“Do you know, Daniel, that among our brothers there is complaint of your daughter?”
The Jew raised his eyes for an instant from his anvil, stopped his eternal hammering and, without showing the least emotion, asked his questioner:
“And what do they say of her?”
“They say,” continued his interlocutor, “they say—what do I know?—many things; among them, that your daughter is in love with a Christian.” At this, the despised suitor waited to see what effect his words had had upon Daniel.
Daniel raised his eyes once more, looked at him fixedly a moment without speaking and, lowering his gaze again to resume his interrupted work, exclaimed:
“And who says this is not slander?”
“One who has seen them more than once in this very street talking together while you were absent at our Rabbinical service,” insisted the young Hebrew, wondering that his mere suspicions, much more his positive statements, should have made so little impression on the mind of Daniel.
The Jew, without giving up his work, his gaze fixed upon the anvil where he was now busying himself, his little hammer laid aside, in brightening the metal clasp of a sword guard with a small file, began to speak in a low, broken voice as if his lips were repeating mechanically the thoughts that struggled through his mind:
“He! He! He!” he chuckled, laughing in a strange, diabolical way. “So a Christian dog thinks he can snatch from me my Sara, the pride of our people, the staff on which my old age leans! And do you believe he will do it? He! He!” he continued, always talking to himself and always laughing, while his file, biting the metal with its teeth of steel, grated with an ever-increasing force. “He! He! ‘Poor Daniel,’ my friends will say, ‘is in his dotage. What right has this decrepit old fellow, already at death’s door, to a daughter so young and so beautiful, if he doesn’t know how to guard her from the covetous eyes of our enemies?’ He! He! He! Do you think perchance that Daniel sleeps? Do you think, peradventure, that if my daughter has a lover—and that might well be—and this lover is a Christian and tries to win her heart and wins it—all which is possible—and plans to flee with her—which also is easy—and flees, for instance, to-morrow morning,—which falls within human probability,—do you think that Daniel will suffer his treasure to be thus snatched away? Do you think he will not know how to avenge himself?”
“But,” exclaimed the youth, interrupting him, “did you then know it before?”