But, again had destiny decreed that a woman was to play an ignoble part in the tragic history of the Jews. A marriage was proposed between Manoel of Portugal, and the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, of Spain. Manoel was rejoiced with the proposal. Already he saw himself in the near future King of United Spain and Portugal, and of the entire New World. But Satan stepped between, dipped his pen in gall, and writing the marriage contract, demanded as one of the conditions, the immediate expulsion from Portugal of all the Jews, both natives and exiles. The king hesitated. The fanatical daughter of fanatical parents persisted, argument made her more vehement. Torquemada might well be proud of his pupil--the possession of vast empires, and of the most powerful crown of Europe tempted, and the tempter conquered. He had purchased his right to the princess of Spain at a sacrifice of thousands and thousands of lives, and with the destruction of the very pillars of his nation's prosperity. On the 30th of November, 1497, the marriage contract was signed, and on the 20th of the following month appeared the edict of the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal.--The scenes of mourning and wailing and heart-rending cries which resounded in Spain, re-echoed in Portugal, only the more painfully, because of the terrible knowledge they had since acquired of the meaning of the word "Expulsion." Manoel soon regretted his signing away his most industrious, most intelligent and most prosperous citizens. But the marriage contract held him fast, and the Spanish queen kept a watchful eye on him, and Torquemada upon both. The prospective vast empire, and the Spanish crown still dazzled his eyes. He planned a strategy. He thought he could force the parents to embrace Christianity, and to remain, if he once succeeded in getting all their children into his power, and into the Christian faith. He gave secret orders for the repetition of the atrocious crime of having all children under fourteen years of age seized from their mothers' bosom and fathers' arm, dispersed through the kingdom to be baptised and brought up as Christians. The secret became known. Portugal again re-echoed the wails of stricken ones. Frantic mothers threw their children into deep wells or rivers. Mothers were known to take their babes from their breast and tear them limb from limb, rather than to resign them to Christians. They would rather know the bodies of their children in the grave, and their released spirit in Heaven, than have them adopt a faith into which Satan sent his friends for their schooling. With all the parents' opposition the king's order was executed. Many accepted baptism, but not enough to please the king, and to wreak vengeance upon them for thwarting his wishes, he revoked his edict, seized all who had not yet fled and sold them as slaves.