Lautlos hoert es Isabella,
Die fuer Gott nur stets gehandelt—
Und mit frommer Duldermiene
Schleicht sie wankend aus dem Saale.
CHAPTER XVIII.
EFFECT OF THE EXPULSION.
A BRIEF REVIEW.—CURSE OF GOD VISITED UPON SPAIN.—THE CHURCH A FALSE PROPHET.—WITH EXPULSION OF THE JEWS AND MOORS SPANISH PROSPERITY CEASES.—SPANIARDS EXPERIENCE SOME OF THE SUFFERINGS WHICH THE JEWS AND MOORS HAD ENDURED.—SPAIN MAKES AMENDS.—THE MOORS LOST.—THE JEWS LIVE.
A few words more and our task is ended. A few words more and we shall bid a last farewell to unfortunate Spain, once so sunny, so prosperous, so intellectual, and so fair. A few words more and our goodly vessel, staunch and strong, will furl its eager wings and speed us straight across the foaming deep, and land us once again upon Columbia's heaven blessed and freedom-kissed virgin soil. As we predicted, so it came to pass. Our journey back into the centuries of the past, and into foreign lands, and among foreign peoples, has proven a profitable one, and as memorable as profitable. Events and scenes, beautiful and loathsome, joyous and tearful, soul refreshing and execrable, followed each other in rapid succession. There was much, which, despite the most authentic historic sources, seemed fabulous, incredible, impossible. Men and women and the states of society and civilization in which they lived and played their parts, were described, which startled us for their peerless magnificence, for their marvelous intellectuality, scarce equalled even now, and led us to suppose that we were not dealing with facts, but with the imagination of some rich phantasy. And events and achievements were recounted which struck terror into our very soul, and caused the heart to rise in rebellion against the mind when it was asked to believe them as actual occurrences, and not as some distressing and revolting and blood-stained work of fiction. And yet all that was told, and all that was described, and all that was recounted was history, and true history, strange and incredible, marvelous and anomalous though it did appear.