Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/401

Rh among men who will sacrifice their wives for their friends, and aside, not aloud, he says to himself: —

" These be the Christian husbands! I have a daughter ; Would any of the stock of Barrabas Had been her husband, rather than a Christian!"

This passage this casual word is the basis of the condemnation which we must pronounce of the fair Jessica. It was not an unloving father whom she robbed and abandoned. Shameful deceit ! She even makes common cause with the enemies of Shy lock, and when they at Belmont say all manner of evil things of him, Jessica does not cast down her eyes, nor do her lips grow white no, Jessica herself says the worst things of her father. Atrocious wickedness ! She has no feeling, only a love of what is remarkable and romantic. She is wearied and ennuyée in the closely shut "honourable" house of the stern and bitter Jew, which at last appears to her to be a hell. Her frivolous heart was all too easily attracted by the lively notes of the drum, and the wry-necked fife. Did Shakespeare here mean to sketch a Jewess ? Indeed no ; what he depicts is only a daughter of Eve, one of those beautiful birds, who, when they are fledged, fly away from the paternal nest to the beloved man. So Desde-