"The hour of darkness, my brother!"

Immediately upon the last response, Samuel swung back the gate. Two persons wrapped in cloaks hurried through the passage and disappeared in the garden. The Jew secured again the gate, and returned to his wife, who, no more surprised than he by the mysterious entrance of the two newcomers, said:

"Dictate, my friend; I shall write."

"In the year 1660," began Samuel, "Monsieur Marius Rennepont, a rich Protestant shipowner and captain, lay in Lisbon. He had carried from France, on his ship, Monsieur the Duke of San Borromeo, one of Portugal's greatest lords. The very day of his arrival in Lisbon, Monsieur Rennepont saw from his hotel on the Plaza Mayor, the preparations for an auto-da-fé. On inquiry he learned that the next day a Jew named Samuel was to be burnt in the cause of religion. Monsieur Rennepont, being a humane and generous-minded man, and, moreover, having sympathy for the fate of heretics as his own Protestant co-religionists were beginning in France to be persecuted in spite of the Edict of Nantes, resolved to snatch this Jew from the torture, and counted on the support and protection of the Duke of San Borromeo.

"The latter, more than once during the passage, had made tender of his services to the captain. Chance so willed it that he was the elder brother of the Inquisitor of Lisbon. Monsieur Rennepont's hopes were realized. The Duke of San Borromeo by his credit obtained from the tribunal of the Inquisition a commutation of the Jew's sentence from capital punishment to one of perpetual banishment. Monsieur Rennepont, having saved his protegé, made inquiries as to his character, and received the best accounts thereof. He proposed that the Jew accompany him to France, an offer which the latter accepted with gratitude. Later on Monsieur Rennepont entrusted him with the money matters of his trade; and Samuel devoted himself body and soul to his benefactor.

"That Hebrew, my grandfather, was soon able to prove his gratitude to Monsieur Marius Rennepont. The Protestant persecutions increased in fury. Those who refused to be converted were exposed to violence and exactions of every sort. Monsieur Rennepont had a son whom he loved passionately. In order to ensure to this son the enjoyment of his goods by sheltering them from confiscation, he abjured the Protestant faith. Dearly he paid for that moment of weakness. The Jesuit Society, for some hidden reason which my grandfather never could fathom, pursued from age to age with their secret surveillance and hatred a certain Lebrenn family, with which one of Monsieur Rennepont's ancestors had been connected by marriage in the middle of the Sixteenth Century.[1] For reasons to be revealed later, that branch of the Renneponts had broken off its relations with the Lebrenns; it was even ignorant of whether its former allies had left any descendants.

"The Society of Jesus, enveloping in its covert network of espionage all who, either closely or distantly, were connected with the Lebrenn family, learned through its agents that Monsieur Marius Rennepont, in spite of his apparent conversion to Catholicism, was in the habit of attending, along with several of his co-religionists, a certain Protestant church. Denounced by the Jesuits, Monsieur Rennepont incurred the terrible penalties visited upon the fallen from faith—the galleys for life, and the confiscation of his property. At the same time his only son fell a victim to a duel without witnesses. Some time thereafter, the father conceived the hazardous idea of escaping, at his age, from the rigors of the galleys. He fled to a house several hours distant from Paris, called my grandfather Samuel to his side, and entrusted to him his wishes and his last testament. The goods confiscated from him, had, by a royal order, been turned over to his betrayers, the Jesuits, who thus profited by his fortune. But Monsieur Rennepont, having long intended to leave to his son, should the latter survive him, a certain patrimony had laid away in a secret place fifty thousand crowns in gold. That sum he confided to my grandsire, charging him to re-purchase this estate where we now are, then estimated at between seven and eight thousand crowns. Samuel was instructed to carry out certain orders with regard to the main dwelling of the estate, and to live, with his descendants, in the lodge which we occupy.

"The sum thus remaining in my grandfather's hands, amounting to some forty thousand crowns, he was to put out at interest as securely as possible; the sums accruing from this interest were to be capitalized and added to the principal for the space of about a century and a half, that is to say, till the year 1832. Samuel was authorized to draw every year two thousand livres from the profit of these investments, and to pass on this duty, and the salary attached to it, to his own son, or in case of the latter's death, to some relative, or co-religionist, known to him for probity.

"Such is the solidarity which binds us Hebrews together, and which constitutes our strength, that my grandsire, even had he no son, would have found some faithful repository for his trust. But God willed that it should be my father Isaac himself who was to acquit himself of this debt of gratitude towards the protector of our ancestor, and that I, in turn, should fulfil the same duty.

"The object of Monsieur Marius Rennepont in thus bequeathing to us the duty of investing the interests on the sum which he confided to our ancestor, was to leave to the third or fourth generation of his heirs an enormous fortune, the employment of which will only be disclosed upon the opening of his will, which his representatives will perform in forty-three years, on the 13th of February, 1832, in this house, the door of which is to remain sealed and the windows fastened until that date."