nfidel (by which name they
designate all those who do not conform to their creed), is esteemed an
action in the highest degree meritorious. This conquest to their faith,
therefore, they make wherever an opportunity is open to them, by the
most indiscriminate and unscrupulous means, according to the teaching of
the Alcoran, which allows the lawfulness of all means, and the most
unbounded license in their choice, for the attainment of a lawful
object. Tahra, the Moor, failed not, accordingly, in her intercourse
with the youthful Sol, to extol, as it were incidentally, the excellence
of her religion, the many advantages enjoined by its adherents, and the
unbounded esteem awarded by the true believers to those who consented to
embrace it. But the lovely and innocent-minded Jewess, quite unconscious
of the malignant purpose of her neighbor, heeded none of her
exhortations, but rather listened to them with a degree of compassion.
Being herself certain of her faith, and feeling an enthusiastic interest
in the law under which she was born, she regarded merely as an excess of
religious sentiment, the zeal which prompted the Mahometan to persevere
in these encomiums of her religious tenets.

The dawn gleamed forth one day amid a thousand clouds, which hung in
thick masses below the sky, and covered it with an opaque and gloomy
screen; the mournful twittering of the warbling birds bespoke anxiety
and alarm; the hoarse rushing of the wind threatened destruction to the
woods; the flowers of the fields began to droop; the sun withdrew his
light from the world beneath, and all seemed to presage a day of grief
and bitterness--save in the home where the fair Sol arose, like another
Circe, from her couch, and sallied forth, seeming to temper by her
enchanting presence the angry frowns of the elements without. In the
house of Hachuel was a chamber, set apart for devotional purposes.
Thither she directed her earliest steps, having previously (after the
manner of the Hebrews) cleansed her hands from all impurity. On quitting
this oratory, she occupied herself in the various works of the house;
but, as noon drew on, her mother, with her wonted asperity, reproved her
for not having already completed her household task. Sol replied with a
degree of warmth which aroused the anger of her mother, who angrily
reproached and even threatened her with chastisement; when, in a fatal
moment, the young girl, fearing lest she should be scourged, ran with