n strong language, to
deliver the woman and baptize the child. And so it took place, and the
nurse took the child and baptized it. But the woman who had been
confined sprang frantically from her bed, and with vehement cries, tore
the child violently from the hands of the midwife. Forthwith, the city
judge made his appearance with armed men, in order to separate the now
little Christian son from the mother. But as she, like a frantic one,
held the child so firmly clasped in her arms, that it was feared it
would be stifled in extricating it from her, the judicious judge of the
city contented himself with strictly forbidding the old Jews there
assembled, to make the child a Jew. Thereupon it was commanded, by his
Excellence, the Lord Count of the Empire, Von Sternberg, Chief Burgrave
of the Kingdom of Bohemia, that this fifth child should be delivered
over to the father. Not long after, the mother also, who had so
stubbornly adhered to Judaism, gave in, and was baptized.

"The father of the Jewish boy Simon Abeles, was Lazarus, and his
grandsire Moses Abeles who for many years had been Chief Rabbi of the
Jews. Whilst already of tender years, there had been discovered in this
boy a special leaning of the spirit towards Christianity. Whenever he
could, he separated himself from the Jewish youths, and associated with
the Christian boys, played with them, and gave them sweets which he had
collected from his father's table, in order to gain their good will.
The Jewish cravat, stiffened with blue starch, which the Jews wear
round the neck, thereby distinguishing themselves here in Bohemia from
the Christians, was quite repugnant to Simon. As the light of his
reason became brighter, he took every opportunity of learning the
Christian mysteries. It happened that he was many times sent by his
father, who was a glove dealer, on business to the house of Christopher
Hoffman, a Christian glover. There he tarried in contemplation of the
sacred, not the profane, pictures that hung on the walls, although the
last were more precious and remarkable as specimens of artistic
painting, and he inquired with curiosity of the Christian inmates, what
was signified in these pictures. When in reply they told him, that one
was a representation of Christ, another of the mother of Christ, the
miracle-working mother of God, by Buntzel, and another, the holy
Antonius of Padua, he exclaimed, from his heart, sighing: 'Oh, that I
could be a Christian!' More