"I will repair all," said Don Juan, fervently. "I alone, I repeat it,
have the power to set you free. You are no longer a Jewess; you are one
of our faith; there is now no bar upon our loves. Imperious though my
father,--all dark and dread as is this new POWER which he is rashly
erecting in his dominions, the heir of two monarchies is not so poor in
influence and in friends as to be unable to offer the woman of his love
an inviolable shelter alike from priest and despot. Fly with me!--quit
this dreary sepulchre ere the last stone close over thee for ever! I
have horses, I have guards at hand. This night it can be arranged. This
night--oh, bliss!--thou mayest be rendered up to earth and love!"

"Prince," said Leila, who had drawn herself from Juan's grasp during this
address, and who now stood at a little distance erect and proud, "you
tempt me in vain; or, rather you offer me no temptation. I have made my
choice; I abide by it."

"Oh! bethink thee," said the prince, in a voice of real and imploring
anguish; "bethink thee well of the consequences of thy refusal. Thou
canst not see them yet; thine ardour blinds thee. But, when hour after
hour, day after day, year after year, steals on in the appalling monotony
of this sanctified prison; when thou shalt see thy youth--withering
without love--thine age without honour; when thy heart shall grow as
stone within thee, beneath the looks of you icy spectres; when nothing
shall vary the aching dulness of wasted life save a longer fast or a
severer penance: then, then will thy grief be rendered tenfold by the
despairing and remorseful thought, that thine own lips sealed thine own
sentence. Thou mayest think," continued Juan, with rapid eagerness,
"that my love to thee was at first light and dishonouring. Be it so. I
own that my youth has passed in idle wooings, and the mockeries of