'Your grandmother goes with me,' he explained decisively.
The grandmother's eyes met his unflinchingly; they had drawn fire from Yossel's. 'And why should I not go to Palestine too?' she said.
'The more reason I should make haste if I am to be luckier than Moses our Master.' She readjusted her spectacles firmly.
'Yossel has wisdom; he will find the way while alive as easily as others will roll thither after death.'
'You'll be dead before you get there,' said the artist brutally.
'Ah, no! God will not let me die before I touch the holy soil!'
'You, too, want to die in Palestine?' cried the amazed artist.
'And where else shall a daughter of Israel desire to die? Ah, I forgot--your mother was an Epicurean with godless tresses; she did not bring you up in the true love of our land. But every day for seventy years and more have I prayed the prayer that my eyes should behold the return of the Divine Glory to Zion. That mercy I no longer expect in my own days, inasmuch as the Sultan hardens his heart and will not give us back our land, not though Moses our Master appears to him every night, and beats him with his rod. But at least my eyes shall behold the land of Israel.'
'Amen!' said Yossel, still propped assertively on his crutches. The grandson turned upon the interrupter. 'But you can't take her _with_ you?'
Schneemann found himself expatiating upon the responsibility of looking after such an old woman; it seemed too absurd to talk of the scandal. That was left for the grandmother to emphasize.
'Would you have me arrive alone in Palestine?' she interposed impatiently. 'Think of the talk it would make in Jerusalem! And should I even be permitted to land? They say the Sultan's soldiers stand at the landing-place like the angels at the gates of Paradise with swords that turn every way. But Yossel is cunning in the customs of the heathen; he will explain to the soldiers that he is an Austrian subject, and that I am his _Frau_.'
'Who speaks of passing off? He could say I was his sister, as Abraham our Father said of Sarah. But that was a sin in the sight of Heaven, and therefore as our sages explain----'
'It is simpler to be married,' Yossel interrupted.
'The witnesses are coming to my lodging this afternoon,' Yossel continued calmly. 'Dovidel and Yitzkoly from the _Beth Hamedrash_.'