Jener Bau der Glaubensrichter Ist verschwunden von dem Boden Lissabons und ein Theater Hat die Staette sich erkoren. Hoheitsvoll blickt auf Domingo Dieser heitre Musentempel, Der den Lorbeer ewig wahret Allen, die gedient dem Schoenen! [Illustration] CHAPTER XVI. EXPULSION OF THE JEWS. TORQUEMADA RESOLVES UPON IMMEDIATE EXPULSION OF ALL UNCONVERTED JEWS.--THE FATAL EDICT.--THE SPANIARDS MOVED TO PITY.--DON ISAAC ABARBANEL PLEADS WITH THE QUEEN.--THE QUEEN HESITATES.--TORQUEMADA, THE FIEND, CONQUERS AGAIN.--THE ILL-FATED JEWS SEEK AMONG THE DEAD THE PITY WHICH THE LIVING REFUSE.--THE DEPARTURE. With tearful eyes and bleeding heart we have seen portrayed the mournful and tragic fate of the Jews and Moors in Spain. We were unwilling eye-witnesses to sufferings and cruelties, which we knew had never been equalled, and thought could never be surpassed. We thought we had seen the climax of maniacal fanaticism. We thought well might Thomas de Torquemada recline now beneath the laurels of infamous immortality he had won for himself, and henceforth concentrate his frenzied zeal upon religious efforts, less iron-hearted and less murderous. We thought now that Spain had completely vanquished the Moor, had degraded the Jews, had successfully taught the "convert" Jews a most "burning" love for the Christian faith, by means of the Inquisition's pitiless, slaughtering tribunal, now that greed and bigotry and viciousness and ambition had been satiated, we thought Ferdinand and Isabella would halt in their unpitying and unmerciful career, would pause long enough to gaze upon the terrible calamities they had inflicted upon the realm and upon innocent people, and would hasten to amend their ways, and repair their great wrongs. It was natural for us to think so. It is the experience of mankind that reaction accompanied by remorse, ever follows close upon the heels of rampant fury; that generosity and clemency, however fiercely the infuriated storms had lashed them into savage atrocity, will seek and find again their unruffled calm. It is therefore we stand aghast at beholding the next brutish inhumanity of Torquemada. Of a truth, he is not man but fiend, for to him principles which guide the actions of human beings are not applicable. For him there exists no reaction and no remorse, no generosity and no clemency. Where the most cruel of the cruel tremble at the mere thought, he executes sportively and in cold blood. Where others rest their blood-reeking weapons in the belief that they have reached, at last, the summit of crime, he heartlessly advances as upon mere stepping stones to far greater cruelties to come. He knew why he apprehended assassination now. He knew why he secured an escort now of fifty horse and two hundred foot. He was about to perpetrate a crime that should throw into the shade all that he had enacted hitherto.