“Thou dost not tremble,” said Almamen, at length, breaking the silence, “and I have erred. Thou art not the criminal I deemed thee. Come to my arms!”
“Alas!” said Leila, obeying the instinct, and casting herself upon that rugged bosom. “I will dare, at least, not to disavow my God. Father! by that dread anathema which is on our race, which has made us homeless and powerless--outcasts and strangers in the land; by the persecution and anguish we have known, teach thy lordly heart that we are rightly punished for the persecution and the anguish we doomed to Him, whose footstep hallowed our native earth! FIRST, IN THE HISTORY of THE WORLD, DID THE STERN HEBREWS INFLICT UPON MANKIND THE AWFUL CRIME OF PERSECUTION FOR OPINIONS SAKE. The seed we sowed hath brought forth the Dead Sea fruit upon which we feed. I asked for resignation and for hope: I looked upon yonder cross, and I found both. Harden not thy heart; listen to thy child; wise though thou be, and weak though her woman spirit, listen to me.”
“Be dumb!” cried Almamen, in such a voice as might have come from the charnel, so ghostly and deathly sounded its hollow tone; then, recoiling some steps, he placed both his hands upon his temples, and muttered, “Mad, mad! yes, yes, this is but a delirium, and I am tempted with a devil! Oh, my child!” he resumed, in a voice that became, on the sudden, inexpressibly tender and imploring, “I have been sorely tried; and I dreamt a feverish dream of passion and revenge. Be thine the lips, and thine the soothing hand, that shall wake me from it. Let us fly for ever from these hated lands; let us leave to these miserable infidels their bloody contest, careless which shall fall. To a soil on which the iron heel does not clang, to an air where man’s orisons rise, in solitude, to the Great Jehovah, let us hasten our weary steps. Come! while the castle yet sleeps, let us forth unseen--the father and the child. We will hold sweet commune by the way. And hark ye, Leila,” he added, in a low and abrupt whisper, “talk not to me of yonder symbol; for thy God is a jealous God, and hath no likeness in the graven image.”
Had he been less exhausted by long travail and racking thoughts, far different, perhaps, would have been the language of a man so stern. But circumstance impresses the hardest substance; and despite his native intellect and affected superiority over others, no one, perhaps, was more human, in his fitful moods,--his weakness and his strength, his passion and his purpose,--than that strange man, who had dared, in his dark studies and arrogant self-will, to aspire beyond humanity.