"Prince Cardinal! when I and my brethren were banished from Spain forty years ago, we appealed to an ancient monument in the open square of Toledo, bearing the inscription of some very early bishop, to the effect that we Sephardim had not quitted Spain during the whole time of the second Temple; and, therefore, could not have shared in the guilt of crucifying Jesus!"
"Singular!"
"When Taric the Moor took Toledo, in the year 710 of your era, he found, at Segoncia, among other treasures, the actual table of shew-bread which had belonged to Solomon's Temple! and which our nation had secretly brought to Spain. It was composed of one huge emerald, surrounded by three rows of the choicest pearls, and it stood upon three hundred and sixty feet of pure gold."
"Are you fabling?" exclaimed the Cardinal, whom this tradition interested more than all the rest.
"Nay," said Bar Hhasdai, "the fable is not mine, at any rate. That such a relic was really found there, is proved by their changing the name of the place from Segoncia to Medinat al Meida, the place of the table."
"Why, man, such a relic as that would redeem your whole race! Hist, the Duchess is singing——"
A lute, rarely touched, preluded a sweet, plaintive air, sung by a balmy voice in the saloon. The Cardinal listened with pleasure and a little provocation; for the Duchess had twice refused to sing to him, and it was very bad of her to do so at the request of some one else. The little snatch of song ended abruptly in the minor.
"Could not you enter into that?" said Ippolito, noticing a strange mixture of sadness and sarcasm on the physician's face. He replied with a distich—
"What saith the art of music among the Christians?—