who murdered tiny babes and stabbed sacred hosts. The fresh morning wind blowing between my naked legs reminded me that I wore a shirt only. I felt somewhat embarrassed, because it is evident, my boy, that a man without breeches is in a state highly inconvenient to speak of sacred truth, to confound error and to prevent crime. Withal I gave him a prodigious sketch of his outrages, and I threatened him with the terrors of justice both human and divine.” “What do you say, my good master?” I nearly screamed, “yonder Mosaïde, who has such a pretty niece, kills newborn babes and stabs hosts?” “I don’t know anything about him,” M. Jérôme Coignard replied, “and besides cannot know it. But those crimes are his, they are of his race, and I can charge him with them without slandering him. I place on that miscreant’s back a long array of flagitious ancestors. You cannot have remained ignorant of all that is said of the Jews and of their abominable rites. You may see in an ancient cosmography of Munster in Westphalia a drawing representing some Jews mutilating a child; they are recognisable by the wheel or round of cloth they wear on their clothes in sign of infamy. For all that I do not believe these misdeeds to be of their daily and domestic use. I also doubt that the majority of Israelites are inclined to outrage the holy wafers. To accuse them of doing so would be to believe that they are as deeply convinced of the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ as we are ourselves. Sacrilege without faith is unbelievable, and the Jew who stabbed a host rendered by that very deed a sincere homage to the truth of transubstantiation. These are fables, my boy, to be left to the ignorant and, if I throw them in the face of that horrible Mosaïde, I do it less by the counsels of sound criticism than by the impressive suggestions of resentment and anger.” “Oh! sir,” I said, “you might have contented yourself with reproaching him for the murder of the Portuguese he killed in the frenzy of his jealousy; that certainly was a murder.” “What!” broke out my good master. “Mosaïde has killed a Christian? He is dangerous, my dear Tournebroche. You’ll have to come to the same conclusion that I have arrived at myself about this adventure. It is quite certain that his niece is the mistress of M. d’Asterac, whose room she doubtless had just left when I met her on the stairs. “I am too religious a man not to be sorry that so amiable a person comes of the Jewish race, who crucified Jesus Christ. Alas! do not doubt, my dear boy, that villain Mordecai is the uncle of an Esther who does not need to macerate six months in myrrh to become worthy of the bed of a king. That old spagyric raven is not the man fit for such a beauty, and I am rather inclined to take an interest in her myself.