whatever of chill stole in at the
grayness of the canaled streets of the northern city after the color
and glow of Porto. His first care as soon as he was settled in the
great, marble-halled house which his mother's old friends and
relatives in the city had purchased on his behalf, was to betake
himself on the Sabbath with his mother and brother to the Portuguese
synagogue. Though his ignorance of his new creed was so great that he
doffed his hat on entering, nor knew how to don the praying-shawl lent
him by the beadle, and was rather disconcerted to find his mother
might not sit at his side, but must be relegated to a gallery behind a
grille, yet his attitude was too emotional to be critical. The
prayer-book interested him keenly, and though he strove to follow the
service, his conscious Hebrew could not at all keep pace with the
congregational speed, and he felt unreasonably shamed at his failures
to rise or bow. Vidal, who had as yet no Hebrew, interested himself in
picking out ancient denizens of Porto and communicating his
discoveries to his brother in a loud whisper, which excited Gabriel's
other neighbor to point out scions of the first Spanish families,
other members of which, at home, were props of Holy Church, bishops,
and even archbishops. A curious figure, this red-bearded,
gross-paunched neighbor, rocking automatically to and fro in his
_taleth_, but evidently far fainer to gossip than to pray.

Friars and nuns of almost every monastic order were, said he, here
regathered to Judaism. He himself, Isaac Pereira, who sat there safe
and snug, had been a Jesuit in Spain.

"I was sick of the pious make-believe, and itched to escape over here.
But the fools had let me sell indulgences, and I had a goodly stock on
hand, and trade was slack"--here he interrupted himself with a
fervent "Amen!" conceded to the service--"in Spain just then. It's no
use carrying 'em over to the Netherlands, thinks I; they're too clever
over there. I must get rid of 'em in some country free for Jews, and
yet containing Catholics. So what should I do but slip over from
Malaga to Barbary, where I sold off the remainder of my stock to some
Catholics living among the Moors. No sooner had I pocketed
the--Amen!--money than I declared myself a Jew. God of Abraham! The
faces those Gentiles pulled when they found what a bad bargain they
had made with Heaven! They appealed to the Cadi against what they
called the imposition. But"--and here an ir