"My child! my child! what has happened? Oh, speak!"
"The dream! O my mother! The dream! We are lost—lost—and ruined!" and, leaning her bursting head on her mother's shoulder, through sobs and tears she told her, in broken sentences, the conspiracy of the Moors against her honour and her life.
"Shall the curse cleave to our race for ever?" said Rachel. "But, no; they shall not take you from me;" and she clasped the affrighted girl more closely to her bosom, as they heard the sound of voices, and the approach of a crowd in the street.
"They cannot—they dare not!"
By this time the return of Abdslem, with the Cadi's soldiers, to summon Azora to the presence of that functionary, put an end to her lamentations; and forgetting her caution and the usual respect to be shown to a Moslem, she endeavoured to assuage her grief by uselessly aggravating their oppressors.
"Oh! may a mother's curse light on you and yours! May your children be fatherless, and your wife a widow. Had your eye (sleepless be it ever) no pity? Could you not spare my innocent child? Perjured slave! reprobate scum of the children of Edom—may every curse that ever came out of the mouth of man be poured in one appalling mass on your devoted head! O Lord of Hosts! hear me!"
These curses were poured out, half in Hebrew half in Arabic, as she stood with one arm round her daughter, and the other raised to heaven! She looked an inspired prophetess expecting the thunderbolt to seal her denunciation.
"Listen!" exclaimed Abdslem to the appalled bystanders—"be witness to her curses, and to me,—a Moslem!—Woman, your curses be on your own head. What is written will happen! If the Prophet, (on whom peace,) has enlightened your daughter's mind with the truth of Islam, and she wishes to leave your worn-out religion, what is it to me? The praise be to God, what is written must be!"
"A lie! he knows it a lie," said Azora. "I was born a Jewess, and so I will die! and I go not except by force!"
"Then force it shall be;" and with the help of the soldiers, and in spite of her screams and resistance, they tore her from her mother, who, overcome with anguish, swooned in the arms of the women who had collected and looked on in terror. Abdslem then threw her hayk over Azora (for he would not take a woman through the streets unveiled) and led her off in triumph, the crowd that followed chanting as they went along—