"So on the hearts of the people descended the words of the speaker.
Silent a moment they stood in speechless wonder, and then arose
Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anguish." * *
—Longfellow's "Evangeline."
Maddening thought. Frenzied they rushed to and fro. Cries of terror and despair pierced the air. The Sierra Morena to the South, and the Pyrenees to the North re-echoed the heart-rending wailing of the stricken ones.
Whither shall they flee? What country will dare offer them hospitable shores, when the greatest power in Europe thrusts them out helplessly, defencelessly, with a brand of infamy upon their brow?
Maddening thought, to go forth as exiles from the land of their birth, from their sweet domestic hearths, where they were wont to sit and tell of their long and proud and glorious past; to go forth from Spain, whose very soil seemed holy in their eyes; to leave Spain, that had been their fatherland for 1500 years, and more, long before the race of their present persecutors had heard of it, or had yet been civilized; to leave behind all that is near and dear to the human heart; the home of their proud achievements; the soil that held the graves of their own relatives and friends and of their illustrious sires, whose names had shed a brilliancy of light, that illuminated the darkness of their ages, and all the ages since; to leave Spain, whose very name was rapture to their souls; to leave it, never to return again; to leave home, possessions, friends, and go forth into the very jaws of death—on, ye Dominican fiends; slay them at once. If die they must, let them breathe their last upon the soil, which, next to Palestine, they worshipped most, but thrust them not out to perish in foreign lands.
Nay, we cannot conceive, to-day, the terror of this edict. Imagine, forbid it God—the very thought makes us shudder—imagine that an edict were suddenly to be issued that the 300,000 Jews of the United States—such was the number of the Jews of Spain—should be exiled from this country after the expiration of four months, never to return again; imagine such a calamity to befall us here, where our past is not yet a century old, and where the memories and associations of the past are not so deeply rooted as were those of Spain; imagine that we were told to go forth, branded with infamy, to cope, helplessly and defencelessly, and hopelessly with a hostile world; told to leave behind all that honest toil had gained for us; imagine that we had to assemble at the sea coast on a given day, to be packed into ships, like so many cattle, wives torn from husbands, babes from mothers, brothers from sisters, and then carried off, thousands of us to be hurled into the foaming deep, thousands to perish from want and exposure and cruelty, thousands to be disembarked upon uninhabited islands to be left a prey to wild beasts and starvation, thousands to be dropped on foreign shores, only to meet with still greater cruelties than were hitherto inflicted. Picture to yourself, if you can, miseries as terrible as these, happening unto us to-day, forbid it Heaven!—and even then will you only barely realize the calamity of this edict.
The sad fate which awaited the Jews touched the hearts of even the Spaniards. A delegation of them, including the most powerful grandees of the realm, waited upon the sovereigns, and implored them to revoke the terrible decree. Ferdinand and Isabella turned deaf ears to their entreaties. The great Don Isaac Abarbanel, the last of the brilliant lights of the Jews in Spain, a high officer in the service of Queen Isabella, threw himself at her feet, and in heart-rending sobs he burst forth:
"Ask for our life, and it is thine; ask for all our possessions, they are thine, but if live we must, then, Illustrious Queen, drive us not from off the soil of Spain which is dearer to us than our life."