Toward the end of that summer, in spite of anything anyone could say, and though the climbing was already a hardship for him, the old man moved again. For a new hovel had been built, high above all the rest. And as he was once more walking across the square after so long a time, leaning on Esther’s arm, many people crowded around him and bowed low to touch his groping hands and plead for his advice about many things. For he seemed to them like a dead man who had risen from his grave because some prophesied time had at length come to pass. And so it really seemed. The men told him that an uprising was in progress in Venice, that the nobility stood in peril, and that in a short time the boundaries of the Ghetto would fall and everyone would rejoice in the same freedom. The old man had nothing to say in answer, only nodded as though all of this were long since known to him along with much more besides. He went into the house of Isaak Rosso, on the top of which his new apartment was situated, and climbed a full half day to reach it.

Up there, Esther gave birth to a tender blond child. After she had recuperated, she took it out on the roof in her arms and for the first time set before its wide-open eyes the whole golden sky. It was an autumn morning of indescribable clarity and light. Things, objects, were darkened, almost without illumination; only isolated bits of flying light settled on them, as on big flowers, rested there for a moment, and then darted beyond their gold-limned edges into the heavens. And there, where they vanished, from this high vantage point could be seen what had never yet been seen from the Ghetto, a still, silvery light—the sea. And only now, after her eyes had accustomed themselves to this glory, did she make out Melchizedek, over on the edge of the roof, as far forward as one could go. He stood with his arms outspread and forced his dull eyes to look into the slowly unfolding light. His arms remained raised, a radiant thought upon his countenance, as though he were at worship. Then he rocked forward again and again, pressing his old head against the badly cut, sharp-edged stones. People had gathered on the square below and were looking up at him. Individual words and gestures rose up out of the crowd but did not reach the solitary old man in prayer. And the people saw the eldest and the youngest as though in the clouds. But the old man continued for a long while to lift himself up in pride and then fall back again in humility. And the crowd grew, and their eyes did not stir from him. Was it the sea he had seen or God, the Eternal, in His Glory?