“At these words, the young man, overcome by all he saw and heard, and quite unprepared for this sudden transition from Catholicism to Judaism, burst into tears. The father seized the moment, “My child, you are now to profess yourself the slave of these idolaters, who are cursed in the law of Moses, and by the commandment of God,--or to enrol yourself among the faithful, whose rest shall be in the bosom of Abraham, and who, reposing there, shall see the unbelieving crawling over the burning ashes of hell, and supplicate you in vain for a drop of water, according to the legends of their own prophet. And does not such a picture excite your pride to deny them a drop?”--“I would not deny them a drop,” sobbed the youth, “I would give them these tears.”--“Reserve them for your father’s grave,” added the Jew, “for to the grave you have doomed me.--I have lived, sparing, watching, temporizing, with these accursed idolaters, for _you_. And now--and now you reject a God who is alone able to save, and a father kneeling to implore you to accept that salvation.”--“No, I do not,” said the bewildered youth.--“What, then, do you determine?--I am at your feet to know your resolution. Behold, the mysterious instruments of your initiation are ready. There is the uncorrupted book of Moses, the prophet of God, as these idolaters themselves confess. There are all the preparations for the year of expiation--determine whether those rites shall now dedicate you to the true God, or seize your father, (who has put his life into your hands), and drag him by the throat into the prisons of the Inquisition. You may--you can--_will you?_”