Rachel, however, was so accustomed to magnificence that she had lost all appreciation of it. She scarcely vouchsafed a glance to her inlaid cabinets, her oriental carpets, her crystal lustres, and her costly paintings. Even her own transcendent beauty, reflected in the large Venetian mirrors that surrounded her, was unheeded, as she reclined in simple muslin among the silken cushions of a Turkish divan.
But Rachel, in her muslin, was lovely beyond all power of language to describe. Her youth, grace, and beauty were ornaments with which "Nature's own cunning hand," had decked her from her birth. What diamond ever lit up Golconda's mine with such living fire as flashed from her hazel eyes? What pearl upon its ocean-bed ever glittered with a sheen like that of the delicate teeth that peeped from between her pouting coral lips? When she wandered in her vapory white dresses through her father's princely halls, neither pictures nor statues there could compare in color or proportion with the banker's queenly daughter herself.
She lay on the dark silk cushions of the divan like a swan upon the opalline waters of the lake at sunset. One arm, white and firm as Carrara marble, supported her graceful head, while in her right hand she held an open letter.
"Oh, my beloved!" murmured she, "you hope every thing from the magnanimity of the emperor. But in what blessed clime was ever a Jewess permitted to wed with a Christian? The emperor may remove the shackles of our national bondage, but he can never lift us to social equality with the people of another faith. There is nothing to bridge the gulf that yawns between my beloved and me. It would kill my father to know that I had renounced Judaism, and I would rather die than be his murderer. Oh, my father! oh, my lover! My heart lies between you, and yet I may not love you both!—But which must I sacrifice to the other?"
She paused and raised her eyes imploringly to heaven. Her cheeks flushed, her bosom heaved, and no longer able to restrain her agitation, she sprang from her divan, and light as a gazelle, crossed the room, and threw open the window.
"No, my lover," said she, "no, I cannot renounce you! A woman must leave father and mother, to follow him who reigns over her heart! I will leave all things, then, for you, my Gunther!" And she pressed his letter to her lips; then folding it, she hid it in her bosom.
A knock at the door caused her to start slightly, and, before she had time to speak, the Jewish banker entered the room.
"My dear father!" exclaimed Rachel, joyfully, flying to him and putting her arms around his tall, athletic form.
Eskeles Flies stroked her dark hair, and pressed a kiss upon her brow.
"I have not seen you for two days, father," said Rachel, reproachfully.
"I have been absent inspecting my new factories at Brunn, my daughter."