means of subsistence in some Protestant country, beyond the reach of the Inquisition. “As he was about to disclose this secret on which the safety of both depended, and which I bent in speechless agony to hear, a knock was heard at the door, very unlike the knocks of the preceding night. It was single, solemn, peremptory,--and followed by a demand to open the doors of the house in the name of the most holy Inquisition. At these terrible words, the wretched Jew flung himself on his knees, blew out the candles, called on the names of the twelve patriarchs, and slipped a large rosary on his arm, in less time than it is possible to conceive any human frame could go through such a variety of movements. The knock was repeated,--I stood paralyzed; but the Jew, springing on his feet, raised one of the boards of the floor in a moment, and, with a motion between convulsion and instinct, pointed to me to descend. I did so, and found myself in a moment in darkness and in safety. “I had descended but a few steps, on the last of which I stood trembling, when the officers of the Inquisition entered the room, and stalked over the very board that concealed me. I could hear every word that passed. “Don Fernan,” said an officer to the Jew, who re-entered with them, after respectfully opening the door, “why were we not admitted sooner?”--“Holy Father,” said the trembling Jew, “my only domestic, Maria, is old and deaf, the youth my son is in his bed, and I was myself engaged in my devotions.”--“It seems you can perform them in the dark,” said another, pointing to the candles, which the Jew was re-lighting.--“When the eye of God is on me, most reverend fathers, I am never in darkness.”--“The eye of God _is_ on you,” said the officer, sternly seating himself; “and so is another eye, to which he has deputed the sleepless vigilance and resistless penetration of his own,--the eye of the holy office. Don Fernan di Nunez,” the name by which the Jew went, “you are not ignorant of the indulgence extended by the church, to those who have renounced the errors of that accursed and misbelieving race from which you are descended, but you must be also aware of its incessant vigilance being directed towards such individuals, from the suspicion necessarily attached to their doubtful conversion, and possible relapse. We know that the black blood of Grenada flowed in the tainted veins of your ancestry, and that not more than four centuries have elapsed, since your forefathers trampled on that cross before which you are now prostrate. You are an old man, Don Fernan, but not an _old Christian_; and, under these circumstances, it behoves the holy office to have a watchful scrutiny over your conduct.”