"'Lord,' cried the Rabbi in accents of deepest despair, 'Lord, grant that the walls of this house in which we and our fathers with songs of praise have glorified and blessed Thy name--that the walls of this temple of God may fall together, and that we may find a grave under its ruins! But let us not fall alive into the hands of the barbarians, let not our wives and maidens become a living prey to the wicked.' 'No,' now exclaimed a powerful voice, 'that shall they not, Rabbi!--Wives and maidens; do you prefer death at the hand of your fathers, husbands, brothers, death at your own hands to shame and dishonour? Would you appear pure and innocent before the throne of the Almighty instead of falling living victims into the hands of those blood-thirsty inhuman men outside.--Would you? Speak, time presses,' and again resounded from a hundred women's lips 'Rather death than dishonour!'--
"His lovely blooming wife pressed up close to the side of the man who had thus spoken, her baby at her breast: 'Let me be the first, let me receive my death from thy loved hands,' she murmured softly. With the deepest emotion of which a human soul is capable he clapsed her to his breast. 'It must be done quickly,' he said with hollow trembling voice. 'The separation must be speedy, I never thought to part from you thus! Lord, Most Merciful, forgive us, we do it for Thy holy name's sake alone! Art thou ready?'
"'I am,' she said, 'let me only once more, but once more, for the last time kiss my sweet, my innocent child--God bless thee, poor orphan, God suffer thee to find compassion in the eyes of our murderers.... God help thee! We, dear friend, we part but for a short time, thou wilt follow me soon, thou true-hearted!'--
"With the most infinite sorrow that can thrill a human breast, the husband pressed a fervent parting kiss, and a last touch of the hand upon the loved infant that absolutely refused to leave its mother, and the bared and heaving breast.--One stroke of the knife, and a jet of blood sprinkled the child's face and spouted up against the walls of the house of God.--The woman sank, with a cry of 'Hear, o Israel, the Everlasting our God is God alone' and fell lifeless on her knees.--
"All the other women, including Judith, followed the heroically courageous example. Many died by their own hands, many received the death-stroke from their husbands, fathers, brothers, but all of them without a murmur, silent and resigned to God's will. They had to tear away tender children, who weeping and wringing their hands climbed on to their father's knees, and piteously implored them, not to hurt their mother--it was a scene, horrible and heart-rending, a scene than which the history of the Jews, the history of mankind knows none more agonising. It was accomplished! No woman might fall alive into the hands of the persecutors, the last death-sigh was breathed, and the few stout men, who had desired only so long to defend the inner door, stepped backward. A fearful blow, and the door, the last bulwark, fell in, sending clouds of dust whirling over it. The knight, brandished battle-axe in hand, stood on the steps that led up into the house of prayer, his countenance disfigured by wrath, behind him crowded an immeasurable mass of people armed with spits and clubs and iron flails. 'Yield your women and children,' he shouted in a voice of thunder, at length betraying his real intention--'and abjure your faith!'
"'Look at these blood-dripping steaming corpses,' said a man who stood nearest the door, 'they are women and maidens, they have all preferred death to dishonour.--Do you think that we men fear death at thy hands and the hands of thy murderous associates? Murder me, monster, and be accursed, here and hereafter, in this world and the next, for ever and ever!'--a moment afterwards the bold speaker lay on the ground weltering in his blood. At sight of the countless corpses of the women the beastly rage of the populace, that saw itself cheated of the fairest portion of its booty, mounted to absolute madness. Hyenas drunk with blood would have behaved with greater humanity. Not a life was spared, and even infants were slaughtered over the bodies of their mothers. Blood flowed in streams. One boy alone was later on dragged still living from under the heaps of dead. As they approached the tabernacle, in order to inflict the death-stroke on the Rabbi, who knelt on the steps before it, they found him lifeless, his head turned upwards towards the East, a soft smile upon his death-like features. Death had anticipated them; his pure soul had exhaled in fervent prayer.
"The mob surveyed the work that had been accomplished, and now that the thirst for blood was stilled, shrunk in terror before the bloody horror that had been perpetrated.--The tabernacle remained untouched, the house of God unplundered. Discharging oaths and curses at the knight, their ringleader, the wild troop dispersed in apprehensive fright of the divine and human judge. But King Wenceslaus left the iniquity, in spite of the most urgent representations of the Bohemian nobility, unvisited and unpunished. But from that day his good angel left him. The spirit of those helpless murdered ones seemed continually to hover about his head. His reign became unfortunate. The nobility felt itself deeply injured by this outrage upon justice. A series of interminable disputes sprung up between the nobles and populace, and Wenceslaus who went on from one cruelty to another was twice imprisoned by the states, and died at length, probably of the trouble and anxiety cause by a bloody revolt of the Hussites that had broken out shortly before his death. To his life's end he never recovered either happiness on confidence.--The knight too, the author of that foul deed, who afterwards marched through the country, burning, robbing and murdering was overtaken by a righteous punishment. The Archbishop of Prague ten years later, at the time of the second captivity of Wenceslaus, hanged him up with fifty other robbers in sight of the city of Prague.--His name was forgotten."
"You are a wonderful narrator," thus Gabriel broke the silence that had lasted for some time, after Schöndel had ended her story: "I could listen to you by the hour."
Indeed he had been especially struck by the impassioned elevation of her language, and the choiceness of her expressions so little in accordance with her position in life.
"Excuse a question," he began again after a short pause. "I feel myself for the first time really at home, when I am intimately acquainted with those about me. A happy chance led me to your house, a house than which I could not wish or find a better--but you will not be offended with my frankness. I am surprised to find such remarkably easy circumstances in the house of a servant, and still more in you, dear goodwife, such an unusually high degree of cultivation.--Perhaps, you will explain this to me."