"That day we received permission to go home to our poor house in the Jewish quarter.I know not whether you are learned enough in Jewish usages to be aware that in every Jewish house, where old traditions are kept up, there is one room consecrated to confusion;a room always locked up and sequestered from vulgar use, except on occasions of memorable affliction, where everything is purposely in disorder--broken--shattered--mutilated: to typify, by symbols appalling to the eye, that desolation which has so long trampled on Jerusalem, and the ravages of the boar within the vineyards of Judea.My mother, as a Hebrew princess, maintained all traditional customs.Even in this wretched suburb she had her 'chamber of desolation.' There it was that I and my sisters heard her last words.The rest of her sentence was to be carried into effect within a week.She, meantime, had disdained to utter any word of fear; but that energy of self-control had made the suffering but the more bitter.Fever and dreadful agitation had succeeded.Her dreams showed sufficiently to us, who watched her couch, that terror for the future mingled with the sense of degradation for the past.Nature asserted her rights.But the more she shrank from the suffering, the more did she proclaim how severe it had been, and consequently how noble the self-conquest.Yet, as her weakness increased, so did her terror; until I besought her to take comfort, assuring her that, in case any attempt should be made to force her out again to public exposure, I would kill the man who came to execute the order--that we would all die together--and there would be a common end to her injuries and her fears.She was reassured by what I told her of my belief that no future attempt would be made upon her.She slept more tranquilly--but her fever increased;and slowly she slept away into the everlasting sleep which knows of no to-morrow.
"Here came a crisis in my fate.Should I stay and attempt to protect my sisters? But, alas! what power had I to do so among our enemies? Rachael and I consulted; and many a scheme we planned.
Even while we consulted, and the very night after my mother had been committed to the Jewish burying ground, came an officer, bearing an order for me to repair to Vienna.Some officer in the French army, having watched the transaction respecting my parents, was filled with shame and grief.He wrote a statement of the whole to an Austrian officer of rank, my father's friend, who obtained from the emperor an order, claiming me as a page of his own, and an officer in the household service.O heavens! what a neglect that it did not include my sisters! However, the next best thing was that I should use my influence at the imperial court to get them passed to Vienna.This I did, to the utmost of my power.But seven months elapsed before I saw the emperor.If my applications ever met his eye he might readily suppose that your city, my friend, was as safe a place as another for my sisters.Nor did Imyself know all its dangers.At length, with the emperor's leave of absence, I returned.And what did I find? Eight months had passed, and the faithful Rachael had died.The poor sisters, clinging together, but now utterly bereft of friends, knew not which way to turn.In this abandonment they fell into the insidious hands of the ruffian jailer.My eldest sister, Berenice, the stateliest and noblest of beauties, had attracted this ruffian's admiration while she was in the prison with her mother.
And when I returned to your city, armed with the imperial passports for all, I found that Berenice had died in the villain's custody;nor could I obtain anything beyond a legal certificate of her death.And, finally, the blooming, laughing Mariamne, she also had died--and of affliction for the loss of her sister.You, my friend, had been absent upon your travels during the calamitous history I have recited.You had seen neither my father nor my mother.But you came in time to take under your protection, from the abhorred wretch the jailer, my little broken-hearted Mariamne.
And when sometimes you fancied that you had seen me under other circumstances, in her it was, my dear friend, and in her features that you saw mine.
"Now was the world a desert to me.I cared little, in the way of love, which way I turned.But in the way of hatred I cared everything.I transferred myself to the Russian service, with the view of gaining some appointment on the Polish frontier, which might put it in my power to execute my vow of destroying all the magistrates of your city.War, however, raged, and carried me into far other regions.It ceased, and there was little prospect that another generation would see it relighted; for the disturber of peace was a prisoner forever, and all nations were exhausted.Now, then, it became necessary that I should adopt some new mode for executing my vengeance; and the more so, because annually some were dying of those whom it was my mission to punish.A voice ascended to me, day and night, from the graves of my father and mother, calling for vengeance before it should be too late.
