“Yes—yes,” interrupted Old Death, in a voice half suffocated with emotions which the Jewess fondly believed to be those of remorse.
“The hoardings of many years and the produce of innumerable misdeeds were thus swept away,” she continued, impressively; “and Providence at length decreed that you should become a prisoner in the very place where you had so long ruled as a master. Does not heaven, then, afford you solemn and significant warnings that your career of crime is no more to be pursued with success?—and do not those warnings move your heart to repentance and remorse? Neglect not such warnings as these, I conjure you!”
“Your words do me good, young lady!” exclaimed Old Death. “I am glad that you have come thus to speak to me.”
“And shall you ponder upon what I have said?” she demanded.
“Yes. But you will not leave me yet?—and you will come again?” he said, in a voice indicative of suspense and anxiety relative to the answer that was to be given.
“I will return to-morrow,” observed Esther.
“Thank you!” exclaimed Old Death, his tone now denoting a profound emotion.
But Esther did not immediately leave the vicinity of the cell on the present occasion. Believing that she had succeeded in making some salutary impression upon him, she was desirous of following up the promising commencement of her mission; and she accordingly continued to reason with him for nearly half-an-hour longer. In the course of the observations and arguments which she addressed to the ancient sinner, she displayed a sound judgment and a deep but enlightened religious feeling: there was nothing bigoted—nothing fanatical in her language. She indulged in no quotations from the Old Testament—the book that formed the basis of her own nation’s creed: but she expatiated on the goodness of the Creator—the hope that exists for penitent sinners—the terrors of a death-bed without previous repentance—and the folly, as well as the wickedness, of the course already pursued by the prisoner. Old Death interrupted her but seldom; and when he did interject an observation, it was in a tone and of a nature calculated to inspire the charming Jewess with the hope that her mission had not been undertaken in vain.
At length she quitted the vicinity of the cell, having reiterated her promise to return on the following day.
And this pledge was faithfully kept;—and again do we find the Hebrew maiden persevering in her humane—her noble task of awakening proper feelings in the breast of a terrible sinner. To her question whether he had meditated upon his spiritual condition, Old Death replied earnestly and eagerly in the affirmative; and throughout this second visit, he not only sought to retain the young lady near him—or rather at his door—as long as possible, but likewise seemed sincere in his endeavours to inspire her with the belief that her reasoning and her representations had not been thrown away upon him.