the poor _judeos_. The decree of the
Catholic Kings. Let them first repeal it!... Let them first call us
back!"

Aguirre laughed at his listener's fears. Bah! The Catholic Kings! Much
they counted for now!... Who remembered those good gentlemen?

But the old man persisted in his fears. He had suffered much. The terror
of the expulsion was still in his bones and in his blood, after four
centuries. In summer, when the heat forced them to abandon the torrid
rock, and the Aboab family hired a little cottage on the seashore, in
Spanish territory just beyond La Linea, the patriarch dwelt in constant
restlessness, as if he divined mysterious perils in the very soil upon
which he trod. Who could tell what might happen during the night? Who
could assure him that he would not awake in chains, ready to be led like
a beast to a port? This is what had happened to his Spanish ancestors,
who had been forced to take refuge in Morocco, whence a branch of the
family had moved to Gibraltar when the English took possession of the
place.

Aguirre poked mild fun at the childish fears of the aged fellow,
whereupon Zabulon intervened with his darkly energetic authority.

"My father knows what he is talking about. We will never go; we can't
go. In Spain the old customs always return; the old is converted into
the new. There is no security; woman has too much power and interferes
in matters that she does not understand."

Woman! Zabulon spoke scornfully of the sex. They should be treated as
the Jews treated them. The Jews taught them nothing more than the amount
of religion necessary to follow the rites. The presence of women in the
synagogue was in many instances not obligatory. Even when they came,
they were confined to the top of a gallery, like spectators of the
lowest rank. No. Religion was man's business, and the countries in which
woman has a part in it cannot offer security.

Then the unsympathetic Israelite spoke enthusiastically of the "greatest
man in the world," Baron Rothschild, lord over kings and
governments--taking care never to omit the title of baron every time he
pronounced the name--and he finally named all the great Jewish centers,
which were ever increasing in size and population.

"We are everywhere," he asserted, blinking maliciously. "Now we are
spreading over America. Governments change, peoples spread over the face
of the earth, but we are ever the same. Not without reason do we await
the Messiah. He will come