oying a counter-irritant. Here,
boy! My sword and dagger! Quick!'

'No, the hypocrites! No blood is to be shed, they say, if we make no
resistance, and let them pillage. Cyril and his monks are there, to
prevent outrage, and so forth.... The Angel of the Lord scatter them!'

The conversation was interrupted by the rushing in of the whole
household, in an agony of terror; and Raphael, at last thoroughly
roused, went to a window which looked into the street. The thoroughfare
was full of scolding women and screaming children; while men, old and
young, looked on at the plunder of their property with true Jewish
doggedness, too prudent to resist, but too manful to complain--while
furniture came flying out of every window, and from door after door
poured a stream of rascality, carrying off money, jewels, silks, and
all the treasures which Jewish usury had accumulated during many
a generation. But unmoved amid the roaring sea of plunderers and
plundered, stood, scattered up and down, Cyril's spiritual police,
enforcing, by a word, an obedience which the Roman soldiers could only
have compelled by hard blows of the spear-butt. There was to be no
outrage, and no outrage there was: and more than once some man in
priestly robes hurried through the crowd, leading by the hand, tenderly
enough, a lost child in search of its parents.

Raphael stood watching silently, while Miriam, who had followed him
upstairs, paced the room in an ecstasy of rage, calling vainly to him to
speak or act.

'Let me alone, mother,' he said, at last. 'It will be full ten minutes
more before they pay me a visit, and in the meantime what can one do
better than watch the progress of this, the little Exodus?'

'Not like that first one! Then we went forth with cymbals and songs to
the Red Sea triumph! Then we borrowed, every woman of her neighbour,
jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment.'

'And now we pay them back again;.. it is but fair, after all. We ought
to have listened to Jeremiah a thousand years ago, and never gone back
again, like fools, into a country to which we were so deeply in debt.'

'Accursed land!' cried Miriam. 'In an evil hour our forefathers
disobeyed the prophet; and now we reap the harvest of our sins!--Our
sons have forgotten the faith of their forefathers for the philosophy of
the Gentiles, and fill their chambers' (with a contemptuous look round)
'with heathen imagery; and our daughters are--Look there!'

As she spo