As Raphael paced nervously up and down his room, his pale face was lifted proudly, and one thought predominated all others. The shame with which the haughty Christian, in the consciousness of his power, had stained the Jewish house was expiated, and was to-day to be completely wiped out.
The count had made the Jewess his wife without her having abjured her faith. What he felt about it was his own concern; if he suffered, he deserved it. Praise and thanks to the Lord, who had ordained it should be so! And if Agenor was willing to give a satisfaction which even Raphael had not dared to demand, as Judith had written--that is, to stop at the house and ask formally for her brother's sanction to the union--it would be the most trying hour of the count's life. Yet it was just, and Judith had asked only because she knew what befitted her and hers.
Yes, God had greatly prospered them; and the more piercing the voices of the mob, the more proudly and defiantly Raphael held his head. He stamped his foot passionately. "Though they kill me the next moment, with my last breath will I give thanks for having seen this expiation."
His ideas became confused and struggling when he thought of Judith, of what she must feel when she bent her husband's neck so low--he, whose honor was now her honor--of how her life was to be fashioned after all that had transpired, and in an atmosphere saturated with hatred against her and her class.
He scarcely realized this; and when he remembered how he had prophesied her present misery in former times, the feelings which had been his support for the two fearful years which were passed now helped him. She had prepared her own couch. God above kept strict accounts.
But she was his sister, the being he had loved more than himself. There were moments when his anger and bitterness melted into warm, trembling tenderness. What had not this beautiful girl suffered, she who was worthy of any fortune! If she had erred, was it not from a noble impulse? And how she had paid for it!
The hour when she sank at his feet a penitent came into his mind. O God! how emaciated she was! how burdened by a sorrow which no human voice could dispel!
The cheering for Wroblewski aroused him from his musings; then from a great distance the first faint roar of a cannon, answered by volleys in the marketplace. The count had reached the boundary-line of the town, where the banderium was waiting for him. Another half-hour and the procession would be before the door.
But it was not so long. When the count, in an open landau with his wife, and a closed vehicle which contained Hamia, Jan, and the boy, who had been christened Ludwig, reached "The Three lindens," at the limits of the town, he scarcely gave the leader of the banderium time to hand him the bread and salt before he ordered the closed carriage to drive to the castle by a circuitous way, and told Fedko to "hurry up."
The landau was driven at a furious pace, and was enveloped in a cloud of dust as it reached the town.