Spinoza. Auerbach Berthold
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waves closed over the offered prey. For a long time my rest was sunk with it. The whole ship was in frightful commotion; one man alone stood unmoved amid the uproar: it was Mendez Henrico. A cocked pistol in one hand, and holding on with all his strength to a rope with the other, he stood on the deck.
"What do you want? are you mad?" I cried to him; he smiled pityingly.
"Do you see the sea there?" he said; "do you see? It is a great font; we shall all be baptized there according to the rites of the Greek Church; but they shall not compel me to it while I live—they, whom the elements deceive so slavishly. If that breaks (here he pointed to the mast), this ball shall burn in my heart; I will not—" At that moment the mast crashed down, a shot resounded, and Henrico fell head first overboard. I felt crushed by all that was around me; we were playthings in the hands of the storm.
My son, whoever would learn what is the good of his own life and of what, he knows of the world, and what is worthless in it, he will learn it best if he be placed with all he is and has on the boundless ocean. During that storm and the ensuing calm I saw deeper into the meaning of things than ever before. It was to me like the forty years' wandering in the wilderness of our forefathers; the old generation shall not enter into the promised land; it died out in me, and a new man saw the abode of freedom before him.
We landed at last in Antwerp, and it was in a season of mourning that I first learnt to love our new home.
For thirty days, as the law ordains, I mourned for my father; but for a much longer period I deplored my inability to carry out his last wishes. Manuela was meanwhile accepted as a member of the Jewish congregation, and at her side I found that peace and happiness for which I eternally thank God. We had both many hard struggles in life. We had both imagined the exercise of Judaism in a free community to be a very different thing; we did not know how strong the ties of habit were in us, and I especially could not reconcile myself to the mere freedom to live a life hemmed in by a thousand religious observances. God Almighty will forgive my sins, I have learned to know that His Holy Will is over all, and that the observance of the Law alone leads to him. We have devoted all we have to the end that our children might grow up in the peace of true faith. Be thankful for it. You above all, my son.
Such is the story of my life and of my love, written for my only son, Baruch, alone.
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