d began to intone the benedictions, but her heart felt no
religious joy in the remembrance of how the God of her fathers had
saved them and their Temple from Hellenic pollution. It was torn by
anxiety as to the fate of her boy, her scholar son, unaccountably
absent for the first time from the household ceremonies of the Feast
of Dedication. What was he doing--outside the Ghetto gates--in that
great, dark, narrow-meshed city of Rome, defying the Papal law, and of
all nights in the year on that sinister night when, by a coincidence
of chronology, the Christian persecutor celebrated the birth of his
Saviour? Through misty eyes she saw her husband's face, stern and
rugged, yet made venerable by the flowing white of his locks and
beard, as with the supernumerary taper he prepared to light the wax
candles in the nine-branched candlestick of silver. He wore a long,
hooded mantle reaching to the feet, and showing where it fell back in
front a brown gaberdine clasped by a girdle. These sombre-colored
robes were second-hand, as the austere simplicity of the Pragmatic
required. The Jewish Council of Sixty did not permit its subjects to
ruffle it like the Romans of those days of purple pageantry. The young
bloods, forbidden by Christendom to style themselves signori, were
forbidden by Judea to vie with signori in luxury.

"Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God," chanted the old man. "King of the
Universe, who hast sanctified us with Thy commandments, and commanded
us to kindle the light of Chanukah."

It was with a quavering voice that Rachel joined in the ancient hymn
that wound up the rite. "O Fortress, Rock of my salvation," the old
woman sang. "Unto Thee it is becoming to give praise; let my house of
prayer be restored, and I will there offer Thee thanksgivings; when
Thou shalt have prepared a slaughter of the blaspheming foe, I will
complete with song and psalm the dedication of the altar."

But her imagination was roving in the dim oil-lit streets of the
tenebrous city, striving for the clairvoyance of love. Arrest by the
_sbirri_ was certain; other dangers threatened. Brawls and bravos
abounded. True, this city of Rome was safer than many another for its
Jews, who, by a miracle, more undeniable than that which they were now
celebrating, had from the birth of Christ dwelt in the very heart of
Christendom, the Eternal People in the Eternal City. The Ghetto had
witnessed no such sights as Barcelona or Frankfort or Prague. The
bl