"Pardon me, my lord prince, but your few kind words, to which my ears are all unused, have broken up the sealed fountains of my heart. It is seldom that we children of Jacob hear the accents of sympathy, or find any one to manifest concern for us, when not personally interested in doing so."
At this moment, the sound of the sistrum before the sacred altar of the temple, fell upon my ears; and, turning round to the east, I laid my hands across my breast, and bowed my head low in worship, it being the signal that the hierarch was offering incense and libations.
To my surprise, the Hebrew woman pursued her work, and remained with her head, as I thought, more proudly elevated than before.
"Do you not worship?" I asked, with surprise.
"Yes, the One God," she answered, with dignity.
I started with surprise, that a bondwoman should declare, so openly and familiarly, the mystery which even Remeses scarcely dared to receive, and which I had accepted with hesitation and awe.
"How knowest thou there is One God?" I said, regarding her with deepening interest.
"From our fathers."
"Do all your people worship the One Unity?"
"Not all," she answered, a shadow passing across her queenly brow. "The masses of our enslaved nation know only the gods of Egypt. They adore Apis with servility. They are the first to hail the new-found calf-god, if, by chance, he be found in the nome where they toil. They are ignorant of the true God, and degraded by their long servitude (for we are all born in bondage—all!); they worship the gods of their masters; and pots of flesh which are sent from the sacrifices by the proselyting priests, as bribes to make our chief men bow down to Osiris and Apis, are temptations enough to cause these elders daily to deny the God of their father Abraham. Jacob and Joseph are become Egyptians, and the knowledge of the undivided God is preserved only by a few, who have kept sacred the traditions of our fathers."