The sad fate which awaited the Jews touched the hearts of even the Spaniards. A delegation of them, including the most powerful grandees of the realm, waited upon the sovereigns, and implored them to revoke the terrible decree. Ferdinand and Isabella turned deaf ears to their entreaties. The great Don Isaac Abarbanel, the last of the brilliant lights of the Jews in Spain, a high officer in the service of Queen Isabella, threw himself at her feet, and in heart-rending sobs he burst forth: "Ask for our life, and it is thine; ask for all our possessions, they are thine, but if live we must, then, Illustrious Queen, drive us not from off the soil of Spain which is dearer to us than our life." For a moment her inflexible will wavered, another moment, and the mourning of 300,000 people might have been turned to rejoicing, and the doom of Spain might have been averted, and the history of Europe might have had a different reading to-day. But that other moment was never to come. Torquemada, who listened in an adjoining chamber to Abarbanel's tearful entreaty, and to the queen's yielding words, rushed into the royal presence, almost mad with fury, and pointing to the crucifix, he shrieked: "Behold Him whom Judas Iscariot sold for thirty pieces of silver! Sell him now for a higher price, and render an account of your bargain before God!" The fiend had conquered again. The queen is on her knees before him, imploring forgiveness for her moment's weakness. A gloom pervaded the entire realm, as the time of the departure drew hastily on. The Jews, attired in the deepest mourning, wandered restlessly about the streets. Peace dwelled no longer in their homes. Their fountain of tears had run dry. Their words became fewer, and more and more painful. When children twined their little arms lovingly about their parents' neck, when pining husbands gazed upon their drooping wives, and in their mournful silence asked one another: A month hence, a fortnight hence, a week hence, to-morrow, where will father be? Where will mother be? What fate awaits husband, and what misery shall fall upon wife? What cruelty shall subdue brother, and to what life of infamy shall sister be sold? When upon such questions they brooded, and when did they not? madness seized upon them, and they rushed out to the burial places, and there, among the dead, they sought the pity and mercy and consolation the living could not give; there, in the graveyards, they lingered among the tombs of their dear departed, sometimes for three or four days in succession, not a morsel of food nor a drop of water passing their lips. And as they fixed their gaze upon the stately palms, that shaded them and the graves of their dead, with aching heart they lingered low: