The old physician shook his head. "Nay, I love my Portugal. 'Tis here
that I was born, and here will I die. I love her--her mountains, her
rivers, her valleys, her medicinal springs--always love Portugal,
Ianthe--"
"Yes, father," said the little girl gravely.
"And, oh, her poets--her Rubeiro, her Falcão, her Camoëns--my own
grandfather was thought worthy of a place in the 'Cancioneiro Geral';
and I too have made a Portuguese poem on the first aphorism of
Hippocrates, though 'tis yet in manuscript."
"But if thou darest not profess thy faith," said Gabriel, "'tis more
than all the rest. To live a daily lie--intolerable!"
"Hoity-toity! Thou art young and headstrong. The Catholic religion!
'Tis no more than fine manners; as we say in Hebrew, _derech eretz_,
the way of the country. Why do I wear breeches and a cocked hat--when
I am abroad, _videlicet_? Why does little Ianthe trip it in a
petticoat?"
"Because I am a girl," said Ianthe.
Dom Diego laughed. "There's the question rhetorical, my little one,
and the question interrogative. However, we'll not puzzle thee with
Quintilian. Run away to thy lute. And so it is, Senhor da Costa. I
love my Judaism more than my Portugal; but while I can keep both my
mistresses at the cost of a little finesse--"
"But the danger of being burnt alive!"
"'Tis like hell to the Christian sinner--dim and distant."
"Thou hast been singed, methinks."
"Like a blasted tree. The lightning will not strike twice. Help
thyself to more wine. Besides, my stomach likes not the Biscay Bay.
God made us for land animals."
But Gabriel was not to be won over to the worthy physician's view, and
only half to the man himself. Yet was not this his last visit, for he
clung to Dom Diego as to the only Jew he knew, and borrowed from him a
Hebrew Bible and a grammar, and began secretly to acquire the sacred
tongue, bringing toys and flowers to the little Ianthe, and once a
costlier lute than her own, in return for her father's help with the
idioms. Also he borrowed some of Dom Diego's own works, issued
anonymously from the printing presses of Amsterdam; and from his new
friend's "Paradise of Earthly Vanity," and other oddly entitled
volumes of controversial theology, the young enthusiast sucked
instruction and confirmation of his doubts. To Dom Diego's Portuguese
fellow-citizens the old gentleman was the author of an erudite essay
on the treatment of phthisis, emphatically denouncing the implicit
reliance on milk.
But Gabriel could not imitate this comfortable self-adjustment to
surroundings. 'Twas but a half fight for the Truth, he felt, and
ceased to cultivate the semi-recreant physician. For as he grew more
and more in love with the Old Testament, with its simple doctrine of a
people, chosen and consecrate, so grew his sense of far-reaching
destinies, of a linked race sprung from the mysterious East and the
dawn of history, defying destruction and surviving persecution,
agonizing for its faith and its unfaith--a conception that touched the
springs of romance and the source of tears--and his vision turned
longingly towards Amsterdam, that city of the saints, the home of the
true faith, of the brotherhood of man, and the fatherhood of God.