14 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
rabbi ; " but that should not make us content when our brethren in the east and west are ground under the heel, beaten in the streets, cast into prison, crucified ; and even here in the south, Czarovna is one of the few exceptions, where we may do more than herd together like animals content to feed on the husks their masters fling to them. But it was so in Venice, where to-day our brethren hold up their heads in the blessed sun, and walk with the Christian merchants, their equals in respect and in power.
"Not quite that," said Andrea, " but of a sufficient freedom of action and life ; it is only in London where it may be said the Jew is equal to the Christian. And if it were not that some of our brethren, steeped in the preju- dices and vices that have been engendered of a thousand years of persecution, did not trespass upon the English liberal and human sentiment by ill acts that we as a community would be the first ourselves to punish, London would come to forget entirely that a man were Jew or Gentile, except, if he were a Jew, to glorify him all the more for his good works. It is thus that we are cursed from generation to generation ; the offspring of the dead, bitter past, the child of persecution, the seed of misery and dependence, waxes strong, and in his strength de- velops the cunning of a past in which it was his only weapon, and brings down upon individuals the curses of even the great liberal-minded people of London."
" It thou wert not a Jew, and true as the ring of thine own gold, Andrea Ferrari, thy words would be thine own condemnation ; but, friend of many countries, do thou tell our daughter Anna of that city of the sea, which is like the dream of a poet rather than a sober incident, from the book of real experience ; and whither our dear son, the rabbi, doth propose to travel with our loving daughter Anna mayhap accompanied by their father what sayest thou, Anna ? "
