“I returned, and found my mother returned.  She slept by starts, but she was feverish and agitated; and when she awoke and first saw me, she blushed, as if I could think that real degradation had settled upon her.  Then it was that I told her of my vow.  Her eyes were lambent with fierce light for a moment; but, when I went on more eagerly to speak of my hopes and projects, she called me to her—­kissed me, and whispered:  ’Oh, not so, my son! think not of me—­think not of vengeance—­think only of poor Berenice and Mariamne.’  Aye, that thought was startling.  Yet this magnanimous and forbearing mother, as I knew by the report of our one faithful female servant, had, in the morning, during her bitter trial, behaved as might have become a daughter of Judas Maccabaeus:  she had looked serenely upon the vile mob, and awed even them by her serenity; she had disdained to utter a shriek when the cruel lash fell upon her fair skin.  There is a point that makes the triumph over natural feelings of pain easy or not easy—­the degree in which we count upon the sympathy of the bystanders.  My mother had it not in the beginning; but, long before the end, her celestial beauty, the divinity of injured innocence, the pleading of common womanhood in the minds of the lowest class, and the reaction of manly feeling in the men, had worked a great change in the mob.  Some began now to threaten those who had been active in insulting her.  The silence of awe and respect succeeded to noise and uproar; and feelings which they scarcely understood, mastered the rude rabble as they witnessed more and more the patient fortitude of the sufferer.  Menaces began to rise toward the executioner.  Things wore such an aspect that the magistrates put a sudden end to the scene.

“That day we received permission to go home to our poor house in the Jewish quarter.  I know not whether you are learned enough in Jewish usages to be aware that in every Jewish house, where old traditions are kept up, there is one room consecrated to confusion; a room always locked up and sequestered from vulgar use, except on occasions of memorable affliction, where everything is purposely in disorder—­broken—­shattered—­mutilated:  to typify, by symbols appalling to the eye, that desolation which has so long trampled on Jerusalem, and the ravages of the boar within the vineyards of Judea.  My mother, as a Hebrew princess, maintained all traditional customs.  Even in this wretched suburb she had her ’chamber of desolation.’  There it was that I and my sisters heard her last words.  The rest of her sentence was to be carried into effect within a week.  She, meantime, had disdained to utter any word of fear; but that energy of self-control had made the suffering but the more bitter.  Fever and dreadful agitation had succeeded.  Her dreams showed sufficiently to us, who watched her couch, that terror for the future mingled with the sense of degradation for the past.  Nature asserted