Spinoza. Auerbach Berthold
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passed away; I had written twice to Manuela and her father, but received no answer. Her lovely image receded more and more into the background of my soul; the exclusiveness and self-sufficiency in which I had wrapped myself disappeared by degrees. The retreat of our uncle in Madrid and his family from our secret society, his bitter repentance, and the penance he did for the former half-heartedness of his faith, filled us all with grief and anxiety. The powerful Espinosas now in Spain are the descendants of this uncle. But not by a single betrayal of his coreligionists did he seek to lighten the hard penance laid upon him. We heard, however, from Geronimo that through a new edict of the Inquisition, which we had believed would affect the Moorish Christians alone, the Jewish Christians also would be exiled to Africa.
Amid anxiety for myself and those belonging to me, the memory of Manuela revived with all the fascinations of her angelic being. I saw the finger of God in it, when Rodrigo Casseres, who was travelling to Seville, offered to take charge of my commissions there.
I represented in my letter to Manuela all the horrors that awaited us, and besought her to come to us immediately with her father, that we might bear the future together. Almost without hope of any result, and merely to fulfil love's last duty, I sent off the letter.
My breast filled with a thousand cares and anxieties, and blaming our ancestors, who had laid on us a daily, ever-recurring, inglorious martyrdom, and doubled-faced religion, as an inheritance, I sauntered one day along the country road. There I saw a carriage advancing at a slow rate; I approached. A look, a cry, and Manuela was in my arms. As if by magical attraction had she lightly sprung over the side of the carriage. I quickly got into the conveyance with her, and drew the curtains, then drove towards the gate. Don Antonio sat by Manuela, wrapped in a large woollen rug; he, too, congratulated himself on the lucky accident that had allowed us to meet so soon.
"If I had gone much longer over hill and dale," he said, "Manuela would have brought me to you as a corpse; the journey rattled all my limbs together so, that I thought I was on the rack again. You have succeeded to your heart's content, have you not, Manuela, now you have persuaded the old fool to this long journey? Yes, yes; my life is worth nothing now; the sooner I die the better, is it not. Never mind, I shall not last long."
With a mocking laugh he scowled at us both, and pushed Manuela's arm away.
If his former refusal had seemed diabolical avarice to me before, the way he now poisoned his own child's happiness made it difficult for me to conquer my disgust; but he was nevertheless Manuela's father. Manuela understood how to dispel my annoyance by innumerable little questions and reminiscences. She easily succeeded, for what an infinitude we had to say to each other. But how strange it is, that, while a hundred important questions crowd into the mind, it is so often the least important that first forms itself into words!
"How is old Laura?" I inquired.
"She is dead, the false viper! Hear what happened to her. Hardly seven months since my father lay very ill (he has hardly enjoyed a month's health during your absence). Laura fell ill also; she was taken to the hospital of San Lorenzo, which she made heir to all her possessions. Her illness increased; she was incurable. After she had received the final sacrament, she expressed as a last wish that they should bring me to her; she could not die in peace till she had spoken to me once more alone. My father, too, advised me to go to her, and with almost insuperable disinclination I allowed myself to be conducted to the hospital. I should hardly have recognized Laura, so emaciated she had become in a few weeks; she, however, knew me at once, and wept as she stretched out her bony hands to me. Her habitual talkativeness had not yet deserted her, and in a low voice, broken by groaning and moaning, she avowed to me, that it was she who in confession to the priest had told that my father never went to church, and worshipped heathen gods in secret.
"The confessor, for this godly act, had absolved her from all her sins; but now it seemed to her as if she could not die before I too had forgiven her for the many troubles that had ensued to me in consequence. I must remember that she had pledged her own soul that I was a good Christian child, and thus I had been safe; I must remember, she said—and the old wretch winked with her half-closed eyes—that it was only so that I had come to know that dear good Don Alfonso, and she promised me soon to pray in heaven for our union. I thanked her for her good intentions, but could not embitter her dying hour, and forgave her, I must confess, with a not wholly willing heart."
I then told Manuela of my last conversation with Laura, and amid such talk we reached my father's house. The arrivals were very welcome to my father. Old Valor was carried up the steps, and their limited baggage soon stowed in its place. My sister, who was some years older than Manuela, was soon her dearest friend, so that she felt completely at home with us.
We quietly prepared for our departure, but the infirm state of Don Antonio, in which he would not hear of a journey, made us all anxious; my father, who was reputed to be the most experienced physician in New Castile, feared that he would linger long. We were astonished one morning, therefore, to find him dead in bed, with a frightfully swollen countenance. For this once, when Manuela first saw the horrible state of her father's face, her bodily powers sank unconscious under the burden of her woe; otherwise she had endured with fortitude all the vicissitudes of life.
My father thought that he had not the appearance of a natural death; and in fact, when the body was laid out, the amulet that Don Antonio had worn on his breast since his last imprisonment was found open and empty, and nowhere were to be discovered the remains of any poison. Manuela never heard anything of this circumstance.
As old Valor was now dead, my father thought our departure should be deferred no longer. The departed had left no intimation of his last will: what was more natural than that Manuela should travel with us? My father charged me to remind her to take into speedy consideration her somewhat unsettled affairs. I went to her, and found her alone, weeping, and pensive.
"We all honor you for these signs of filial affection," I said; "but why give yourself up any longer to such melancholy thoughts? My father will be your father, and I—you know what I would be to you."
"No, never!" she answered. "Have pity on me, poor orphan that I am, and let me go to my uncle in Valencia. He will not visit my father's enmity on me; he will not repel his sister's child. How willingly would I remain with you! but I see too late that an iron wall separates us forever."
"Do you know already?" I asked impatiently. "Did my sister confide it to you? Believe me, long ago my heart felt guilty of cowardly perjury not to have confessed everything to you; you would never have betrayed me. Yes, I am a Jew, and will stand by my oppressed brethren in the faith as long as a breath of life remains in me; and if you can desert me, well and good—you never loved me. Go to your uncle; no one will prevent you."
Manuela stared at me with despairing eyes.
"You are cruel, Señor," she said; "I should never have thought you could be so. Who has given you the right to treat me with such scorn, and yet that I must love you? Think you that I am faint-hearted, and ashamed of my faith? Say outright—I know you adhere to Islam, as your dead father did—and I will embrace your knees and beg forgiveness, but do not mock me. What have I done to you?"
A torrent of tears choked her voice; she turned from me sobbing. "O father, father!" she cried, "they treat your child so; why did you not take me with you into your grave?"
I called down all the curses of Heaven on my head if I had not told the truth. She looked at me kindly again, and the tears in her eyes witnessed her extreme sorrow for the injustice she had done me, and for the awful abyss that opened before our eyes.
"So near, and yet so infinitely far!" she said, giving me her hand in reconciliation. I besought her by all her former depth of love.
"God is a God of love wherever he is worshipped—in church, mosque, or synagogue. Were it not the will of God, should we have found and refound each other?" In fiery words I placed before her the differences of creed as they appeared to lovers; I troubled myself but little about what was written in books or taught by priests. God forgive me, I should not like to answer for it all now. Manuela but half listened to me, and cried in a heart-rending voice:
"Lord God, destroy me not