heavy curtain that screened the threshold and was within the chapel.

By the altar gathered a confused and disordered group--the sisterhood,
with their abbess. Round the consecrated rail flocked the spectators,
breathless and amazed. Conspicuous above the rest, on the elevation of
the holy place, stood Almamen with his drawn dagger in his right hand,
his left arm clasped around the form of a novice, whose dress, not yet
replaced by the serge, bespoke her the sister fated to the veil; and,
on the opposite side of that sister, one hand on her shoulder, the other
rearing on high the sacred crucifix, stood a stern, commanding form, in
the white robes of the Dominican order; it was Tomas de Torquemada.

"Avaunt, Almamen!" were the first words which reached Muza's ear as
he stood, unnoticed, in the middle of the aisle: "here thy sorcery and
thine arts cannot avail thee. Release the devoted one of God!"

"She is mine! she is my daughter! I claim her from thee as a father, in
the name of the great Sire of Man!"

"Seize the sorcerer! seize him!" exclaimed the Inquisitor, as, with
a sudden movement, Almamen cleared his way through the scattered and
dismayed group, and stood with his daughter in his arms, on the first
step of the consecrated platform.

But not a foot stirred--not a hand was raised. The epithet bestowed on
the intruder had only breathed a supernatural terror into the audience;
and they would have sooner rushed upon a tiger in his lair, than on the
lifted dagger and savage aspect of that grim stranger.

"Oh, my father!" then said a low and faltering voice, that startled Muza
as a voice from the grave--"wrestle not against the decrees of Heaven.
Thy daughter is not compelled to her solemn choice. Humbly, but
devotedly, a convert to the Christian creed, her only wish on earth is
to take the consecrated and eternal vow."

"Ha!" groaned the Hebrew, suddenly relaxing his hold, as his daughter
fell on her knees before him, "then have I indeed been told, as I have
foreseen, the worst. The veil is rent--the spirit hath left the temple.
Thy beauty is desecrated; thy form is but unhallowed clay. Dog!"
he cried, more fiercely, glaring round upon the unmoved face of the
Inquisitor, "this is thy work: but thou shalt not triumph. Here, by
thine own shrine, I spit at and defy thee, as once before, amidst
the tortures of thy inhuman court. Thus--thus--thus--Almamen the Jew
delivers the last of his house from the curse of Ga