"So you know who we are, and why we left our home. You are giving me your future, together with many other things; no gift can repay you; but first of all, it was due you that you should know my past."
Then, holding out his hand to the smith, he asked: "You are a Christian; will you still cleave to me, after what you have heard?"
Adam silently pressed the Jew's right hand, and after remaining lost in thought for a time, said in a hollow tone:
"If they catch you, and—Holy Virgin—if they discover . . . Ruth. . . .
She is not really a Jew's child . . . have you reared her as a Jewess?"
"No; only as a good human child."
"Is she baptized?"
Lopez answered this question also in the negative. The smith shook his head disapprovingly, but the doctor said: "She knows more about Jesus, than many a Christian child of her age. When she is grown up, she will be free to follow either her mother or her father."
"Why have you not become a Christian yourself? Forgive the question.
Surely you are one at heart."
"That, that . . . you see, there are things. . . . Suppose that every male scion of your family, from generation to generation, for many hundred years, had been a smith, and now a boy should grow up, who said: I—I despise your trade?'"
"If Ulrich should say: 'I-I wish to be an artist;' it would be agreeable to me."