against the whole house of Israel!”—Does this come from the chief rabbi; I always took the venerable father for a sober man.... Eh, Miriam?’
‘Fool! instead of laughing at the sacred words of the prophets, get up and obey them. I sent you the note.’
‘Why can’t I obey them in bed? Here I am, reading hard at the Cabbala, or Philo—who is stupider still—and what more would you have?’
The old woman, unable to restrain her impatience, literally ran at him, gnashing her teeth, and, before he was aware, dragged him out of bed upon the floor, where he stood meekly wondering what would come next.
‘Many thanks, mother, for having saved me the one daily torture of life—getting out of bed by one’s own exertion.’
‘Raphael Aben-Ezra! are you so besotted with your philosophy and your heathenry, and your laziness, and your contempt for God and man, that you will see your nation given up for a prey, and your wealth plundered by heathen dogs? I tell you, Cyril has sworn that God shall do so to him, and more also, if there be a Jew left in Alexandria by to-morrow about this time.’
‘So much the better for the Jews, then, if they are half as tired of this noisy Pandemonium as I am. But how can I help it? Am I Queen Esther, to go to Ahasuerus there in the prefect’s palace, and get him to hold out the golden sceptre to me?’
‘Fool! if you had read that note last night, you might have gone and saved us, and your name would have been handed down for ever from generation to generation as a second Mordecai.’
‘My dear mother, Ahasuerus would have been either fast asleep, or far too drunk to listen to me. Why did you not go yourself?’
‘Do you suppose that I would not have gone if I could? Do you fancy me a sluggard like yourself? At the risk of my life I have got hither in time, if there be time to save you.’
‘Well: shall I dress? What can be done now?’
‘Nothing! The streets are blockaded by Cyril’s mob—There! do you hear the shouts and screams? They are attacking the farther part of the quarter already.’
‘What! are they murdering them?’ asked Raphael, throwing on his pelisse. ‘Because, if it has really come to a practical joke of that kind, I shall have the greatest pleasure in employing a counter-irritant. Here, boy! My sword and dagger! Quick!’
‘No, the hypocrites! No blood is to be shed, they say, if we make no resistance, and let them pillage. Cyril and his monks are there, to prevent outrage, and so forth.... The Angel of the Lord scatter them!’
The conversation was interrupted by the rushing in of the whole household, in an agony of terror; and Raphael, at last thoroughly roused, went to a window which looked into the street. The thoroughfare was full of scolding women and screaming children; while men, old and young, looked on at the plunder of their property with true Jewish doggedness, too prudent to resist, but too manful to complain—while furniture came flying out of every window, and from door after door poured a stream of rascality, carrying off money, jewels, silks, and all the treasures which Jewish usury had accumulated during many a generation. But unmoved amid the roaring sea of plunderers and plundered, stood, scattered up and down, Cyril’s spiritual police, enforcing, by a word, an obedience which the Roman soldiers could only have compelled by hard blows of the spear-butt. There was to be no outrage, and no outrage there was: and more than once some man in priestly robes hurried through the crowd, leading by the hand, tenderly enough, a lost child in search of its parents.
Raphael stood watching silently, while Miriam, who had followed him upstairs, paced the room in an ecstasy of rage, calling vainly to him to speak or act.
‘Let me alone, mother,’ he said, at last. ‘It will be full ten minutes more before they pay me a visit, and in the meantime what can one do better than watch the progress of this, the little Exodus?’
‘Not like that first one! Then we went forth with cymbals and songs to the Red Sea triumph! Then we borrowed, every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment.’
‘And now we pay them back again;.. it is but fair, after all. We ought to have listened to Jeremiah a thousand years ago, and never gone back again, like fools, into a country to which we were so deeply in debt.’
‘Accursed land!’ cried Miriam. ‘In an evil hour our forefathers disobeyed the prophet; and now we reap the harvest of our sins!—Our sons have forgotten the faith of their forefathers for the philosophy of the Gentiles, and fill their chambers’ (with a contemptuous look round) ‘with heathen imagery; and our daughters are—Look there!’
As she spoke, a beautiful girl rushed shrieking out of an adjoining house, followed by some half-drunk ruffian, who was clutching at the gold chains and trinkets with which she was profusely bedecked, after the fashion of Jewish women. The rascal had just seized with one hand her streaming black tresses, and with the other a heavy collar of gold, which was wound round her throat, when a priest, stepping up, laid a quiet hand upon his shoulder. The fellow, too maddened to obey, turned, and struck back the restraining arm…and in an instant was felled to the earth by a young monk..
‘Touchest thou the Lord’s anointed, sacrilegious wretch?’ cried the man of the desert, as the fellow dropped on the pavement, with his booty in his hand.
The monk tore the gold necklace from his grasp, looked at it for a moment with childish wonder, as a savage might at some incomprehensible product of civilised industry, and then, spitting on it in contempt, dashed it on the ground, and trampled it into the mud.
‘Follow the golden wedge of Achan, and the silver of Iscariot, thou root of all evil!’ And he rushed on, yelling, ‘Down with the circumcision! Down with the blasphemers!’—while the poor girl vanished among the crowd.
Raphael watched him with a quaint thoughtful smile, while Miriam shrieked aloud at the destruction of the precious trumpery.
‘The monk is right, mother. If those Christians go on upon that method, they must beat us. It has been our ruin from the first, our fancy for loading ourselves with the thick clay.’
‘What will you do?’ cried Miriam, clutching him by the arm.
‘What will you do?’
‘I am safe. I have a boat waiting for me on the canal at the garden gate, and in Alexandria I stay; no Christian hound shall make old Miriam move afoot against her will. My jewels are all buried—my girls are sold; save what you can, and come with me!’
‘My sweet mother, why so peculiarly solicitous about my welfare, above that of all the sons of Judah?’
‘Because—because—No, I’ll tell you that another time. But I loved your mother, and she loved me. Come!’
Raphael relapsed into silence for a few minutes, and watched the tumult below.
‘How those Christian priests keep their men in order! There is no use resisting destiny. They are the strong men of the time, after all, and the little Exodus must needs have its course. Miriam, daughter of Jonathan—’
‘I am no man’s daughter! I have neither father nor mother, husband nor—Call me mother again!’
‘Whatsoever I am to call you, there are jewels enough in that closet to buy half Alexandria. Take them. I am going.’
‘With me!’
‘Out into the wide world, my dear lady. I am bored with riches. That young savage of a monk understood them better than we Jews do. I shall just make a virtue of necessity, and turn beggar.’
‘Beggar?’
‘Why not? Don’t argue. These scoundrels will make me one, whether I like or not; so forth I go. There will be few leavetakings. This brute of a dog is the only friend I have on earth; and I love her, because she has the true old, dogged, spiteful, cunning, obstinate Maccabee spirit in her—of which if we had a spark left in us just now, there would be no little Exodus; eh, Bran, my beauty?’
‘You can escape with me to the prefect’s, and save the mass of your wealth.’
‘Exactly