II.
But--I hold to the great principles of '76, and first of all to that of equality. If we must have a law for the protection of domestic animals against the men who torment them, I would like to see a law devised to protect men against the animals who are a pest to poor humanity, for the shoe sometimes gets on the other foot.
For example; look at that pack of dogs of all sizes, of all tastes, (I mean human,) and in every stage of canine civilization, which their masters permit to run at large in the streets of our city, even in the worst of the dog days, without counting the free and independent dogs who know no master but themselves. You have a friend who is a diligent reader of the chapter of accidents in the daily papers. He tells you about this or that dog who was seen running mad, that he had bitten two or three persons, one of whom has since died of hydrophobia, and adds with a peculiar relish that "the dangerous animal is still at large!" These gentlemen--I mean the owners of the dogs--are provokingly careless and indifferent about the muck which their dogs are running in the midst of a population biteable to any extent. You are kindly informed that if you happen to get bitten by some suspicious-looking cur--and what cur is not of a suspicious character in these days--it will be necessary to squeeze the wound, wash it, then cauterize it with a red hot iron, or cut it out, and then, etc., etc. These are most excellent recipes, I have no doubt, but I think I know of a better, which would be to prevent the bites altogether.
But, you say, there is the proclamation of his Honor, the Mayor, and there is the police, etc., etc. Dogs at large are to be muzzled or held by a chain. Oh! yes; very fine, indeed, when they are. The proclamation is very good, but since the dog owners pay so little heed to it, it is not surprising that the dogs themselves pay no more respect to it than they do to the proclamations of patent medicines pasted on the lamp-posts or fences. As to the country places outside of the city, whither we of the heated streets and close shops fly to get a breath of fresh air, and a moment of repose--there you will see fat men and thin ladies who never dream, either asleep or awake, of muzzling their favorite bull-dogs, lap-dogs, pointers, setters, tan terriers or greyhounds. Muzzle their dogs! that would make the poor dogs, and their owners too, very uncomfortable. A pretty piece of impudence indeed for a village constable to presume to carry out the law against the dog, errant in delicto, which is the property of a Mr. or a Mrs. or a Miss who is a "somebody," as if they were nobodies. Mr. Constable knows better than that, and so does Mr. Puffer, the magistrate.
Besides, there is a learned doctor of the society for the prevention, etc., who deplores with astonishment mingled with grief, etc., etc., that any one should be so inhumane as to gag "man's companion and friend" for the sake of the prevention of a few despicable cases of hydrophobia. He has never been bitten by a mad dog, and don't expect to be. He does not see why anybody else need expect to be.
Then there are our nurses and the children, whose daily promenade is embittered by the sight and often the attacks of some Snarleyow. "It was as good as a play," says Snarleyow's master; "Snarley nearly frightened them to death, I thought I should die of laughter to see them {691} scamper. It was great fun for Snarley." Very well, gentlemen, there is also something which is great fun for me too, and that is to kick Snarley whenever he presumes to be too "playful" with me or my particular friends the children.
Protect your "friends of man" if you will, gentlemen, but don't let them interfere with my friends, or---
III.
Permit me here to make a digression, which is not altogether one;
Man is defined, a reasonable animal.
Now the question arises whether woman is included in this definition. Don't get angry, ladies--the horrid men, you know, are so curious!
IV.
From the friend of man let us pass to the subject of the friend of woman. And here I find myself face to face with a celebrated document which produced such a deep, or rather such a lively impression upon the public, a few weeks since. Who is there in the whole five parts of the world that has not heard of the noted "cat trial"? That learned decision and sentence given by Squire Pouter, justice of the peace in Dullville, is yet ringing in my ears, by which were avenged, as far as a fine from five cents to a dollar could avenge, a litter of fifteen cats illegally drowned. Illegally!--that at least was the opinion of the wise magistrate, who rendered his judgment at great length, and after his well known comprehensive style, citing his authors, complimenting the one, and refuting the others, bringing under contribution the code of Justinian, the English common law, the state statutes, and the discussions of the Legislature at Albany. In short, our modern Solon decided as follows: The cat, in its nature, is both a domestic and wild animal. As a wild animal, it is true, it is lawful game for the hunter; but, as a domestic animal, it has a right to live, and is under the august protection of the law. Now, since the wild part of its nature revolts against captivity, it has a right to come and go according to its instinctive desire for daily exercise, and housekeepers are not bound in conscience to make a raid upon them in their tender feline infancy under pretence that some day or other they will make a raid upon their pantry. Raids of prevention in the times of peace are unheard of in the history of the republic. Therefore they are condemned (the raiders, in the present case, not the cats) to pay such and such fines, for the benefit of the fifteen victims, or their heirs or assigns. Yes, indeed, this splendid judgment made a good deal of noise, and well it might. I, who am speaking to you reside in my own house, and have no evil intentions toward any one, but--there are three cats who come each evening from as many points of the compass for the purpose of making strategic attacks upon my eatables. Infinite are the precautions that I am forced to take to save my daily bread from the enemy. I must keep up an incessant fight, and a running fire, not to speak of the difficulty I experience in vain attempts to sleep with one eye open and my ear, which is not on the pillow, on the alert. I will not speak of their defiant caterwauling and spiteful spitting when they find my barricades impassable; it is too painful a subject for me to dwell upon.
Who are the victims of oppression, most eminent and sage magistrate? Is civilized man positively to be given over in the name of the society for the prevention, etc., as a victim to the instincts and caprices of cats? Not at all, not at all, O illustrious Pouter! I will see you and the cats--well--some distance, if not further, first. Bring on your grimalkins, for my soul burns to avenge the rights of man!
It is not all. Here, for example, next door, lives Miss Lambkin; age unknown. She, by some unexplained perversion of taste, is keeping something in her house which is either an old sheep or a middle-aged goat. This cud-chewer, who lapses into ennui despite the charms of its mistress, bleats incessantly three times a minute, several thousands of times in the twenty-four hours. Is such an eternal see-saw of sound bearable? Is not my life a burden to me? Is not my liberty to think, to play my violin, to take my usual nap after dinner abridged by the liberty of Miss Lambkin's detestable foster child? And if I happen to be sick, or suffering from the tooth-ache or the headache, or melancholy, or perchance am sentimental, this beast, I suppose, must not be thwarted in its monotonous sing-song. Mister Pouter, is there liberty for wolves? for most assuredly I shall soon play the part of one!
I have not finished yet. Since the first of May a family has come to live in the house on the other side of mine. With father, mother and furniture comes a tall, wasp-waisted damsel who now passes hours, yes, hours banging upon an aged piano. It is her method of bleating, and it is full as amusing as the other, if not a little less. Will the president of the society for the prevention, etc., inform us if there is any protection for aged pianos? A society for the protection of men and pianos would find in me one of its most eloquent orators, diffuse writers, and active members. I would have all wandering Jews of unmuzzled dogs executed on the spot, knocked on the head or drowned, at choice. These at least have not the fifty cents in their pockets to pay for a living release.
As to the cats, I intend to memorialize the supreme court to declare the decision of our immortal justice of the peace non-constitutional. I wish it to be "legal" to kill, drown, or otherwise destroy any cat or cats found on strange premises, understood, of course that they are to be buried at the killer's expense, and the government not to be made liable to pay handsomely for public obsequies with military procession.
Bleating goats, or sheep, or parrots, et tutti quanti, to be invited to keep still, and not to speak until spoken to.
Lastly, as to the piano-bangers, I acknowledge the case is a little delicate, and any remedy whatsoever has its difficulties. I am not malicious, and am inclined to the side of resignation and toleration. For after all, you know, they are ladies, and when you say that, it is enough. Without association you cannot accomplish anything nowadays; and where in the world could be found a sufficient number of men to form a society for their protection against them. After that, I do not see that it is necessary I should say anything further.
There lived at Cordova, many years ago, an old Jew who had three passions: he loved science, he loved gold, he loved his only child, who bore the sweet name of Rachel. He loved science, not for its own sake, not because it was the means of the acquisition of truth, but for himself, that is to say, through pride.
He loved gold, a little perhaps because it was gold, very much because it gave him the means of providing luxuries for his darling child, greatly also because without it he could not have made the costly experiments necessary in the pursuit of science.
He loved his daughter alone, with the pure and disinterested, but passionate tenderness of paternal love. In a word he was a savant, a father, a Jew.
His name was Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah, and he practised medicine. He wrought such wonderful cures that very soon his fame spread throughout Spain, and from all parts of the kingdom the people came in crowds to consult him. He received his patients in the afternoon. In the morning he slept, it was said; but how his nights were passed none knew, and many were the speculations concerning it. This only was known, that they were passed in a secret chamber, of which he alone possessed the key, and it had been observed that this mysterious apartment was sometimes illuminated with many-colored flames, blue, or red, or green, while a dense smoke issued from the chimney.
The police of the kingdom at length resolved to penetrate the mystery, which seemed to them very suspicions. Everything is suspicious to the police of all countries.
One evening, Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah saw two dark, grave men watching his house. He listened and heard these words of sinister import:
"To-morrow, at dawn, we will know whether this wretch is a money-coiner or a magician."
The conscience of the poor old Jew did not reproach him, for his life was pure and innocent; but he had had great experience of the world, and held as on axiom that innocence is worth absolutely nothing in a court of justice. He went still further, he considered it an aggravating circumstance. He often quoted the old Arabian proverb: "If I were accused of having stolen and pocketed the grand mosque at Mecca, I would immediately run off as fast as I could." He said that justice was a game of cards--and he was no player.
What misanthropic ideas! How different would his conclusions have been had he lived nowadays! However, as he had not the happiness of living in that Eden of justice, France of 1866, he put the philosophy of the proverb into practice, and left Cordova that very night, taking with him all his treasures. The next morning at dawn the two dark, grave men, found an uninhabited, dismantled dwelling; which made them still more dark and grave.
II.
Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah, disguised as a merchant and mounted on a strong mule, passed rapidly through Spain. On either side of his saddle, and securely fastened to it was a long wicker {694} basket, in the shape of a cradle. Ben-Ha-Zelah looked from time to time at these baskets with satisfaction, mingled with sadness, and then urged on his mule, casting many a backward glance, to be quite sure he was not pursued. In one of the baskets were his treasures and his books; in the other slept peacefully the young daughter of the fugitive. Having reached a small seaport town, the old Jew took passage in a vessel which was about to sail for Egypt.
Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah had often heard of the caliph Achmet Reschid, who was celebrated throughout the East for his love of science, and the high consideration in which he held scientific men. As for impostors, charlatans and empirics, he held them in sovereign contempt and took real pleasure in impaling them.
This good prince reigned in Cairo. Thither Ben-Ha-Zelah bent his steps; for he believed himself, and with reason, to be a true savant.
The profound and extensive acquirements of the old Jew, together with his astonishing skill in everything appertaining to the healing art, soon made him as famous in Cairo as he had been in Cordova, and he was at once made court physician.
The caliph Achmet Reschid was never weary of admiring the almost universal knowledge of the old man, and often invited him to the palace to converse with him for hours upon the secrets and marvels of nature. Suddenly a terrible plague broke out in the city, and threatened to decimate the population. Ben-Ha-Zelah compounded a wonderful lotion, which cured six times in seven. He contended that in nothing could evil be conquered in a greater proportion than this; that a seventh was a minimum of disorder, of sorrow, of vice, in the imperfect organization of this world, and that when the proportion of evil in the human body, in the soul, in society, in nature, had been reduced to a seventh, all the progress possible in this world had been made.
However that may be, he was summoned one night in great haste to the palace; the wife and son of the caliph were stricken down by the pestilence. Ben-Ha-Zelah applied the miraculous lotion and the son was restored to health--but the wife died.
The caliph Achmet Reschid was overcome with gratitude for so signal a service and throwing himself into the arms of the old physician, exclaimed: "Venerable old man I to thee I owe the life of my son and my happiness! As a proof of my gratitude, I appoint thee Grand Vizier!"
The old Jew prostrated himself on the ground before his generous benefactor.
"Yes," continued the caliph, who had a truly noble heart; "yes, I need a friend in whom I can confide, as I have, one after another, beheaded all those whom I had in a moment of impulse honored with that title."
"Thanks, mighty caliph!" humbly replied Ben-Ha-Zelah. "How shall I find fitting words to thank my gracious prince for such unmerited condescension! Surely never did kindness like this rejoice the earth!"
"Thou sayest well and truly, child of Jacob," answered the puissant caliph.
Time, far from diminishing the love of the caliph for Ben-Ha-Zelah, only increased it. The jealousy of the courtiers had always succeeded in poisoning the mind of the caliph against any one on whom he had conferred the dignity of Grand Vizier; but the prudence of the old Jew baffled all their schemes, and Achmet Reschid had learned how to guard against calumniators. At the first word breathed against the new favorite that benevolent prince and faithful friend ordered the rash slanderer to be beheaded, and very soon the courtiers vied with each other in their praises of the Grand Vizier. The good caliph, seeing the harmony of feeling among his people with regard to the new favorite, congratulated himself on his firmness.
"I knew very well," said he, "that the whole court would at last do him justice. I talk of him with every one and no man says aught against him."
III.
As for Ben-Ha-Zelah, he seemed to be perfectly indifferent to the immense power which his favor with the caliph gave him in the state. In vain did the courtiers try to entangle him in the intrigues of the court. In vain did the noblemen of the kingdom, in hopes of gaining his protection, lay costly gifts at his feet. He gently refused them all. Devoid of ambition, and prudent to excess, the old Jew withdrew as much as possible from public affairs. He even begged the caliph to excuse his attendance at the palace, except at certain hours of the day, that he might devote himself more uninterruptedly to scientific pursuits. The love of the caliph grow day by day, and the courtiers as well as the common people, seeing the humility and disinterestedness of the Grand Vizier, acknowledged him to be indeed a sage.
At court, as everywhere else, he was clad in a coarse brown robe, and was in no way distinguishable from the crowd, had not the intellectual expression of his face, and the strange brilliancy of his eyes, revealed at a glance a superior mind. He might often be seen in the streets of Cairo, carrying in his own hands the metals, stones or medicinal plants, which he bought in the bazaars, or gathered in his solitary rambles. Wherever he went he heard his own praise; but never did he in any way betray that it was agreeable to him.
"No one is so poor and humble," said the common people to each other, "as the Grand Vizier of our high and mighty caliph."
The truth was, however, that with the exception of Achmet Reschid, no one in Cairo possessed such vast riches as the "poor" Vizier; but after the manner of the Jews he carefully concealed them, and lived in a very modest mansion situated outside the walls of the city. This humble dwelling was completely hidden by the palm and cedar trees which surrounded it, and for still greater security was enclosed by a high wall.
In this quiet and mysterious retreat, where he admitted no guests, he had centered all that made his life; there dwelt his child, the young Rachel, just budding into womanhood.
When, after passing weary hours in the unmeaning ceremonial of the court, he reached his garden gate, and stealthily opened it, his usually impassive face was suddenly illumined as with a sunbeam. It was as if he had passed from death unto life.
His daughter, clad like a queen of the east, ran to meet him, and embraced him so tenderly that it seemed as if a portion of her young life was breathed into the worn and exhausted frame of the aged father. Ben-Ha-Zelah forgot his sorrows and his cares, and seemed to revive as with the breath of spring. "I gave thee life, my daughter; thou dost restore it to me!" murmured the old man.
Rachel was just entering her sixteenth year. Her hair was of the beautiful golden color which people love. Her eyes, her voice, her smile, her bearing, carried with them an irresistible charm. She looked, it was a ray of light; she spoke, it was a strain of music; she smiled, it was the opening of a gate of Paradise. Her heart was pure and innocent as was that of the Rachel of old, whom Jacob loved. Can we wonder that the heart of her father was bound up in her? Who indeed, could help loving a being so pure and bright?
IV.
Ben-Ha-Zelah was old, but his was a vigorous old age--and the young daughter and aged father, as they walked under the grand old trees of the garden, made a beautiful picture. The long white head, piercing eyes, {696} eagle nose, and broad brow of the old man, formed a striking contrast to his humble dress, and when no longer under constraint, it revealed a mysterious and profound satisfaction in his own personality and intelligence. There was so much pride that there was no place for vanity in his soul.
What cared he for the admiration or contempt of others, the vain clamors of the multitude, whom he considered infinitely his inferiors? When he said to himself, "I am Ben-Ha-Zelah," the rest of the world no longer existed for him.
His pride was like that of Lucifer: it was not relative but absolute; he contemplated himself with a terrible satisfaction. Thence his disdain for all the miserable trifles which gratify the self-love of inferior men. The pride of seeming comes when the pride of being is not absolute.
Whence then came the gigantic pride of the old Jew?
Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah was the most learned man of his time.
He had carried his investigations far beyond those of the most scientific men of the age; he was well versed in physics, mechanics, dynamics, arithmetic, music, astronomy, medicine, surgery, and botany; but the science he most loved, was that which, at first known under the name of alchemy, was destined to become the greatest science of modern times--chemistry.
He passed night after night shut up in his laboratory, as he had formerly done at Cordova, seeking to penetrate one after the other all the mysteries of nature. There, bending over his glowing furnaces, surrounded with retorts and crucibles of strange shapes, filled with metals in a state of fusion, by all sorts of instruments and alembics, old Ben-Ha-Zelah interrogated matter and demanded the mystery of its essence; he pursued it from form to form, he tore it with red-hot pincers; he melted it in the glowing fires of his furnaces; he made it solid only to reduce it again to a liquid state, decomposing it a hundred times in a hundred different ways. He tortured it, as does the lawyer the prisoner at the bar, that he may wring from him his most hidden secrets.
Matter, thus pursued by the indefatigable alchemist, had revealed more than one of its mysterious laws, which he had made useful in the practice of his profession, so that he was considered in Cairo little less than a demi-god. However, in his labors he sought not the good of his fellow-men, but the barren satisfaction of the passion which was consuming him, the pride of knowledge; he sought to penetrate the secrets of the most high God. The promise of the tempter to our first parents; Eritis sicut dei, scientes, "You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil," had penetrated his soul; and he desired to plant in his garden that fatal tree to which the first-born of our race stretched out their guilty hands. Like his ancestor Jacob, he wrestled with Jehovah.
One can readily understand that the old man, absorbed in this gigantic struggle, was dead to all vanity, so far as men were concerned. He had reached such dizzy heights that he had almost lost sight of them. To him they were like the brute beasts which crossed his path; he believed them to be of an inferior nature to him, who had been gifted with such vast genius--such indefatigable industry. His high thoughts were not for such miserable pigmies.
Sometimes seating himself in dreamy mood in his garden, at the foot of a grand old cedar, his favorite seat, and taking in his hand a pebble, a blade of grass or a flower he was plunged in profound meditation.
What makes this "a body" thought he. This "body" is brown, heavy, hard, square, or has many other properties which come under my notice. But it is evident that neither the color, weight, cohesion, nor form constitute its essence. They are its manner of beings--not its being. If I modify it, destroy it even, it will still {697} be the same body, and I shall, after all, have only attacked its manner of being; the essence which heretofore has always escaped me--the soul of the body, if I may say so--will have suffered no change. It is as if I were suddenly to become hunchback, lame, idiotic--I would still be the same man. I must discover the substance quod sub stat; in the first place, what causes this to be; in the second place, what constitutes it a body; and finally, what makes it this particular body which I hold in my hand and not another.
The problem was formidable; it was the mystery of the omnipotence of the God who created the world, and nevertheless this unknown Prometheus shrank not from the task, and flattered himself he could wring from created matter the secrets of its Creator.
In his experiments' Ben-Ha-Zelah had started with the axiom that all bodies were formed from certain elements which were invariable, but combined in different ways. Moreover, his researches had proved to him that many elements, formerly believed to be primary, were composed of different elements into which they might again be readily resolved. So that seeing their number decrease as his investigations became more abstruse and his analyses more delicate, he had arrived at the conclusion that there existed an original and absolute substance of which all bodies, even those apparently the most different, were only variations.
He affirmed the identity of the base under the infinite variety of the forms. This primary substance which he considered as coëternal with God, was, he thought, that on which Jehovah breathed in the beginning, and in his Satanic pride he believed two things--first that the Almighty had combined the atoms of matter in so wondrously complex a manner only to conceal from man the secret of its creation--and secondly, that the Rabbi-Ben-Ha-Zelah would be able to baffle the precautions of the Almighty, and by analysis after analysis, at length succeed in finding the simple primary substance from which all things were originally formed.
Such were the thoughts which continually filled his mind--such the gigantic plan he had conceived. Again and again he said to himself that by taking from a body one after the other its contingent qualities, as one takes the bark from a nut, he would succeed at length in penetrating its most hidden depths, to that matter essence from which was made, as he believed, all that existed in the universe.
He had inscribed on the door of his laboratory Materia, mater. And as soon as he should be able to imprison in his alembics this primary matter he could at will, disposing it after certain forms, make in turn bronze, stone, wood, or gold. Nay more, he hoped to surprise with the same blow the mystery of life--and then, thought he in his impious pride, I shall be a creator, like unto Him before whom every knee bends in adoration. I shall be God! Eritis sicut dei.
The old man, lost in the vain search for the absolute basis of matter, little suspected that the final word of all science is; "The essence of matter is immaterial."
However, he devoted himself most zealously to the great work he had undertaken, and passed night after night in the recesses of his laboratory which would have reminded one of the entrance to the infernal regions but for the sweet presence of the young and lovely Rachel, who glided in and out, bringing order out of confusion, and in the evening beguiled the long hours by singing to her father snatches of the old Hebrew songs of which such touching and beautiful fragments have come down to us.
V.
One night, Ben-Ha-Zelah, regardless of fatigue, was still bending over his glowing furnaces. For more than a week he had allowed himself no sleep, nor had he permitted his eyes to wander from the vast crucible which had been heated to white beat for six consecutive months. He had discovered phenomena hitherto unknown. His bony hands clutched convulsively the handle of the bellows, and his eager, care-worn face was illuminated with a two-fold radiance, that from the purple light of the furnace and from the interior flame which consumed his soul. He was motionless from intensity of emotion. At last then he was about to attain the aim and desire of his whole life!
The primary substance, the absolute essence of matter, he was about to seize it--to be its lord. The old man still watched; a whitish vapor rose slowly from the crucible; matter decomposed in this crucible seemed to be a prey to a fearful travail--to struggle in an internal conflict.
The old man raised his tall form to its full height and at that moment appeared like a second Lucifer. He shouted in triumph, "I have created!"
Then rushing to the casement he gazed upward to the starry heavens, not in prayer, but in defiance.
"I have created!" he repeated, "I have created! I have conquered! I am the equal of God!"
A noise, slight in reality, but to the excited senses of Ben-Ha-Zelah, louder than the crash of thunder, was heard behind him. He turned with agitated countenance. The crucible, unwatched during his delirium of pride, had fallen, and was shivered to atoms. All was lost; the creation of him who aspired to an equality with the Most High was but a heap of ashes.
Ben-Ha-Zelah was stunned by this unlooked-for calamity. He fell back fainting, as if, while he rashly sought to penetrate the mystery of life, pale death, entering his dwelling had touched him with her sombre wing.
VI.
When consciousness returned, the fire of the furnace, which had been fed with so much care for six weary months, was extinguished. Through the open casement he saw myriads of stars blazing in the firmament. The majestic silence of the night hovered over the unchanged immensity.
The old man was seized with an indefinable terror. He understood that he was punished for his pride, and he had a presentiment that the sudden failure of the labor and research of so many years was but the beginning of his punishment. It seemed to him that in the midst of the thick darkness the living God had looked into the depths of his guilty soul and had stretched out his all-powerful hand to smite him. Suddenly, as by a revelation, there came to him a knowledge of the point where God was about to strike him.
"My child! my child!" cried he, in a voice broken by terror and remorse.
He ran to the chamber of his daughter.
The old man opened the door gently, taking, in spite of his terror, a thousand paternal precautions not to awaken the sleeper. The trembling light of a small alabaster lamp cast its faint rays about the apartment. Gently he drew back the curtains of the bed and gazed fondly upon his child.
Rachel slept profoundly, her breathing was as peaceful as innocence. Ben-Ha-Zelah looked upon the sweet, calm face with a transport of delight. The tranquillity of this peaceful sleep of childhood was communicated to him, and for a moment stilled the agitation of his soul.
He leaned fondly over the sleeping form; listened joyfully to the calm breathing of his darling child, to the regular beating of her heart; then stooping, imprinted a kiss of fatherly love on the beautiful brow.
Rachel remained immovable, and her sleep was unbroken. "It is strange she has not awakened," said the old man to himself looking at her again. "Sleep is so like death."
As he allowed this thought to take form a vague terror took possession of him.
"Bah! she sleeps! I hear her breathing," said he aloud.
The secret indefinable fear which he could not banish, and for which he could not account, still remained; he could no longer contain himself.
"Rachel!"' cried he in a loud voice. The young girl slept on.
"Rachel! my child!" he cried again, at the same time shaking her gently by the arm.
Still the calm sleep was unbroken; and the peaceful breathing which at first had delighted the fond father now seemed like a fatal spell.
"Rachel! Rachel!"
He took her in his arms; he placed her on a couch; he tried to make her walk; and in vain essayed with his trembling fingers to open the sealed eyelids.
The young girl slept on; her respiration as calm, and the rhythm of her heart still preserved its frightful monotone. All the efforts of the despairing father were vain. Day dawned, night came, the next day, and weeks and months, and Rachel awoke not.
VII.
The distracted father, remembering that he was a physician, sought in medical science a remedy for this strange malady. He tried every known medicine, he essayed new ones; but nothing could break the fearful sleep. He no longer went to the palace of the caliph, but his days and nights were passed in his laboratory as they had formerly been at Cordova; his researches, however, were no longer to feed his pride. Sorrow concentrated his mighty genius on one thought--to discover a remedy for his idolized child. Bitterly did be expiate the old anxieties of his pride by the torturing perplexities of this new sorrow.
More than six months passed thus. A last and desperate remedy to which he had recourse, had, like all the others failed; Ben-Ha-Zelah on a night like that on which this weight of sorrow had come upon him, was in his laboratory bending as ever over his retorts. He had made every research, every experiment that genius, quickened by affection, could suggest, and had failed in all. Rachel still slept. Then the broken-hearted old man, convinced of his own impotence, let fall his arms at his sides and burst into tears.
At that moment he heard a voice which seemed to come at once from the depths of immensity, and from the inmost recesses of his own heart.
"All thy efforts are vain," said the voice. "Thou wilt cure thy child, only by passing about her neck, a pearl necklace, not the pearls which bountiful nature gives, and God makes, but pearls which thou thyself hast fashioned. Thou thoughtest thyself the equal of God, the equal of Him who created the world; and he punishes thee, by condemning thee to create only a few pearls, and he is willing to lend thee all the riches and treasures of his beautiful world. Go and seek! And when thou hast made enough of these pearls to fill the box beside thee, make a necklace of them. Put it on the neck of thy child, and she will awake."
It was not an illusion. The old man had seen no one, but the box was there beside him. It was a little box, of a wood unknown to him, which exhaled a delicious odor. On the lid inscribed in letters of gold, was a Hebrew word, meaning "Treasure of God."
Ben-Ha-Zelah, re-kindled the fires of his furnaces and again applied himself to explore the arcana of alchemy. He took from his coffers all the pearls he possessed, and after having analyzed them, tried in vain to form them again; but the secret of omnipotence which he attempted to grasp, fled from him. He decomposed precious stones and succeeded only in making a gross calcareous substance. Again and again he flattered himself, he had penetrated the mystery of the Creator; but all his hopes ended in nothingness. {700} Nature, which he had once attempted to conquer to satisfy his pride as a savant, he now wooed in vain to still the passionate yearnings of his fatherly heart.
One day he said to himself: "My knowledge is very little; and with the very little I know, I shall never succeed in solving this problem, and nevertheless it is possible!"
The voice which spoke to me is a voice which does not deceive.
Then an inspiration came to him which lighted with a pale ray of hope, the sorrowful face long unused to happiness. The idea occurred to him, that if he should go and study the shells of the Persian gulf where pearls are formed, he might succeed in winning from nature the mystery which he had so much interest in learning.
He set out the next morning on his long and wearisome journey, leaving his child to the faithful care of the old Jewish slave who had been so many years in his service, and in whom he reposed the most perfect confidence. She had been the nurse of Rachel, and loved her almost with a mother's love. He spent two months in studying the pearl oyster of the Persian gulf; but there, as in his laboratory, all his efforts were vain.
Providence, thought he, (he no longer said "nature,") Providence has secrets which will never be known to mortals!
Convinced of the utter folly of his painful researches--anxious, moreover, to see his poor child again. He sadly turned his face homeward.
VIII.
As he slowly and sadly pursued his way toward Egypt, he saw on the second day of his journey across the desert, a group in the distance, apparently just in his route; continuing to advance, he saw a dead camel covered with blood, beside him the dead body of a knight, pierced with sabre-strokes; on the road-side a woman, apparently dying, holding in her arms a young infant.
Ben-Ha-Zelah, moved with compassion, approached and accosted the woman. She told him that in crossing the desert with her husband and child, they had been attacked by brigands, who had killed her husband, left her mortally wounded, and had rifled them of all their treasures; even their water-bottles--more precious than all in the desert.
"I am dying," said she, "but my bitterest sorrow is in leaving my poor little babe, who must perish thus alone in the desert."
The poor mother for one moment thought of asking the kind old man to take her child, but she saw that one of his water-bottles had been broken by some accident, and that he had hardly enough water to cross the desert.
Ben-Ha-Zelah had had the same thought, but he calculated the quantity of water remaining to him, and and to himself that it was impossible.
The woman was dying.
There, in the presence of the mother's despair, with the wail of the infant so soon to be an orphan, in his ears, he thought of his own child.
"Woman," said he, "I will take your babe, and will care for him as for my own. I will save his life, even at the cost of my own."
The mother died, invoking blessings on his head.
Ben-Ha-Zelah resumed his journey across the desert, placing before him on the saddle, the infant, who at first wept, then laughed in infantile glee, then amused himself by teasing the patient nurse, pulling his beard, or tangling the reins of the camel. The old man who had become as gentle as a mother, sought every means which affection could suggest to amuse the helpless little creature, so strangely given to his charge--sometimes with the gold tassels of his bridle, sometimes with his bright fire-arms, sometimes by rattling in his ears the gold sequins in his purse. Again he would sing to him a lullaby, long-forgotten. {701} The child was pleased with each new amusement devised by the old savant, but it was only for a few moments, and was again looking about for something he had not yet seen.
How much we all resemble children!
Poor old Ben-Ha-Zelah knew not what to do to satisfy this restless craving for amusement. Suddenly he thought of the beautiful little box, which the child had not seen, and drew it out from the folds of his robe.
The child eagerly grasped this new plaything and turned it about in every possible way.
To the amazement of the old Jew, there was a slight sound, as of some small object rolling about in the box.
The child shouted with delight. The old man was breathless and trembling. He grasped the box convulsively from the hands of the infant, who held it out to him, smiling. He opened it. His blood froze in his veins, with an emotion not of terror but of joy and hope.
He beheld in the box a pearl, pure and more beautiful than any he had ever seen.
Speechless with emotion he could only raise his eyes to heaven in a wordless prayer of gratitude.
Then he heard a voice which seemed to fill the immensity of the desert, and nevertheless, was as low and sweet as the loving murmur of a fond mother.
"O Ben-Ha-Zelah! every tear which thou shalt dry, is a pearl which thou dost create."
Ben-Ha-Zelah looked about him. All around him was the desert. Before him, in his arms, the little babe, suddenly grown calm, and smiling in his face.
A few more days and his journey through the desert was ended. But many were the privations he endured that the helpless little infant, now so dear to him, might not want.
Ben-Ha-Zelah was rich, and now he was good. His goodness made use of his riches to dry the tears of misfortune--there are as many, alas! in this world of suffering, as there are dewdrops on a summers morning-- and very soon his box was quite full.
When he again saw his child, the mysterious sleep was unbroken. She came not to welcome him, but he put the pearl necklace about her beautiful throat, and she awoke, smiling.
"Oh! what a lovely necklace, papa," she cried.
"It is the first I have ever given thee, my darling," said the happy father, "but I hope it may not be the last. My pearl-casket is now empty, but I trust in God that I may fill it many times before I die."
[ORIGINAL.]
[Footnote 174: "A History of the Gipsies: with Specimens of the Gipsy Language." By Walter Simson. Edited, with preface, introduction, and notes, and a disquisition on the past, present, and future of Glpsydom. By James Simson. 12mo, pp. 575. New York: M. Doolady. London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston. 1866.]
About the beginning of the 15th century there appeared in Germany a strange mysterious people, such as had never been seen in Europe before;