"I believe in Abarbanel. He tells us that two families of the house of David settled in Spain during the first captivity. One of them settled at Lucena; the other, the Abarbanels, took root at Seville. Hence all their descendants were of the royal stock--of the tribe of Judah." "You yourself, then, are of the royal stock?" "I trace up to David." Ippolito did not know whether to believe him; but he evidently believed in himself. "I thought," said De' Medici, "your genealogies were lost?" "Not when we came to Spain. But it is believed that many Jews were in Spain even _prior_ to the first captivity--Jews who came over with the merchant ships of Hiram in the days of David and Solomon, and who remitted large sums of money towards the erection of the Temple. You may see a tombstone that confirms this, without the walls of Saguntum, to this day. It bears the following inscription in Hebrew--'The sepulchre of Adoniram, the servant of King Solomon, who came hither to collect tribute.' The tomb was opened about fifty years ago, and found to contain an embalmed corpse of unusual stature." "This is curious," said the Cardinal, reflectively,--"and merely a matter of curiosity." "It ought not to be so in your eyes--nor in the eyes of any thoughtful Christian," said Bar Hhasdai. "Why not?" "Because we Sephardim were not consenting unto the death of him whom you term the Christ." "Ha!--But you would have done so, most probably, if you had been on the spot." "That is a gratuitous supposition. On the contrary, we wrote an epistle to Caiaphas the High Priest, pleading for the life of Jesus, whose good report had been brought us." "Can this be so?" "Prince Cardinal! when I and my brethren were banished from Spain forty years ago, we appealed to an ancient monument in the open square of Toledo, bearing the inscription of some very early bishop, to the effect that we Sephardim had not quitted Spain during the whole time of the second Temple; and, therefore, could not have shared in the guilt of crucifying Jesus!" "Singular!" "When Taric the Moor took Toledo, in the year 710 of your era, he found, at Segoncia, among other treasures, the actual table of shew-bread which had belonged to Solomon's Temple! and which our nation had secretly brought to Spain. It was composed of one huge emerald, surrounded by three rows of the choicest pearls, and it stood upon three hundred and sixty feet of pure gold." "Are you fabling?" exclaimed the Cardinal, whom this tradition interested more than all the rest. "Nay," said Bar Hhasdai, "the fable is not mine, at any rate. That such a relic was really found there, is proved by their changing the name of the place from Segoncia to Medinat al Meida, _the place of the table_." "Why, man, such a relic as that would redeem your whole race! Hist, the Duchess is singing----"