“I come from Antioch, where the Crusaders are besieged by Kerboga, the Emir of Mosul. Famine has raged among them, and of three hundred thousand Goyim, [Footnote: Gentiles.] only twenty thousand remain.”
“What had they to do here?”
“Now, on the roads, they are talking of a new battle which the Goyim have won, and they believe that the Crusaders will march straight on Jerusalem.”
“Well, they won’t come here.”
“They won’t find the way, unless there are traitors.”
“Moslems or Christians, they are all alike, but Moslems could be our friends, because they are of Abraham’s seed. ‘God is One!’ Had their Prophet stood by that, there would have been nothing between us, but he fell through pride and coupling his own name with that of the Highest—‘Muhammed is His Prophet.’ Perhaps, but he should not be named in the same breath with the Eternal. The Christians call him a ‘false prophet,’ but that he was not.”
“The Christians could rather....”
“The Christians are misguided, and their doctrine is folly. They believe the Messiah has come, although the world is like a hell, and men resemble devils! And it ever gets worse....”
Then the door was flung open, and on the threshold appeared a little man, emaciated as a skeleton, with burning eyes. He was clothed in rags, carried a cross in his hand, and bore a red cross-shaped sign on his shoulder.
“Are you Christians?” he asked, “since you drink of the cup and eat the bread, as our Lord Jesus Christ did on the night of his betrayal?”