"Woman," he said, "for ten years have I sought thee, ten years have I panted to see thee, to speak with thee, to be avenged on thee, as the wounded, exhausted hart for fresh water.--When I saw at a distance the towers of Prague, where I knew that I should find thee, when I entered the Ghetto whose gates enclosed thee--then my heart bounded with a wild joy, I assumed the dress of a student, I visited all the houses of prayer, the lecture-rooms, the libraries, in order to meet your husband. I dwelt with those to whom I bear a deadly hate, all this only--to find thee.... I despised not to associate with a mad beggar, because I believed he would put me upon your track--when I recognised you yesterday evening, I was so happy in my hate, so superabundantly happy, to have found thee, to have revenge in my power--happy! as I have never been since that fateful hour when all the hope of my life was quenched and now, now that I stand before thee, that my hands clasp thy beautiful rounded arm, now, at this moment words fail me to tell thee, how fervently I hate thee, how fervently I hate ye all...."
Gabriel again paced up and down in the highest excitement. "I will tell you a story, Blume," he said at length, pushing a chair by her side, "a very notable story, most of it you already know, but it matters not, it is long since the history has crossed my lips, and I will once more bring my comfortless past before my soul, perchance in so doing I shall find the true expression for that emotion which agitates my breast.--Once upon a time there lived in Cologne a man named Baruch Süss. He was physician to the Archbishop, rich, powerful, and respected at court. But he was prouder of the possession of two daughters, Miriam and Perl, than of his wealth and influence. On the death of two hopeful boys he had transferred to them his whole love. They were the most beauteous maidens in Germany, and suitors soon approached them from all corners of the world. Miriam could with difficulty make up her mind, and only after the younger, Perl, your mother, had intermarried with a branch of the celebrated Rottenberg family, did her father succeed in fixing her choice upon his brother's son, his nephew, Joseph Süss, who lived at Spires.--Their marriage was for three years a childless one, in the fourth she announced to her enraptured husband that she was a mother.--Miriam Süss was brought to bed of a wonderfully beautiful boy, they named him Gabriel. The happy husband rejoiced, the poor were bountifully endowed, a rich foundation established. Baruch of Cologne, the grandfather, who before had feared that he would remain without posterity, undertook the fatiguing journey to Spires for the express purpose of seeing his first grandchild, and in the first intoxication settled his property upon him after his death. Shortly after me, you, Blume, were born, and the grandfather and his two sons-in-law agreed, that the children should some day be united in the bond of wedlock. The years of my childhood and of my youth flew happily by. Idolised by a father whose rich love I could not, though with the best intentions, adequately return, I clave with an infelt warm and holy love to my mother, who guarded me as the apple of her eye. Both because I remained an only child, and on account of my intended union with you, Blume, who wast also the only child of thy parents, my grandfather heaped all his tenderness upon my head. I remember but dimly my earliest childhood, and only one circumstance presents itself to my soul, but so mistily, so confusedly, that even to this day I am in doubt, whether it was not a dream, a deceitful phantom, that my glowing fancy at a later period created and then referred back to an earlier time. I was once walking outside the gate, accompanied as usual by a maidservant, when suddenly a tall, pale, thin man threw himself upon me, pressed me to his heart, and dropped two large tears upon my face. My nursemaid, as surprised as I, would have screamed, but he pressed a piece of gold into her hand and speedily made off with a heavy sigh.--If it was not a dream, that man was my father!"
Gabriel stopped exhausted. Blume was acquainted with her kinsman's early history, she followed his narrative with the most strained attention, anxiously awaiting the moment when he should come to the most fearful catastrophe of his life.
"You know," continued Gabriel, "that from my ninth year I passed one half of the year with my grandfather, the other in my parents' house. My education was a perfect one. In Spires I was thoroughly instructed in religious and Talmudic knowledge; my grandfather, loved and respected at the Court of the Archbishop of Cologne, and owing to his situation, for a Jew a peculiar one, in constant intercourse with the Rhenish nobility, caused me to be indoctrinated with all those sciences, that are ordinarily less accessible to German Jews. I even dared devote myself to knightly arts and exercises, forbidden them in the largest portion of Germany either by law or arbitrarily. I was well made, strong, gifted with a keen and penetrating spirit. I was nineteen years old, and once, it was on the feast of the dedication, on my return home from the high-school at Frankfurt, I found my grandfather there. It had with wise foresight--not to arouse my opposition before hand--been kept secret from me that they intended to marry me to you whom I had never seen before, and even then when it was announced that we were all to go and visit uncle Joel in Worms, it never in the least occurred to me, that the journey was to be a bridal one for me. We arrived at Worms. I saw you, Blume! resplendent with all the lustre of your youthful beauty, and the deepest love that ever seized man's heart blazed suddenly high in my bosom. To my mother's husband who called himself my father I had only devoted a feeling of gratitude, not of inclination, and it was my, your grandfather, to whom I openly declared my ardent affection, and that I believed it to be returned. 'My glorious, my dear child,' exclaimed the old man and tears streamed from his eyes, 'by thee all the wishes of my heart are fulfilled; yes, Gabriel! Blume, thy mother's sister's daughter, is the bride that was destined for thee. God bless the union, that your fathers concluded upon in your earliest years, and that you have sealed by the feelings of your heart.' Holding my grandfather's hand I stood before you, and dared to kiss your forehead white as alabaster. We were bride and bridegroom...."
Gabriel made another pause. Blume's face revealed the fearful anguish of her soul, she knew, what would follow, and cold clear drops of perspiration trickled down her face, which even the bitterest mental torture could not rob of its miraculous attractiveness. Her heart beat audibly.
"I was the happiest man on earth," continued Gabriel in a voice, the unsteadiness of which was a sign of the infinite sorrow that consumed his soul, "I was filled with my faith to which I clave with all the strength of my mind and spirit. It made me happy, it exalted me. I had a mother, and I loved my mother with that unutterable superhuman intenseness, for which we vainly seek an expression, which can only exist to such a pitch in the heart of a grateful child. I had thee, and how I loved thee, how I loved thee, Blume! That thou hast never had an idea of, that thou couldst never have had an idea of!..."
Gabriel stopped short, his voice, that in the whirl of battle could be heard above the thunder of the cannon, sounded feeble and tremulous; his gleaming eyes were wet. He passed his hand over his forehead, and went on: "It was doomed to be otherwise. Ten months had elapsed since our betrothal, I was at Worms, on a visit to you, and full of hope was looking towards a future close at hand, in which you were to be wedded to me; when an unexpected message arrived, that my mother had been suddenly attacked by a mortal sickness, that I was to make haste, if I would see her again alive. A maddening grief thrilled through my breast. I flew along the road to Spires, like one hunted by evil shadows; I arrived late on the evening of the new year. The servants were waiting for me in the entrance-hall, they wished to delay me, to prepare me; I paid no heed to their officiousness, and flew breathless and swift as an arrow up the stairs and into my mother's sick-room. She was still living, but lay at her last gasp. The darkness was broken: many men had already assembled to say the prayers for a departing soul,--the chamber was lit by a pendant lamp of eight branches in the centre of it. Joseph Süss stood by her bed and held her hands in his. The sorrowful consolation of finding her still alive struggled in me with the bitterest grief 'Here am I, dear Mother,' I cried in a voice choked by tears, throwing myself on my knees before her, and covering her beautiful cold hand with hot kisses, 'here am I, good sweet mother! I was sure that thou wouldst tarry for thine own true son.... I could not believe, dear true-hearted mother, that thou wouldest soar away from me before I arrived.... here I am, here I kneel before thee in deep inexpressible sorrow. Why do you not speak to me?... Look at me once again, only once again, with thy mild loved eye, speak to me I implore you! only one word, but one, a last farewell ... lay thine hand in blessing on the head of thy only child, whom thou forsakest, who is dying of deep and infinite grief!..."
"The bye-standers, though accustomed to scenes of death, were constrained to sob aloud at the unbounded outbreak of my childish emotion and my vain entreaty seemed not to be ineffectual. Miriam Süss suddenly raised herself in the bed, as if lifted by a spring, her beautiful face, already touched by the breath of death, was a blue-white, her eyes protruded far out of their sockets ... but she did not bless me!... she folded her hands and began in a tremulous but perfectly intelligible voice: 'Lord of the World!... Thou hast sent thy messenger to me, and I must pass into the shadowy realms of death.... I tremble before Thee, O Lord and Judge! for I have sore sinned, gone sore astray!... Forgive me, O God, Thou that art gracious to all, and pardoneth iniquity and sins; I have bitterly repented, made large atonement.... and that all men may know, that my repentance is perfect and sincere, I will now in the last moment of my life, openly and loudly confess before thee my husband and these worthy men the whole enormity of my inexpiable guilt.... I broke my marriage vows to thee.... and my son Gabriel is not thy son....' Blume! what I felt at that moment, poor human speech is incapable of expressing.... Grief, passion, woe, torment--put together in one conception all the notions that these words embrace; multiply them by thousands,--and you will still have no idea of that which coursed quivering through my broken heart,--With one blow, with one single, mighty, well-aimed blow, an infinite filial love was driven out of my breast, and the blackest hate filled me, a hate, well founded and inextinguishable. Had I lived a thousand lives and every moment of my life committed a deadly sin, yet if there is a divine justice.... all the iniquity of my life would have been atoned for by this too woeful moment. At the very time when I was supplicating with hot tears a blessing from my dying mother--she betrayed me, cast me out of the Paradise of my life into never ending torment.... at a time when for her I would have breathed out my life with a smile and in silence under the cruellest tortures, when I would have with joy delivered my soul for her salvation to the everlasting torments of the damned, at that time my mother betrayed me!!! 'Mad liar! recall the words! say that an evil spirit has spoken by thy mouth!' I cried in a furious voice, shaking violently her almost inanimate body. 'I cannot, Gabriel, I cannot,' she shrieked, 'pray for me!... Lord of the world! forgive me! be gracious unto me! have pity on me! I have sore sinned.... Oh God! accept my confession and death as atonement! Hear Israel ...' she could say no more, her eyes grew dim--she fell back--a light death sigh heaved her breast--she had ceased to exist.... 'No, dead mother, No,' I cried, 'God will not have compassion upon thee, since thou knewest no compassion for me--I curse thee and thy memory: ...' I uttered the most fearful maledictions, the most horrible curses--they tore me from my mother's lifeless corpse....
"Joseph Süss Lad sunk speechless at the confession of his guilty wife. When he came to himself he foamed with rage. His guilty wife was dead and the poor deceived man turned the whole weight of his irreconcilable wrath upon my innocent head.--The bond that should have united us to one another was loosed, I was not his son, I was a stranger--oh! far less than a stranger.... He took no time for reflection, and an hour later I stood alone, forsaken, an outcast from the house, that I had hitherto called my home! Thus had one moment, one word, robbed me of father, mother, love, memory, past and future.
"I wandered all the night about the town, I could not wait till morning dawned, and when it came I wished that the darkness of night had endured for ever. Early on new year's day every one went to the synagogue, I, I alone shunned the face of men.... I would not remain in the street, and in the despair of my heart turned my steps towards the dwelling of my early teacher, a sick, bed-ridden old man, obliged even on highest feast-days to perform his devout exercises at home. I found him already sitting up in bed and reading by the light of a lamp. The report of my humiliation had already reached even him, at sight of his once loved scholar he uttered a cry and the bible fell from his trembling hands. Was it chance, was it perhaps that my old teacher, revolving my unhappy situation, had opened at the passage in scripture that applied to it, I know not; but as I bent to pick up the book, my glance fell upon it, the words danced in varied iridescence before my burning eyes, I read the words: 'A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.' I felt anew a wild spasm at my heart. Together with the fearful unutterable excitement that had seized me at the shameless confession of that woman, who had carried me in her womb, with the crushing pain of seeing myself so humiliated before the eyes of men; there had also sprung up the melancholy self-tormenting feeling that I owed my existence to a sin, that I had been launched into the world against the will of the Most High, whom I at that time worshipped with boundless reverence: ... But as I once more read those clear and significant words, the words of that scripture which I had hitherto looked upon as binding and sacred--as I read the sentence of the Lord, whom I, bowed to the dust in fulness of faith, had called all-merciful, all-good, all-just--as I read the judgment, that made me, me guiltless of the transgression, miserable--that brought me to naught; T tore out of my lacerated and bleeding heart that blind faith, that could never restore me to bliss, never make me happy, that faith which might never more seem true and sacred to me.... I tore myself free from religion, sweet comfortress, that offered consolation to all but me...."