Dreamers of the Ghetto. Israel Zangwill

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      "At the palace of Annibale de' Franchi."

      Miriam started. "The father of the beautiful Helena de' Franchi?" she asked.

      "The same," said Joseph flushing.

      "And how camest thou to find protection there, in so noble a house, under the roof of a familiar of the Pope?"

      "Did I not tell thee, mother, how I did some slight service to his daughter at the last Carnival, when, adventuring herself masked among the crowd in the Corso, she was nigh trampled upon by the buffaloes stampeding from the race-course?"

      "Nay, I remember naught thereof," said Rachel, shaking her head. "But thou mindest me how these Christians make us race like the beasts."

      He ignored the implied reproach.

      "Signor de' Franchi would have done much for me," he went on. "But I only begged the run of his great library. Thou knowest how hard it is for me that the Christians deny us books. And there many a day have I sat reading till the vesper bell warned me that I must hasten back to the Ghetto."

      "Ah! 'twas but to pervert thee."

      "Nay, mother, we talked not of religion."

      "And last night thou wast too absorbed in thy reading?" put in Miriam.

      "That is how it came to pass, Miriam."

      "But why did not Helena warn thee?"

      This time it was Joseph that started. But he replied simply—

      "We were reading in Tasso. She hath rare parts. Sometimes she renders Plato and Sophocles to me."

      "And thou, our future Rabbi, didst listen?" cried Rachel.

      "There is no word of Christianity in these, mother, nor do they satisfy the soul. Wisely sang Jehudah Halevi, 'Go not near the Grecian wisdom.'"

      "Didst thou sit near her at the mass?" inquired Miriam.

      He turned his candid gaze towards her.

      "She did not go," he said.

      Miriam made a sudden movement to the door.

      "Now that thou art safe, Joseph, I have naught further to do here. God keep thee."

      Her bosom heaved. She hurried out.

      "Poor Miriam!" sighed Rachel. "She is a loving, trustworthy maiden. She will not breathe a whisper of thy blasphemies."

      Joseph sprang from his feet as if galvanized.

      "Not breathe a whisper! But, mother, I shall shout them from the housetops."

      "Hush! hush!" breathed his mother in a frenzy of alarm. "The neighbors will hear thee."

      "It is what I desire."

      "Thy father may come in at any moment to know if thou art safe."

      "I will go allay his anxiety."

      "Nay." She caught him by the mantle. "I will not let thee go. Swear to me thou wilt spare him thy blasphemies, or he may strike thee dead at his feet."

      "Wouldst have me lie to him? He must know what I have told thee."

      "No, no; tell him thou wast shut out, that thou didst remain in hiding."

      "Truth alone is great, mother. I go to bring him the Truth." He tore his garment from her grasp and rushed without.

      She sat on the floor and rocked to and fro in an agony of apprehension. The leaden hours crept along. No one came, neither son nor husband. Terrible images of what was passing between them tortured her. Towards mid-day she rose and began mechanically preparing her husband's meal. At the precise minute of year-long habit he came. To her anxious eye his stern face seemed more pallid than usual, but it revealed nothing. He washed his hands in ritual silence, made the blessing, and drew chair to table. A hundred times the question hovered about Rachel's lips, but it was not till near the end of the meal that she ventured to say, "Our son is back. Hast thou not seen him?"

      "Son? What son? We have no son." He finished his meal.

      III

      The scholarly apostle, thus disowned by his kith and kin, was eagerly welcomed by Holy Church, the more warmly that he had come of his own inward grace and refused the tribute of annual crowns with which the Popes often rewarded true religion—at the expense of the Ghetto, which had to pay these incomes to its recreants. It was the fashion to baptize converted Jews in batches—for the greater glory—procuring them from without when home-made catechumens were scarce, sometimes serving them up with a proselyte Turk. But in view of the importance of the accession, and likewise of the closeness of Epiphany, it was resolved to give Joseph ben Manasseh the honor of a solitary baptism. The intervening days he passed in a monastery, studying his new faith, unable to communicate with his parents or his fellow Jews, even had he or they wished. A cardinal's edict forbade him to return to the Ghetto, to eat, drink, sleep, or speak with his race during the period of probation; the whip, the cord, awaited its violation. By day Rachel and Miriam walked in the precincts of the monastery, hoping to catch sight of him; nearer than ninety cubits they durst not approach under pain of bastinado and exile. A word to him, a message that might have softened him, a plea that might have turned him back—and the offender was condemned to the galleys for life.

      Epiphany arrived. A great concourse filled the Basilica di Latran. The Pope himself was present, and amidst scarlet pomp and swelling music, Joseph, thrilled to the depths of his being, received the sacraments. Annibale de' Franchi, whose proud surname was henceforth to be Joseph's, stood sponsor. The presiding cardinal in his solemn sermon congratulated the congregants on the miracle which had taken place under their very eyes, and then, attired in white satin, the neophyte was slowly driven through the streets of Rome that all might witness how a soul had been saved for the true faith. And in the ecstasy of this union with the human brotherhood and the divine fatherhood, and with Christ, its symbol, Giuseppe de' Franchi saw not the dark, haggard faces of his brethren in the crowd, the hate that smouldered in their dusky eyes as the festal procession passed by. Nor while he knelt before crucifix and image that night, did he dream of that other ceremonial in the Synagogue of the Piazza of the Temple, half-way from the river; a scene more impressive in its sombreness than all the splendor of the church pageant.

      The synagogue was a hidden building, indistinguishable externally from the neighboring houses; within, gold and silver glistened in the pomegranates and bells of the Scrolls of the Law or in the broidery of the curtain that covered the Ark; the glass of one of the windows, blazing with a dozen colors for the Twelve Tribes, represented the Urim and the Thummim. In the courtyard stood a model of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem, furnished with marvellous detail, memorial of lost glories.

      The Council of Sixty had spoken. Joseph ben Manasseh was to suffer the last extremity of the Jewish law. All Israel was called together to the Temple. An awful air of dread hung over the assemblage; in a silence as of the grave each man upheld a black torch that flared weirdly in the shadows of the synagogue. A ram's horn sounded shrill and terrible, and to its elemental music the anathema was launched, the appalling curse withdrawing every human right from the outlaw, living or dead, СКАЧАТЬ