length brought us together again, and for a longer time.
Early in spring, I moved into new lodgings, and the first time that I looked out at my window, I saw the face of my old school-fellow at Barnow, in an opposite window, side by side with that of the skeleton he was studying. He lived in the same house and in the same quadrangle as I did. We therefore renewed our acquaintance in some measure, and gradually even became friends--that is to say, as far as it was possible for students of such different standing (he was in his fourth year, I only in my first), and for characters so dissimilar as ours, to be friends.