declaring Pharaoh should not have a drop of wine to cool his parched tongue. The Scripture recitation over, they began to eat, exclaiming, as they tasted the herb, “Bitter, bitter!”[242] Ascending a pair of winding stairs, we entered another apartment, where, beside a Jewess and a little girl, three venerable Jews were partaking of their annual feast with much good cheer. The story of the ancestral sufferings had been recited, and they were engaged in common table-talk. The lady of the house was affable, and her little daughter so clean and pretty as to excite affection and merit a present. Contrary to expectation as well as to the law, they offered us a piece of unleavened bread――which was made of flour and water, and baked in the form of a thin cake――and a bit of herb, not unlike American lettuce, and exceedingly bitter to the taste. The three old Jews were advanced in years beyond the allotted time of human life, and their white hair, with their long flowing beards, gave them a patriarchal appearance. They conversed freely as to their national and religious condition, regarding themselves under the Turks as degraded and oppressed as their fathers were under the oppressive domination of Pharaoh. Yet they were not without hope; “Elias would soon come; the proud Moslem would be overthrown, their land delivered, and their ancient capital restored to all its primal glory.” Again winding through the lane-like streets, into which the pale moonlight came struggling through the broken arcade that spanned the thoroughfare, we reached the residence of a rich Jewish banker, and rapped at the court-yard gate, but received the scriptural reply, “I know you not.” From the street we could see the brilliantly-lighted room where the paschal feast was held――the elegantly-robed Jewesses, as they passed by the window――and heard the voices of joy and devotion within. The lateness of the hour, and the banker’s fear lest the display of his plate and jewels might expose him to the rapacity of the Turk, were the probable causes of his refusal to admit us. Standing without in the chilly air of night, the time and scene recalled the Savior’s parable of the Strait Gate: “When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut-to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are.”[243]