第60章

This last was a charge under which they quailed; for by that time the French had made themselves odious to all who retained a spark of patriotic feeling.My heart sank within me when I looked up at the bench, this tribunal of tyrants, all purple or livid with rage;when I looked at them alternately and at my noble mother with her weeping daughters--these so powerless, those so basely vindictive, and locally so omnipotent.Willingly I would have sacrificed all my wealth for a simple permission to quit this infernal city with my poor female relations safe and undishonored.But far other were the intentions of that incensed magistracy.My mother was arrested, charged with some offense equal to petty treason, or scandalum magnatum, or the sowing of sedition; and, though what she said was true, where, alas! was she to look for evidence? Here was seen the want of gentlemen.Gentlemen, had they been even equally tyrannical, would have recoiled with shame from taking vengeance on a woman.And what a vengeance! O heavenly powers! that I should live to mention such a thing! Man that is born of woman, to inflict upon woman personal scourging on the bare back, and through the streets at noonday! Even for Christian women the punishment was severe which the laws assigned to the offense in question.But for Jewesses, by one of the ancient laws against that persecuted people, far heavier and more degrading punishments were annexed to almost every offense.What else could be looked for in a city which welcomed its Jewish guests by valuing them at its gates as brute beasts? Sentence was passed, and the punishment was to be inflicted on two separate days, with an interval between each--doubtless to prolong the tortures of mind, but under a vile pretense of alleviating the physical torture.Three days after would come the first day of punishment.My mother spent the time in reading her native Scriptures; she spent it in prayer and in musing; while her daughters clung and wept around her day and night--groveling on the ground at the feet of any people in authority that entered their mother's cell.That same interval--how was it passed by me? Now mark, my friend.Every man in office, or that could be presumed to bear the slightest influence, every wife, mother, sister, daughter of such men, I besieged morning, noon, and night.I wearied them with my supplications.Ihumbled myself to the dust; I, the haughtiest of God's creatures, knelt and prayed to them for the sake of my mother.I besought them that I might undergo the punishment ten times over in her stead.And once or twice I DID obtain the encouragement of a few natural tears--given more, however, as I was told, to my piety than to my mother's deserts.But rarely was I heard out with patience;and from some houses repelled with personal indignities.The day came: I saw my mother half undressed by the base officials; I heard the prison gates expand; I heard the trumpets of the magistracy sound.She had warned me what to do; I had warned myself.Would Isacrifice a retribution sacred and comprehensive, for the momentary triumph over an individual? If not, let me forbear to look out of doors; for I felt that in the selfsame moment in which I saw the dog of an executioner raise his accursed hand against my mother, swifter than the lightning would my dagger search his heart.When I heard the roar of the cruel mob, I paused--endured--forbore.Istole out by by-lanes of the city from my poor exhausted sisters, whom I left sleeping in each other's innocent arms, into the forest.There I listened to the shouting populace; there even Ifancied that I could trace my poor mother's route by the course of the triumphant cries.There, even then, even then, I made--Osilent forest! thou heardst me when I made--a vow that I have kept too faithfully.Mother, thou art avenged: sleep, daughter of Jerusalem! for at length the oppressor sleeps with thee.And thy poor son has paid, in discharge of his vow, the forfeit of his own happiness, of a paradise opening upon earth, of a heart as innocent as thine, and a face as fair.

"I returned, and found my mother returned.She slept by starts, but she was feverish and agitated; and when she awoke and first saw me, she blushed, as if I could think that real degradation had settled upon her.Then it was that I told her of my vow.Her eyes were lambent with fierce light for a moment; but, when I went on more eagerly to speak of my hopes and projects, she called me to her--kissed me, and whispered: 'Oh, not so, my son! think not of me--think not of vengeance--think only of poor Berenice and Mariamne.' Aye, that thought WAS startling.Yet this magnanimous and forbearing mother, as I knew by the report of our one faithful female servant, had, in the morning, during her bitter trial, behaved as might have become a daughter of Judas Maccabaeus: she had looked serenely upon the vile mob, and awed even them by her serenity; she had disdained to utter a shriek when the cruel lash fell upon her fair skin.There is a point that makes the triumph over natural feelings of pain easy or not easy--the degree in which we count upon the sympathy of the bystanders.My mother had it not in the beginning; but, long before the end, her celestial beauty, the divinity of injured innocence, the pleading of common womanhood in the minds of the lowest class, and the reaction of manly feeling in the men, had worked a great change in the mob.Some began now to threaten those who had been active in insulting her.The silence of awe and respect succeeded to noise and uproar; and feelings which they scarcely understood, mastered the rude rabble as they witnessed more and more the patient fortitude of the sufferer.Menaces began to rise toward the executioner.Things wore such an aspect that the magistrates put a sudden end to the scene.