h
the darkness, and lighted fires serve to modify a little the icy
temperature of this cellar. Here and there pillars seem to support a roof
which is too high and too darkened for the eye of the visitor to
distinguish. On the sides are dark and damp recesses, where women assist
at the celebration of worship, which is always carried on, according to
ancient custom, with much wailing and strange gestures of the body. The
book of the law which is in use is no less venerable than the edifice in
which it is contained. It appears that this synagogue has never undergone
the slightest repairs or changes for many centuries. The successive
generations who have prayed in this ancient temple rest under thousands
of sepulchral stones, in a cemetery which is of the same date as the
synagogue, and is about a league in circumference.

Paris has never possessed, properly speaking, a regular _Jewish quarter_;
it is true that the Israelites settled down in the neighbourhood of the
markets, and in certain narrow streets, which at some period or other took
the name of _Juiverie_ or _Vieille Juiverie (Old Jewry_); but they were
never distinct from the rest of the population; they only had a separate
cemetery, at the bottom or rather on the slope of the hill of
Sainte-Genevieve. On the other hand, most of the towns of France and of
Europe had their _Jewry_. In certain countries, the colonies of Jews
enjoyed a share of immunities and protections, thus rendering their life a
little less precarious, and their occupations of a rather more settled
character.

In Spain and in Portugal, the Jews, in consequence of their having been on
several occasions useful to the kings of those two countries, were allowed
to carry on their trade, and to engage in money speculations, outside
their own quarters; a few were elevated to positions of responsibility,
and some were even tolerated at court.

In the southern towns of France, which they enriched by commerce and
taxes, and where they formed considerable communities, the Jews enjoyed
the protection of the nobles. We find them in Languedoc and Provence
buying and selling property like Christians, a privilege which was not
permitted to them elsewhere: this is proved by charters of contracts made
during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which bear the signature of
certain Jews in Hebrew characters. On Papal lands, at Avignon, at
Carpentras, and at Cavaillon, they had _bailes_, or consuls of their
nation.