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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Spinoza," Berthold Auerbach deftly navigates the intellectual landscape of the 17th century to present a nuanced exploration of the life and philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Auerbach employs a rich narrative style that blends biographical detail with philosophical inquiry, showcasing Spinoza's radical ideas within the context of the Enlightenment. The book engages with critical themes such as rationalism, ethics, and the nature of God, situating Spinoza as both a product of his time and a timeless thinker whose legacy resonates through modern philosophy. Through meticulous research, Auerbach crafts a compelling portrait of Spinoza, inviting readers to reflect on the implications of his thought in a rapidly changing world. Berthold Auerbach, a prominent Jewish author and philosopher himself, was deeply influenced by the currents of rationalist thought that emerged during his lifetime. His background provided him with an acute understanding of the struggles faced by thinkers like Spinoza, who challenged the dogmatic constraints of their time. Auerbach's own commitment to intellectual freedom and societal progress shines through in this work, positioning him as both an admirer and a critical analyst of Spinoza's contributions. "Spinoza" is highly recommended for readers seeking to deepen their understanding of philosophical inquiry and its historical roots. Auerbach's eloquent prose and insightful analysis make this book a must-read for anyone interested in the interplay between life, philosophy, and the pursuit of knowledge. Both scholars and casual readers will find value in Auerbach's thoughtful examination, which invites them to engage with Spinoza's groundbreaking ideas. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Spinoza
Table of Contents
Introduction
At the heart of Berthold Auerbach’s Spinoza lies the charged convergence of an uncompromising quest for truth with the binding claims of community, as a life devoted to thought tests the tensile strength of love, loyalty, ritual, and law, and as the solitude required by rigorous reasoning collides with the warmth of shared custom, forcing readers to follow a thinker who refuses easy comforts, accepts the costs of clarity, and discovers, through patience and integrity, how a human being might inhabit the world without surrendering either the intimacy of belonging or the freedom demanded by an examined mind.
Spinoza is a nineteenth-century German historical novel that imaginatively reconstructs the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic in which the philosopher Baruch Spinoza lived and worked, blending biographical materials with fiction to present a sustained portrait of a mind in its world. Appearing within the flourishing of European historical fiction, the book situates an intellectual life among the textures of daily existence—streets, households, workshops, and rooms of study—while engaging debates about tolerance and authority that preoccupied modern readers. Without pretending to be a scholarly monograph, it uses the resources of the novel to render the atmosphere of an era when ideas moved people as powerfully as armies.
At its center is the coming-of-age and self-fashioning of Spinoza as a thinker, born into a community with venerable traditions and drawn, through study and reflection, toward a demanding vision of truth. Auerbach follows his subject across studies, work, and friendship, staging conversations that test the bounds of orthodoxy and common sense while allowing domestic scenes to reveal the cost of intellectual independence. The plot remains intimate rather than sensational: a sequence of encounters, choices, and quiet revelations that accumulate into a life-position. Without reducing complexity to melodrama, the narrative lets readers feel how conviction gradually reshapes a person’s days.
Auerbach writes in a reflective, dignified prose that favors patient development over spectacle, balancing scene and meditation so that argument never loses its human temperature. The voice is steady and humane, observant of gesture and setting, attentive to the rhythms of work and study as much as to the turns of debate. Dialogue carries ideas without reading like a treatise, while narration anchors abstractions in visible detail. The tone is sympathetic but unsentimental, resisting hagiography even as it honors perseverance. Readers encounter a philosophical novel in the classic sense: contemplative, dialogic, and grounded in the moral psychology of everyday life.
Among its central themes are freedom of conscience, the reach and limit of communal authority, and the practical ethics that follow from a world understood through reason. The novel considers how loyalty, affection, and habit interact with principles; how courage and humility can coexist; and what integrity asks of a person who seeks clarity without rancor. It dramatizes the tension between necessity and freedom as a lived problem rather than a slogan, while exploring tolerance not as indifference but as a disciplined generosity of mind. Throughout, Auerbach probes the cost of independent judgment and the sustenance it can nonetheless provide.
Auerbach’s Spinoza remains timely because it speaks to societies wrestling with pluralism, contested truths, and the friction between communal cohesion and individual conviction. Its portrait of careful thinking under pressure models a civility that does not evade conflict, showing how disagreements can be severe without becoming dehumanizing. In an age impatient for quick verdicts, the book values slow attention, revision, and honesty about consequences. It also affirms that ideas are not abstractions hovering above life but forces that shape work, friendship, and belonging. For contemporary readers, it offers both an ethical poise and a literary space in which to practice it.
Approached as both story and meditation, Spinoza welcomes readers who know the philosopher and those who simply want a searching novel about how a person comes to live by thought. It sets no gatekeeping requirements, guiding us through rooms, labors, and relationships in which principles are patiently tested against experience. As a contribution to nineteenth-century historical fiction, it exemplifies how the genre can humanize difficult ideas without diluting them. As a portrait of a life, it invites empathy for all who share its stage. The reward is a calm intensity: a sustained encounter with conviction shaped in the grain of days.
Synopsis
Berthold Auerbach’s Spinoza, first published in 1837, is a historical novel that follows the philosopher Baruch Spinoza through the intellectual and civic landscapes of the Dutch Republic. Auerbach shapes a continuous portrait rather than a sequence of set pieces, tracing how a quiet, exacting temperament is formed amid mercantile bustle, congregational oversight, and the shocks of new science. The narrative begins within Amsterdam’s Portuguese-Jewish community, where learning, family duty, and communal discipline frame a gifted youth’s early path. Without dramatizing spectacle, the book situates his emerging questions about authority and truth as lived pressures, placing daily routines beside arguments that ask what binds a person.
Early chapters chart the sharpening conflict between conscience and allegiance, culminating in the community’s formal ban that severs him from synagogue life and kinship protections. Auerbach presents the decree less as a melodramatic break than as a sober, irrevocable boundary that clarifies his course. Practical consequences follow: the loss of expected livelihood, the need for new companions, and a quieter dwelling. The portrait emphasizes steadiness over rebellion. The estrangement sets a problem the book pursues throughout: how a life devoted to understanding can remain humane, sociable, and lawful while resisting authority that claims to define the limits of permissible thought.
Removed from communal structures, he fashions a modest independence, supporting himself with precise manual work and the discipline of reading. The novel places craft and contemplation side by side, showing how patient, repeatable labor steadies speculative inquiry. New acquaintances gather from varied confessional backgrounds, drawn by conversation more than polemic. Auerbach keeps the social canvas intimate: circles of friends, hosts, and correspondents sustain dialogue when formal institutions close their doors. The city’s printers and booksellers hover at the edges, promising reach and risk. The tone remains calm, charting how a private regimen of study becomes a durable alternative to status.
As his system takes shape, the narrative threads expository passages through domestic scenes, setting reflections on substance, necessity, and joy within ordinary hours. Auerbach renders the philosopher’s method, orderly and spare, without staging disputations as spectacles. The charge of irreligion shadows these pages, not as scandal-mongering, but as a persistent misunderstanding the hero answers by clarifying terms and refusing invective. Ethical questions dominate: what freedom means under necessity, where human flourishing lies, and how clear understanding alters the passions. The novel’s pacing privileges careful articulation over sudden turn, making thought itself the action that moves the story forward.
The public world enters more directly when a theological-political manuscript seeks a printer, and friends weigh prudence against candor. Auerbach depicts the networks of censors, magistrates, and sympathetic readers that determine whether a book can appear and be read safely. The arguments themselves defend freedom to philosophize and a civil order grounded in law rather than sect. Controversy follows, yet the novel dwells on inner poise rather than public uproar, measuring costs in narrowed companionships and quiet vigilance. Through this episode, the narrative tests how principles endure once they leave the study and encounter fear, envy, and opportunism.
Later sections widen the horizon through correspondence with scholars abroad and cautious recognition at home, setting solitary labor within an international exchange of ideas. Occasional offers promise institutional security, yet the protagonist prefers a freedom measured by time and conscience. Auerbach lets practical details—rent, tools, a reliable desk—signal the cost of independence, while neighbors and patrons provide a modest safety net. Urban turbulence and shifting regimes remain mostly background, surfacing when they bear directly on publishing or movement. The steady emphasis stays on temperament: calm, exact, hospitable to reason, and wary of honor that would purchase quiet by limiting speech.
Auerbach’s novel endures as a measured portrait of a thinker’s life, suggesting how conviction can be lived without zealotry and how tolerance depends on institutions and character alike. By following the rhythms of work, friendship, and publication, it offers an accessible path into themes that later generations would debate in politics and philosophy: the status of Scripture, the bounds of sovereignty, and the discipline of joy. Without dramatizing private endings or historical climaxes, the book closes on the questions that animated it, inviting readers to consider how clarity, patience, and lawful freedom might be sustained amid disputatious modern societies.
Historical Context
Berthold Auerbach’s Spinoza: Ein Denkerleben appeared in 1837 in the German Confederation, during the Vormärz period of tightened censorship and surveillance after the Carlsbad Decrees. German states monitored universities and presses, while the Bundestag’s 1835 decree suppressed the “Young Germany” writers. Debates on constitutional reform, religious freedom, and Jewish emancipation animated salons and lecture halls. Auerbach, a Jewish author trained in philosophy, turned to the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic to portray freedom of conscience under pressure. Writing a historical novel allowed him to engage contemporary questions indirectly, grounding them in verifiable episodes from Baruch Spinoza’s life and the institutions that shaped it.
The novel’s setting draws on the Dutch Golden Age, when the United Provinces combined commercial dynamism with a regime of regulated toleration. The Union of Utrecht (1579) promised freedom of conscience even as the Dutch Reformed Church retained public privileges. Amsterdam became a haven for refugees, including Portuguese conversos who reestablished Judaism in the Sephardic congregation Talmud Torah. Communal discipline, including the power of herem (excommunication), maintained cohesion. In 1656 that congregation imposed a far‑reaching ban on the young Baruch Spinoza. The event, well documented in the Hebrew edict, frames enduring tensions between communal authority, doctrinal boundaries, and individual inquiry.
Seventeenth‑century intellectual life in the Netherlands featured fervent debate over Cartesian natural philosophy and biblical interpretation. Universities such as Leiden and Utrecht hosted conflicts between proponents of Descartes and defenders of Reformed scholasticism, exemplified by the controversies surrounding Gisbertus Voetius. A vigorous Republic of Letters linked Dutch presses with thinkers abroad. Spinoza corresponded with Henry Oldenburg, secretary of England’s Royal Society, among others. His anonymously issued Tractatus Theologico‑Politicus (1670), printed in the Dutch Republic, argued for freedom to philosophize and critical scriptural study. It was quickly denounced by church bodies and, in 1674, prohibited by the States of Holland.
Political upheavals formed a second axis of the backdrop. After 1650, republican regents dominated many provinces, while the House of Orange’s role fluctuated. Under Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt, the period of “True Freedom” prioritized commerce and maritime power. Naval conflict with England erupted in the Anglo‑Dutch Wars, followed by the Franco‑Dutch War. The disaster of 1672—the rampjaar—brought invasion, panic, and the lynching of the de Witt brothers, after which William III assumed the stadtholderate. Authorities tightened suspicion toward heterodoxy and dissent. These shifts conditioned the risks faced by heterodox printers, philosophical circles, and the communities around Spinoza.
Spinoza’s biography anchors the narrative with documented milestones. Born in 1632 in Amsterdam to a Portuguese‑Jewish merchant family, he received a traditional education before leaving communal life. After the 1656 excommunication, he lived among Collegiants and other dissenters in Rijnsburg, then in Voorburg, and finally The Hague. He supported himself as a lens grinder, interacted with leading savants, and developed his philosophical system. The Ethics, written in a geometric manner, circulated privately and was issued posthumously in 1677 within the Opera Posthuma. His extensive correspondence—including with Oldenburg—and his 1676 meeting with Leibniz provide reliable glimpses of his intellectual network.
Institutions and media channels are central to the book’s historical scaffolding. The Dutch Reformed Church functioned as the public church; tolerated minorities operated under municipal oversight. Sephardic congregations were governed by lay parnassim and rabbis who managed charity, education, and discipline. Civic magistrates and provincial states regulated presses, licensing, and importation of books, while clandestine printers serviced controversial manuscripts. Scholarly societies and correspondence networks—including the Royal Society—facilitated exchange of ideas despite confessional barriers. These structures explain how Spinoza’s manuscripts could circulate, how communal sanctions carried force, and why authorities moved to restrict certain publications without extinguishing debate.
In German letters, Spinoza’s legacy had been vigorously disputed before Auerbach wrote. The late‑eighteenth‑century Pantheism Controversy—sparked by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s claims about Lessing—compelled Moses Mendelssohn and others to confront Spinoza’s metaphysics. Goethe, Herder, and later Schelling and Hegel engaged with Spinoza as a foundational figure. By the 1830s, he symbolized both rigorous system and freedom to philosophize. This reception primed German audiences to read a life of Spinoza as a commentary on reason, faith, and the state. Auerbach’s narrative thus draws upon a recognized cultural debate rather than introducing an unfamiliar subject.
Read in context, Auerbach’s work portrays a documented seventeenth‑century struggle over truth‑seeking, communal order, and political authority, while speaking to nineteenth‑century concerns. By emphasizing institutions—the synagogue, the public church, civic magistracies, universities, and presses—it illuminates how ideas travel and meet resistance. The narrative echoes Vormärz liberalism by valuing freedom of conscience and open inquiry, yet it remains anchored in archival facts: the 1656 herem, the 1670 Tractatus, the 1674 ban, and the posthumous Ethics. Through this alignment, the novel offers a historically grounded critique of dogmatism and a reflection on the conditions that enable intellectual independence.
Spinoza
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
ACOSTA.
ON a Friday afternoon at the end of April, 1647, in an obscure corner of the Jewish cemetery at Oudekerk, near Amsterdam, men were shovelling quickly to cover a sunken coffin with earth.
No mourners stood by[1q]. The people present stood in groups, and conversed on the events of the day or of the life and death of him now given to the earth, while the gravediggers hurried over their work in silence and indifference; for already the sun sinking in the west showed that it would soon be time "to greet the face of the Sabbath."
At the head of the grave stood a pale youth, who watched the brown clods fall into the hole with thoughtful looks. With his left hand he unconsciously plucked the buds from the well-cut beech hedge.
"Young friend," said a stranger to the youth in Spanish, "are you the only kinsman here of him who rests beneath? I perceive that you knew him well, and could tell me who he is, that he should be shovelled over like one plague-stricken without a sigh or word of mourning or lamentation. I am a stranger—"
"I am no more related to him than you," said the youth with some hesitation, "in so far as you, I presume, are of the race of Israel. You must indeed be a stranger, and come from distant lands, not to have heard of the fate of this unhappy, God-forsaken man. Oh! he was great and glorious, and how is he fallen into the depths!"
"Pray," interrupted the stranger, "do not do as the others did whom I asked on turning in here from the street; tell me—"
"Do you know the family of Da Costa from Oporto?" asked the youth.
"Who has lived in Spain, and has not been impressed with the renown of that name? The most distinguished of knights bore it. Miguel da Costa, after whose death the family disappeared from Oporto, was one of the stateliest of the cavaliers, whom I saw at the tournament of Lisbon; he was once a zealous member of our secret community."
"He, who there finds rest at last," began the youth, "was his son, and, as my father often said, in figure and bearing the image of his sire. Gabriel, as he was named, was practised in all knightly exercises, deeply learned, especially in the law. Though so early tortured by religious doubts, he accepted, in his twenty-fifth year, the office of treasurer to the cathedral charities. Then a desire awoke in him for the religion of his forefathers, and with his mother and brothers he left the land where rest the bones of so many slain for our faith, where Jews without number kneel, and kiss the pictures, which they—" Here the youth suddenly stopped, and listened to the conversation of the diggers at the grave.
"God forgive my sins," said one, "but I maintain this knave did not deserve to be buried on a Friday evening; because the Sabbath is coming in he is freed from the first torments of corruption. If his soul gets safe over, he will come to a spread table, and have no need to wander in Gehinom (Hell), for on the Sabbath all sinners rest from their torments. I told them they should have let him lie till Sunday morning: it was time enough for the fate that awaited him; and at least his death need not have led us to make a hole in the Sabbath. Make haste that we may finish."
"Ay, ay," responded the other, "he'll wonder when he gets over, and the destroying angel whips him with fiery rods; he'll believe then that there is another world that he did not see while living. Think you not so?"
"Pray tell me more," said the stranger.
"You have heard what they said," answered the youth, "and the little man there with a hump on his back, who scoffs at him now, enjoyed much of his bounty; for his generosity was boundless. Gabriel came to Amsterdam, submitted to every precept, and entered our faith. Henceforth he bore the name of Uriel Acosta[1]. He followed zealously what is written: 'Thou shalt search therein day and night.' I have often been told that it was affecting to see how the stately man was not ashamed to be instructed in Hebrew or the Holy Scriptures by the merest boy. But an unclean spirit entered into him, and he began to scoff at our pious Rabbis. You have heard here that he was one of those who deny the foundations of our faith; he has set down the sins of his heart in his writings, and would prove them from the Holy Word. Rabbi Solomon de Silva, our celebrated physician, has refuted his errors. Acosta was excommunicated, but freed himself by recantation. The contrary spirit in him, however, rested not. He not only opposed our holy religion, in that, as his own nephew said, he violated the Sabbath, and enjoying forbidden meats, and dissuaded two Christians, who would have changed to Judaism, but he spoke openly, as a very apostate, against all religion. For seven years he refused to live according to the precepts of our faith, or undergo the penance laid upon him. He should have been laid forever under the greater excommunication, and expelled from among our people. On the persuasion of his former friend, the pious Rabbi Naphthali Pereira, he submitted to the sentence of the Beth-Din (the court of Rabbis), and bore all the hard penances to which they subjected him. My father often said, if Acosta had entered the field in defence of our religion he would have cheerfully and courageously gone to his death for it, but he could not live for it. Domestic disunion, the breaking off of his engagement to a daughter of Josua di Leon, disordered his mind entirely. He left as his last will the story of his life, wherein he sought to justify himself; if you remain in Amsterdam you may hear many other things about him. For a long time he had not spoken with any one, contrary to his former ways; men took it for repentance, but he brooded over new misdeeds. He shunned the Rabbi Naphthali Pereira, for he held him to be the first cause of his sorrows and misfortunes. Early yesterday, as the Rabbi passed Acosta's house on his return from the synagogue, the apostate shot at the holy man with a pistol. He was once a good shot, and renowned for it in his native town; but an angel from heaven must have held his arm, for it is wonderful that he did not wound the holy man! He seems to have premeditated the deed, for he immediately seized a second loaded pistol, and shot himself in the mouth, so that his brains are said to have been blown even to the roof. For this, therefore, is he now infamous—"
"Baruch," interrupted a long lank youth who now approached them, "Baruch, come; all is finished, and we return home with our master."
"I am coming, Chisdai," answered Baruch; and bowing to the stranger he crossed to where those assembled prayed in the Aramaic language for the resurrection of the dead and the restoration of Jerusalem. On leaving the graveyard each one plucked grass three times from the ground, and throwing it over his head said the following verse in Hebrew: "And they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth" (Ps. lxxii. 11). Three times, in front of the graveyard, each one washed his hands in the water brought for the purpose, to cleanse himself from the touch of the demons who haunt God's acre. While so doing they said the verse (Is. xxv. 8), "He will swallow up death in victory." Only then could they proceed on their homeward way, but even on the road the verses of Ps. xc. 15 and Ps. xci. must be three times repeated. According to custom, they seated themselves while commencing the verses on a stone, or sod; the first verse being spoken they renewed their march. Thus departed Baruch and Chisdai, with their teacher Rabbi Saul Morteira[2] between them.
"So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord!" (Judges V. 31) said Chisdai at last. "On this haughty man the judgment of the Lord has declared itself in all its might. Thou didst not see his penance, Baruch. I hope that mine eyes may never see such another. A sinful pity arose in me until I perceived with sorrow that men are constrained to wield the lash of God. All is fixed in my memory. I see the apostate before me as he read out his recantation in the synagogue, in a white winding-sheet, not in his former imperious tone; he carried his front less audaciously high: but what good was it that he, like the Prophet Isaiah, bowed his head like a reed to the wind? And when they led him to the corner, and bound his Samson-like arms to the pillar, and bared his broad back—I see it all before me as plainly as if it were before these eyes now. The Chacham stood near the sexton, and read out the verse (Ps. lxxviii. 38): "But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath." Three times he repeated the thirteen words, and at each word the sexton laid his lash on the bare back. Not the slightest sign of pain did he give, and when he had received the required number, he still lay there motionless, his mouth kissing the ground his feet had refused to tread. At last he was reclothed and led to the entrance of the synagogue: there in the doorway he was forced to kneel, the sexton holding his head, that each as he went out might set his foot on the scarred back, and step over him in his way; I made myself heavier as I stepped, that he might feel my foot also. I tell thee it is a shame that thy father should have taken thee away with him just on that day. I saw him, when all the rest were gone, rise, and go back into the synagogue; he tore the holy chest furiously open, and gazed long on the scroll of laws, till the sexton reminded him to go. "Are the gates of heaven again opened to me?" he asked—and he seemed to me to laugh scornfully. He wrapped himself in his mantle and sneaked home. The ways of God are just! He has fallen into the pit which he digged for others. Thus must all such perish: he is lost both here and there." Chisdai glanced at his teacher to read in his looks the approval of his holy zeal; he, however, shook his head thoughtfully, and repeated the prayer before him quietly.
sins
"I too abominate the teaching that led to the perplexities of Uriel—"
"Name him no more: he is damned," interrupted Chisdai; while Baruch continued:
"He has overthrown even his teachings, since it drove him to suicide. While he lived men judged him; now he is dead God alone can judge him."
The Rabbi nodded to Baruch without saying a word, being still busied with the Psalms.
"But it is written," said Chisdai defiantly (Prov. x. 7), "'The name of the wicked shall rot.'"
The three walked on for some minutes in silence, each engrossed by his own thoughts. At last the Rabbi broke the stillness, and explained that the revealed law admitted of no denial, for God had written it with His own hand, and delivered it to us all that we might live according to it.
"Whoever desires to live according to the suggestions of his reason, denies the necessity of revelation, denies its truth, and thereby mocks the laws that must rule him."
"There are men," concluded the Rabbi, "who say: 'Let each think and believe as he can answer it to himself.' They are themselves, without knowing it, fallen away. We dare not leave any one born in our faith to perdition, for it would be our perdition also. If we can bring him with discourse to repentance and penance, we sing 'Hallelujah!' but if he remain obdurate and stubborn, we rend our garments; he is dead; he must die, or kill the Satan in his heart. We constrain him with all the power that God has given us."
"They constrain him until he says 'I will,'" interrupted Chisdai from the Talmud; and the Rabbi continued:
"If we cannot exorcise the lying spirit in him, we exterminate him, and his devil also. When words no longer reach, the Lord has given us the stone wherewith to stone. Let not yourselves be led by those who are now soft-hearted over the fate of the apostate, and say, 'They should have saved him—not driven him so far.' It is well for him that he can sin no longer."
A singular train of thought must have risen in Baruch's mind, for he asked after a pause:
"Where in Holy Scripture is suicide forbidden?"
"What a question!" replied the Rabbi peevishly; and Chisdai added:
"It says in the sixth commandment, 'Thou shalt do no murder,' without comment, and that means neither another nor thyself."
"You start strange questions to-day," said the Rabbi disapprovingly to Baruch. He, however, could not explain what disturbed him. The stranger had aroused him from deep thought as he stood by the grave of the heretic, gazing into the pit while they lowered the body in; it seemed to him as though his own body were sunk therein, and that his spirit wandered complainingly and questioningly through the world. Is it the fate of the wanderer that he should be pushed over a precipice? Who can compel another's mind, who compel his own, to keep to the path mapped out for him? How unalterable must have been the convictions of him who was there shovelled over, that for their sake he should have tried to give death to others, and have given death to himself! Who dare judge and condemn in such a case as this? The words of the stranger had broken in on these heavy thoughts; the words of the Rabbi on their return had awakened his opposition anew, and raised a forgotten memory in the mind of the youth. Years before, when he stood for the first time among the graves, this grief had disturbed the mind of the boy. His uncle, Immanuel, was then buried; long an invalid, he had been much with the children, and had made them his messengers to the outer world. When all the people had left the graveyard, some to school, others to the harbor or exchange, and others to workshops and counting-houses, the noise of the city still going on, as if nothing had happened, the boy's heart beat fast within him as the question arose in it:
"How can everything go on so uninterruptedly when our uncle is really no longer at home?"
For hours the child wept in the empty room of the dead man, where the window stood wide open as it had never stood before; and he railed at the cruel people, who left the sick man lying outside, and acted as if they had known no uncle. His mother—for he dared not complain to his father so—sought to pacify him, and explain that his uncle was no longer alone and ill, but well and happy above with God and his forefathers and all good men. The boy could not understand, and cried:
"Ah! you have not seen them: they have put him in a deep pit, and thrown great sods on the box in which he was sleeping; he is surely awake and cannot get out." His mother strove to explain that, only the body was buried; the soul was with God. The boy was pacified, but for weeks he thought, in storm and rain, "How is it with our uncle in the earth?" . . .
"Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldst thou destroy thyself? (Ec. vii. 17,) said Baruch to himself, and was silent.
When they arrived at the Rabbi's house he reminded his scholars impressively that the morrow would be the 6th of Ijar. They separated, each to his own home, to change their garments and hasten to the synagogue.
The corn-seed falls on open ground, a sod crumbles and covers it, and no one considers how it sprouts and strikes root, thus hidden from human eyes. Well may the life of man be likened to such hidden growth: its laws are still less revealed; only the result can be modified, not the process; examination but reveals more and more interruptions in this growth.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
A FRIDAY EVENING.
THAT evening, in the corner room of the high house with the large bow-windows and handsome stucco work that stood on the town wall near the synagogue, unusual illumination and splendor reigned. The silver chandelier in the centre of the room, whose rare arabesques were usually wrapped in gauze, shone brilliantly in reflection of the seven candles that blazed in a circle round it. There were many other beauties to illuminate: the cushions of the carved chairs were stripped of their ordinary gray covers, and revealed the magnificence of their silk and gold embroidered flowers and birds to the eyes of all beholders, so that hardly a glance could be spared for the gorgeous carpet beneath. The glittering goblets and glasses stood in regular order on the sideboard, and reflected the light in varied broken rays. From the stove, a light puff of sandalwood smoke arose, and pervaded the moderately spacious apartment, in whose midst under the chandelier stood a round table covered with pink-flowered damask, on which the silver pitchers and goblets seemed to give promise of a small but jovial company. On the east wall hung a picture on gilt parchment, and above it in Hebrew characters was written, "From this side blows the breath of Life." A frame brown with age enclosed the picture, in whose faded outlines the walls of a city were still recognizable, and underneath, in Hebrew, the verse, "Then the heathen that are left round about you shall know that I, the Lord, build the ruined places, and plant that which was desolate: I, the Lord, have spoken it, and I will do it" (Ezek. xxxvi. 36). It was the ancient city of the Lord, Jerusalem; and many eyes, now darkened in the bosom of the earth, had rested, with tears of grief or longing looks of joy, on this gilded parchment. There was no other picture on the tapestry-decked walls. On the ottoman reclined a youthful maiden; her rounded cheek rested on her right hand, the fingers were lost to sight in the abundance of her unbound raven tresses as she thus rested; an open prayer-book lay before her, but her eyes wandered beyond it into vacancy.
Was it devotion, was it the thought of God, that filled her soul? Was it a beautiful memory that rose before her, or dream-pictures of the future that entranced her and brought that celestial longing to the rosy lips, and doubled the pulsations of her heart? Or was it that happy unconscious waking dream, that so often surprises the maiden developing into womanhood, and raises nameless and defined longings in her breast? A Sabbath stillness rested on all her fairy-like surroundings. "I believe you are tired, Miriam, and no wonder!" said a nasal voice as the door opened.
Miriam sprang up hastily, pushed back her hair from her brow, kissed the prayer-book fervently, laid it on the window-seat, and quickly smoothed the ottoman.
"Why, what a fright you are in! Did you think a witch was coming? I may be ugly enough for one, it is true; I have not had time to change my dress; but that was a piece of work," said old Chaje; and indeed her whole appearance verified her description of herself. A coif smoked by the fire covered her gray hair, except where some locks escaped, and strayed like cobwebs over her wrinkled face; a black streak of soot on her left cheek, and half over her nose was remarked upon by Miriam, and Chaje tried to wipe it off before the mirror.
"You were quite right," she continued as she wiped her face with her kitchen apron. "You were quite right to lie down a little. Why should that thing stand there the whole year round and never be used? I wish I could lie down on my bed for awhile; I want nothing to eat to-night, I am so weary. Ay! When one has been eighteen years in one service, one feels the toil does not only wear one's clothes out. You would be tired enough if you had been ten times up and down, cleaning everything yourself and getting a bed ready for the strange guest; it is no little to do, but it is all set to rights now: he will stare to see it. What a good thing it is you bought the fish! Wine, fish, and meat—that the poor man has among the poor every Sabbath. Without fish the Sabbath is not rightly kept: it says so in the Thora[3]. You are such a good housewife, you ought to be married soon; you will ask me to the wedding? Only take care not to wed such a little Schlemiehl as your Rebecca has. Have you seen how Baruch looks again today? As if he had been ten years underground. I'm afraid—I'm afraid that much learning may—God forbid it!—injure his health. Day and night, nothing but learning, learning, learning; and how will it end? My brother Abraham had a son, who was as knowing as Ristotles; he studied so much, that at last he quite stupefied himself. But hark! I think the service in the synagogue is over. I must go; I wouldn't be seen by any decent Jew as I am now. They are coming up the steps." Therewith Chaje slipped through the door.
Miriam was glad to be free from the tiresome talker. Her father, the stranger, whom we saw in the graveyard in conversation with Baruch, and Baruch himself entered. Miriam approached her father, and bowed before him; he laid both hands on her head, and blessed her in a low voice, saying these words; "The Lord make thee like the mothers, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah;" and he also blessed Baruch, saying this verse in low tones: "The Lord make thee like Ephraim and Manasseh." He and Baruch then chanted a short canticle in honor of the troop of angels who enter the house of a Jew on each Sabbath. The father's voice took a melancholy tone, as he sang, with his son, in the usual manner, the praise of woman in Prov. xxxi. 10: "Who can find a virtuous woman?" The beauty, and even the management of the house, were the same as ever; the careful housewife had ensured its continuance; but she herself had been torn from him by death. Doubly painful was the thought of her loss amid Sabbath joys. The stranger noticed the picture on the wall.
"Do you recognize it yet, Rodrigo?" said the father when he had finished the whispered prayer. "It is an old heirloom, and hung once in our cellar synagogue at Guadalajara; I saved it with much danger."
While the two friends spoke of their old associations, Baruch and Miriam stood at the opposite end of the apartment.
"You have a dreadfully dismal face again today," said Miriam, smoothing her brother's hair from his brow as she spoke; "come to the mirror and see."
"It was an instance of divine providence, for which I shall ever be thankful, that I recognized you directly you passed," said his father to the stranger.
"So you know my son, Baruch, already; this is my youngest daughter. How old are you now, Miriam?"
"Only a year younger than Baruch," answered the maiden, blushing.
"A foolish answer," said her father: "she is fourteen, I believe. I have an elder daughter, already married."
"Ah, my dears! I have two children also," said the stranger. "My Isabella is about your age, Miriam; my son will soon be twenty now. I hope when my children come here you will take care of them, especially in things pertaining to religion, for in all such they are wholly inexperienced. But stay," continued the stranger as he stood with folded arms before Baruch. "When I look at Baruch again, I cannot understand how it was I did not recognize him in the graveyard: his singularly dark complexion, his long, dark, almost black eyebrows, are just like yours in your younger days, when you meditated some daring adventure or other; and this frown on his uneven brow—that is just you; but the black wavy hair, and fine-cut mouth, with the soft dimple at the corner—ah, with what celestial sweetness Manuela smiled with those lips! A certain bold oppositiveness, that speaks in the lines of his face, all give him a partially Moorish look that he has from his mother. Ah, if she still lived, what joy it would give her to see me here to-day!"
Baruch listened to this description of himself unwillingly, and half in fear. When he heard thus of his partially Moorish origin, he recollected that Chisdai had taunted him with it in school; he was indignant that his father had not imparted it to him before. The latter noticed the annoyance of his son, and said to the stranger,
"You cannot conceal, Rodrigo, that you are a pupil of Silva Velasquez, and helped him to point out the beauty and ugliness of others to the dames of Philip's court. Baruch, you must show this gentleman your drawings to-morrow. Do not look so timid; nothing has been done to you."
"No, no," said the stranger, as he patted the boy's cheek, "I hope we shall be good friends. Did you not know my cousin, the learned Jacob Casseres?"
"Not himself," said Baruch, "but I knew his book, 'The seven days of the week at the Creation.'"
They then sat down to table, blessed the bread and the wine, and inaugurated the Sabbath.
"It is strange," remarked the host, after grace was said: "on other days I can hardly finish the last mouthful before I put my lighted cigar in my mouth, but on the Sabbath it is as if all our habits were changed; I do not desire to smoke, and it gives me no annoyance to practise the self-denial." The guest gave no response.
"Bless me," continued the host, "I notice now you still keep to our native custom of mixing wine with water. If you remain with us in the foggy north, where we force land from the sea, and guard it each hour; where half the year the earth is stiff, and the blue canopy of heaven hidden with clouds; where you breathe in mist and vapor, instead of clear air; here in our town, where no springs flow, and water for drinking must be brought from a distance; where men live as if imprisoned by the sea; where the climate itself compels men to be tranquil and composed, and the foresight and patience which have made the land, and still hold it, are the prime virtues of mankind: remain here, I say, and believe me, you will soon conform to our custom, and pour pure grape blood into your old veins to make yours circulate the faster. Ah, it is a glorious and precious country, our Spain! Our Eden inhabited by devils. Now when I must so soon lay my weary head in the bosom of the earth, I feel for the first time that it is not my native land that will receive me."
"You are unjust," replied the stranger. "You here sit at your table without fear: there your friend and your own child might be forced to confess with a heavy heart that you secretly worshipped the God of Israel; and the glow of a funeral pile might warm your old veins instead of this costly wine. You may dream now of the pleasures of your native land, and forget the terrible death that stared us in the face! The glorious chestnut woods with their cool dark shade could not invite us to rest, or the rich forests to the chase; on the morrow those trees might be our fagots; on the morrow we might be the hunter's prey. In truth, when I hear you speak so, I could join with those zealots who ascribe our afflictions to excessive love of our native land, too great pride and gratification in the respect we had won there."
"Yes, yes, you are right," answered his host; "but let us not disturb the joy of our reunion with dismal reflections. Come, drink! But stay! Miriam, bring the Venetian goblets here; and let Elsje light you to the cellar, and bring the two flasks that De Castro sent me."
"Brilliant!" exclaimed the stranger as he raised the glass of newly poured out wine to his lips; " that is real Val de Pefias; where did it come from?"
"As I said, Ramiro de Castro sent it to me from Hamburg. The wine has improved with us, but now it grows more fiery; and we—!"
"Well, well, we have lived; be content. The wine awakes the long-extinguished fire in me. Dost thou remember yet? Such wine we drank that evening in the Posada near the House of Donna Ines, who had already made thee wait two evenings in vain. You struck the table, and swore never to see her again; yet the next evening in the silent Arbor it was 'dear Alfonso' and 'dear Ines' again. Ha! ha! ha!"
The father warned his friend of the presence of the children; the stranger took little notice, however, and revelled in the wine of his native land.
"Do you remember that heavenly summer evening?" he continued, "when we sauntered on the Alameda in Guadalaxara? I see you now, when the bells tolled nine, and every one stood still as if by magic to pray a Pater Noster. I see you standing before me: how you crushed your hat in your hands! Your eyes flashed fire as though they would set the whole world in flames. Donna Ines not excepted. You were a dangerous cavalier."
Thus the two old friends renewed the memories of their youth. For an hour they lived a life of pleasure and youthful fire.
"I cannot understand," said Baruch once, "how a man could be happy for a moment in such a land, where he would perpetually see scorn, shame, and death before him."
"You are too young," said the stranger. "Believe me, if men watched your lightest breath, there are hours, yea days, when you can be happy, and forget everything. If men repulse you with scorn, and push you and yours aside into the mud, there is a holy of holies, wherein no earthly power enters: it is your own consciousness, union with your own faithful circle; the heaven that there surrounds us no man can take from us; not even the ever present horror of death.
"All these afflictions have passed over us, and yet we were happy."
"But the incessant discord in the soul? Christian before the world, and Jew at heart?"
"That was our misfortune, that I witnessed in your uncle Geronimo."
"Why does he not leave his dreary hermitage, and come to us?" inquired Baruch.
Baruch had risen from his seat, and repeated the verse appointed to be said on hearing of a death:
"Praised be Thou, O Lord our God, King of the World, and Righteous Judge!"
"Tell us of it, I pray you," he added; and Miriam too approached the table, and joined in her brother's request.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
THE JEWISH DOMINICAN.
RODRIGO CASSERES took another long draught from his tall goblet, and began his narration:
"About eight months ago I received a letter from Seville through Philip Capsoli; I was horrified when I read the address, 'To Daniel Casseres in Guadalaxara[4][2q].' It could only be some thoughtless Jew who would address me by my Hebrew name. How I trembled at the contents! 'Daniel, Man of Pleasure,' it said, 'the day of vengeance and death is at hand, and I must die among the Philistines. Would you ask how it feels to be roasted? Come to me; I am watched by the holy police. In the name of the High God, by the ashes of our murdered brothers and sisters, I conjure you come to thy dying Geronimo de Espinosa.' There could be no doubt that Geronimo himself had written the letter; the fine straight line under the signature, a sign of the worship of the one true God, showed me that plainly, even if I had failed to recognize the trembling handwriting.
"When I told my children of my intention to travel to Seville, I was weak enough to be deterred from its fulfilment by their prayers and tears. I had almost forgotten poor Geronimo, when a dreadful dream reminded me of him, and the next day I set out on my journey.
"I parted from my children with a beating heart, telling them I was going to my sister in Cordova. I travelled swiftly through Cordova, and passed my sister's house unnoticed; I could neither stop nor rest; it was as if an unseen hand drew me irresistibly onward. I arrived at Seville. The clock struck the hour as I mounted the hill. 'There you dwell, my brilliant Geronimo,' I said to myself, 'and turn your footsteps to the Chapel, with prayer on your lips and scorn in your heart. Is it not a tempting of Providence for you, at heart a Jew, to venture your person in the councils of the Inquisition, even to help your brethren?' I entered the chapel, and knelt till the mass was ended. I then arose, and looked round among the stout or ascetic devotees again, but in none could I recognize Geronimo.
