But even in the ecstasy of this her acknowledgment, he had a chill
undercurrent of consciousness that she did not understand; that, never
having lived in an unpersecuted Jewish community, she had no real
sense of its own persecuting power. Still, there was no need to remain
in Amsterdam now: they would live together in some lonely spot, in the
religion of Right Reason that he would teach her. So their hands came
together again, and once their lips met. But the father was yet to be
told of their sudden-born, sudden-grown love, and this with
characteristic impulse Uriel did as soon as the old physician awoke.
"God bless my soul!" said Dom Diego, "am I dreaming still?"
His sense of dream increased when Uriel went on to repeat the story of
his excommunication.
"And the ban--is it still in force?" he interrupted.
"It has not been removed," said Uriel sadly.
The burly graybeard sprang to his feet. "And with such a brand upon
thy brow thou didst dare speak to my daughter!"
"Father!" cried Ianthe.
"Father me not! He hath beguiled us here under false pretences. He
hath made us violate the solemn decree of the synagogue. He is
outlawed--he and his house and his food.--Sinner! The viands thou
hast given us, what of them? Is thy meat ritually prepared?"
"Thou, a man of culture, carest for these childish things?"
"Childish things? Wherefore, then, have I left my Portugal?"
"All ceremonies are against Right Reason," said Uriel in low tones,
his face grown deadly white.
"Now I see that thou hast never understood our holy and beautiful
religion. Men of culture, forsooth! Is not our Amsterdam congregation
full of men of culture--grammarians, poets, exegetes, philosophers,
jurists, but flesh and blood, mark you, not diagrams, cut out of
Euclid? Whence the cohesion of our race? Ceremony! What preserves and
unifies its scattered atoms throughout the world? Ceremony! And what
is ceremony? Poetry. 'Tis the tradition handed down from hoary
antiquity; 'tis the color of life."
"'Tis a miserable thraldom," interposed Uriel more feebly.
"Miserable! A happy service. Hast never danced at the Rejoicing of the
Law? Who so joyous as our brethren? Where so cheerful a creed? The
trouble with thee is that thou hast no childish associations with our
glorious religion, thou camest to it in manhood with naught but the
cold eye of Reason."
"But thou dost not accept every invention of Rabbinism. Surely in
Porto thou didst not practise everything."
"I kept what I could. I believe what I can. If I have my private
doubts, why should I set them up to perplex the community withal?
There's a friend of mine in this very city--not to mention names--but
a greater heretic, I ween, than even thou. But doth he shatter the
peace of the vulgar? Nay, not he: he hath a high place in the
synagogue, is a blessing to the Jewry, and confideth his doubts to me
in epistles writ in elegant Latin. Nay, nay, Senhor Da Costa, the
world loves not battering-rams."
And as the old physician spoke, Uriel began dimly to suspect that he
had misconceived human life, taken it too earnestly, and at his heart
was a hollow aching sense of futile sacrifice. And with it a suspicion
that he had mistaken Judaism, too--missed the poetry and humanity
behind the forms, and, as he gazed wistfully at Ianthe's tender
clouded face, he felt the old romantic sense of brotherhood stirring
again. How wonderful to be reabsorbed into his race, fused with
Ianthe!
But Right Reason resurged in relentless ascendency, and he knew that
his thought could never more go back on itself, that he could never
again place faith in any Revelation.
"I will be an ape among apes," he thought bitterly.