Chapter I

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

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.