To the congregation at large, ignorant of these inner quarrels, the
backsliding of Uriel was made clear by the swine-flesh which the
Christian butcher now openly delivered at the house. Horrified zealots
remonstrated with him in the streets, and once or twice it came to a
public affray. The outraged elders pressed for a renewal of the ban;
but the Rabbis hesitated, thinking best, perhaps, henceforward to
ignore the thorn in their sides.
It happened that a Spaniard and an Italian came from London to seek
admission into the Jewish fold, Christian sceptics not infrequently
finding peace in the bosom of the older faith. These would-be
converts, hearing the rumors anent Uriel Acosta, bethought themselves
of asking his advice. When the House of Judgment heard that he had
bidden them beware of the intolerable yoke of the Rabbis, its members
felt that this was too much. Uriel Acosta was again excommunicated.
And now began new years of persecution, more grievous, more determined
than ever. Again his house was stoned, his name a byword, his walks
abroad a sport to the little ones of a new generation. And now even
the worst he had feared came to pass. Gradually his brother, who had
refused on various pretexts to liberate his capital, encroached on his
property. Uriel dared not complain to the civil magistrates, by whom
he was already suspect as an Atheist; besides, he still knew no Dutch,
and in worldly matters was as a child. Only his love for his brother
turned to deadly hate, which was scarcely intensified when Joseph led
Ianthe under the marriage canopy.
So seven terrible years passed, and Uriel, the lonely, prematurely
aged, found himself sinking into melancholia. He craved for human
companionship, and the thought that he could find it save among Jews
never occurred to him. And at last he humbled himself, and again
sought forgiveness of the synagogue.
But this time he was not to be readmitted into the fold so lightly.
Imitating the gloomy forms of the Inquisition, from which they had
suffered so much, the elders joined with the Rabbis in devising a
penance, which would brand the memory of the heretic's repentance upon
the minds of his generation.
Uriel consented to the penance, scarcely knowing what they asked of
him. Anything rather than another day of loneliness; so into the great
synagogue, densely filled with men and women, the penitent was led,
clothed in a black mourning garb and holding a black candle. He whose
earliest dread had been to be shamed before men, was made to mount a
raised stage, wherefrom he read a long scroll of recantation,
confessing all his ritual sins and all his intellectual errors, and
promising to live till death as a true Jew. The _Chacham_, who stood
near the sexton, solemnly intoned from the seventy-eighth Psalm: "But
He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed
them not: yea, many a time turned He his anger away and did not stir
up all his wrath. For He remembered that they were but flesh: a wind
that passeth away and cometh not again."
He whispered to Uriel, who went to a corner of the synagogue, stripped
as far as the girdle, and received with dumb lips thirty-nine lashes
from a scourge. Then, bleeding, he sat on the ground, and heard the
ban solemnly removed. Finally, donning his garments, he stretched
himself across the threshold, and the congregation passed out over his
body, some kicking it in pious loathing, some trampling on it
viciously. The penitent remained rigid, his face pressed to the
ground. Only, when his brother Joseph trampled upon him, he knew by
subtle memories of his tread and breathing who the coward was.
When the last of the congregants had passed over his body, Uriel arose
and went through the pillared portico, speaking no word. The
congregants, standing in groups about the canal-bridge, still
discussing the terrible scene, moved aside, shuddering, silenced, as
like a somnambulist that strange figure went by, the shoulders thrown
back, the head high, in superb pride, the nostrils quivering, but the
face as that of the dead. Never more was he seen of men. Shut up in
his study, he worked feverishly day and night, writing his
autobiography. _Exemplar Humanae Vitae_--an Ensample of Human Life, he
called it, with tragic pregnancy. Scarcely a word of what the world
calls a man's life--only the dry account of his abstract thought, of
his progress to broader standpoints, to that great discovery--"All
evils come from not following Right Reason and the Law of Nature." And
therewith a virulent denunciation of Judaism and its Rabbis: "They
would crucify Jesus even now if He appeared again." And, garnering the
wisdom of his life-experience, he bade every man love his neighbor,
not because God bids him, but by virtue of being a man. What Judaism,
what Christianity contains of truth belongs not to revealed, but to
natural religion. Love is older than Moses; it binds men together. The
Law of Moses separates them: one brings harmony, the other discord
into human society.
His task was drawing to an end. His long fight with the Rabbis was
ending, too. "My cause is as far superior to theirs as truth is more
excellent than falsehood: for whereas they are advocates for a fraud
that they may make a prey and slaves of men, I contend nobly in the
cause of Truth, and assert the natural rights of mankind, whom it
becomes to live suitably to the dignity of their nature, free from the
burden of superstitions and vain ceremonies."
It was done. He laid down his quill and loaded his pair of
silver-mounted pistols. Then he placed himself at the window as of
yore, to watch in his two mirrors for the passing of his brother
Joseph. He knew his hand would not fail him. The days wore on, but
each sunrise found him at his post, as it was reflected sanguinarily
in those fatal mirrors.
One afternoon Joseph came, but Daniel was with him. And Uriel laid
down his pistol and waited, for he yet loved the boy. And another time
Joseph passed by with Ianthe. And Uriel waited.
But the third time Joseph came alone. Gabriel's heart gave a great
leap of exultation. He turned, took careful aim, and fired. The shot
rang through the startled neighborhood, but Joseph fled in panic,
uninjured, shouting.
Uriel dropped his pistol, half in surprise at his failure, half in
despairing resignation.
"There is no justice," he murmured. How gray the sky was! What a cold,
bleak world!
He went to the door and bolted it. Then he took up the second pistol.
Irrelevantly he noted the "G." graven on it. Gabriel! Gabriel! What
memories his old name brought back! There were tears in his eyes. Why
had he changed to Uriel? Gabriel! Gabriel! Was that his mother's voice
calling him, as she had called him in sunny Portugal, amid the vines
and the olive-trees?
Worn out, world-weary, aged far beyond his years, beaten in the long
fight, despairing of justice on earth and hopeless of any heaven,
Uriel Acosta leaned droopingly against his beloved desk, put the
pistol's cold muzzle to his forehead, pressed the trigger, and fell
dead across the open pages of his _Exemplar Humanae Vitae_, the thin,
curling smoke lingering a little ere it dissipated, like the futile
spirit of a passing creature--"a wind that passeth away and cometh not
again."