calm and still. The stars in their allotted places, he said: as they
have always been and always will be. He stood watching them. Behind the
stars that twinkled were stars that blazed; behind the stars that
blazed were smaller stars, and behind them a sort of luminous dust. And
all this immensity is God's dwelling-place, he said. The stars are God's
eyes; we live under his eyes and he has given us a beautiful garden to
live in. Are we worthy of it? he asked; and Jew though he was he forgot
God for a moment in the sweetness of the breathing of earth, for there
is no more lovely plain in the spring of the year than the Plain of
Gennesaret.

Every breath of air brought a new and exquisite scent to him, and
through the myrtle bushes he could hear the streams singing their way
down to the lake; and when he came to the lake's edge he heard the
warble that came into his ear when he was a little child, which it
retained always. He heard it in Egypt, under the Pyramids, and the
cataracts of the Nile were not able to silence it in his ears. But
suddenly from among the myrtle bushes a song arose. It began with a
little phrase of three notes, which the bird repeated, as if to impress
the listener and prepare him for the runs and trills and joyous little
cadenzas that were to follow. A sudden shower of jewels it seemed like,
and when the last drops had fallen the bird began another song, a
continuation of the first, but more voluptuous and intense; and then, as
if he felt that he had set the theme sufficiently, he started away into
new trills and shakes and runs, piling cadenza upon cadenza till the
theme seemed lost, but the bird held it in memory while all his musical
extravagances were flowing, and when the inevitable moment came he
repeated the first three notes. Again Joseph heard the warbling water,
and it seemed to him that he could hear the stars throbbing. It was one
of those moments when the soul of man seems to break, to yearn for that