X The Jewels
Rabbi Meir sat during the whole of the Sabbath-day in the School instructing the people. During his absence from the house his two sons died, both of them of uncommon beauty, and enlightened in the Law. His wife bore them to her bedchamber, and spread a white covering over their bodies. In the evening Rabbi Meir came home. ‘Where are my sons?’ he asked. ‘I repeatedly looked round the School, and I did not see them there.’ She reached him a goblet. He praised the Lord at the going out of the Sabbath, drank, and again asked: ‘Where are my sons?’ ‘They will not be afar off’, she said, and placed food before him that he might eat. When he had said grace after the meal, she thus addressed him: ‘With thy permission, I would fain propose to thee one question’. ‘Ask it then’, he replied. ‘A few days ago a person entrusted some jewels into my custody, and now he demands them of me; should I give them back again?’ ‘This is a question’, said the Rabbi, ‘which my wife should not have thought it necessary to ask. What! wouldst thou hesitate to restore to every one his own?’ ‘No,’ she replied; ‘but yet I thought it best not to restore them without acquainting you therewith.’ She then led him to the chamber, and took the white covering from the dead bodies. ‘Ah, my sons! my sons!’ loudly lamented the father. ‘My sons! the light of my eyes!’ The mother turned away and wept bitterly. At length she took her husband by the hand, and said: ‘Didst thou not teach me that we must not be reluctant to restore that which was entrusted to our keeping? See—the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!’