'What is the matter with you, my son? You go about like one in a dream,
and as if the world in which you live were nothing to you,' said the
old doctor one day to his son, the young painter, shortly after their
guests had left them. 'If you cannot conquer your love, and if the girl
return your affection in an equal degree, I am willing to withdraw my
objection to your marriage, and old Philip Moses is too worthy a man to
wish to make you both miserable.'
'I honour him for the unshaken sincerity of his religious feelings,'
replied his son, 'although these will bring me to the grave. I have had
a long conversation with him, father: I might have rebelled against his
severity, but his mildness has overcome me, and taken from me my last
hope. I know that from a sense of gratitude he might bring himself even
to join our hands; but the heart of the old man would break in doing
so, and I should have to look upon myself as the murderer both of him
and Benjamina. He is immovable in his adherence to his creed; and even
though he might give Benjamina to me himself, he would curse her in his
heart for having deserted the faith of her forefathers.'
'But she has already deserted that faith in her own mind; she loves
you; and the old man knows all this, yet he has not condemned her.'
'Still he might do so, if she were openly to throw off Judaism. He
loves her as he does his own soul, but he would deem his soul doomed to
perdition if it could stray from _Jehovah_, as he calls his peculiar
worship.'
'Well, have patience, my son. The old man's days are numbered. My
medical knowledge enables me to tell you that death is already creeping
over him.
'Ah, father! you do not know Benjamina; though her heart should break,
she would be as true to the dead as she is to the living. But I would
not that a knowledge of my grief should add to her sufferings, or
deprive her of the peace she may perhaps acquire in the performance of
what she considers her duty. Allow me to travel, father! There is no
hope of happiness before me _now_ in this world; but I will seek
tranquillity in the charming land which is sacred to the arts, and in
absence from all that may recall the past.'
Thus the father and son conversed, while the rabbi, Philip Moses, was
engaged in consecrating the great sin-offering for his unhappy people.
Three days after this event the old man breathed his last in the arms
of the faithful Benjamina.