The Scapegoat | Page 7

one of the houses belonging to the mosque on the Moorish side of
the Mellah walls.
Seeing this, the usurers laid their heads together again and said, "Let us
see that no man of our nation serve him, and so shall his life be a
burden." Then the two Jews who had been his servants deserted him,
and when he asked for Moors he was told that the faithful might not
obey the unbeliever; and when he would have sent for negroes out of
the Soudan he was warned that a Jew might not hold a slave. But the
conspiracy failed again. Two black female slaves from Soos, named
Fatimah and Habeebah, were bought in the name of the Governor and
assigned to Israel's service.
And when it was seen at length that nothing availed to disturb Israel's
material welfare, the three base usurers laid their heads together yet
again, that they might prey upon his superstitious fears, and they said,

"He is our enemy, but he is a Jew: let the woman who is named the
prophetess put her curse upon him." Then she who was so called, one
Rebecca Bensabbot, deaf as a stone, weak in her intellect, seventy years
of age, and living fifty years on the poor-box which Reuben Maliki
kept, crossed Israel in the streets, and cursed him as a son of Beelzebub
predicting that, even as he had made the walls of the Kasbah to echo
with the groans of God's elect, so should his own spirit be broken
within them and his forehead humbled to the earth. He stood while he
heard her out, and his strong lip trembled at he words; but he only
smiled coldly, and passed on in silence.
"The clouds are not hurt," he thought, "by the bark of dogs."
Thus did his brethren of Judah revile him, and thus did they torture him;
yet there was one among them who did neither. This was the daughter
of their Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana. Her name was Ruth. She was
young, and God had given her grace and she was beautiful, and many
young Jewish men, of Tetuan had vied with each other in vain for he
favour. Of Israel's duty she knew little, save what report had said of it,
that it was evil; and of the act which had made him an outcast among
his own people, and an Ishmael among the sons of Ishmael she could
form no judgment. But what a woman's eyes might see in him, without
help of other knowledge, that she saw.
She had marked him in the synagogue, that his face was noble and his
manners gracious; that he was young, but only as one who had been
cheated of his youth and had missed his early manhood, the when he
was ignored he ignored his insult, and when he was reviled he
answered not again; in a word, the he was silent and strong and alone,
and, above all that he was sad.
These were credentials enough to the true girl's favour, and Israel soon
learnt that the house of the Rabbi was open to him. There the lonely
man first found himself. The cold eyes of his little world had seen him
as his father's son, but the light and warmth of the eyes of Ruth saw
him as the son of his mother also. The Rabbi himself was old, very
old--ninety years of age--and length of days had taught him charity.
And so it was that when, in due time, Israel came with many excuses

and asked for Ruth in marriage, the Rabbi gave her to him.
The betrothal followed, but none save the notary and his witnesses
stood beside Israel when he crossed hands over the handkerchief; and,
when the marriage came in its course, few stood beside the Chief Rabbi.
Nevertheless, all the Jews of the quarter and all the Moors of Tetuan
were alive to what was happening, and on the night of the marriage a
great company of both peoples, though chiefly of the rabble among
them, gathered in front of the Rabbi's house that they might hiss and
jeer.
The Chacham heard them from where he sat under the stars in his patio,
and when at last the voice of Rebecca the prophetess came to him
above the tumult, crying, "Woe to her that has married the enemy of
her nation, and woe to him that gave her against the hope of his people!
They shall taste death. He shall see them fall from his side and die,"
then the old man listened and trembled visibly. In confusion and fierce
anger he rose up and stumbled through the crooked passage to the door,
and flinging it wide, he stood in the doorway facing them that