Her companion, scarcely
less familiar with the sights of Prague than she herself, walked by her
side, glancing carelessly at the passing people, at the Hebrew signs, at
the dark entrances that lead to courts within courts and into labyrinths
of dismal lanes and passages, looking at everything with the same serene
indifference, and idly wondering what made Unorna choose to walk that
way. Then he saw that she was going towards the cemetery. They
reached the door, were admitted and found themselves alone in the vast
wilderness.
In the midst of the city lies the ancient burial ground, now long
disused but still undisturbed, many acres of uneven land, covered so
thickly with graves, and planted so closely with granite and sandstone
slabs, that the paths will scarce allow two persons to walk side by
side. The stones stand and lie in all conceivable positions, erect,
slanting at every angle, prostrate upon the earth or upon others already
fallen before them--two, three, and even four upon a grave, where
generations of men have been buried one upon the other--stones large
and small, covered with deep-cut inscriptions in the Hebrew character,
bearing the sculpture of two uplifted hands, wherever the Kohns, the
children of the tribe of Aaron, are laid to rest, or the gracefully
chiselled ewer of the Levites. Here they lie, thousands upon thousands
of dead Jews, great and small, rich and poor, wise and ignorant,
neglected individually, but guarded as a whole with all the tenacious
determination of the race to hold its own, and to preserve the
sacredness of its dead.
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