"Man!" exclaimed the Rabbi, fixing his keen black eye upon Burrell,
"away from before me! Guilt and falsehood are on your lip. Your eye, the
eye of the proud Christian, quails before the gaze of the despoiled and
despised Jew; were you innocent, you would stand firm as I do now, erect
in your Maker's image. Do you not tremble lest God's own lightnings
blast you? Did you ever read, and reading believe, the Christian story
of Ananias and Sapphira!"
If Burrell had possessed an atom of human feeling, he would have sunk
abashed to the earth, and entreated the forgiveness of the Rabbi, whose
flashing eyes and extended features glared and swelled with indignation;
but the only two emotions that at the time contended within him were
cowardice and pride. Had he the power, gladly would he have struck the
Jew to death, as a punishment for what he deemed his insolence; but he
feared the protecting and avenging hand of Cromwell, who never resigned
a cherished purpose or a cherished person, and whose esteem for the
learned Rabbi was perfectly known, and much talked of about the court.
"You cannot avoid crediting me for meekness, Ben Israel," he said,
without, however, raising his eyes from the ground (for his blood boiled
in his veins, though he spoke in a gentle tone); "you have come into my
house, rated me upon a foul charge, and will not permit me to speak in
my own defence. Take a cup of this wine, and then I will hear, if you
can adduce it, further proof than that false portrait."
The Rabbi touched not the proffered beverage, but withdrew from his vest
sundry letters, which he unfolded with a trembling hand: they were the
communications he had received from the Polish Jew, with whose family at
Paris his daughter had remained. He stated Burrell's extraordinary
attention to Zillah, during his residence abroad--the frequent letters
that passed between them under pretence of a correspondence with her
father--her having received others from England since Burrell's
return--her total change of manner--and, finally, her having quitted his
house, and his being unable to discover where she had gone. Strong
suspicions were added that she had followed Burrell to, and was now in,
England; and there was a long and formal expression of regret from the
Polish Jew that he had ever admitted the Christian beyond the threshold
of his door.
The villain breathed more freely when he ascertained that the fugitive
had not been traced from St. Vallery; and he felt he could have braved
the affair with perfect ease and indifference, but for the information
conveyed by Dalton's letter, and the consequent dread of Zillah's
appearing before him, perhaps at the very moment that the
often-asserted, and sworn to, lie passed his lips. It was now more
difficult to dissemble than he had ever yet found it; he saw clearly
that his oaths and protestations made but little impression upon the
mind of Ben Israel, who filled up every pause either by lamentations for
his daughter, execrations on her seducer, or touching appeals to one
whose feelings were centred in self, and who therefore had little
sympathy for sorrow that would have moved a heart of stone. Burrell was
so thoroughly overpowered by the events of the evening, that the only
point of exertion on which his mind rallied was a strong wish to rid
himself of the Jew as speedily as possible, so that he might find
opportunity to collect and arrange his thoughts--it therefore occurred
to him to assume the bearing of injured innocence, as protestations had
been of no avail; he accordingly said, in a tone and with a manner so
earnest, that at the moment it almost destroyed the suspicions of the
Rabbi:-"Sir, I have over and over again asserted enough to convince any
rational person that I know nothing of the crime you impute to me;
having, in my own estimation, performed all that could be required, I
must now withdraw. If you please to lay your statement before his
Highness, I will defend myself, as I have now done, and let him judge
between thee and me."