“Foolish? Yes, and mad, too! And my madness is all you have left me--take it--it is yours! You cannot kill my love. Deny my words, deny your deeds! Let all be false in you--it is but one pain more, and my heart is not broken yet. It will bear another. Tell me that what I saw had no reality--that you did not make him sleep--here, on this spot, before my eyes--that you did not pour your love into his sleeping ears, that you did not command, implore, entreat--and fail! What is it all to me, whether you speak truth or not? Tell me it is not true that I would die a thousand martyrdoms for your sake, as you are, and if you were a thousand times worse than you are! Your wrong, your right, your truth, your falsehood, you yourself are swallowed up in the love I bear you! I love you always, and I will say it, and say it again--ah, your eyes! I love them, too! Take me into them, Unorna--whether in hate or love--but in love--yes--love--Unorna--golden Unorna!”
With the cry on his lips--the name he had given her in other days--he made one mad step forwards, throwing out his arms as though to clasp her to him. But it was too late. Even while he had been speaking her mysterious influence had overpowered him, as he had known that it would, when she so pleased.
She caught his two hands in the air, and pressed him back and held him against the tall slab. The whole pitilessness of her nature gleamed like a cold light in her white face.
“There was a martyr of your race once,” she said in cruel tones. “His name was Simon Abeles. You talk of martyrdom! You shall know what it means--though it be too good for you, who spy upon the woman whom you say you love.”
The hectic flush of passion sank from Israel Kafka’s cheek. Rigid, with outstretched arms and bent head, he stood against the ancient gravestone. Above him, as though raised to heaven in silent supplication, were the sculptured hands that marked the last resting-place of a Kohn.
“You shall know now,” said Unorna. “You shall suffer indeed.”
[*] The deeds here described were done in Prague on the twenty-first day of February in the year 1694. Lazarus and his accomplice Levi Kurtzhandel, or Brevimanus, or “the short-handed,” were betrayed by their own people. Lazarus hanged himself in prison, and Levi suffered death by the wheel--repentant, it is said, and himself baptized. A full account of the trial, written in Latin, was printed, and a copy of it may be seen in the State Museum in Prague. The body of Simon Abeles was exhumed and rests in the Teyn Kirche, in the chapel on the left of the high altar. The slight extension of certain scenes not fully described in the Latin volume will be pardoned in a work of fiction.