The Duchess of Trajetto Part 5

"Did you send for Barbarossa?" The boy's eyes flashed fire.

"If I have any reason to think you did so, you shall be flayed alive; and I shall be sure to find out."

The boy looked unmoved.

"Your only chance of escaping punishment is your being henceforth inviolably faithful to your mistress. There, go; and be a good boy."

The boy made a salaam and retired.

"There can be no harm," said the Cardinal to Giulia, "in giving him a little reminder."

Next day the boy was found drowned. Whether he had tried to escape by swimming, or had intentionally ended his life, n.o.body knew. He could no longer be a traitor at any rate. But this is antic.i.p.ating.

CHAPTER V.

THE CARDINAL AND THE JEW.

"I should like," said Ippolito, "to speak with that Jew before I leave you. He may help me to some curious ma.n.u.scripts."

The Medici were very clever in hunting up curiosities of literature; for their encouragement of the arts sprang less from the love of that renown which rewards liberal patronage, than from real, genuine interest in arts and letters _for their own sake_. Hence the wors.h.i.+p of their very names among poor _literati_, to whom sympathy and appreciation are dearer than gold, though they like that too. Pity that they loved Plato better than Christ! The spirit of poetical and philosophical emulation which they kindled was accompanied by utter obtuseness to spiritual things. A keen sense of purity of language fostered no love of purity of life; there was, in fact, complete antagonism between the elegant disciples of Lorenzo and the severe followers of Savonarola and Bernardino Ochino; and if the very light that was in them was darkness, how great was that darkness! The Medici r.e.t.a.r.ded rather than advanced the spirituality of their age; and in like manner, though in different proportion, their elegant biographer has thrown a false shadow on good, and a false light on evil. Of course I shall be covered with obloquy for saying this.

Cardinal Ippolito received Bar Hhasdai in a cabinet adjoining the _sala di compagnia_, in which music and society-games were beguiling the tedium of the other guests. The Jew was a grand specimen of the Sephardim--he was a great deal older than he looked, his hair unbleached, and his head unbent by age.

"Your name is that of a great man," said the Cardinal to him.

"My descent is from him likewise," said the physician. "I am son, or, as your people would say, descendant of that Hhasdai ben Isaac who was Hagib to the second Abderrahman, and wrote the famous epistle--of which you doubtless have heard--to Joseph, King of Cozar."

"No, I never heard anything about it," said Ippolito with interest. "Who was the king of Cozar?"

"The Cozarim," replied Bar Hhasdai, "were Jews dwelling on the Caspian Sea. My ancestor had long heard of them without being able to communicate with them, till, from the Spanish emba.s.sy at Constantinople, he learned that some of them frequently brought furs for sale to the bazaars there. On this, he addressed an epistle to them, beginning: 'I, Bar Hhasdai ben Isaac, ben Ezra, one of the dispersed of Jerusalem, dwelling in Spain,' and so on--'Be it known to the king that the name of the land we inhabit is, in the holy language, Sepharad, but in that of the Ishmaelites, el Andalus,' &c. Bar Hhasdai despatched this epistle to the East by an envoy, who returned six months afterwards, saying he had hunted high and low for the Cozarim, without being able to find them.

Their kingdom undoubtedly existed, but was quite inaccessible. Bar Hhasdai transmitted his letter afterwards, however, through two amba.s.sadors of the Asiatic people called Gablim, who visited Cordova."

"And were these Cozarim the lost tribes?"

"I know not."

"Where are they now?"

"They are not found."

"How came you Jews to settle in Spain?"

"I believe in Abarbanel. He tells us that two families of the house of David settled in Spain during the first captivity. One of them settled at Lucena; the other, the Abarbanels, took root at Seville. Hence all their descendants were of the royal stock--of the tribe of Judah."

"You yourself, then, are of the royal stock?"

"I trace up to David."

Ippolito did not know whether to believe him; but he evidently believed in himself.

"I thought," said De' Medici, "your genealogies were lost?"

"Not when we came to Spain. But it is believed that many Jews were in Spain even _prior_ to the first captivity--Jews who came over with the merchant s.h.i.+ps of Hiram in the days of David and Solomon, and who remitted large sums of money towards the erection of the Temple. You may see a tombstone that confirms this, without the walls of Saguntum, to this day. It bears the following inscription in Hebrew--'The sepulchre of Adoniram, the servant of King Solomon, who came hither to collect tribute.' The tomb was opened about fifty years ago, and found to contain an embalmed corpse of unusual stature."

"This is curious," said the Cardinal, reflectively,--"and merely a matter of curiosity."

"It ought not to be so in your eyes--nor in the eyes of any thoughtful Christian," said Bar Hhasdai.

"Why not?"

"Because we Sephardim were not consenting unto the death of him whom you term the Christ."

"Ha!--But you would have done so, most probably, if you had been on the spot."

"That is a gratuitous supposition. On the contrary, we wrote an epistle to Caiaphas the High Priest, pleading for the life of Jesus, whose good report had been brought us."

"Can this be so?"

"Prince Cardinal! when I and my brethren were banished from Spain forty years ago, we appealed to an ancient monument in the open square of Toledo, bearing the inscription of some very early bishop, to the effect that we Sephardim had not quitted Spain during the whole time of the second Temple; and, therefore, could not have shared in the guilt of crucifying Jesus!"

"Singular!"

"When Taric the Moor took Toledo, in the year 710 of your era, he found, at Segoncia, among other treasures, the actual table of shew-bread which had belonged to Solomon's Temple! and which our nation had secretly brought to Spain. It was composed of one huge emerald, surrounded by three rows of the choicest pearls, and it stood upon three hundred and sixty feet of pure gold."

"Are you fabling?" exclaimed the Cardinal, whom this tradition interested more than all the rest.

"Nay," said Bar Hhasdai, "the fable is not mine, at any rate. That such a relic was really found there, is proved by their changing the name of the place from Segoncia to Medinat al Meida, _the place of the table_."

"Why, man, such a relic as that would redeem your whole race! Hist, the d.u.c.h.ess is singing----"

A lute, rarely touched, preluded a sweet, plaintive air, sung by a balmy voice in the saloon. The Cardinal listened with pleasure and a little provocation; for the d.u.c.h.ess had twice refused to sing to him, and it was very bad of her to do so at the request of some one else. The little s.n.a.t.c.h of song ended abruptly in the minor.

"Could not you enter into that?" said Ippolito, noticing a strange mixture of sadness and sarcasm on the physician's face. He replied with a distich--

"What saith the art of music among the Christians?-- 'I was a.s.suredly stolen from the land of the Hebrews!'"

"Do you mean that that is a Hebrew melody?"

"O, yes!"

"Jew! _why_ will you not convert, and be healed?"

"It cannot be. I have seen whole families of slain Jews with gaping gashes in their bodies, heaped at their own thresholds--and those gashes were made by the swords of Christians!"