but I shall soon be well and then you will bear me back to hear—­The sentence did not finish, and Jesus said:  thou’lt be better here with me, Hazael, than listening to discourses that fatigue the mind.  Mathias is very insistent, Manahem muttered.  He is indeed, Saddoc answered.  And while Jesus sat by Hazael, fearing that his life might go out at any moment, Manahem reproved Saddoc, saying that whereas duty is the cause of all good, we have only to look beyond our own doors to see evil everywhere.  Even so, Saddoc answered, what wouldst thou?  That the world, Manahem answered, was created by good and evil angels.  Whereupon Saddoc asked him if he numbered Lilith, Adam’s first wife, among the evil angels.  A question Manahem did not answer, and, being eager to tell the story, he turned to Jesus, who he guessed did not know it, and began at once to tell it, after warning Jesus that it was among their oldest stories though not to be found in the Scriptures.  She must be numbered among the evil angels, he said, remembering that Saddoc had put the question to him, for she rebuked Adam, who took great delight in her hair, combing it for his pleasure from morn to eve in the garden, and left him, saying she could abide him no longer.  At which words, Jesus, Adam sorrowed, and his grief was such that God heard his sighs and asked him for what he was grieving, and he said:  I live in great loneliness, for Lilith, O Lord, has left me, and I beg thee to send messengers who will bring her back.  Whereupon God took pity on his servant Adam and bade his three angels, Raphael, Gabriel and Michael, to go away at once in search of Lilith, whom they found flying over the sea, and her answer to them was that her pleasure was now in flying, and for that reason I will not return to Adam, she said.  Is that the answer we are to bring back to God? they asked.  I have no other answer for him, she answered, being in a humour in which it pleased her to anger God, and the anger that her words put upon him was so great that to punish her he set himself to the creation of a lovely companion for Adam.  Be thou lonely no more, he said to Adam.  See, I have given Eve to thee.  Adam was never lonely again, but walked through a beautiful garden, enjoying Eve’s beauty unceasingly, happy as the day was long, till tidings of their happiness reached Lilith, who by that time had grown weary of flying from sea to sea:  I will make an end of it, she said, and descending circle by circle she went about seeking the garden, which she found at last, but failing to find the gate or any gap in the walls she sat down and began combing her hair.  Nor was she long combing it before Lucifer, attracted by the rustling, came by, saying:  I would be taken captive in the net thou weavest with thy hair, and she answered:  not yet; for my business is in yon garden, but into it I can find no way.  Wilt lend me thy sinewy shape, Lucifer? for in it I shall be able to glide over the walls and coil myself into the tree of forbidden fruit, and I shall persuade