They went to bed. Manasseh insisted upon that. They could not possibly
expect Joseph till the morning. Accustomed as Rachel was to lean upon
her husband's strength, at this moment his strength seemed harshness.
The night was long. A hundred horrid visions passed before her
sleepless eyes. The sun rose upon the Ghetto, striving to slip its
rays between the high, close-pressed tops of opposite houses. The five
Ghetto gates were thrown open, but Joseph did not come through any.
The Jewish pedlars issued, adjusting their yellow hats, and pushing
before them little barrows laden with special Christmas wares. "_Heb,
heb_," they shouted as they passed through the streets of Rome. Some
sold simples and philtres, and amulets in the shape of miniature
mandores or four-stringed lutes to preserve children from maladies.
Manasseh, his rugged countenance grown harder, went to his place of
business. He had forbidden any inquiries to be made outside the pale
till later in the day; it would be but to betray to the enemy Joseph's
breach of the law. In the meantime, perhaps, the wanderer would
return. Manasseh's establishment was in the Piazza Giudea. Numerous
shops encumbered the approaches, mainly devoted to the sale of
cast-off raiment, the traffic in new things being prohibited to Jews
by Papal Bull, but anything second-hand might be had here from the
rough costume of a shepherd of Abruzzo to the faded fripperies of a
gentleman of the Court. In the centre a new fountain with two dragons
supplied the Ghetto with water from the Aqueduct of Paul the Fifth in
lieu of the loathly Tiber water, and bore a grateful Latin
inscription. About the edges of the square a few buildings rose in
dilapidated splendor to break the monotony of the Ghetto barracks; the
ancient palace of the Boccapaduli, and a mansion with a high tower and
three abandoned churches. A monumental but forbidding gate, closed at
sundown, gave access to a second Piazza Giudea, where Christians
congregated to bargain with Jews--it was almost a suburb of the
Ghetto. Manasseh had not far to go, for his end of the Via Rua
debouched on the Piazza Giudea; the other end, after running parallel
to the Via Pescheria and the river, bent suddenly near the Gate of
Octavius, and finished on the bridge Quattro Capi. Such was the Ghetto
in the sixteen hundreds.
Soon after Manasseh had left the house, Miriam came in with anxious
face to inquire if Joseph had returned. It was a beautiful Oriental
face, in whose eyes brooded the light of love and pity, a face of the
type which painters have given to the Madonna when they have
remembered that the Holy Mother was a Jewess. She was clad in a simple
woollen gown, without lace or broidery, her only ornament a silver
bracelet. Rachel wept to tell her the lack of news, but Miriam did not
join in her tears. She besought her to be of good courage.
And very soon indeed Joseph appeared, with an expression at once
haggard and ecstatic, his black hair and beard unkempt, his eyes
glittering strangely in his flushed olive face, a curious poetic
figure in his reddish-brown mantle and dark yellow cap.
"_Pax vobiscum_," he cried, in shrill, jubilant accents.
"Joseph, what drunken folly is this?" faltered Rachel.
"_Gloria in altissimis Deo_ and peace on earth to all men of
goodwill," persisted Joseph. "It is Christmas morning, mother." And he
began to troll out the stave of a carol, "Simeon, that good saint of
old--"
Rachel's hand was clapped rudely over her son's mouth.
"Blasphemer!" she cried, an ashen gray overspreading her face.
Joseph gently removed her hand. "It is thou who blasphemest, mother,"
he cried. "Rejoice, rejoice, this day the dear Lord Christ was
born--He who was to die for the sins of the world."
Rachel burst into fresh tears. "Our boy is mad--our boy is mad. What
have they done to him?" All her anticipations of horror were outpassed
by this.
Pain shadowed the sweet silence of Miriam's face as she stood in the
recess of the window.
"Mad! Oh, my mother, I am as one awakened. Rejoice, rejoice with me.
Let us sink ourselves in the universal joy, let us be at one with the
human race."
Rachel smiled tentatively through her tears. "Enough of this foolery,"
she said pleadingly. "It is the feast of Dedication, not of Lots.
There needs no masquerading to-day."
"Joseph, what ails thee?" interposed the sweet voice of Miriam. "What
hast thou done? Where hast thou been?"
"Art thou here, Miriam?" His eyes became conscious of her for the
first time. "Would thou hadst been there with me!"
"Where?"
"At St. Peter's. Oh, the heavenly music!"
"At St. Peter's!" repeated Rachel hoarsely. "Thou, my son Joseph, the
student of God's Law, hast defiled thyself thus?"
"Nay, it is no defilement," interposed Miriam soothingly. "Hast thou
not told us how our fathers went to the Sistine Chapel on Sabbath
afternoons?"
"Ay, but that was when Michel Angelo Buonarotti was painting his
frescoes of the deliverances of Israel. And they went likewise to see
the figure of our Lawgiver in the Pope's mausoleum. And I have even
heard of Jews who have stolen into St. Peter's itself to gaze on that
twisted pillar from Solomon's temple, which these infidels hold for
our sins. But it is the midnight mass that this Epicurean has been to
hear."
"Even so," said Joseph in dreamy undertones, "the midnight
mass--incense and lights and the figures of saints, and wonderful
painted windows, and a great multitude of weeping worshippers and
music that wept with them, now shrill like the passionate cry of
martyrs, now breathing the peace of the Holy Ghost."
"How didst thou dare show thyself in the cathedral?" whimpered Rachel.
"Who should dream of a Jew in the immense throng? Outside it was dark,
within it was dim. I hid my face and wept. They looked at the
cardinals in their splendid robes, at the Pope, at the altar. Who had
eyes for me?"
"But thy yellow cap, Joseph!"
"One wears not the cap in church, mother."
"Thou didst blasphemously bare thy head, and in worship?"
"I did not mean to worship, mother mine. A great curiosity drew me--I
desired to see with my own eyes, and hear with mine own ears, this
adoration of the Christ, at which my teachers scoff. But I was caught
up in a mighty wave of organ-music that surged from this low earth
heavenwards to break against the footstool of God in the crystal
firmament. And suddenly I knew what my soul was pining for. I knew the
meaning of that restless craving that has always devoured me, though I
spake not thereof, those strange hauntings, those dim perceptions--in
a flash I understood the secret of peace."
"And that is--Joseph?" asked Miriam gently, for Rachel drew such
laboring breath she could not speak.
"Sacrifice," said Joseph softly, with rapt gaze. "To suffer, to give
one's self freely to the world; to die to myself in delicious pain,
like the last tremulous notes of the sweet boy-voice that had soared
to God in the Magnificat. Oh, Miriam, if I could lead our brethren out
of the Ghetto, if I could die to bring them happiness, to make them
free sons of Rome."
"A goodly wish, my son, but to be fulfilled by God alone."
"Even so. Let us pray for faith. When we are Christians the gates of
the Ghetto will fall."
"Christians!" echoed Rachel and Miriam in simultaneous horror.
"Ay, Christians," said Joseph unflinchingly.
Rachel ran to the door and closed it more tightly. Her limbs shook.
"Hush!" she breathed. "Let thy madness go no further. God of Abraham,
suppose some one should overhear thee and carry thy talk to thy
father." She began to wring her hands.
"Joseph, bethink thyself," pleaded Miriam, stricken to the heart. "I
am no scholar, I am only a woman. But thou--thou with thy
learning--surely thou hast not been befooled by these jugglers with
the sacred text? Surely thou art able to answer their word-twistings
of our prophets?"
"Ah, Miriam," replied Joseph tenderly. "Art thou, too, like our
brethren? They do not understand. It is a question of the heart, not
of texts. What is it I feel is the highest, divinest in me? Sacrifice!
Wherefore He who was all sacrifice, all martyrdom, must be divine."
"Bandy not words with him, Miriam," cried his mother. "Oh, thou
infidel, whom I have begotten for my sins. Why doth not Heaven's fire
blast thee as thou standest there?"
"Thou talkest of martyrdom, Joseph," cried Miriam, disregarding her.
"It is we Jews who are martyrs, not the Christians. We are penned here
like cattle. We are marked with shameful badges. Our Talmud is burnt.
Our possessions are taxed away from us. We are barred from every
reputable calling. We may not even bury our dead with honor or carve
an epitaph over their graves." The passion in her face matched his.
Her sweetness was exchanged for fire. She had the air of a Judith or a
Jael.
"It is our own cowardice that invites the spittle, Miriam. Where is
the spirit of the Maccabæans whom we hymn on this feast of Chanukah?
The Pope issues Bulls, and we submit--outwardly. Our resistance is
silent, sinuous. He ordains yellow hats; we wear yellow hats, but
gradually the yellow darkens; it becomes orange, then ochre, till at
last we go capped in red like so many cardinals, provoking the edict
afresh. We are restricted to one synagogue. We have five for our
different country-folk, but we build them under one roof and call four
of them schools."
"Hush, thou Jew-hater," cried his mother. "Say not such things aloud.
My God! my God! how have I sinned before Thee?"
"What wouldst thou have, Joseph?" said Miriam. "One cannot argue with
wolves. We are so few--we must meet them by cunning."
"Ah, but we set up to be God's witnesses, Miriam. Our creed is naught
but prayer-mumbling and pious mummeries. The Christian Apostles went
through the world testifying. Better a brief heroism than this long
ignominy." He burst into sudden tears and sank into a chair
overwrought.
Instantly his mother was at his side, bending down, her wet face to
his.
"Thank Heaven! thank Heaven!" she sobbed. "The madness is over."
He did not answer her. He had no strength to argue more. There was a
long, strained silence. Presently the mother asked--
"And where didst thou find shelter for the night?"
"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?"