Chapter 6 No.6

Although Rochtzi has not seen more than thirty summers, she looks like an old woman. Once upon a time she was pretty, she was even known as one of the prettiest of the Kamenivke girls, and traces of her beauty are still to be found in her uncommonly large, dark eyes, and even in her lined face, although the eyes have long lost their fire, and her cheeks, their color and freshness. She is dressed in clean holiday attire, but her eyes are red from the hot, salt tears, and her expression is darkened and sad.

"Such a festival, such a great, holy festival, and then when it comes...." The pale lips tremble and quiver.

How many days and nights, beginning before Purim, has she sat with her needle between her fingers, so that the children should have their holiday frocks-and all depending on her hands and head! How much thought and care and strength has she spent on preparing the room, their poor little possessions, and the food? How many were the days, Sabbaths excepted, on which they went without a spoonful of anything hot, so that they might be able to give a becoming reception to that dear, great, and holy visitor, the Passover? Everything (the Almighty forbid that she should sin with her tongue!) of the best, ready and waiting, and then, after all....

He, his sheepskin, his fur cap, and his great boots are soaked with rain and steeped in thick mud, and there, in this condition, lies he, Bertzi Wasserführer, her husband, her Passover "king," like a great black lump, on the nice, clean, white, draped "eating-couch," and snores.