2. II.
With a heart filled to overflowing as he thought upon
the unrequited and profitless state of his daughter's affections,
and the fate to which it would doom her, the
position of Melchior was yet such that he could neither
indulge in idle grief nor spare the necessary time to
convey her once more, as was now his desire, into the
deserts which they both sighed for. The business of
the Gothic-Jewish nation hung upon his hands, and to
his undoubted capacity and sleepless energy alone had
his people deputed their rescue from the tyranny under
which they groaned in Iberia, and their hope for future
security and the protection of a better government.
This he had promised them to achieve, and to this he
had solemnly devoted himself. Inspired with a patriotic
and unselfish zeal not common to the time, and far less
common among the nation of which he was a member,
Melchior would have freely given up his child in sacrifice
to the God whom he worshipped, and the people
once so greatly the object of his care, to achieve his
present object. It cannot, therefore, be held strange
that he should now waive her claims as a child, and his
own love as a father, to proceed upon toils which, individually,
could bring him no advancement in place and
no increase of the benefits of earth, and the prosecution
of which involved him only in a thousand privations, not
to speak of the risks of life which, as a notorious outlaw,
he hourly incurred. Freely and joyfully would he, more
than once, have given up the struggle, as he saw how
few there were among his tribe who sought for freedom
for its own sake. They all desired it for the security
of their gains; but they desired only the liberty of the
tradesman, and for this Melchior strove not. The freedom
which he sought was that of the principles and the
affections—the right to speak the truth, to look up to
Heaven unrebuked, to resist injustice, to side with the
victim against it, to frown upon the brutal and undeserving,
to enjoy the air and the sunlight, and to yield up
his sympathies, whenever they were demanded, in tribute
to the beautiful and the good. The mere security of
his goods formed but a humble portion of those desires
in which his love of liberty had its origin. A cause
even higher than his regard for his people prompted his
labours, and permitted not a relaxation of his purpose.
He laboured, like all true patriots, in the cause of truth;
and his own life and the life of his child—ay, the very
existence of his people—were all as nothing in comparison
with the great aim and principle which nerved and
stimulated his patriotism.
