While thus engaged, he heard a confused and distant shout; and, listening attentively, he distinguished a cry, grown of late sufficiently familiar, of, "Live, Jusef the just—perish, the traitor Jews!"
"Ah!" said Ximen, as the whole character of his face changed; "some new robbery upon our race! And this is thy work, son of Issachar! Madman that thou wert, to be wiser than thy sires, and seek to dupe the idolaters in the council chamber and the camp—their field, their vantage ground; as the bazaar and the market-place are ours. None suspect that the potent santon is the traitor Jew; but I know it! I could give thee to the bow-string—and, if thou Overt dead, all thy goods and gold, even to the mule at the manger, would be old Ximen's."
He paused at that thought, shut his eyes, and smiled at the prospect his fancy conjured up and completing his survey, retired to his own chamber, which opened, by a small door, upon one of the back courts. He had scarcely reached the room, when he heard a low tap at the outer door; and, when it was thrice repeated, he knew that it was one of his Jewish- brethren. For Ximen—as years, isolation, and avarice gnawed away whatever of virtue once put forth some meagre fruit from a heart naturally bare and rocky—still reserved one human feeling towards his countrymen. It was the bond which unites all the persecuted: and Ximen loved them, because he could not envy their happiness. The power—the knowledge—the lofty, though wild designs of his master, stung and humbled him—he secretly hated, because he could not compassionate or contemn him. But the bowed frame, and slavish voice, and timid nerves of his crushed brotherhood presented to the old man the likeness of things that could not exult over him. Debased and aged, and solitary as he was, he felt a kind of wintry warmth in the thought that even he had the power to protect!
He thus maintained an intercourse with his fellow Israelites; and often, in their dangers, had afforded them a refuge in the numerous vaults and passages, the ruins of which may still be descried beneath the mouldering foundations of that mysterious mansion. And, as the house was generally supposed the property of an absent emir, and had been especially recommended to the care of the cadis by Boabdil, who alone of the Moors knew it as one of the dwelling-places of the santon, whose ostensible residence was in apartments allotted to him within the palace,—it was, perhaps, the sole place within Granada which afforded an unsuspected and secure refuge to the hunted Israelites.
When Ximen recognised the wonted signal of his brethren, he crawled to the door; and, after the precaution of a Hebrew watchword, replied to in the same tongue, he gave admittance to the tall and stooping frame of the rich Elias.
"Worthy and excellent master!" said Ximen, after again securing the entrance; "what can bring the honoured and wealthy Elias to the chamber of the poor hireling?"
"My friend," answered the Jew; "call me not wealthy, nor honoured. For years I have dwelt within the city; safe and respected, even by the Moslemin; verily and because I have purchased with jewel and treasure the protection of the king and the great men. But now, alas! in the sudden wrath of the heathen—ever imagining vain things—I have been summoned into the presence of their chief rabbi, and only escaped the torture by a sum that ten years of labour and the sweat of my brow cannot replace. Ximen! the bitterest thought of all is, that the frenzy of one of our own tribe has brought this desolation upon Israel."
"My lord speaks riddles," said Ximen, with well-feigned astonishment in his glassy eyes.
"Why dost thou wind and turn, good Ximen?" said the Jew, shaking his head; "thou knowest well what my words drive at. Thy master is the pretended Almamen; and that recreant Israelite (if Israelite, indeed, still be one who hath forsaken the customs and the forms of his forefathers) is he who hath stirred up the Jews of Cordova and Guadix, and whose folly hath brought upon us these dread things. Holy Abraham! this Jew hath cost me more than fifty Nazarenes and a hundred Moors."
Ximen remained silent; and, the tongue of Elias being loosed by the recollection of his sad loss, the latter continued: "At the first, when the son of Issachar reappeared, and became a counsellor in the king's court, I indeed, who had led him, then a child, to the synagogue—for old Issachar was to me dear as a brother—recognised him by his eyes and voice: but I exulted in his craft and concealment; I believed he would work mighty things for his poor brethren, and would obtain, for his father's friend, the supplying of the king's wives and concubines with raiment and cloth of price. But years have passed: he hath not lightened our burthens; and, by the madness that hath of late come over him, heading the heathen armies, and drawing our brethren into danger and death, he hath deserved the curse of the synagogue, and the wrath of our whole race. I find, from our brethren who escaped the Inquisition by the surrender of their substance, that his unskilful and frantic schemes were the main pretext for the sufferings of the righteous under the Nazarene; and, again, the same schemes bring on us the same oppression from the Moor. Accursed be he, and may his name perish!"