In one of the most obscure and crooked lanes of the Imperial City,
wedged in and almost hidden between the high Moorish tower of an old
Visigothic church and the gloomy walls, sculptured with armorial
bearings, of a family mansion, there was many years ago a tumbledown
dwelling-house dark and miserable as its owner, a Jew named Daniel Levi.
This Jew, like all his race, was spiteful and vindictive, but for deceit
and hypocrisy he had no match.
The possessor, according to popular report, of an immense fortune, he
might nevertheless be seen all day long huddled up in the shadowy
doorway of his home, making and repairing chains, old belts and broken
trappings of all sorts, in which he carried on a thriving business with
the riff-raff of
[Illustration: A MOORISH WINDOW]
the Zocodover, the hucksters of the Postigo and the poor squires.
Though an implacable hater of Christians and of everything pertaining to
them, he never passed a cavalier of note or an eminent canon without
doffing, not only once, but ten times over, the dingy little cap which
covered his bald, yellow head, nor did he receive in his wretched shop
one of his regular customers without bending low in the most humble
salutations accompanied by flattering smiles.
The smile of Daniel had come to be proverbial in all Toledo, and his
meekness, proof against the most vexatious pranks, mocks and cat-calls
of his neighbors, knew no limit.
In vain the boys, to tease him, stoned his poor old house; in vain the
little pages and even the men-at-arms of the neighboring castle tried to
provoke him by insulting nicknames, or the devout old women of the
parish crossed themselves when passing his door as if they saw the very
Lucifer in person. Daniel smiled eternally with a strange, indescribable
smile. His thin, sunken lips twitched under the shadow of his nose,
which was enormous and hooked like the beak of an eagle, and although
from his eyes, small, green, round and almost hidden by the heavy brows,
there gleamed a spark of ill-suppressed anger, he went on imperturbably
beating with his little iron hammer upon the anvil where he repaired the
thousand rusty and seemingly useless trifles which constituted his stock
in trade.
Over the door of the Jew’s humble dwelling and within a casing of
bright-colored tiles there opened an Arabic window left over from the
original building of the Toledan Moors. Around the fretted frame of the
window and climbing over the slender marble colonettes that divided it
into two equal apertures there arose from the interior of the house one
of those climbing plants which, green and full of sap and of exuberant
growth, spread themselves over the blackened walls of ruins.
In the part of the house that received an uncertain light through the
narrow spaces of the casement, the only opening in the time-stained,
weather-worn wall, lived Sara, the beloved daughter of Daniel.
When the neighbors, passing the shop of the Hebrew, chanced to see Sara
through the lattice of her Moorish window and Daniel crouched over his
anvil, they would exclaim aloud in admiration of the charms of the
beautiful Jewess: “It seems impossible that such an ugly old trunk
should have put forth so beautiful a branch!”
For, in truth, Sara was a miracle of beauty. In the pupils of her great
eyes, shadowed by the cloudy arch of their black lashes, gleamed a point
of light like a star in a darkened sky. Her glowing lips seemed to have
been cut from a carmine weft by the invisible hands of a fairy. Her
complexion was pale and transparent as the alabaster of a sepulchral
statue. She was scarcely sixteen years of age and yet there seemed
engraven on her countenance the sweet seriousness of precocious
intelligence, and there arose from her bosom and escaped from her mouth
those sighs which reveal the vague awakening of passion.
The most prominent Jews of the city, captivated by her marvellous
beauty, had sought her in marriage, but the Hebrew maiden, untouched by
the homage of her admirers and the counsels of her father, who urged her
to choose a companion before she should be left alone in the world, held
herself aloof in a deep reserve, giving no other reason for her strange
conduct than the caprice of wishing to retain her freedom. At last, one
of her adorers, tired of suffering Sara’s repulses and suspecting that
her perpetual sadness was a certain sign that her heart hid some
important secret, approached Daniel and said to him:
“Do you know, Daniel, that among our brothers there is complaint of your
daughter?”
The Jew raised his eyes for an instant from his anvil, stopped his
eternal hammering and, without showing the least emotion, asked his
questioner:
“And what do they say of her?”
“They say,” continued his interlocutor, “they say--what do I know?--many
things; among them, that your daughter is in love with a Christian.” At
this, the despised suitor waited to see what effect his words had had
upon Daniel.
Daniel raised his eyes once more, looked at him fixedly a moment without
speaking and, lowering his gaze again to resume his interrupted work,
exclaimed:
“And who says this is not slander?”
“One who has seen them more than once in this very street talking
together while you were absent at our Rabbinical service,” insisted the
young Hebrew, wondering that his mere suspicions, much more his positive
statements, should have made so little impression on the mind of Daniel.
The Jew, without giving up his work, his gaze fixed upon the anvil where
he was now busying himself, his little hammer laid aside, in brightening
the metal clasp of a sword guard with a small file, began to speak in a
low, broken voice as if his lips were repeating mechanically the
thoughts that struggled through his mind:
“He! He! He!” he chuckled, laughing in a strange, diabolical way. “So a
Christian dog thinks he can snatch from me my Sara, the pride of our
people, the staff on which my old age leans! And do you believe he will
do it? He! He!” he continued, always talking to himself and always
laughing, while his file, biting the metal with its teeth of steel,
grated with an ever-increasing force. “He! He! ‘Poor Daniel,’ my friends
will say, ‘is in his dotage. What right has this decrepit old fellow,
already at death’s door, to a daughter so young and so beautiful, if he
doesn’t know how to guard her from the covetous eyes of our enemies?’
He! He! He! Do you think perchance that Daniel sleeps? Do you think,
peradventure, that if my daughter has a lover--and that might well
be--and this lover is a Christian and tries to win her heart and wins
it--all which is possible--and plans to flee with her--which also is
easy--and flees, for instance, to-morrow morning,--which falls within
human probability,--do you think that Daniel will suffer his treasure to
be thus snatched away? Do you think he will not know how to avenge
himself?”
“But,” exclaimed the youth, interrupting him, “did you then know it
before?”
“I know,” said Daniel, rising and giving him a slap on the shoulder, “I
know more than you, who know nothing, and would know nothing had not the
hour come for telling all. Adieu! Bid our brethren assemble as soon as
possible. To-night, in an hour or two, I will be with them. Adieu!”
And saying this, Daniel gently pushed his interlocutor out into the
street, gathered up his tools very slowly, and began to fasten with
double bolts and bars the door of his little shop.
The noise made by the door as it closed on its creaking hinges prevented
the departing youth from hearing the sound of the window lattice, which
at the same time fell suddenly as if the Jewess were just withdrawing
from the embrasure.