for ostentatious pleasure rides through the streets of this northern city in their carriages. He’d live like they do, emptily and sluggishly. The spirit would leave him in shame, not as it entered him, but with a disappointed sigh. Or it would slip out of his body like a fart or a belch. Jacob, my beloved Jacob, would become a piteous convert, and in the end, his children would be able to pay their way into their noble titles. The entire path we’ve traveled up till now would lose its reason and its meaning.
