A young man immediately entered, and answered, “Did you call me, Father?”—But while he spoke, he threw a hollow and wandering glance on the singular furniture of the room.
“I called you, my son, and why did you not answer me?”
“I did not hear you, father—I mean, I did not think it was on me you called. I heard only a name I was never called by before. When you said ‘Antonio,’ I obeyed you—I came.”
“But that is the name by which you must in future be called and be known, to me at least, unless you prefer another.—You shall have your choice.”
“My father, I shall adopt whatever name you choose.”
“No; the choice of your new name must be your own—you must, for the future, either adopt the name you have heard, or another.”
“What other, sir?”
“That of parricide.”
The youth shuddered with horror, less at the words than at the expression that accompanied them; and, after looking at his father for some time in a posture of tremulous and supplicating inquiry, he burst into tears. The father seized the moment. He grasped the arms of his son, “My child, I gave you life, and you may repay the gift—my life is in your power. You think me a Catholic—I have brought you up as one for the preservation of our mutual lives, in a country where the confession of the true faith would infallibly cost both. I am one of that unhappy race everywhere stigmatized and spoken against, yet on whose industry and talent the ungrateful country that anathematizes us, depends for half the sources of its national prosperity. I am a Jew, ‘an Israelite,’ one of those to whom, even by the confession of a Christian apostle, ‘pertain the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh—’ ” Here he paused, not willing to go on with a quotation that would have contradicted his sentiments. He added, “The Messiahs will come, whether suffering or triumphant.29 I am a Jew. I called you at the hour of your birth by the name of Manasseh-ben-Solomon. I called on you by that name, which I felt had clung to the bottom of my heart from that hour, and which, echoing from its abyss, I almost hoped you would have recognized. It was a dream, but will you not, my beloved child, realize that dream? Will you not?—will you not? The God of your fathers is waiting to embrace you—and your father is at your feet, imploring you to follow the faith of your father Abraham, the prophet Moses, and all the holy prophets who are with God, and who look down on this moment of your soul’s vacillation between the abominable idolatries of those who not only adore the Son of the carpenter, but even impiously compel you to fall down before the image of the woman his mother, and adore her by the blasphemous name of Mother of God—and the pure voice of those who call on you to worship the God of your fathers, the God of ages, the eternal God of heaven and earth, without son or mother, without child or descendant (as impiously presumed in their blasphemous creed), without even worshipper, save those who, like me, sacrifice their hearts to him in solitude, at the risk of those hearts being pierced by their own children.”
At these words, the young man, overcome by all he saw and heard, and quite unprepared for this sudden transition from Catholicism to Judaism, burst into tears. The father seized the moment, “My child, you are now to profess yourself the slave of these idolaters, who are cursed in the law of Moses, and by the commandment of God—or to enroll yourself among the faithful, whose rest shall be in the bosom of Abraham, and who, reposing there, shall see the unbelieving crawling over the burning ashes of hell, and supplicate you in vain for a drop of water, according to the legends of their own prophet. And does not such a picture excite your pride to deny them a drop?”
“I would not deny them a drop,” sobbed the youth, “I would give them these tears.”
“Reserve them for your father’s grave,” added the Jew, “for to the grave you have doomed me.—I have lived, sparing, watching, temporizing, with these accursed idolaters, for you. And now—and now you reject a God who is alone able to save, and a father kneeling to implore you to accept that salvation.”
“No, I do not,” said the bewildered youth.
“What, then, do you determine?—I am at your feet to know your resolution. Behold, the mysterious instruments of your initiation are ready. There is the uncorrupted book of Moses, the prophet of God, as these idolaters themselves confess. There are all the preparations for the year of expiation—determine whether those rites shall now dedicate you to the true God, or seize your father (who has put his life into your hands), and drag him by the throat into the prisons of the Inquisition. You may—you can—will you?”
In prostrate and tremulous agony, the father held up his locked hands to his child. I seized the moment—despair had made me reckless.
