“But thou, Imri, canst thou approve this course of acting? Couldst thou rest in such fatal security?”
“Were I alone, my Josephine, with none to love or care for, death itself were preferable; but oh, when I look on thee, and remember thy deep love for this fair soil—when I think on Aréli, on all that he must suffer—the misery we must all endure—I could wish my mind would reconcile itself to act as others do; that to serve my God in secret, and those of wood and stone in public, were no perjury.”
“Oh, do not say so, Imri; think not of me, my beloved: I love not my home better than my God—I would not accept peace and prosperity at such a price! Had I been alone, death, even by the sword of slaughter, would have been welcome, would have found me here, for I could not have gone forth. But now I am thine, Imri, thine, and whither thou goest I will go; and thou shalt make me another home than this, my husband, where we may worship our God in peace and joy, and there shall be blessing for us yet.”
She had spoken with a smile so inexpressibly affecting in its plaintive sweetness, that her husband could only press her to his heart in silence, and inwardly pray it might be as she said. Of Aréli she had not spoken, and he guessed too truly wherefore. From the hour of their banishment, a change had come over the spirit of the boy; his smiles still greeted those he loved, but he was longer away than was his wont, and Imri, following him at a distance, could see him ever lingering amid his favourite haunts; and when far removed, as he believed, from the sight of man, he would fling himself on the grass, and weep, till sometimes, from very exhaustion, sleep would steal over him, and then, starting up, he would make hasty sketches of some much-loved scenes, to prove to his sister how well he had been employed.
These painful proofs of the poor boy’s sorrow Imri could conceal, but not the decay of bodily strength; or deny, when Josephine appealed to him, that his frame became yet more shadowy in its beautiful proportions,—that the rose which had spread itself on either cheek, the unwonted lustre of the eye, the increased transparency of his complexion, told of the loveliness of another world; yet for him how might they grieve?
It happened that one of the Spanish soldiers, a father himself, and less violently prejudiced than his fellows, had taken a fancy to the beautiful and afflicted boy always wandering about alone; and he thought it would be doing a kind action to prevent his accompanying the fugitives, by adopting him as his own; believing it would be easy to rear him to the Catholic church, as one so young, and moreover, deaf and dumb, could have imbibed little of the Jewish misbelief. Kindly and tenderly he sought and won the child’s affection, and found means to converse with him intelligibly.
Incapable of thinking evil, Aréli doubted not his companion’s kindness, and though aware he was a Spaniard and a Catholic, artlessly betrayed the deep suffering his banishment engendered. Fadrique worked on this; he told him he should not leave them, that he would bring his family and live there, and Aréli should be loved by all. He worked on the boy’s fancy till he felt he had gained his point, then erecting a small crucifix, bade him kneel and worship.
The film passed from the eyes of the child, indignation flashed from every feature, and springing up, he tore the cross to the earth, and trampled it into the dust. Ten or twelve soldiers who had been carelessly watching Fadrique’s proceedings from a distance, enraged beyond measure at this insult from a puny boy, darted towards him, flung him violently to the earth, and pointed their weapons at his throat. At that instant Josephine stood before them; for she too had watched, with the anxious eye of affection, the designs of Fadrique.
“Are ye men!” she exclaimed, and the rude soldiers shrunk abashed from her glance, “that thus ye would take the blood of an innocent helpless child—one whose very affliction should appeal to mercy, denied as it may be to others? On yourselves ye called this insult to your faith. How else could he tell ye he refused your offers? You bade him acknowledge that which his soul abhors; and was it strange his hand should prove that which he hath no voice to speak? And for this would ye take his life? Oh, shame, shame on your coward hearts!”
Sullenly the men withdrew, at once awed by her mien, and remembering that in assaulting any Hebrew before the time specified in the edict was over, they were liable to military severity. Fadrique lingered.