"Ianthe loves the ape; 'tis her concern," Uriel was stung into rejoining. "Nay, 'tis my concern. By Heaven, I'll grandsire no gorillas!" "Methinks in Porto thou wast an ape thyself," cried Uriel, raging. "Dog!" shrieked the old physician, his venerable countenance contorted; "dost count it equal to deceive the Christians and thine own brethren?" And he flung from the house. Uriel wrote to Ianthe. She replied-- "I asked thee to make thy peace. Thou hast made bitterer war. I cannot fight against my father and all Israel. Farewell!" Uriel's face grew grim: the puckers in his brow that her fingers had touched showed once more as terrible lines of suffering; his teeth were clenched. The old look of the hunted man came back. He took out her first note, which he kept nearest his heart, and re-read it slowly-- "Why ruin thy life for a mere abstraction? Canst thou not make peace?" A mere abstraction! Ah! Why had that not warned him of the woman's calibre? Nay, why had he forgotten--and here he had a vivid vision of a little girl bringing in Passover cakes--her training in a double life? Not that woman needed that--Dom Diego was right. False, frail creatures! No sympathy with principles, no recognition of the great fight he had made. Tears of self-pity started to his eyes. Well, she had, at least, saved him from cowardly surrender. The old fire flamed in his veins. He would fight to the death. And as he tore up her notes, a strange sense of relief mingled with the bitterness and fierceness of his mood; relief to think that never again would he be called upon to jabber with the apes, to grasp their loathly paws, to join in their solemnly absurd posturings, never would he be tempted from the peace and seclusion of his book-lined study. The habits of fifteen years tugged him back like ropes of which he had exhausted the tether. He seated himself at his desk, and took up his pen to resume his manuscript. "All evils come from not following Right Reason and the Law of Nature." He wrote on for hours, pausing from time to time to select his Latin phrases. Suddenly a hollow sense of the futility of his words, of Reason, of Nature, of everything, overcame him. What was this dreadful void at his breast? He leaned his tired, aching head on his desk and sobbed, as little Daniel had never sobbed yet. XIII 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.