Fortunately for those with whom he was dissatisfied, he never went directly to work, but only jeered at the defects which he wanted to reprove, with hints, allusions, classic passages, and Scripture texts. His delivery, moreover--he always read his discourses--was unpleasant, unintelligible, and, above all, was often interrupted by a cough, but more frequently by a hollow paunch-convulsing laugh, with which he was wont to announce and accompany the biting passages. This singular man I found to be mild and obliging when I began to take lessons from him. I now went to him daily at six o'clock in the evening, and always experienced a secret pleasure when the outer door closed behind me, and I had to thread the long dark cloister-passage. We sat in his library at a table covered with oil-cloth, a much-read Lucian never quitting his side.
In spite of all my willingness, I did not get at the matter without difficulty, for my teacher could not suppress certain sarcastic remarks as to the real truth about Hebrew. I concealed from him my designs upon Jew-German, and spoke of a better understanding of the original text. He smiled at this, and said I should be satisfied if I only learned to read. This vexed me in secret, and I concentrated all my attention when we came to the letters. I found an alphabet something like the Greek, of which the forms were easy, and the names, for the most part, not strange to me. All this I had soon comprehended and retained, and supposed we should now go to reading. That this was done from right to left I was well aware. But now, all at once appeared a new army of little characters and signs, of points and strokes of all sorts, which were in fact to represent vowels. At this I wondered the more, as there were manifestly vowels in the larger alphabet, and the others only appeared to be hidden under strange appellations. It was also taught, that the Jewish nation, so long as it flourished, actually were satisfied with the first signs, and knew no other way to write and read. Most willingly then would I have gone on along this ancient, and, as it seemed to me, easier path; but my worthy declared rather sternly, that we must go by the grammar as it had been approved and composed. Reading without these points and strokes, he said, was a very hard undertaking, and could be accomplished only by the learned, and those who were well practised. I must therefore make up my mind to learn these little characters; but the matter became to me more and more confused. Now, it seemed, some of the first and larger primitive letters had no value in their places, in order that their little after-born kindred might not stand there in vain. Now they indicated a gentle breathing, now a guttural more or less rough, and now served as mere equivalents. But, finally, when one fancied that one had well noted everything, some of these personages, both great and small, were rendered inoperative, so that the eyes always had very much, and the lips very little to do.