uffer you to be insulted by any one, even by me,
were my frenzy--for frenzy it is--to urge me so far."

"May Heaven be praised!" said the Jewess; "death is the least of my
apprehensions in this den of evil."

"Ay," replied the Templar, "the idea of death is easily received by the
courageous mind, when the road to it is sudden and open. A thrust with a
lance, a stroke with a sword, were to me little--To you, a spring from
a dizzy battlement, a stroke with a sharp poniard, has no terrors,
compared with what either thinks disgrace. Mark me--I say this--perhaps
mine own sentiments of honour are not less fantastic, Rebecca, than
thine are; but we know alike how to die for them."

"Unhappy man," said the Jewess; "and art thou condemned to expose thy
life for principles, of which thy sober judgment does not acknowledge
the solidity? Surely this is a parting with your treasure for that which
is not bread--but deem not so of me. Thy resolution may fluctuate on the
wild and changeful billows of human opinion, but mine is anchored on the
Rock of Ages."

"Silence, maiden," answered the Templar; "such discourse now avails but
little. Thou art condemned to die not a sudden and easy death, such as
misery chooses, and despair welcomes, but a slow, wretched, protracted
course of torture, suited to what the diabolical bigotry of these men
calls thy crime."

"And to whom--if such my fate--to whom do I owe this?" said Rebecca
"surely only to him, who, for a most selfish and brutal cause, dragged
me hither, and who now, for some unknown purpose of his own, strives to
exaggerate the wretched fate to which he exposed me."

"Think not," said the Templar, "that I have so exposed thee; I would
have bucklered thee against such danger with my own bosom, as freely as
ever I exposed it to the shafts which had otherwise reached thy life."

"Had thy purpose been the honourable protection of the innocent," said
Rebecca, "I had thanked thee for thy care--as it is, thou hast claimed
merit for it so often, that I tell thee life is worth nothing to me,
preserved at the price which thou wouldst exact for it."

"Truce with thine upbraidings, Rebecca," said the Templar; "I have my
own cause of grief, and brook not that thy reproaches should add to it."

"What is thy purpose, then, Sir Knight?" said the Jewess; "speak it
briefly.--If thou hast aught to do, save to witness the misery thou
hast caused, let me know it; and then, if so it please you, leav