"Will you listen to me?" said Bar Hhasdai. "Then you shall hear. In the month Abib, or, as you would say, in March, in the year 5052, or according to your reckoning 1492, a decree was passed that every Jew should quit Arragon, Castile, and Granada, on pain of death and confiscation. By a refinement in injustice, we were forbidden to take out of the country plate, jewels, or coin: we must convert all our possessions into bills of exchange. As our enemies would not buy of us till the last moment, and then at a prodigious discount, you may conceive the way in which we were pillaged, often reduced to exchange a good house for an ass, or a field or vineyard for a few yards of cloth. "When the royal proclamation was announced, Abarbanel the Jew happened to be at court. He entered the king's presence, and cast himself before him on his face, exclaiming, 'Regard us, O king! Use not thy faithful servants with so much cruelty! Exact from us everything we possess, rather than banish us from what has now become our country!' But it was all in vain. At the king's right hand sat the queen, who was the Jews' enemy, and who urged him with an angry voice to carry through what he had so happily commenced. We left no effort untried to obtain a reversal of the king's sentence; but without effect. Baptism was the only alternative. I am sorry to say, there were some who submitted to it, rather than forsake their homes. Home is dear; but it may be purchased too dearly. More noble were those _eight hundred thousand_ Sephardim who forsook house and hearth, garden, field, and vineyard, the synagogues and the burial-places of their fathers, and, on foot and unarmed, collected together from every province, young and old, infants and women, noble examples of passive endurance, to go whither the Lord should lead them! Of that number was I; and with God for our guide we set out---- "Do I tire you?" "O no!----Go on." "About twenty thousand of us took refuge in Portugal, where they were admitted, _pro tempore_, on payment of eight golden ducats per head: but, if they remained beyond a certain day, they were sentenced to slavery. The frontiers were lined with tax-gatherers, to exact the poll-tax. "The majority of us embarked at the different ports, where brutal ship-masters exacted enormous sums for their passage, and, in many cases, burned or wrecked their vessels when at sea, escaping themselves in their boats, and leaving the unhappy Jews to perish.