"Nay, nay, my dear child----"
She interrupted him impetuously. "I mean it! I mean it! You are always doing noble things--always! Do you think I shall ever forget how you risked your own life to save that of my darling Philip? In vain, alas! in vain. And before that too! Did you not save him from being stung to death? But if you are strong enough to work, how much stronger am I? I will go on the stage again, and earn money for us. I will! I will!"
He would scarcely listen to the proposition; but she was so determined that he could only pacify her by promising her that if they could not find Philip's father before the end of three months, she should be allowed to have her own way. When the contest was over, she went to Mr. Nathan, and took his face between her pretty hands and kissed him.
"I don't wonder my poor dear mother was fond of you," she said. "And now tell me why you have never married."
"I never saw any one but your mother that I cared for, my dear," replied Mr. Nathan; "she would have married me if I had turned Christian."
"And you would have married her if she had turned Jewess?"
"Yes, it is so."
"You are as good a man as any Christian," cried Margaret.
"I hope so, my dear," said Lewis Nathan, with outward meekness; believing in his heart, I have no doubt, that he was much better. But that's none of our business.
And here I must say some special words. Very few, if any one, of my readers would have supposed that Mr. Nathan was a Jew, if the fact had not been disclosed to them in the preceding lines. They would not have supposed so, simply because he speaks in fairly good English, and because it has hitherto been the invariable rule in English fiction to represent a Jew as speaking a kind of jargon, which has its source only in the imagination of the writers, who are either prejudiced or not well informed upon the matter. It is time the fallacy was exploded. The "S'help me's!" the "Ma tear's!" and the "Vell! vell! vell's!" which in English fiction and on the English stage are set down as indispensable in the portrayal of an English Jew are ridiculous perversions of fact. They do not belong even to the lowest class of English Jews, who, as a rule, speak their language pretty correctly. The English complain, with justice, that they are never properly represented upon the French stage; the English Jews may, with equal justice, and equal truth, assert that their position in English fiction is as much a caricature as is the representation of the typical Englishman in a French theatre.