This was an unexpected blow for the wretched Jews, who feared exile even more than execution. They had borne imprisonment, ignominy, penury, and mutilation unflinchingly, in the hope that time would soften the heart, or at least wear out the arm, of persecution. But final banishment, with all the terrible perils of shipwreck, of famine, of attack by pirates and of disease which a large and unprotected crowd voyaging the high seas was certain to encounter in those days, would mean irretrievable ruin for the whole race. Moreover the Jews loved Spain with passionate devotion,[73] as is shown by the mediaeval Hebrew poetry which assumes some of its most glowing eloquence in praise of Andalusia. So, in order to avoid expatriation, the leading Jews offered thirty--some say three hundred--thousand ducats to the sovereigns as a ransom for their people. Ferdinand and Isabella, intent on bringing their costly Moorish campaign to a successful issue, were not disinclined to listen to a proposal which promised a reinforcement of their military resources. They received the Jewish deputy in audience, and there was every prospect of the negotiations coming to a happy conclusion, when, at the psychological moment, Torquemada, the sleepless and ruthless, burst into the apartment of the palace where the interview was held, and, lifting up a crucifix, which he drew forth from beneath his cassock, thundered at the King and Queen: “Judas Iscariot sold his master for thirty pieces of silver. Your Highnesses would sell Him anew for thirty thousand; here He is, take Him and barter Him away.” With these words the terrible actor cast the crucifix upon the table and left the room. The effect of the scene on the sovereigns’ minds was such as the crafty priest had anticipated. His sudden and opportune appearance, and his equally sudden disappearance, savoured of the miraculous; his solemn warning seemed to issue from Heaven. The same superstitious subservience to ghostly influence which had induced Isabella more than a dozen years before to sanction the persecution of the Jews, now induced her to order their expulsion. Nor was there a voice to protest. The Castilians who would have bitterly resented the arbitrary banishment of one of themselves, heard with complacency a similar decision taken against a whole nation. For Israel was a people apart. They had no share in its interests; and it had no share in their rights. ♦1492♦