“I knew it; but thy confession shortens our parley. Now, ‘Christian knight,’ tell me why thou didst attempt to allure to thyself the affections of a mere girl; a Jewish maiden whom thou canst never hope to wed? Dost thou so pay our hospitality; setting at defiance parental authority and our Jewish laws? Dost thou under the favors of this house intrigue to quench all its light?”
“Thou brandst that girl and me with the epithet ‘dishonorable;’ and thou a priest! Men of thy holy calling should never slander, especially not their own kin and strangers.” The knight was livid, but not with fear.
“Can an Israelite slander Crusaders? these professors of high religion, these followers of an impostor, these enemies of my people, these practicers of intrigues, races, jousts, gluttonies and drunkenness; men whose sole serious business is murderous war? Tell me?”
The knight’s face flushed a little, but with complete self-control he replied:
“Some of my comrades have been unworthy men, ’tis true; but some Jews have fallen to every crime and violence. Have all fallen? Thou hast not, perhaps! Shall all be maligned for the few? What says Harrimai?”
“Thou art of those, who come to thrust us out of our land and thrust in here a hated creed!”
“I am of those who live to serve the needy and erring.”
“To the proof; I’ve heard from thy clans only of bloodshed.”
“Our order sprung up four hundred years ago, under the stirring appeals of religionists as pious and humane as thou; or any of thy kind since Aaron. We were begotten in a time when grim famine made the well-fed wondrous kind. Those hours that make men universally akin.”
“Go on; ‘Christian knight,’ I’d like a lesson of that sort.”