For a moment her inflexible will wavered, another moment, and the mourning of 300,000 people might have been turned to rejoicing, and the doom of Spain might have been averted, and the history of Europe might have had a different reading to-day. But that other moment was never to come. Torquemada, who listened in an adjoining chamber to Abarbanel's tearful entreaty, and to the queen's yielding words, rushed into the royal presence, almost mad with fury, and pointing to the crucifix, he shrieked:
"Behold Him whom Judas Iscariot sold for thirty pieces of silver! Sell him now for a higher price, and render an account of your bargain before God!"
The fiend had conquered again. The queen is on her knees before him, imploring forgiveness for her moment's weakness.
A gloom pervaded the entire realm, as the time of the departure drew hastily on. The Jews, attired in the deepest mourning, wandered restlessly about the streets. Peace dwelled no longer in their homes. Their fountain of tears had run dry. Their words became fewer, and more and more painful. When children twined their little arms lovingly about their parents' neck, when pining husbands gazed upon their drooping wives, and in their mournful silence asked one another: A month hence, a fortnight hence, a week hence, to-morrow, where will father be? Where will mother be? What fate awaits husband, and what misery shall fall upon wife? What cruelty shall subdue brother, and to what life of infamy shall sister be sold? When upon such questions they brooded, and when did they not? madness seized upon them, and they rushed out to the burial places, and there, among the dead, they sought the pity and mercy and consolation the living could not give; there, in the graveyards, they lingered among the tombs of their dear departed, sometimes for three or four days in succession, not a morsel of food nor a drop of water passing their lips. And as they fixed their gaze upon the stately palms, that shaded them and the graves of their dead, with aching heart they lingered low:
"More blest each palm that shades those plains
Than Israel's scattered race;
For, taking root, it there remains
In solitary grace;
It cannot quit its place of birth,
It will not live in other earth.