"Three thousand--the number was completed last winter, by the order of
Jusef the vizier; and their goods and coffers are transformed into shafts
and cimiters against the dogs of Galilee."

"Three thousand--no more! three thousand only! I would the number had
been tripled, for the interest is becoming due!"

"My brother, and my son, and my grandson, are among the number," said the
old man, and his face grew yet more deathlike.

"Their monuments shall be in hecatombs of their tyrants. They shall not,
at least, call the Jews niggards in revenge."

"But pardon me, noble chief of a fallen people; thinkest thou we shall be
less despoiled and trodden under foot by yon haughty and stiff-necked
Nazarenes, than by the Arabian misbelievers?"

"Accursed, in truth, are both," returned the Hebrew; "but the one promise
more fairly than the other. I have seen this Ferdinand, and his proud
queen; they are pledged to accord us rights and immunities we have never
known before in Europe."

"And they will not touch our traffic, our gains, our gold?"

"Out on thee!" cried the fiery Israelite, stamping on the ground. "I
would all the gold of earth were sunk into the everlasting pit! It is
this mean, and miserable, and loathsome leprosy of avarice, that gnaws
away from our whole race the heart, the soul, nay--the very form, of man!
Many a time, when I have seen the lordly features of the descendants of