"I risk no penalties," replied the beggar. "Indeed! Then do you think anyone may trample with impunity upon our ancient _Ascamot_?" "Our ancient _Ascamot_!" repeated Manasseh in surprise. "What have they to say against a Sephardi marrying a Tedesco?" The audacity of the question rendered the Council breathless. Manasseh had to answer it himself. "They have nothing to say. There is no such _Ascama_." There was a moment of awful silence. It was as though he had disavowed the Decalogue. "Do you question the first principle of our constitution?" said the President at last, in low, ominous tones. "Do you deny that your daughter is a traitress? Do you--?" "Ask your Chancellor," calmly interrupted Manasseh. "He is a Man-of-the-Earth, but he should know your statutes, and he will tell you that my daughter's conduct is nowhere forbidden." "Silence, sir," cried the President testily. "Mr. Chancellor, read the _Ascama_." The Chancellor wriggled on his chair, his face flushing and paling by turns; all eyes were bent upon him in anxious suspense. He hemmed and ha'd and coughed, and took snuff, and blew his nose elaborately. "There is n-n-no express _Ascama_," he stuttered at last. Manasseh sat still, in unpretentious triumph. The Councillor who was now become his right-hand neighbour was the first to break the dazed silence, and it was his first intervention. "Of course, it was never actually put into writing," he said in stern reproof. "It has never been legislated against, because it has never been conceived possible. These things are an instinct with every right-minded Sephardi. Have we ever legislated against marrying Christians?" Manasseh veered round half a point of the compass, and fixed the new opponent with his argumentative forefinger. "Certainly we have," he replied unexpectedly. "In Section XX., Paragraph II." He quoted the _Ascama_ by heart, rolling out the sonorous Portuguese like a solemn indictment. "If our legislators had intended to prohibit intermarriage with the German community, they would have prohibited it." "There is the Traditional Law as well as the Written," said the Chancellor, recovering himself. "It is so in our holy religion, it is so in our constitution." "Yes, there are precedents assuredly," cried the President eagerly. "There is the case of one of our Treasurers in the time of George II.," said the little Chancellor, blossoming under the sunshine of the President's encouragement, and naming the ancestor of a Duchess of to-day. "He wanted to marry a beautiful German Jewess." "And was interdicted," said the President. "Hem!" coughed the Chancellor. "He--he was only permitted to marry her under humiliating conditions. The Elders forbade the attendance of the members of the House of Judgment, or of the Cantors; no celebration was to take place in the _Snoga_; no offerings were to be made for the bridegroom's health, nor was he even to receive the bridegroom's call to the reading of the Law."