n than the Jewish. The things it teaches about
God have more difficulties."

"What difficulties?" quoth Vidal. "I see no difficulties."

But in the end the younger brother, having all Gabriel's
impressionability, and none of his strength to stand alone, consented
to accompany the refugees.

During those surreptitious preparations for flight, Gabriel had to go
about his semi-ecclesiastical duties and take part in Church
ceremonies as heretofore. This so chafed him that he sometimes
thought of proclaiming himself; but though he did not shrink from the
thought of the stake, he shrank from the degradation of imprisonment,
from the public humiliation, foreseeing the horror of him in the faces
of all his old associates. And sometimes, indeed, it flashed upon him
how dear were these friends of his youth, despite reason and religion;
how like a cordial was the laughter in their eyes, the clasp of their
hands, the well-worn jests of college and monastery, market-place and
riding-school! How good it was, this common life, how sweet to sink
into the general stream and be borne along effortless! Even as he
knelt, in conscious hypocrisy, the emotion of all these worshippers
sometimes swayed him in magnetic sympathy, and the crowds of
holiday-makers in the streets, festively garbed, stirred him to
yearning reconciliation. And now that he was to tear himself away, how
dear was each familiar haunt--the woods and waters, the pleasant hills
strewn with grazing cattle! How caressingly the blue sky bent over him,
beseeching him to stay! And the town itself, how he loved its steep
streets, the massive Moorish gates, the palaces, the monasteries, the
whitewashed houses, the old-fashioned ones, quaint and windowless, and
the newer with their protrusive balcony-windows--ay, and the very
flavor of garlic and onion that pervaded everything; how oft he had
sauntered in the Rua das Flores, watching the gold-workers! And as he
moved about the old family home he had a new sense of its intimate
appeal. Every beautiful panel and tile, every gracious curve of the
great staircase, every statue in its niche, had a place, hitherto
unacknowledged, in his heart, and called to him.

But greater than the call of all these was the call of Reason.

PART II

URIEL ACOSTA

VII

With what emotion, as of a pilgrim reaching Palestine, Gabriel found
himself at last in the city where a synagogue stood in the eye of day!
The warmth at his heart annulled