"She is dead to me," murmured Eskeles so inaudibly that the emperor scarcely heard him. "She left me a year ago for a man whom she loved better than her father."
"But she left because you would have married her to a man whom she hated. Gunther told me so."
"Yes, sire. I had no idea that my unhappy child would go to such extremity. Had she entreated me as she should have done, I would have yielded; but her lover had hardened her heart against me, and she abandoned me—not to become the honorable wife of any man, but to lead a life of shame and reproach. Rachel is not married, she is the mistress of that man."
"This, too, is your fault, baron. You made her swear never to become a Christian, and by our laws she could not marry him. But he considers her as his wife. You see that I know all. Gunther, to justify himself, confided to me the whole history of his love."
"He did not tell the truth, sire. My daughter herself is unwilling to become a Christian."
"Then she is a conscientious Jewess?"
"No, sire, she does not attend the synagogue."
"What is she, then?" asked the emperor, astonished.
"She is a Deist; and precisely because I required of her to profess either Judaism or Christianity, she fled to that man whom she cannot be made to believe is the suitor of her wealth and not of herself."
"Do you think, then, that Gunther is interested?"