He did not answer her. He had no strength to argue more. There was a long, strained silence. Presently the mother asked—
"And where didst thou find shelter for the night?"
"At the palace of Annibale de' Franchi."
Miriam started. "The father of the beautiful Helena de' Franchi?" she asked.
"The same," said Joseph flushing.
"And how camest thou to find protection there, in so noble a house, under the roof of a familiar of the Pope?"
"Did I not tell thee, mother, how I did some slight service to his daughter at the last Carnival, when, adventuring herself masked among the crowd in the Corso, she was nigh trampled upon by the buffaloes stampeding from the race-course?"
"Nay, I remember naught thereof," said Rachel, shaking her head. "But thou mindest me how these Christians make us race like the beasts."
He ignored the implied reproach.
"Signor de' Franchi would have done much for me," he went on. "But I only begged the run of his great library. Thou knowest how hard it is for me that the Christians deny us books. And there many a day have I sat reading till the vesper bell warned me that I must hasten back to the Ghetto."