he white head of an old man bowed in prayer.
BARUCH and NAPHTALI
enter and take their seats.

BARUCH.
Think you he speaks before the service?

NAPHTALI.
Yea.
Lo, phantom-like the towering patriarch!
[RABBI CRESSELIN slowly rises beneath the Ark.]

RABBI CRESSELIN.
Woe unto Israel! woe unto all
Abiding 'mid strange peoples! Ye shall be
Cut off from that land where ye made your home.
I, Cresselin of Chinon, have traveled far,
Thence where my fathers dwelt, to warn my race,
For whom the fire and stake have been prepared.
Our brethren of Verdun, all over France,
Are burned alive beneath the Goyim's torch.
What terrors have I witnessed, ere my sight
Was mercifully quenched! In Gascony,
In Savoy, Piedmont, round the garden shores
Of tranquil Leman, down the beautiful Rhine,
At Lindau, Costnitz, Schaffhausen, St. Gallen,
Everywhere torture, smoking Synagogues,
Carnage, and burning flesh. The lights shine out
Of Jewish virtue, Jewish truth, to star
The sanguine field with an immortal blazon.
The venerable Mar-Isaac in Cologne,
Sat in his house at prayer, nor lifted lid
From off the sacred text, while all around
The fanatics ran riot; him they seized,
Haled through the streets, with prod of stick and spike
Fretted his wrinkled flesh, plucked his white beard.
Dragged him with gibes into their Church, and held
A Crucifix before him. "Know thy Lord!"
He spat thereon; he was pulled limb from limb.
I saw--God, that I might forget!--a man
Leap in the Loire, with his fair, stalwart son,
A-bloom with youth, and midst the stream unsheathe
A poniard, sheathing it in his boy's heart,
While he pronounced the blessing for the dead.
"Amen!" the lad responded as he sank,
And the white water darkened as with wine.
I saw--but no! You are glutted, and my tongue,
Blistered, refuseth to narrate more woe.
I have known much sorrow. When it pleased the Lord
To afflict us with the horde of Pastoureaux,
The rabble of armed herdsmen, peasants, slaves,
Men-beasts of burden--coarse as the earth they tilled,
Who like an inundation deluged France
To drown our race--my heart held firm, my faith
Shook not upon her rock until I saw,
Smit by God's beam, the bi