"Ropero, so sad and so forlorn, Now thou feelest pain and scorn. Until sixty years had flown, Thou couldst say to every one, 'Nothing wicked have I known.' Christian convert hast thou turned, _Credo_ thou to say hast learned; Willing art now bold to view Plates of ham--no more askew. Mass thou hearest, Church reverest, Genuflexions makest, Other alien customs takest. Now thou, too, mayst persecute Those poor wretches, like a brute." "Those poor wretches" were his brethren in faith in the fair Spanish land. With a jarring discord ends the history of the Jews in Spain. On the ninth of Ab, 1492, three hundred thousand Jews left the land to which they had given its first and its last troubadour. The irony of fate directed that at the selfsame time Christopher Columbus should embark for unknown lands, and eventually reach America, a new world, the refuge of all who suffer, wherein thought was destined to grow strong enough "to vanquish arrogance and injustice without recourse to arrogance and injustice"--a new illustration of the old verse: "Behold, he slumbereth not, and he sleepeth not--the keeper of Israel." * * * A great tournament at the court of the lords of Trimberg, the Franconian town on the Saale! From high battlements stream the pennons of the noble race, announcing rare festivities to all the country round. The mountain-side is astir with knights equipped with helmet, shield, and lance, and attended by pages and armor-bearers, minnesingers and minstrels. Yonder is Walther von der Vogelweide, engaged in earnest conversation with Wolfram von Eschenbach, Otto von Botenlaube, Hildebold von Schwanegau, and Reinmar von Brennenberg. In that group of notables, curiously enough, we discern a Jew, whose beautiful features reflect harmonious soul life. "Süsskind von Trimberg," they call him, and when the pleasure of the feast in the lordly hall of the castle is to be heightened by song and music, he too steps forth, with fearlessness and dignity, to sing of freedom of thought, to the prevalence of which in this company the despised Jew owed his admission to a circle of knights and poets:[45] "O thought! free gift to humankind! By thee both fools and wise are led, But who thy paths hath all defined, A man he is in heart and head. With thee, his weakness being fled, He can both stone and steel command, Thy pinions bear him o'er the land. O thought that swifter art than light, That mightier art than tempest's roar! Didst thou not raise me in thy flight, What were my song, my minstrel lore, And what the gold from _Minne's_ store? Beyond the heights an eagle vaunts, O bear me to the spirit's haunts!" His song meets with the approval of the knights, who give generous encouragement to the minstrel. Raising his eyes to the proud, beautiful mistress of the castle, he again strikes his lyre and sings: