asped his great warm hand,
holding it tight, forgetting to drop it, as though it were drawing him
back to life and love and fellowship.

The first few words made it clear that Dom Diego had not heard of
Uriel's excommunication. He was new in the city, having been driven
there, pathetically enough, at the extreme end of his life by the
renewed activity of the Holy Office. "I longed to die in Portugal," he
said, with his burly laugh; "but not at the hands of the Inquisition."

Uriel choked back the wild impulse to denounce the crueller
Inquisition of Jewry, from the sudden recollection that Dom Diego
might at once withdraw from him the blessed privilege of human speech.

"Didst make a good voyage?" he asked instead.

"Nay, the billows were in the Catholic League," replied the old man,
making a wry face. "However, the God of Israel neither slumbers nor
sleeps, and I rejoice to have chanced upon thee, were it only to be
guided back to my lodgings amid this water labyrinth."

On the way, Uriel gave what answers he could to the old man's
questionings. His mother was dead; his brother Vidal had married,
though his wife had died some years later in giving birth to a boy,
who was growing up beautiful as a cherub. Yes, he was prospering in
worldly affairs, having long since intrusted them to Joseph--that was
to say, Vidal--who had embarked all the family wealth in a Dutch
enterprise called the West India Company, which ran a fleet of
privateers, to prey upon the treasure-ships in the war with Spain. He
did not say that his own interests were paid to him by formal letter
through a law firm, and that he went in daily fear that his estranged
and pious brother, now a pillar of the synagogue, would one day
religiously appropriate the heretic's property, backed by who knew
what devilish provision of Church or State, leaving him to starve. But
he wondered throughout their walk why Dom Diego, who had such constant
correspondence with Amsterdam, had never heard of his excommunication,
and his bitterness came back as he realized that the ban had extended
to the mention of his name, that he was as one dead, buried, cast down
to oblivion. Even before he had accepted the physician's invitation to
cross his threshold, he had resolved to turn this silence to his own
profit: he, whose inward boast was his stainless honor, had resolved
to act a silent lie. Was it not fair to outwit the rogues with their
own weapon? He had faded from human me