manuel, after muttering sundry
curses, withdrew. We looked at him as he passed down the lane, with his
hands clenched and the muscles of his countenance trembling with
excitement. We heard him, as he passed by, telling every one of his
friends that Rachel was shut up in the room with a Christian. Some
treated the information with indifference, others only called him
jealous; but sundry boys crowded round the door, waiting for my
departure.

I took the lace and left the shop with her. The children in the street,
excited by that rascal, made use of some insulting expressions towards
her; but ran away whenever I made an attempt to approach them. I could,
however, see that the poor girl was, if not alarmed, very unhappy; for,
now that Emmanuel was no longer present, the tears ran down her cheeks.
I took her hand kindly and parted from her, but not without a vague and
uncomfortable feeling of doubt and mistrust.

"Ah, me!" I thought, when alone, "is this the freedom, the liberty, the
charity which suffereth long, the consideration for others, which the
gospel teaches? It is well for the great poet to write of the freedom of
the Roman citizen:--

But Rome, 'tis thine alone, with awful sway,
To rule mankind, and make the world obey;
Disposing peace and war, thine own majestic sway.
To tame the proud, the fettered slave to free:
These are imperial acts, and worthy thee.

The fettered slave is set free, but the citizen is enthralled; not
because he now proclaims another king than Caesar, but simply because the
tenets of his faith are not precisely the same as our own. And this
beautiful girl, brought up in that worst of suffering--mental
suffering--keenly feeling the persecution to which her race is exposed,
however, she could bear children who would, in those moments of
tribulation to which Imperial Rome of all empires is most subject, stand
forth to defend her walls!"

I went away, however, well pleased with my purchase. Notwithstanding my
promise to the contrary, I could not avoid showing it to one or two
particular friends. Even in so slight a matter it is very easy to find
food for vanity. It gratified me to have purchased it so cheaply. When
it was pronounced quite beautiful, I accepted the expression as an
indirect tribute to my judgment, taste, and ability. It was, of course,
not the lace that I cared for, although most anxious to gratify her who
had charged me with the commission. What, to jud