ven as I do. Peace be with
thee!"

He caught at her gown. "Go not without my thanks, though I must reject
thy counsel. To-morrow I am admitted into the Brotherhood of
Righteousness." In the fading light his face shone weird and unearthly
amid the raven hair. "But why didst thou risk thy good name to tell me
thou hatest me?"

"Because I love thee. Farewell."

She sped away.

He stretched out his arms after her. His eyes were blind with mist.
"Miriam, Miriam!" he cried. "Come back, thou too art a Christian! Come
back, my sweet sister in Christ!"

A drunken Dominican lurched into his open arms.

VI

The Jews would not come to hear Fra Giuseppe. All his impassioned
spirituality was wasted on an audience of Christians and oft-converted
converts. Baffled, he fell back on scholastic argumentation, but in
vain did he turn the weapons of Talmudic dialectic against the
Talmudists themselves. Not even his discovery by cabbalistic
calculations that the Pope's name and office were predicted in the Old
Testament availed to draw the Jews, and it was only in the streets
that he came upon the scowling faces of his brethren. For months he
preached in patient sweetness, then one day, desperate and unstrung,
he sought an interview with the Pope, to petition that the Jews might
be commanded to come to his sermons; he found the Pontiff in bed,
unwell, but chatting blithely with the Bishop of Salamanca and the
Procurator of the Exchequer, apparently of a droll mishap that had
befallen the French Legate. It was a pale scholarly face that lay back
on the white pillow under the purple skull-cap, but it was not devoid
of the stronger lines of action. Giuseppe stood timidly at the door,
till the Wardrobe-Keeper, a gentleman of noble family, told him to
advance. He moved forward reverently, and kneeling down kissed the
Pope's feet. Then he rose and proffered his request. But the ruler of
Christendom frowned. He was a scholar and a gentleman, a great patron
of letters and the arts. Wiser than that of temporal kings, his Jewish
policy had always been comparatively mild. It was his foreign policy
that absorbed his zeal, considerably to the prejudice of his
popularity at home. While Giuseppe de' Franchi was pleading
desperately to a bored Prelate, explaining how he could solve the
Jewish question, how he could play upon his brethren as David upon
the harp, if he could only get them under the spell of his voice, a
gentleman of the bed-chamb