Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/349

Rh what she considers her duty. Allow me to travel, father! There is no hope of happiness before me now in this world; but I will seek tranquility in the charming land which is sacred to the arts, and in absence from all that may recal the past"

Thus the father and son conversed, while the rabbi, Philip Moses, was engaged in consecrating the great sin offering for his unhappy people. Three days after this event the old man breathed his last in the arms of the faithful Benjamina.

" Jews are going to bury their last prophet to-day," said a lounger on the "Jungfernstieg'* to one of his assodates. "See how they are gathering from all corners! And any one of them who meets the hearse must follow it"

"It is old Philip Moses," replied the other; "he was the only honest Jew in Hamburg, and some say he is the last of the old Mosaic type in the world. He died in the belief, notwithstanding all their wanderings and miseries, that his nation were the holiest on earth, and God's favourite people. When he was dying, they say, he had his windows opened, expecting that their Messiah would come flying in to carry him and his people away back to the promised land."

"What absurd folly!" exclaimed the first speaker, laughing; " however, we must admit that he was consistent to the last."

And ridiculing the Jews, they entered one of the pavilions near the Alster.

Towards evening, a young man in a travelling dress stood at the gate of the churchyard belonging to the Jewish community, and gazed sadly and earnestly at a female figure, which, in a deep mourning dress, was kneeling by a newly-made grave. The traveller was the young painter Veit, who had engaged post-horses for that very evening to take him from his native town on his way towards Italy, where he intended to bury himself and his hopeless passion amidst the classic ruins of Rome. Benjamina's self-sacrificing devotion to her grandfather, and his patriarchal adherence to the faith of his ancestors, which held up to execration every departure from that faith, and the intermingling with those whose religion was different, had entirely destroyed his long-cherished hopes; but he determined once again to see his beloved Benjamina, once more to be assured of her sentiments towards him, and then to take a last and sad farewell.

With this resolution he had approached her dwelling, just as the hearse, containing the mortal remains of old Philip Moses, was leaving it. Seeing this, he mingled among the mourners and followed the funeral cortége, although the passers-by wondered to see a fair-haired Christian, in a travelling garb, among the mumbling Jews who accompanied the dead to his last resting-place.

When the mournful ceremony was ended, and they had all left the grave, Veit felt that he could not tear himself away; it seemed as if he found himself impelled to wait there the last scene of his sorrowful fate. He also thought that Benjamina would visit the tomb before night. This expectation was realised, for she did come, later in the evening, with flowers to strew over her grandfather's grave. When he perceived her