Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/240

228, starting away from him, "how your eyes are blasing! You are not going to hurt my father?"

"For your sakes, I will not curse him," said the old man, in a low, tremulous voice; "but accursed be the spirit which influences him, and my unfortunate, perverted people! I shall shake the dust from my feet at the threshold of your door, my son, and never more shall you behold my countenance in this world; but, in your last moments, you will remember this hour. I will wander defenceless among our enemies; I will bare this grey head to their insults, stand amidst their showers of stones, and peradventure be torn asunder by their violent hands, before my own child shall pluck out the beard from my aged cheeks, or turn me out of his house as a beggar."

"Stay!—are you mad?" cried Samuel; "you will not pass alive through that mob outside. Hold him, some one!" he exclaimed to those around. "He is deranged, as you see, and is going into his dotage. I should be sorry if anything were to happen to him, or he were to meet with any injury."

But old Philip Moses went away, like Lot, from the doomed Sodom, and never once looked back. No one attempted to detain him, for his denunciations, and his terrible look, had frightened them all. With his snow-white locks uncovered, and in his torn dark silk talar, alone, and without his staff, he went forth, and shook the dust from his feet as he stepped from the door.

When the Hamburg populace perceived him, a group of children began to abuse him, but no one took up the cry, and not a hand was lifted against the silent, venerable-looking old man.

"Let him go in peace !" said the one to the other; "it is old Philip Moses. He is a good man; it would be a sin to hurt him, or to scoff at him."

"But if we had his son Samuel in our clutches," said others, "he should not get off so easily; he is the greatest bloodsucker among them all!"

was late at night—the tumult in the streets had ceased. No more carriages rolled along from the theatre, or from parties at the houses of the rich Hamburg merchants. The promenade on the "Jungfernstieg" had been over long before, and the pavilions were locked up. Lights glimmered faintly from the upper windows of the large hotels, and only here and there a solitary reveller was to be seen, humming an air, as he was wending his way homewards from the "Sallon d'Apollon," or was stopped by some straggling night-wanderer of the female sex. The moon was shining calmly on the Alster, and the watchman had just called the hour by St Michael's clock; but two strange-looking figures still walked up and down the "Jungfernstieg," and seemed to have no thought of home, though the sharp wind scattered the leaves of the trees around them, and the flitting clouds often obscured the moon on that cold September night A dark-haired young girl walked, shivering with cold, alongside of an old Jew, and seemed to be speaking words of comfort to him, in a low, sweet voice; and that Jew was the aged Philip Moses!

"You are freezing, my child," said the old man, as he threw the skirt