204 ROSENTHAL
Tallesim over their heads. The cantor sat down for a minute to rest, and unbuttoned his shroud. His face was pale and perspiring, and his eyes betrayed a great weariness. From the women's gallery came a sound of weeping and wailing.
Berel had drawn his Tallis over his head, and started reciting with earnestness and enthusiasm :
" We will express the mighty holiness of this Day,
For it is tremendous and awful!
On which Thy kingdom is exalted,
And Thy throne established in grace;
Whereupon Thou art seated in truth.
Verily, it is Thou who art judge and arbitrator,
Who knowest all, and art witness, writer, sigillator, re- corder and teller;
And Thou recallest all forgotten things,
And openest the Book of Remembrance, and the book reads itself,
And every man's handwriting is there ..."
These words opened the source of Berel's tears, and he sobbed unaffectedly. Every sentence cut him to the heart, like a sharp knife, and especially the passage :
"And Thou recallest all forgotten things, and openest the Book of Eemembrance, and the book reads itself, and every man's handwriting is there . . . " At that very moment the Book of Remembrance was lying open before the Lord of the Universe, with the handwritings of all men. It contains his own as well, the one which he wrote with his own hand that day when he took away the hundred-ruble-note. He pictures how his soul flew up to Heaven while he slept, and entered everything in the eternal book, and now the letters stood before the
