"Without you the world is a wilderness, Rebecca. Swear to me that you love me!"
"I swear to you, by the God of my fathers, that I love you!"
"And would you love me if the whole world despised me?"
"What matters the world to me? Would I still love you? I would love you more fervently yet if all the world despised you, for then you would be like me. They despise me too, and turn away contemptuously from me, and yet I have done nothing bad."
"Would you love me, Rebecca, even if I had committed a crime?"
"What do men call crime? Do they not say that you commit a crime in loving me? Would they not say, too, that the priest who blessed our union was a criminal? Be whatever you may, do what you will, I shall love you still. Your soul is my soul, and my heart is your heart. Release me, Gabriel, release me!"
"I will release you, Rebecca; in four days you shall be free, and we shall journey away from here, and return to Italy, never to leave it again."
"To Italy!" rejoiced she—"to my home! Oh, my Gabriel, I shall not merely love you, I shall worship you—you will be to me the Saviour, the Messiah, in whom my people have hoped so long! I—"
"Now that is enough," cried Count Schwarzenberg, who had been silent hitherto, because he felt well how much Rebecca's words forwarded his own plans. "Now that is enough of refractoriness! Come, Gabriel Nietzel, and you, Rebecca, step back, or I shall have your child taken away, and you shall never see it again!"
"Go, Rebecca, go!" cried Gabriel Nietzel cheerfully. "You remain with me, even if you go, and I shall still see and speak to you when I am far from you. Four days only, and then we shall be reunited!"