“Unhappy man!” said the Jewess; “and art thou condemned to expose thy life for principles, of which thy sober judgment does not acknowledge the solidity? Surely this is a parting with your treasure for that which is not bread—but deem not so of me. Thy resolution may fluctuate on the wild and changeful billows of human opinion, but mine is anchored on the Rock of Ages.”

“Silence, maiden,” answered the Templar; “such discourse now avails but little. Thou art condemned to die not a sudden and easy death, such as misery chooses, and despair welcomes, but a slow, wretched, protracted course of torture, suited to what the diabolical bigotry of these men calls thy crime.”

“And to whom—if such my fate—to whom do I owe this?” said Rebecca; “surely only to him, who, for a most selfish and brutal cause, dragged me hither, and who now, for some unknown purpose of his own, strives to exaggerate the wretched fate to which he exposed me.”

“Think not,” said the Templar, “that I have so exposed thee; I would have bucklered thee against such danger with my own bosom, as freely as ever I exposed it to the shafts which had otherwise reached thy life.”

“Had thy purpose been the honourable protection of the innocent,” said Rebecca, “I had thanked thee for thy care —as it is, thou hast claimed merit for it so often, that I tell the life is worth nothing to me, preserved at the price which thou wouldst exact for it.”

“Truce with thine upbraidings, Rebecca,” said the Templar; “I have my own cause of grief, and brook not that thy reproaches should add to it.”

“What is thy purpose, then, Sir Knight?” said the Jewess; “speak it briefly.—If thou hast aught to do, save to witness the misery thou hast caused, let me know it; and then, if so it please you, leave me to myself—the step between time and eternity is short but terrible, and I have few moments to prepare for it.”

“I perceive, Rebecca,” said Bois-Guilbert, “that thou dost continue to burden me with the charge of distresses, which most fain would I have prevented.”

“Sir Knight,” said Rebecca, “I would avoid reproaches—but what is more certain than that I owe my death to thine unbridled passion?”

“You err—you err,” said the Templar hastily, “if you impute what I could neither foresee nor prevent to my purpose or agency.—Could I guess the unexpected arrival of you dotard, whom some flashes of frantic valour, and the praises yielded by fools to the stupid self-torments of an ascetic, have raised for the present above his own merits, above common sense, above me, and above his own merits, above common sense, above me, and above the hundreds of our Order, who think and feel as men free from such silly and fantastic prejudices as are the grounds of his opinions and actions?”

“Yet,” said Rebecca, “you sate a judge upon me, innocent—most innocent—as you knew me to be—you concurred in my condemnation, and, if I aright understood, are yourself to appear in arms to assert my guilt, and assure my punishment.”

“Thy patience, maiden,” replied the Templar.—“No race knows so well as thine own tribes how to submit to the time, and so to trim their bark as to make advantage even of an adverse wind.”

“Lamented be the hour,” said Rebecca, “that has taught such art to the house of Israel! but adversity bends the heart as fire bends the stubborn steel, and those who are no longer their own governors, and the denizens of their own free independent state, must crouch before strangers. It is our curse, Sir Knight, deserved, doubtless, by our own misdeeds and those of our father; but you—you who boast disgrace freedom as your brithright, how much deeper is your disgrace when you stoop to soothe the prejudices of others, and that against your own conviction?”