Astonishment and grief alone prevented my exclaiming aloud against this bond on the affections of my child. The marriage of the Israelite with the stranger was prohibited by our law, and still more severely prohibited by the later ordinances of our teachers. But marriage with a fugitive, an alien, a son of the idolater, whose proselytism had never been avowed, and whose skill in the ways of the world might be at this hour undermining the peace or the faith of my whole family—the idea was tenfold profanation! I checked myself only to have complete evidence. “But,” said my daughter, in a voice mingled with many a sigh, “if this should become known to my father—and known it must be—how can we hope for his consent? Now, Constantius, you will have to learn what it is to deal with our nation. We have prejudices, lofty, tho blind—indissoluble, tho fantastic. My father’s consent is beyond all hope.” “He is honorable—he has human feeling—he loves you.” “Fondly, I believe, and I must not thus return his love; no, tho my happiness were to be the forfeit, I must not pain his heart by the disobedience of his child.” “But Salome, my sweet Salome! are obstinacy and prejudice to be obeyed against the understanding and the heart? Can a father counsel his child to a crime, and would it not be one to give your faith to this Jubal, if you could not love him?” “I have decided that already. Never will I wed Jubal.” “Yet what is it that you would disobey—a cruel and fantastic scruple of your teachers, the perverters of your law? Must we sacrifice reason to prejudice, truth to caprice, the law of nature and of heaven to the forgeries and follies of the Scribes? Mine you are, and mine you shall be, my wife by a law more sacred, more powerful, and more pure. The time of bondage is passed. A new law, a new hope, have come to break the chains of the Jew and enlighten the darkness of the Gentile. You have heard that law; your generous heart and unclouded understanding have received it, and now by that common hope, my beloved, we are one, tho seas and mountains should separate us—tho the malice of fortune and the tyranny of man should forbid our union; still, in flight, in the dungeon, in the last hour of a troubled existence, we are one. Now, Salome, I will go, but go to seek your father.” [Sidenote: Salathiel’s Assertion] My indignation rose to its height. I had heard my child taught to rebel. I had heard myself pronounced the slave of prejudice. But the open declaration that my authority was to be to my child a law no more let loose the whole storm of my soul. I rushed forward; Salome uttered a cry and sank senseless upon the ground. Constantius raised her up and bore her to a vase, from which he sprinkled water upon her forehead.