Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/218

196 The Jews were then, as ever since in Europe, a most despised and oppressed race. In all countries they were strangers and foreigners. All Christian nations united in persecuting them, and most cruel laws were passed against them everywhere. Their only protection against such social injustice was in making themselves as powerful as possible to resist it; and their means had been in all countries to heap up vast wealth, so that in their homes and synagogues they could feel themselves partly secure from their oppressors, or sometimes even purchase by the power of their money those rights which society otherwise denied them.

One of these Jews Antonio thought of, a man of clear, subtle intellect, born to have been a statesman if the state had not refused to father him, and now, although an outlaw, a man of influence and power among the scattered remnant of his tribe. Feeling his own power and his superiority over the Christians who spit upon and spurned him, his whole soul was filled with bitterest hatred of his persecutors. Those qualities, which in him would have been great and noble if it had not been for his unfortunate birth, were turned to craft to outwit the Christians, and to form schemes of revenge upon his enemies. Too cunning to let them read his nature or his designs, he carried smiles on his lips to conceal