bruised, too, unsightly in a maiden's eye, and the old man was so severely shaken this day, else might I resent this rude hospitality," and with this, the peddler, who was in no small way of business, drew from an inner pocket a huge pocketbook bound in parchment, closed with parchment thongs, and began examining his accounts with the different merchants who had bought from him at the fairs.
CHAPTER III
IN THE SANCTUARY
"Daughter, thou knowest the common habit of the street is that a parent should give his daughter in marriage at the bidding of a go-between." The speaker paused; then, in ironic tones, continued, "In this we follow the manner of the princes of the realm, who send their ambassadors to a neighboring court to choose for them a fitting bride. I have not listened to the promptings of my friends, who urged me to mate thee with the wealth of a Frankforter or Hamburg Jew, but I left thee to choose thy own mate, as do the free, birds of the air and as our fathers and mothers did in the sunny land where love listens to the music of the guitar and the moon's gentle whisperings. Art satisfied with thy choice? Listen, child, a maiden's secrets are her own to be unfolded to a mother. Yet, since I must be both thy parents—unfitted to be a maiden's counselor—I ask thee this. Thou needst not accept Solomon, the jeweler's son, to please me. He is a goodly youth, one after mine own heart, with more imagination than may be bred in these dim streets. He is of my liking, a friend of my old age, right worthy to be my right hand, yet, therefore, I would not that to please me thou shouldst make him thy guide through life.
"Dear father, he is my choice. I love him fondly." The darkness concealed her blushes.
Aaron, the priest, and his daughter were seated in the living room of their dwelling. The room, though not large, seemed spacious in the hovering twilight of the winter day. The momentary flicker of the burning logs revealed shelves of books and small tables laden with rare articles de vertu. The fire in its glow burnished the dull gold tracery of the heavy arras which draped the walls. On a low stool sat Rachel, idly holding some embroidery at which the fading light would no longer permit her to work. Aaron, a skull cap on his head, wearing a long garberdine, which completely concealed his figure, leant on the table. Beside him lay an open, much-worn volume, stained with finger marks and disfigured with dog's ears. Anon he turned toward the glowing embers and then to the firelit face of his daughter, who seemed to be reading the imaginative tales pictured in the glowing grate. Had there been light, one might also have seen the signs of a Jew's dwelling and one or two Moorish and Spanish curios. Such was the tenacity of the descendants of the Spanish Jews, that for ages they maintained in their common speech euphonisms of Spanish gallantry and endearment, and surrounded themselves with such objects—heirlooms—that their fathers had in their hasty departure brought with them from their southern homes. By a strange perversity, characteristic of the Jewish race from the Exodic period, these exiles and their descendants wilfully forgot their sufferings and looked ever back upon that country