"But pardon me, noble chief of a fallen people; thinkest thou we shall be less despoiled and trodden under foot by yon haughty and stiff-necked Nazarenes, than by the Arabian misbelievers?"
"Accursed, in truth, are both," returned the Hebrew; "but the one promise more fairly than the other. I have seen this Ferdinand, and his proud queen; they are pledged to accord us rights and immunities we have never known before in Europe."
"And they will not touch our traffic, our gains, our gold?"
"Out on thee!" cried the fiery Israelite, stamping on the ground. "I would all the gold of earth were sunk into the everlasting pit! It is this mean, and miserable, and loathsome leprosy of avarice, that gnaws away from our whole race the heart, the soul, nay—the very form, of man! Many a time, when I have seen the lordly features of the descendants of Solomon and Joshua (features that stamp the nobility of the eastern world born to mastery and command) sharpened and furrowed by petty cares,—when I have looked upon the frame of the strong man bowed, like a crawling reptile, to some huckstering bargainer of silks and unguents,—and heard the voice, that should be raising the battle-cry, smoothed into fawning accents of base fear, or yet baser hope,—I have asked myself, if I am indeed of the blood of Israel! and thanked the great Jehovah that he hath spared me at least the curse that hath blasted my brotherhood into usurers and slaves"
Ximen prudently forbore an answer to enthusiasm which he neither shared nor understood; but, after a brief silence, turned back the stream of the conversation.
"You resolve, then, upon prosecuting vengeance on the Moors, at whatsoever hazard of the broken faith of these Nazarenes?"
"Ay, the vapour of human blood hath risen unto heaven, and, collected into thunder-clouds, hangs over the doomed and guilty city. And now, Ximen, I have a new cause for hatred to the Moors: the flower that I have reared and watched, the spoiler hath sought to pluck it from my hearth. Leila—thou hast guarded her ill, Ximen; and, wert thou not endeared to me by thy very malice and vices, the rising sun should have seen thy trunk on the waters of the Darro."
"My lord," replied Ximen, "if thou, the wisest of our people, canst not guard a maiden from love, how canst thou see crime in the dull eyes and numbed senses of a miserable old man?"
The Israelite did not answer, nor seem to hear this deprecatory remonstrance. He appeared rather occupied with his own thoughts; and, speaking to himself, he muttered, "It must be so: the sacrifice is hard— the danger great; but here, at least, it is more immediate. It shall be done. Ximen," he continued, speaking aloud; "dost thou feel assured that even mine own countrymen, mine own tribe, know me not as one of them? Were my despised birth and religion published, my limbs would be torn asunder as an impostor; and all the arts of the Cabala could not save me."
"Doubt not, great master; none in Granada, save thy faithful Ximen, know thy secret."