Here the voice became tender and tearful, but all at once it rose to a hasty and almost angry tone.  “Courage! and so that the rich Mendel Reiss may wipe away the raisin-sauce from his mouth, and rub his belly, and call me a brave fellow, I’m to let myself be shot!  Courage!  Be a man!  Little Strauss was a man, and yesterday went to the Roemer to see the tilting, thinking they would not know him because he wore a frock of violet velvet—­three florins a yard-covered with fox-tails and embroidered with gold—­quite magnificent; and they dusted his violet frock for him till it lost its color, and his own back became violet and did not look human.  Courage, indeed!  The crippled Leser was courageous, and called our scoundrel of a magistrate a blackguard, and they hung him up by the feet between two dogs, while Jack drummed.  Courage!  Don’t be a hare!  Among many dogs the hare is helpless.  I’m a lone man, and I am really afraid.”

“That I’ll swear to,” cried Jaekel.

“Yes; I have fear,” replied Nose Star, sighing.  “I know that it runs in my blood, and I got it from my dear mother”—­

“Yes, yes,” interrupted Jaekel, “and your mother got it from her father, and he from his, and so all thy ancestors one from the other, back to the forefather who marched under King Saul against the Philistines, and was the first to take to his heels.  But look!  Oxheady is all ready—­he has bowed his head for the fourth time; now he is jumping like a flea at the Holy, Holy, Holy, and feeling cautiously in his pocket.”

In fact the keys rattled, the gate grated and creaked and opened, and the Rabbi led his wife into the empty Jews’ Street.  The man who opened it was a little fellow with a good-naturedly sour face, who nodded dreamily, like one who did not like to be disturbed in his thoughts, and after he had carefully closed the gate again, without saying a word he sank into a corner, constantly mumbling his prayers.  Less taciturn was Jaekel the Fool, a short, somewhat bow-legged fellow, with a large, red, laughing face, and an enormous leg-of-mutton hand, which he now stretched out of the wide sleeve of his gaily-chequered jacket in welcome.  Behind him a tall, lean figure showed, or rather, hid itself—­the slender neck feathered with a fine white cambric ruff, and the thin, pale face strangely adorned with an incredibly long nose, which peered with anxious curiosity in every direction.

“God’s welcome to a pleasant feast-day!” cried Jaekel the Fool.  “Do not be astonished that our street is so empty and quiet just now.  All our people are in the synagogue, and you have come just in time to hear the history of the sacrifice of Isaac read.  I know it—­’tis an interesting story, and if I had not already heard it thirty-three times, I would willingly listen to it again this year.  And it is an important history, too, for if Abraham had really killed Isaac and not the goat, then there would be more goats in the world now—­and fewer Jews.”  And then with mad, merry grimaces, Jaekel began to sing the following song from the Agade:[60]