Hebrew Talisman, The
Hebrew Talisman, The
Hebrew Talisman, The
143
H354
1888
HEBREW TALISMAN
T. P. S.
THE
HEBREW
OCT. 15th, 1888.
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Lady
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Alfred
P caret
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Bhagavat Gita Boehme's Epistles Brother of the Shadow, The Buddhist Catechism
. .
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Miscellanies Mystery of the Ages Mysteries of Magic Mystery of the Turkish Bath.
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Rita
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Instruc
Frances Lord
of
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Solitude
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Savage
Corruption of Christianity
. .
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Fiske
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in Diet,
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and Moral.
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George
St. Clair
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. .
Science Occulte
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Lady
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Sermons
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Parker
.
.
White Lotus
M.
C.
Rita
Mdme.
H.
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Jehoshua
Justice a Healing
Power
.
'
Mathers
arid
3
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S. Olcott
Through
Karma, a Novel
.
A. P. Sinnett
.M. C.
the (Novel)
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Vendetta,
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India.
Mr.
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THE
HEBREW TALISMAN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
RICHARD HARTE.
Xon&on
7,
1888,
/V3
INTRODUCTION.
THE
of the T.P.S. pamphlets, a reprint of a curious and very rare work, may not appear to some readers to have a very direct Those who have got beyond the bearing on theosophical teachings. B C of Theosophy, however, will find in this issue a good deal of It deals with one of the most puzzling and material for serious thought. deeply interesting problems which the past has left for solution to the future the destiny of the Jewish race, and the fate of the Holy Land. The plot of the work (if that expression be allowed) is based upon two ideas, which taken singly are so well known as to be almost tiresome namely, the ancient belief of the Jews, based upon prophecy and national pride, that eventually they will recover posession of Judea, and gather together once more at Jerusalem, after their long exile from the land of a belief only less intense than the longing for its realizatheir ancestors The other idea is that contained in the legend of the Wandering tion. Jew firmly believed in by all Christendom from the apostolic ages until but recently, still half-believed by millions, and to which the doctrine of reincarnation, especially immediate reincarnation for a specific purpose, lends, if
present number
These two ingrenot plausibility, at least a new intellectual interest. dients of the plot when put together enter, as it were, into chemical combination, for they give rise to an idea which differs in its characAs a punishment for a the teristics from both of components. thoughtless word spoken by a foolish and ignorant mortal even to a god (in disguise at the time), the eternal and miserable activity of the Wandering Jew is a purposeless piece of unworthy revenge, as little credible in this more humane and enlightened age as the miracle required to consummate it. As a practical settlement of the Jewish question, the return of the Hebrew nation, or even a considerable part of the Jews, to Syria seems All travellers describe the Holy Land as barren and patently absurd. " poor in the extreme, a land which, if it ever flowed with milk and honey," has for centuries been believed to have withered under the terrible curse of an angry God. Could anyone but a child imagine for one instant that so thoroughly practical a people as the Jews, a race, moreover, pre-eminently fond of the luxuries of life, would voluntarily abandon the various countries
which
for centuries have been their homes, abandon their hereditary occupations, abandon civilization, and undertake the frightful labour of reclaiming a rocky and arid district, a labour from which even back-woods pioneers inured to hardship would shrink and all for a religio-sentimental idea ? But put these two incredible notions together, and all is changed. What if it be the mission of the so-called Wandering Jew to preserve in the Hebrew mind the recollection of the former glories of the race, and to keep alive the longing once more to revive them ? The moment that idea finds entry to the mind, the legend ceases to be childish, and the The two things explain each other, and longing is no longer unaccountable. taken together they raise the Jewish question to a level far above that occupied by the superstitions of the ignorant, or the calculations of individual To the Jew himself it is no less than the finger of Jehovah that self-interest.
3021537
has been disciplining and preparing them for their final triumph. Already the despised outcasts of a thousand years ago are the masters of kings and republics alike. There are a score of Jews to-day each one of whom is a greater power in the world than an army of a hundred thousand men. Were they to combine they could purchase Palestine ten times over, and then keep a million of Christian workmen joyfully slaving at
starvation wages for twenty years in doing the work of making the country once more a garden while they stood by to superintend. Perhaps the Jews are It may be that the finger of Jehovah is guiding their destinies in right. know that to be worshipped there, and the direction of Jerusalem.
He
Through
all
the centuries,
We
by them alone, was once His greatest glory. Far be it from theosophists to deny that such may still be the case, and if it so be, then, for the Jews themselves, all that need be done to complete his purposes will be accomplished. To the theosophist, however, Jerusalem, even Judea, is And not the whole of this earth, nor this earth the whole Universe. a higher guidance than that by human will in the case of the Jews, does not imply a monopoly of divine solicitude for one little tribe of people, nor a monopoly of power and wisdom for the celestial being who has chosen them for his special favour. If it be true that the affairs of the Jewish race are under higher guidance, then logic and justice require us to believe that a similar guidance is vouchsafed to all mankind, and to the inhabitants of the myriad worlds that roll in space. Is it so ? Is there being enacted before our eyes a tremendous drama of creation, in which individual men are as microscopic animalculi ? Does it " get rid of the idea of a directing power what our ancestors, equally ignorant, to call " spontaneous development
called Divine Providence
mouth
of a Jew ? those who know go to school to those who invent fables ? Above, behind, inside of every material thing there is a great, an absolute and impersonal, eternal, incomprehensible, sustaining power Far lower in the scale of existence there are the Divine Spirit. powers, personal and non-eternal, creatures who had a beginning and will have an end. Men call these lower fashioning powers colnot only jumbling them together, but lectively a personal God confounding them with the unknowable Absolute. Is one of these minor powers, the Jehovah of the ancient Hebrews, now pulling the wires that attach his people to him, and turning their steps towards the " promised " land once more ? It is said that wealthy Jewish bankers have at this moment actual legal right of possession to Palestine, holding it in mortIt is said that Jewish statesmen have arranged for gage from the Sultan. the completion and ratification of the transfer of the property to the mortgagees, upon the fulfilment of certain diplomatic conditions which events are rapidly bringing about. At the present moment a large part of Palestine, and nearly the whole of Jerusalem, is said to be owned by Jews. What does it all mean ? The T.P.S., in republishing this little work, disclaims all political It contains some bitter sayings conpurpose, as needs hardly to be said. " ancient cerning people long since dead, and events now almost history," all of which the T.P.S. would gladly have omitted in the reprint, had it not been that to do so would have spoiled the consecutiveness of the argument or narrative therein contained. From internal evidence the Hebrew Talisman was written about 1836. No one ever discovered who the writer was. The edition was soon exhausted, and till now has never been reprinted.
;
? Who is to ask these questions ? And of whom Will the Christian listen for their answer from the Will a theosophist seek it from a theologian ? Will
THE
HEBREW TALISMAN.
IT has been lately asserted that so much had been said and sung about the Wandering Jew that nothing further could be made of the subject by any writer, however highly gifted with the quality of invention. Insolent Gentiles!
Learn
/
to be
more humble
in
thought and
am
the
;
written
of
Wandering Jew. I am and /have smiled in very scorn at the description given of me, and
being,
relates
my mode of to me
;
nonentity
I
and
my
by personages who are nearly as ignorant of who pronounce me and a figment. fable a perpetuated misery
all
that
to be a
has
am spoken of as being an undying exception to all human rule my body died and been consigned to the loathsome vault and
;
yet
the
upwards of two score times since that awful day when the veil of the temple was rent in twain, when the earth groaned and was convulsed in her agony of sympathy with the dying one and when He, turning his effulgent orbs in anger upon me exclaimed, " Tarry thou until I come!"
sleek
;
damp worm
Undying!
in
in
exist,
and
I have been the victim of long ceased to be the rack and of the block I have pined in the terrible dungeon of the Inquisition which shuts out hope and which echoes to no sound
;
save the
gaoler
tugal,
;
moan
of the
miserable
in
my body has blazed where hecatombs' of my miserable long suffering race, the youth, the maiden, the matron, the elder, have been immolated living, burning, Take sacrifices, offered on the altars of Christian meekness. Undying but a brief portion of my long and awful history, and put an end to the
;
!
senseless figments of lively imaginations to the absurd belief that the mortal portion of man can outlast the rock, and what is frail can remain
;
unbroken, or what
is
it
God
in gladness,
was
I then.
My
house, over-
looking the sea and shaded on the land side by groves of oranges and myrtles, was on an eminence at the extremity of one of the most delightful
Though
was
fully
?
of my age
esti-
was
dear to her as the gushing fountain to the Pilgrim of Zahara. Our daughter, fairest among even the sunny-eyed daughters of Greece, and our son, the noblest boy that ever gave fair promise of heroic manhood, were even as a
proverb
for
beauty, as
!
him
has
Too mocked
ourselves were for prosperity and concord. happy, by far, to be the permanent lot of
at
we
the
prophet
of
Calvary,
his
and
who
wept repeated one evening in luxurious ease, exchanging glances of mingled love and pride, as our beautiful children abandoned themselves to their innocent mirth and displayed some new grace in every new attitude. Of a sudden the air felt leaden in its
ruin in the ruin of successive nations.
empires
smitten
down,
and
own
We
sat
oppressiveness, a dire consciousness rushed upon my mind, and I once more became aware of my terrible identity. I gasped for breath, and
the metempsychosis of vainly attemped to give utterance to my agony the ancients, fabulous to them, [was no longer a fable and I, who in outward appearance and corporeal members was a merchant of Greece,
; ;
the husband of a loving wife and the father of beloved children, was once more aroused to the maddening truth, that in soul I was the accursed one
of Judea the survivor of many ages the unpitied mourner of innumerThis fatal, this abhorred, able relatives the dead of divers nations
! ; !
it
consciousness comes upon my soul in the fortieth year of whatsoever body and to this consciousness some terrible calamity certainly and inhabits
;
speedily succeeds.
stood with dilated nostrils, glazed eyes, and stricken limbs, my Zoe started suddenly from the anxious and endearing posture she had
As
assumed on witnessing the horrible change which had come over me, and, " The Osmanlie " rushed towards our children. A struggle a shrieking, of the brood of Mahomet the wild and I bloody war-cry piercing shriek,
!
was
childless
and wifeless
How
know
not
but
I did reach it and was my own, and bounding over the blue waters. Days and nights passed by, the good ship cleft her way through the heaving waters but no pang for wife or child, no thought
for
my
my
mind.
dry
and but one thought was existent my accursed there my horrible my identity and when my lips gave utterance " " to my thoughts their sole accents were Tarry thou until I come
;
!
At length
of eighteen
this
for the
accumulated reminiscences
hundred years of misery Aye, that, that is the surpassing have my forty years of unNo sooner doom curse of my tremendous
!
tortured existence passed away, no sooner do I awaken to a consciousness of what I am, than I am goaded to despair by distinct and harrowing remembrance of all that I have been, done, and suffered. All who loved
me and
evils of
are lost to
me
rise
up again
to
my
mental view
long centuries are superadded to the tremendous curse which extends my spiritual evil to the crack of doom.
ship bounded on, and the very excess of my misery aroused an activity of which I had previously been incapable. Of maritime and affairs, I had, in this one of my many lives, had abundant experience
The good
to
me
as the horizon gave tokens of an approaching tempest, I took the helm, and the command of the vessel. If I had not already felt aware that my bodily existence was about to undergo another change, a phenomenon
which
of that fact.
Our
ship
wind and the waves, and swept rapidly through the latter I then knew that 1 was approaching my death in the face of the former that I was towards land which should afford me another place speeding and grave, my spirit, my doomed spirit another body. Oh, that terrible
;
!
chill,
that paralysis of the heart, that numbing yet agonising sinking of the soul, which precede the mortal pang All, all were with me and upon
!
me
yet
gazed
in pity
upon
my
were
pitting their
not, alas
lot
!
manhood and
that to be attached to
me was
Seamen by nature, you insular people are familiar, at least by description, with every phase of ocean's rage and ocean's convulsion. No new descripLet it suffice then to say that I tion of ship-wreck is necessary to you.
saw
shipmates, without an exception, swallowed up by the howling waters, and was myself dashed upon the coast which we had long been land approaching, and which I had long recognized as the once barbarous
my
in which,
when
;
Roman
inhabitants
and which
its
marvelled at for
had combated the fierce and savage had more recently visited as a merchant, and I name wealth, its luxuries, and its civilization. Need
centurion, I
I
your England.
The valour and the wisdom of their ancestors, had encircled her brows with the diadem of empire and had placed within her hands the Sceptre of maritime dominion, and clasp'd around her waist the golden girdle of the world, She had become the mart of nations, and her ships covered the
waters of the globe, and her immense metropolis was the emporium of
the earth.
The
last fell
my
spirit
f
Impelled by the resistless but tality, to seek anotlier mortal residence. unseen hand which scourges me, my disembodied spirit glided onward till it reached a small but beautiful cottage, and there at an open casement, it
paused
silvered
and stood dim, shadowy, and invisible to mortal eye, though and shining in the full calm beams of the moon. In the room sat a young and beautiful woman gazing in agony which could not weep, upon the pale and waxen visage of her dead boy her beautiful, her only one.
;
Anon came
less
the
felt,
body.
The
though unspoken, fiat and my spirit entered the lifeand the mother's shriek of frantic joy
;
domestics rushed
announced the reanimation of the mourned one. The father and the in, and the wonderful event is talked of to this hour in
the beautiful village of
.
existence,
am
I
of
my
race.
first forty years of each bodily unconscious of aught that distinguishes me from the rest have but lately been roused from my ignorance the curse
:
of consciousness
came over me
ere
I am wept her child's death, and knelt in gratitude for his recovery. once more alone in the world, and once more aware that I am the accursed
one of Judea.
Reader you have seen me though you know it not. A single night has bleached my hair, I wear the haggard features of three score, and as my
person, and worn yet intelligent features are contrasted, as I pass through the populous streets of your new Babel, with my sordid garments and my anxious and almost ferocious looks, the passengers turn and gaze upon me in wonder, as to my pursuits, my circumstances, and my
mean
character.
am
aged
I
but
Hitherto, in
bodily deaths
all
my
cannot again die until my mission be complete. I have silently suffered and in all my
;
have
Died, like the wolf, in silence."
But the time has at length come when the cause and the object of my marvellous and doomed existence must be made known that the pride of
;
be abated, and that the scattered people of Israel may know that they verily shall be a kingdom mighty to save and to destroy, and that they shall see the advent of their Messias, and the utter confusion
the Gentiles
may
Nazarine
Aye, I have indeed tarried and I must tarry yet a little while ere the mighty spell can be utterly broken, and the Lion of Judah triumphant over the nations. In what nation have I not lived and
Tarry
mighty, though power, in producing that gradual rise of my scattered and erring, but still sacred and peculiar, people, which will so shortly terminate in the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem in
unseen,
the subjection of the Kings of the Gentiles to the sway of the long tried, long suffering, and at length restored, people of the Most High ? The false
suffered
In
what
nation
have
not
exerted
be smitten down by the true; and the temporal triumph of God's chosen people illustrated and consummated by the veri" " table advent of the veritable Messias. Tyrant I have tarried; Tarry!
powers
will at length
have wielded the power of the thousand powers which may not resist the word of authority spoken by him who has looked unmoved and unrebuked
I
upon the
the veil of the temple, penetrated into the holy of holies, and learned the words of power engraven upon the signet of the master of all wisdom, and of all demons, good and
glories of the Shechinah,
lifted
who has
evil
Ill
who
the
taught, as are the myriads who put their vain trust in the prophet died on Calvary, and led away as they are by a thousand vain conceits
and cunningly devised fables, even they have some faint understanding of wisdom of the great Solomon, whose name be reverenced Selah But they have only a glimmering of light they can see only an atom of the vast whole of his wisdom and his might it is needful therefore that they should learn from me what their false philosophy would never teach
!
them
;
to believe.
They
must
shall chastise
them
the
word
is
spoken, Judah
be very glad.
Though the bigoted and vain Nazarenes know that the great Solomon builded to the Most High a temple of exceeding beauty and exceeding costliness, marvellous to think of, though they know that his wisdom filled
the nations of the earth with wonder, and caused King Hiram and the Queen of Sheba to look upon him with much reverence though they
;
know
mighty ones of the earth, insomuch that none other prince than he could have builded that temple, which he dedicated to the worship of the one only God yet, so narrow-minded and grovelling are these Nazarenes,
;
that they divine not, neither will they confess, that the wealth and power of the great Solomon were but the natural consequence of that ineffable
wisdom which was bestowed upon him when his soul, in a night dream, replied wisely and worthily to the question that was vouchsafed to him
from above.
IO
more than Cimmerian darkness, that they they ! in the petty pride of the ten thousand contradictions which they call philosophy, take upon themselves to deny the interference of the supernal powers in the progress
a
though a single glance at their own version of the history of the wise son of David would, one would suppose, suffice to show them that only by the aid of those powers, subjected to his unspeakable wisdom, could Solomon have amassed and expended the treasures
of
mundane
affairs
which upreared the temple. From the cedar that is on Lebanon to the hyssop that groweth upon the wall, Solomon knew the nature and the and, properties of every thing that springeth up from the pregnant earth
;
and divinely authorised, he had elixirs potent for all purof might which the demons hear in their far abodes, and and words poses, which, hearing, they must obey.
divinely taught
As an instance
who from
their vocation to
the day of Calvary even to the present hour have laboured in hoodwink the worldly and fat-hearted generations, and to keep them unaware of the powers of that magic which, partially revealed to Moses, was entirely unveiled to the steadfast and eagle glance of
Solomon, I may demand, who among the multitudinous sects of the Nazarene has any knowledge of that wondrous and invaluable root, BAARA ? That
could only be drawn from its parent earth, on with human blood, unless at the expense of the instant being sprinkled death of the animal compelled to draw it ? I venture affirm that not one,
save Fabricius, has ever alluded to this wondrous root, except in what the Christians as ignorantly as insolently term " Talmudical /oW." And yet it is perfectly true that it is the quality of this root, as is averred by
sundry writers of our despised and persecuted race, to cast out evil demons from people possessed and, though it is never known to more
;
than one person of our race, a preparation of this root, aided by the words
of might engraven
upon the signet of Solomon, is potent excedingly in tasking the hidden powers, and in discovering the most hidden things.
But by magic divinely taught and divinely Moses, that mighty chieftain in Israel, authorised, foiled the Egyptian Magii at their own weapons, and vexed the land of Egypt with many plagues, even until the peculiar people of God made a
Poor
fools
these Gentiles
how deem
they that
glorious
Exodus from the land of bondage ? Do they deem that by any other means than magic, so taught, and so authorised, Joshua the son of Nun could have made the sun stand still upon Gibeon, and the moon in
the valley of Ajalon
?
false
wor-
II
shipping people who call themselves Christians, might teach them that its power in the casting out of devils, was well known to our fathers, and
demonstrated even to those appointed scourges of Judah, the heathen Romans, whose names be Anathema, Anathema Maranatha. For the
means the demon which had possessed a certain man and that the bloody and sagacious Vespasian who was there present when this merciful deed was done, might be convinced that the
priest Eleazer did cast out
;
by
its
demon did indeed depart, though the exceeding tenuity of spiritual existences will not allow them to be visible to other eyes, than those from
which occult science has removed the scales
the venerable Eleazer com-
manded
person
possessed, the which vessel, in obedience to the commands of Eleazer, the demon, in departing did forcibly throw down and empty.
But
my
me
to
the crude notions or the blind and fanatical bigotry of the detested Nazarenes. The all but omnipotent signet of Solomon was deposited by that
greatest of earthly princes in the
Temple of Jerusalem and in the Hoi}' of High Priest, reposed that gem of price
;
When
but not the signet, which was from the beginning destined to work out the salvation of Judah when her sins should be fully expiated, and her people once more an acceptable people in the sight of the Lord.
Jerusalem
But though the dim light of tradition caused every successive high carefully to guard against the discovery of the precious treasure, even the high priest knew not all the wonders of that treasure. It was
priest
reserved for me, the doomed, the mysterious, the ever-changing in body, the unchangeable, the everlasting in spirit, to learn, even while hosts barbaric pressed towards the Holy of Holies, the saving wealth that And thus it happened. In the seventieth year after the rested therein.
death of him
of the
whom
month called Panemus, in the Syro-Macedonian tongue, but in the Hebrew Jamuz, the dread enemy of our nation, the Roman Titus had so far reduced the doomed defenders of the Holy City, that the daily sacrifice could no longer be offered and then knew all those in whom the only true religion had produced the spirit of prophecy that the temple would indeed
;
fall.
'S
k
-,-.
'
12 or need not recount the horrors of the succeeding days 01 the siege is it not written in the book of the apostate Josephus how the temple was polluted by the blood of our people, shed by each other as well as by the
I
;
Romans ? How that famine was abroad glaring with fierce eyes, and made horribly visible in gaunt and spectral forms ? How that a mother maddened by famine slew her child, yea, her first-born and her only one,
and banquetted in horrible eagerness upon his roasted body ? Alas the apostate Jew and divers writers among the Nazarenes, have dilated but
!
too truly and too sufficiently upon the awful scenes that passed in every Let me street, aye, in every house in the devoted city of the living God. then hasten to that concluding scene, which gave the Holy of Holies
to the
flames
me
eighteen hundred years later, was to rebuild the city and the temples, and prepare the people of God for the dominion of the whole earth, and for the
Selah
Let
it
be done.
It is
about to
be done.
Urged by I know not what divine fury, I had descended from the Upper City, where I had been gazing upon the flaming sword, which illuminated the heavens, even
at
mid-day.
outer court of the temple, now polluted by the bodies of the dying and the dead, and slippery with much blood. Scarcely had I made my which had the been erected for the separation partition wall, way beyond of the Jews from the unbelieving Gentiles when, from one of the many
;
apartments that were on the north side of the holy house, a lurid pillar of fire suddenly shot upward, and in an instant ten thousand fiery tongues
darted from
it
in
ten thousand combatants within and around the temple. To cleave to the earth the destroying Roman, who was in the very act of leaping into the inner court, after snatching from its blaze the torch with which he had now
fired the holy house,
was but the work of an instant that done, I pressed forward up the acclivity which led to the altar of Burnt Offering, where the High Priest, who had succeeded the fugitives, Joseph and Jesus, was surrounded by combatants, and in an evident agony of anxiety to make his
;
way
With a loud cry I threw myself forward but though I was swift, I was too tardy to into save the venerable man, who, at the very moment that I gained his side, was transfixed by a Roman dart. I raised him and bore him towards the Sanctuary, but though life was fast gushing forth from his ghastly wound, he was a Jewish priest still true to his God, his faith, and his office. " Pollute not the Forbear, set me down here," he exclaimed holy place in a which was as and niche, yet unthreatened by the devouring element,
Holy of Holies. the throng and the strife
into the
;
!
set
13
all
tenderly, as
His breathing came shorter and shorter, and his limbs became rigid but the agonies of death had no power over the energies of religion and he did not expire till he had commanded me to penetrate the Holy of centre of the ark, the Holies, and to snatch thence and from the very Talisman of our people, even the signet of the wise Solomon the Shem;
;
ama-phorah.
Jew
the
But
what had
I,
wanderer, to fear
I
passed the brazen pillars, Joachim and Booz, and I reached the golden cherubim, ten cubits in height, whose outspread wings, reaching from the southern wall to the northern wall of the Holy of Holies, had
hitherto concealed for ages
its
moment
!
and the walls were of fine gold, glitfires, and reflecting back the many coloured and living lights that flashed from Onyx and from Sapphire from Chrysolite and from Amethyst and from every precious stone from every part of the earth. Having drawn aside with resolute hand the embroidered veil of purple and scarlet, behold I stood within the Holy of Holies and there over against the eastern end I beheld an altar of solid and unornamented gold. Upon either side of the altar was a hollow candlestick of gold, adorned with lilies and pomgranates of gems
was
dazzled
The
floor
and
fretted gold.
much awe,
as
called Eron.
But upon the table Even / shook in every fibre with looked upon the ark of shittim wood, which in Hebrew is It was five spans long by three in height and breadth
!
and was strongly ornamented with plates of two cherubims of the like precious material. our people the seal of Solomon and I I
;
fine gold,
was
to stretch forth
my hand
and
seize
it
the ark yielded to my mere touch, and mine eyes fell upon the precious signet. It consisted of a single cincture of massive gold, set with a single gem but such a gem. Well might the fiends, well might the
The
lid of
powers of earth and hell shrink from the steadfast gaze of its possessor, and busy themselves in doing his behest. In the centre of the gem was
engraven the ineffable name of God, and around it in mingled radiance Diamond, of Sapphire, of Ruby, and Emerald, the seeming often thousand eyes gleamed with divine ardour to which the lurid lightnings of the
stormiest heaven are but as a meteor that dances upon the morass.
as one fascinated, terrified, petrified
;
stood
would
fain
hand, but
clove to
my arm was paralyzed I would have As I stood thus the root of my mouth.
;
my my tongue
in the
entranced a shout
outer portion of the temple announced the arrival of Titus and his In a few moments the Holy of Holies, the Ark, the very Seal followers. of Solomon, would be bared to the gaze of the profane, violated by the
stretched forth
my hand
and
a report as of ten thousand thunders shook the whole fabric around me, and I felt myself seized by a giant hand, whose grasp deprived me of my senses at the very moment that I saw the majestic
though somewhat corpulent form of Titus within the hitherto sacred How long I remained entranced I know not. When I at place.
length awakened to a sense of from the bloodshed and tumult,
my
situation,
was
far,
far
away
the
from
the
trampling
of the
of
the
victors,
and
the
passionate
but
unheeded
entreaties
dying and
The moon, the pale-visaged Astarte of the Phoenicians, was captive. high in heaven, shedding around a flood of silvery light such as she can never bestow upon this land of cloud and fog. I lay beneath a majestic
palm, and close beside me gushed a fountain, making a delightful music in the otherwise unbroken silence of the night. It was by slow degrees that all the scenes through which I had so recently passed became clearly and
completely recalled to my memory and, oh God with what horror did I not thrill when I discovered that the signet of Solomon was no longer in
;
!
my
possession
should have raved, Heaven pardon me, I believe I should have blasphemed but before I could give utterance to my agony, there arose beside me a low, sweet, musical, but withal, most solemn and majestic
I
;
voice and the mighty change that had come over my spirit and freed it from the dull and inapprehensive obtuseness of mere mortality, enabled me to know that that voice came from no created mortal. I knew that the
was a voice from above, and my heart leaped with an exceeding gladness, for I heard much mercy, and was blessed with a most wondrous mission, and with a trust which they who sit upon the blood-stained thrones
voice
of the perverted earth might
speedily
bow down
in
It
tor.
was revealed
a time
to me that though the curse of him of Nazareth must have power, and though, until the regeneration of our people
should be at hand, his power should go on increasing among the nations, the curse his hate and tyranny has laid upon me should be converted into
a saving mercy to Israel, a pillar of light to guide and guard the wanderers of Judah. Words of might were graven upon my soul, even the words of the signet .of
live the bodily life
one task,
Solomon which all Genii must obey, and I was sent forth to and die the bodily death in divers places but with ever one trust to teach the trampled Jew to become very mighty in
;
despoiling his oppressors, very cunning in availing himself of their hearts' leprosy avarice. Ages upon ages have rolled by where populous cities and the palaces of kings once stood, the bat and the owl and all obscene and
;
grovelling reptiles are now the sole lords, the sole tenants and where I have battled with the gaunt wolf, and disputed with the bear his forest
;
haunt, hundreds of thousands of human beings dwell in cities of strength and splendour the many wearing out their lives in squalor and in toil, that has little recompense and no cessation, the few looking down in insolent
;
and unsparing scorn upon those who starve, that the tyrant and the cheat may fare sumptuously every day. All nations have been in turn the scene of my exertions all ranks, all pursuits, have in turn been made subservient
;
Holy and Appointed end Jerusalem, Oh beloved Jerusalem, I have The appointed toiled to uprear thee in power and in great splendour hour is at hand and then HE cometh, at whose benignant and resistless word the curse of my foe, the fell curse that was pronounced upon me on
to the
;
!
my
spirit shall
have
to
rest.
Whether leading
the
the business of a merchant in Spain, slaughter of the Paynims, or pursuing with the terrors of the Inquisition ever before me, if discovered in my secret
whether passing my youth faith of my forefathers practice of the sacred in the sweet tranquility of an Alpine valley, or amid the roar of waters and the crash of battle whether in one age wielding the sword and the lance
;
now
of one and
now
venomous little republics of Italy, or in another aiding the revolt of Massaof Louis XIV. at Paris; in niello at Naples, or catering to the amusements
all
times, in
all
characters, in
all
my
spirit, in
the sweet low each new body has been called anew to self-knowledge, by Tarry thou until / oh! how full of hope to the Wanderer
whisper
!"
come,"
all
my
my
task.
and the cupidity of their tyrant could bigotry of a whole people, debar him from this or that condition social the Jew in easily degrade and brand him with an outburthen, condemn him to this or that
The
privilege,
but the Jew .could ah.va>:. ward and visible token of his debasement the trarpplecJ -slave, amass wealth, preserve wealth, and by his wealth, he,
;
i6 could always
mock
sway the
and
work have
in
at
the Talismanic power has ever been at influence at some time been felt, in every land
Aye
my
Jehovah how have I scorned the enemies of thy people, when I have seen them waiting with pallid cheek and downcast eyes for the fiat of the enriched Jew to consign them to instant and utter beggary, or to aid them
!
to struggle
on a
little
longer in the hope of gain to themselves, but in reality and add to the righteous usury which shall raise up
make
Alas
how
easier far
it is
it is
to give the
commanded, than
to inspire a
human
the antique abiding place of our race, which alone can justify me in often have I bestowing the potency and the splendour of riches
!
How
not had to lament the backsliding, and the degenerate self-love of my chosen instruments ? With what disgust have I not taken from them their
abused trust
and
by the deprivation of that which I bestowed on them, not for their own petty purposes, but that Israel might be redeemed from her debasement.
self-destruction,
time to support the boundless extravagance of the Court of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, and history, the jest book of wise men and the oracle of fools, will tell you that it was his
for a
genius.
which
tell another tale It was /, it was the talismanic power him for a brief gave breathing space, to inspire his friends with admiration and his enemies with envy. I withdrew that power, and there
I can
arose that scene of bloodshed and confiscation which was especially necessary to enable my people to spoil all the nations of Europe, even as our forefathers
by divine commandment did spoil their Egyptian task-masters. Verily the From the revolution of France sprang Jews have had their revenge and wars those wars sprang royal indigence and from bloody expensive
! ;
up that Christian Moloch of loan jobbery and public debts wherein the present race battens on the spoils and devours the labour of its offspring and now, now was the time when the
;
Jewish people might banquet in the halls of princes, where once their very presence would have been deemed pollution. Now was the time when the
aggrandisement of
my people could not without sin be neglected. England became the resort of thousands of our oppressed people and if England insulted and spat .upon them in theory, it at least supplied them with
;
17
became as necessary,
in
Antwerp, in Bruges, or more recently in Paris. From the death of Louis XVI. to the consulship of Napoleon Buonaparte, I rarely conferred the visible talisman, for however brief a space of time, upon any one it
;
people should be up and doing, that each should be amassing his portion there was a harvest too large for any single reaper and leaving to themselves the native wit of the Jew and the
my
own bad
passions, I looked calmly on, seeing in every bloody battlefield the precursor of a new loan in every new loan the most perfect of human inventions for the transfer of the wealth of the Gentile to the strong boxes
of the Jew.
The
my
the Nazarenes
Norman
atrocities
what the Norman took from the Saxons by the and the broad sword, the Jews now took from the
the pen.
weapon
people
pitched upon to wield the Talismanic influence in England was one whose name will in an instant be recognized by all the votaries and high priests of Mammon, whether Jew or Christian.
first
The
of
my
whom
I
I
allude to
Solomon Salvador.
in a brief
man
space the marvel of all who knew him. The wildest he could undertake was sure to prosper and the magnates of speculation the nation sought his advice when troubled with the common and very
made him
it
was
brilliant.
merely that he should call and mortar after his name, fill it with luxuries from every quarter of the globe, and then spread the banquet and illuminate the saloon to welcome
for the bidding,
The fool did he suppose was placed within his reach a mountainous mass of brick
!
the high-born fool and the high-born harlot, and make glad their hearts with wine and music, while the towers of Jerusalem lay in ruin, and the
remnant of our people sat cowering beneath the insolent trampling of the the men of blood? Fool, thrice foolish! I deprived him of the talismanic.. snow melts power, and his wealth melted away from him fast as the beneath the ardent beams of the sun. His familiar friends saw that he
'
waxed
poor,
and
in the short-sighted
wisdom
to
his downfall to
imprudent speculation,
extravagant
the
true
cause
and he
died
poor,
Possessed of the words of power which the genii must obey, and using those words of power for the great end to which I am ordained, I can convert any thing into a talisman omnipotent in the accumulation of wealth for
its
possessor.
The merest
trinket, the
commonest
ornament, under the influence of these resistless words, becomes hands of its possessor, a weapon mighty as the sceptre of Nisroch.
had withdrawn the talisman from Salvador, I cast about among the young men of Israel, seeking one upon whom
After
I
my
I
eyes
might
confer the
power which
my
unworthy and so holy a trust was no light task. Ability, indeed, I found in abundance among my people but one was prone to the use of great wine, another looked all too fondly on the blue eyes and fair tresses of the
!
to be possessed of.
degenerate protege had proved himself Alas to find one in all respects worthy of
so high
daughters of the Gentiles, even of the men whom we call the English one wasted his time in the light and profane buffooneries of the theatre while
;
;
and
all these things, though clever, industrious, even to parsimony, was wedded to his own base interests, and frugal,
incapable of casting a thought upon the degradation of his ancient race, or upon the ruin of the city of the temple of God even Jerusalem.
It
chanced that as
on a day took
my
all
the
money marts of the world, the Exchange of London, attracted by the saddened yet intelligent aspect of one
glance to
their
my whom
in the
attention
I
was
at a
all
knew
fallen people,
who
midst of
degradations cannot lose that peculiar physiognomy which distinguishes them from all other races, and in the very perpetuation of which the Nazarenes, had not God hardened their hearts and deadened their
understandings, would see a proof, among many, that the Jewish nation is not wholly cast off, but will, in the good and appointed time, be gathered together from all parts, and reinstated in the sovereignty of Palestine.
Drawing nigh to the person of whom I had thus taken notice, I overheard some few words he interchanged with an acquaintance and those few words led me to believe that I had at length found the very man I wanted, for he spoke Hebrew with the purity and energy of a high priest of the time when the temple was in its pride of place, and ministered in by the very flower of our people. Moreover, though his had but so
;
aspect
been saddened and downcast, his eyes now glowed, his mien was erect, his gestures were -energetic, and above all, in deciding my opinion n
lately
his favour,
bitterly,
and vowed
!
to
What had
avenge his wrong upon them hereafter. What was that wrong ? Faugh He hated the / to do with the individual wrongs of any one ?
;
and burned to injure them that was him until, the Exchange closing watched vigilantly
Christians,
to a neighbouring tavern to dine.
all
cared for
and
he retired
What a guttling and guzzling set of swine your mere worldlings are A tavern in the good City of London is neither more nor less than a com!
pendious system of damnation where gluttony and strong wines make sinners of all sorts and size on the six days of the week their temples, which they call churches, being hermetically sealed to the Nazarenes on every day save the seventh. Gluttony, strong drink, and the sinful thoughts
;
inspire, have the six days prayer and Ah one this is it is a whom only repentance surely people especially lawful and praiseworthy to lay under contribution, that the temple may be
rebuilt,
faith
may
and purify
Much as I abhor the devouring and the wassail, which make men to resemble the unclean swine rather than the chief creation and most wonderful masterpiece of
God,
until
I I
of ecstatic and
whom I had fixed my attention. What passed needs not now to particularize suffice it to say, that on the very next day he netted a hundred thousand pounds, two Christian speculators slew themselves in despair, and ten times that number of the smaller
between us
it
;
sincere resolution to
return to
it
no more.
For a time
came
for
protege was all that I could desire but with wealth luxury, and with luxury come an indifference to the grand object
;
my new
which
who
traffic
had raised him up from comparative penury and made him but worshipped by the great herd of those in gain for the sake and for the love of things worldly and
;
perishable.
It
was
in vain that
restoration
Pomp and luxury, flattery and ease, had done their work, and he people. too was destined to experience that what the Lord giveth, that also the
Lord can take away.
blind Gentiles
;
it
was
looking with dull dead eyes upon the great wrongs and
20
great afflictions of the multitude, and frittering away time, and feeling, and hard gold, upon the petty relief of the petty miseries of individuals.
Charitable
this
man and
wrong fraught
earth,
were
to
hands and eyes in ignorant wonder and mere instrument I raised him the great Goldsmid was my very because I deemed him worthy. I found him incompetent to the vast and
Aye,
let
their
sacred duty
designed him
for,
and
longer require a drinking cup. among the elder frequenters of the great temple of mammon, which is called the Exchange, does not remember the golden box with which the hand of
aside the gourd
when we no
Who
in his busiest
power had been pronounced above it with it he could encounter a world and be triumphant without he was as the stripling David, without God, would have been to the giant champion of Philistia. I had warned him again and again I had menanced, I had entreated, but I found him incorrigible in his neglect of the cause of our people in vain and our God and even while he was wassailing at his luxurious villa in the neighbourhood of Morden, the words of power went forth from my lips, and his talisman had departed from him for ever. Large rewards were vainly offered for what all but himself supposed to be a mere toy, a mere He thing of effeminate luxury but those rewards were offered in vain.
The words
of
appeared upon the Exchange without his palladium bargained lost saw absolute ruin looking at him with steadfast and unpitying eyes.
;
and
Ten
days he bore
this,
None can
be
false to
progress of that most marvellous of modern characters Napoleon Buonaparte soon diverted my thoughts from the vexations caused by the
The
and consequent ruin of my deceased protege ; and hastily leaving England, I arrived at Frankfort just as that city was invested and occupied by the French troops.
folly
up -to
have seen so many towns taken by storm, and, when taken, delivered all that the utmost license and cruelty of the most licentious and cruel could that the fate of Frankfort seemed by comparison, to be inflict, troops a mild -one. And yet even there I saw enough to make the blood of an
I
ordinary
man
21
With all the politeness of the French as individuals, large bodies of them are usually among the most ferocious of all assemblages. They seem to resemble those chemical substances which, though separately quite harmcannot be brought into contact without producing disaster and destruction to every one and every thing in their vicinity. In their revolution I have seen individuals in one hour comporting themselves
less,
towards the helpless with all the courage of antique chivalry, and with all the touching delicacy and tenderness of modern politeness and I have seen those self-same individuals in the next hour hideous with blood, and
;
roaring with stentorian lungs for more victims. Separately good, they no sooner became part of a multitude than the mania of fierceness fell upon
their souls,
What
is
true of the
French people
is
no
French
soldiery,
who certainly have never shown en masse any of that forbearance which few indeed among them would fail to show as individuals. And if at Frankfort
have
murder, and the other disgusting violence which the conquered sometimes to endure from the homicidal hirelings, who make a glory and an
honour of their most feculent and debased trade in blood if these were not among the sins to be charged upon the soldiery of France, they amply
;
any inconvenience they experienced from balking their lust and It is impossible to conceive anything more complete love of bloodshed.
for
made up
Every thing that was portable was carried off; every marauding soldier had his two or three watches diamonds glittered on the dirty fingers, or still dirtier linen
;
of
by a thousand tender reminiscences, was melted openly in the streets, and transferred in unThe skill of man was sightly lumps to the knapsacks of its new owners. in vain employed to conceal the spoil, the tears and supplications of
those
ruffians
;
family
plate,
consecrated
women were
their
in
vain employed to
move
marauding.
of Frankfort were a conquered people, the brave
;
The people
soldiers
French
were conquerors
and though
it
glory,
no doubt,
is
in
For your heroes have prodigious appetites and the vast consumption of food of every description by the French troops, the terror which kept the country people from bringing their produce into
the city, and the Messed propensity of all dealers and shopmen, in all times and countries, to raise their prices in the exact ratio of the wretched-
ness and
In saying this, every six families in Frankfort to absolute want. those ranks of people to whom, previously, want had been utterly
speak of
unknown,
save as a thing which (as their individual disposition ch'anced to be) they
pitied
Want
and insulted in the persons of their inferiors. thus to introduced homes, where previously it had been unseen being and unfelt, it needs no elaborate argument to show that where want had and
relieved, or despised
its
appearance.
at the
was
at a standstill
and
very
moment when
the
poor were thus cut off from earning the poor pittance to which they had been accustomed, every article of food was tripled, and many articles
quadrupled
in price.
Fearful, oh
very
fearful,
marauding Gauls
Frankfort.
do
miseries in
can
unhappy wretches, and relieved their now look back upon with anything
my
temporary compassion.
of the
I
But if I, on some few occasions, tarried by the wayside to relieve some more extreme cases of privation and suffering, among the Nazarenes,
neither forgetful of
was
my
great work.
It
is
well
known
Frankfort has long been the my race and there are few
;
which the blessing has more manifestly been bestowed European their industry and talents. Among the wealthiest of the inhabitants upon of Frankfort, were certain Jews; I need not add that they were also among the first who were laid under contribution by the unprincipled and
Finding vast stores of wealth in the possession of positively, though somewhat illogically, concluded that to be very wealthy was an inseparable consequence of being a Jew, and the whole of our people, even down to those who obtained their daily bread by the lowest toils, and the utmost possible difficulty, were harassed
avaricious invaders.
by domiciliary visits questioned by the officers insulted, and sometimes even beaten by the men and, finally, enjoined severally to provide the jnost preposterous sums of money by a certain given day.
;
Avoiding, as
for-
passed from house to house, leaving no very large sum of money at any one house at any one time but taking especial care that however the followers of the Nazarene, because born in different countries, and speaking diffe;
rent tongues, might inflict upon each other the awful agonies attendant upon absolute want of food, no Israelite should lack wherewith to feed
little
man
and the maid servant, and the stranger that was within his gates.
mattered
that the thaler should be reduced to a tenth part of the abundance of money suddenly brought into circulation by
it
What
its
value by
the French marauders, and that the price of every article of food should be
Even then should my people be exempt from absomultiplied by twenty ? for could I not command gold ? lute famine, Yea, should the city at
Had length become absolutely destitute of food, had I not the talisman ? I ? Could not the whole evil I not the ineffable words race, from the buy
false
among
them
the evil genii ? Could I not task lo would not plenty make the
!
So I went from house to house and while I gave present aid, I spoke words of comfort and encouragement as to the future and thus from day to But to day I visited the houses of the Jews that were in Frankfort. to afford them the desire aid not contrariwas motive temporal merely my
; ;
wise, while alleviating the temporal sufferings of my people, I was, day by day, scanning the young men with an intelligent and vigilant eye for
;
where,
if
not
among
Frankfort, might I All exceedingly desirous of working their degradation and destruction ? men are in some sort the creatures and the victims of their own bad
passions, even patriotism itself yea, even religious zeal, to the very verge of ferocious bigotry, can be called into a fiery and active existence by per;
the shamefully plundered and trampled Hebrews of hope to find a zealous hater of the Nazarenes, a man
sonal wrong, and the personal hate which that infallibly engenders.
An Englishman may
stained records of the bloody and relentless Inquisition of old Spain but faint, indeed, are his horror and detestation compared to those that tear
madden
the brain of
It
only the wrong which man himself unimaginable he can that endures thoroughly appreciate and here, even while want and at sorrow were work, and famine itself but barely kept at arm's length
tortures.
;
here
might most hopefully seek for a champion to avenge the I sought carefully, and I did not seek in vain a, case
;
soon came to
requisite for
my knowledge my purpose.
.,,
24
which my gold and my a and very glad welcome, there was sympathy gave me a ready admission one to which I was especially attached, both for its own sake and for the
Among
the
number
of Israelitish families to
sake of associations of eighteen centuries duration. I speak of the family If ever modern countenance bore the stamp and of Solomon De Milheim.
impress of our patriarchs of the old time assuredly it was the countenance if ever the beauty of the manly youth of of the old man, De Milheim
;
Jerusalem,
rising age,
was represented by
his sons
and
in his
eyed and ebon-haired maidens of ancient Judah seemed once more to adorn and glorify the earth with their bright presence.
But
it
was not from such general resemblance that I became so peculiarly Alas no I was drawn thitherward by a most
! ;
the elder daughter of De Milheim I gazed melancholy the of upon very counterpart my adored and most lovely Leah, of the wife of my young bosom, whose pure spirit fled the sinful and stag-eyed on the hard world very day on which he, the avenging one of Nazareth,
pleasure; for in
doomed me
It
to long ages of
agony and of
travail.
of a
of my visits to the family of De Milheim that I heard for upholding and forwarding of my sacred and instrument worthy I forthwith and cause departed in quest of him, and speedily reached high his abode.
Without, it was dingy, and uninviting as the abodes of even the wealthiest of our persecuted, and therefore politic, people are wont to be
;
and when
crossed the
now
unprotected threshold,
it
all
Unquestioned and unseen I passed through the various apartments, a sudden, just as I had reached the little sanctum of the now tenant of the once crowded house, I heard the clash of arms in the solitary hall beneath and I had but just time to pronounce the words of
when on
great
power, which render me invisible to mortal ken, when a French officer passed within a foot of the spot upon which I stood, and threw open the door of the little study with the insolent violence of irresponsible and
unprincipled power.
viplently as he
glided
in,
desolated house.
Seated at an antique writing table was the unhappy master of this His eyes were red as with much weeping, and his cheeks were pale and haggard, as with much sorrow and long vigils.
25
Nazarene man of blood and tyranny and simply utterly stupefied him. His limbs were stiffened, and his eyes fixed and leaden and thus he sat, until aroused to consciousness by the martial and haughty tones of the stranger, commanding him to give gold. This demand effectually recalled the
of the
did not
alarm him
it
unhappy man.
Isaac,
God
up
of
Abraham,
and Jacob
"
!
he exclaimed,
as, kneeling,
!
he
his trembling hands to the east, how long, O God how long ? they not desolated thy servant's hearth, carried away his young men Have they not stricken captive, and spoiled him even to the last thaler ?
"
Have
stripes,
Lord, how
and cursed him with many curses ? How long, and thy people be a jest
and
blind, but without the
strength to draw down upon these new Philistines the roofs of their palaces, " and crush them in the hour of their tyranny and their scorn ?
said the
"Jew!"
adjurations,
fabric
shook as he
Jew
am
;
want
gold,
will
have gold
or,
not here to listen to your lying look you, not content with
;
I'll
"
Now,
as
my soul
to the
my
from
my
"what be these? Sacre why they're " and so saying, he laid French a and weigh pound to a sous violent hand upon the teraphim, even the images which the heathen of the
cried the Nazarene,
!
"Bah!"
fine gold
old day would have termed Lares. In the extremity of his grief, and in the delusive hope that the Nazarene plunderers had paid him their last visit, the unhappy young man of Israel had drawn the teraphim from their
secure hiding place, and, lo the hand of the spoiler was upon them, and the soul of the young man was bowed down, stricken to the very, earth
!
with this consummation of the calamity of his house. It was in vain that the pitiless plunderer blasphemed, and all in vain that he threatened many
and even death for the young man spoke truly in that he was indeed despoiled of all that remained to him on earth, save the and verily clothes he wore and the dismantled house which he inhabited.
tortures,
;
Wearied
desultory
life
violence,
and perhaps,
for
of
I,
26
between truth and falsehood, convinced by the excess of the young man's indeed the words of truth, the agony, that the words which he spake were Nazarene cursing with many and deep curses, yet looking with no unwhich he bore away, departed, and pleased eyes upon the golden teraphim
the young
man
sorrow he poured forth his unavailing lamentations and cursed the Nazarenes, and prayed in fervent tones that he might have power to crush them,
ineffable
name
despoiling their wealth, and trampling down, yea, utterly bruising, their black and unsparing, as unbelieving hearts.
That was a glad moment to me. I would suffer over again the most bitter misery of the most bitter of any of my many lives to enjoy but once Here was a in each day one such rapturous, such exulting moment.
servant
fit
master
here a champion
fit
and hopeless poverty aye, his own passions and his own circumstances would make him a faithful and very zealous foeman to the Nazarene of whatever nation. Here was, at
His wrongs,
his agony, his fervour, his utter
length, the
man, the long hoped, the long sought, who should build up the the temple of the Lord, and make Israel and Judah feared and obeyed in all the quarters of the earth.
As
his
spoiling
God of Abraham, and cursed the deand tyrannous followers of the Nazarene, I observed that he kept eyes constantly fixed upon the niche from which the man of blood had
the young
to the
man prayed
recently
visible,
drawn the teraphim. Placing myself, therefore, while immediately between him and that spot, I spake in my
lo
!
still
in-
soul the
stood visible before him, tall in stature as Saul when he was singled forth from the young men, but pallid as a corpse, and with hoary hair and beard contrasting with ghastly effect
I
on the instant
the supernatural glare of great black eyes that shot forth lurid fires which no mortal could look and not tremble.
upon
The sudden appearance of such a figure, clad in the flowing robes of the far East, and seeming to spring up from the bowels of the earth, might well appal even the most courageous, and the young man fell down before
" As me, and exclaimed,
;
my Lord
as my soul liveth, I have not a coin yea, even the bonds utterly undone of parchment which bound many Nazarenes in the power of thy servant, bqhold, they also are stolen gone for ever gone!"
And, as he thus spake, he wrung his hands, and the big drops of perI raised him from spiration burst forth from his agonized countenance.
27
the earth, and spake to him many comfortable words. He proposed to he spake in hopelessness fly from the wretched city, but I forbade him
;
and
commanded him
I
believe.
hope he spake in doubt and I compelled him to spake the words of power, and the talisman was once more
to
;
committed to a
It
man
of
my
persecuted race.
chanced that there lay on the table before him a ring holding the and having spoken the words of power, and adjured the demons by the ineffable name, I gave to that ring the influence and the ^might of the signet of the wise Solomon. Having done this, I
keys of his rifled drawers
;
commanded
ment
I
;
the young man to name some wish for instant accomplishand ere he had thrice, according to my instructions, whirled round the ring upon his forefinger, steps were heard as of one heavily laden, and
had scarcely become again invisible, when a man carefully disguised, and bearing a large and very heavy bag, laboured slowly and painfully
into the room.
new comer, as he threw down, with a " the gold, bag he had so sorely travailed under, I would scarcely play porter again to save my thalers Time presses, the villains are on the search once more wherever they deem that they have left
.
"
Donner and
mighty crash as of
much
You,
know, are
I
I
they are
commit
the cash
leagues, save so
much
sheer disappointment."
as will prevent the fellows from cutting my throat in And having thus spoken, while wiping the big
drops from his forehead, he waved his hand and took his departure. The young man opened the bag, counted the several packets it contained and found
the
the very
power of
his talisman.
Men of the accursed and plundering race Ye, whose estates were within a brief space to have been within his grasp ye whose equipages and whose liveried lacquies I so lately saw following to his premature grave
!
the
man
of Israel
whom
thus enabled to war upon ye in your most vulaccursed and detested Nazarenes the young Israelite,
I
who
you of the mighty power, experienced whom ye a that man even as to make which god yourselves, gold you and knew that he hated while even fawned upon, him, despised you you
for years despoiled
he who
that
man was
the
Thus
who had
gone before him, his riches astonished the gentiles, and very justly they said, such amazing wealth could not be amassed by one man, in so short a time by any human agency, they were right, it was the agency of the
talisman, directed for a high and holy purpose,
to
infidel,
and to
Zion,
Carefully concealing the treasure thus entrusted to him, by burying it beneath a tree in his little garden, while the murderous and plundering French vexed the city with their presence, and using it subsequently for a brief space, with the certain and rapid success ensured to him by the talis-
man, the young man Rothschild waxed wealthy; and when he had restored the treasure to the prince who had reposed trust in him, he came by my
and speculating fools, and became the leviathan of the money markets of Europe. Thus Nathan became the loan contractor, the jobber, the money lender to the gentile
direction, to this paradise of loan-contracting
kings.
Leaving him to amass wealth, and devoutly praying that he might prove more worthy of the talisman than those who had before held it, I once again made my way to France, for there, too, I had most important work to do in forwarding the great cause.
Superior in other respects to
all
the
men
Emperor
Napoleon, so often favoured with what verily seemed to be a fated and inevitable good fortune, was much prone to belief in auguries and tokens, in predictions, and in the whole paraphernalia of the imperfect notions of
fatality
formed by the Nazarenes of an elder day, and still universally held by the bloody and brutal brood of Mahomet, whose name be anathema!
held up to the admiration of the French people the phantom of military glory he played upon their imaginations by the splendours of his
;
He
he displayed the fire of genius and the cool and with him seems to repose the collected judgment of a statesman secret of governing the restless Gauls.
intellectual
despotism
Availing myself of this, I caused it to be made known, as if by accident that in the Bois de Boulogne, a man of red skin and horribly huge
;
bulk and
dressed in the garb of the wandering children of the Arabian deserts, was at times met with by benighted travellers on that
tall stature,
road
and that
all
to
in narrating
that they
pass.'
aH 'whom he met he spake strange words of truth, both had experienced, and predicting that which was
(
about. to
come to
The
curiosity of the
Emperor was
privately and by night, he repaired to the part of the wood which had been indicated to him, armed, indeed to the teeth, for he was sagacious as the hill
fox,
lion.
crafty, bold, a lover to intensity of his own nation, a still more intense all this was well lover of his own power and his own fame; but so far
;
from deeming the despised and long suffering Jews worthy to build their holy temple and re-establish their antique kingdom, that he, the Nazarene
by birth, the infidel by election and in belief, he, HE panted to possess I discerned that and he was doomed. From and to colonise our Palestine that hour he was as virtually lost as was Belshazzar, the King of Chaldea,
!
!
when
the mystic writing gleamed forth, from the walls of wassail and of revelry.
the house of
poured forth into his astonished ear the most secret thoughts of his
life
;
I ministered to his pride, his ambition, his own impious conpast I became his fidence in his own power, and trust in his own fortune.
nightly visitant and his nightly counsellor. The result of my counsels was the march of four hundred thousand of the very flower of the French to
attack the Scythian barbarians. Borodino was won ; Moscow taken by the Gaul and burned by the patriotism or passion of Rostopschin the retreat
;
commenced, and God is great fatigue, famine, and winter, the winter of the North did all the rest of the business. Napoleon had accomplished Rothschild was right speedily to make that ruin utter and his destiny.
!
inevitable
not to be repaired.
mad, and
thrice
madly-timed
expedition to Russia, it was by no means expected, or even deemed possible by his supporters, i.e., by nine of every ten of the adult men of France.
His marvellous escape amid the hellish fire at the bridge of Lodi his still more marvellous escape from Egypt, when he sailed through a fog which seemed as if made on purpose to hide him from his fierce and eager foemen of England these and a thousand other seemingly fated occurrences of good fortune, and, to set aside all the REAL benefits which he conferred upon France, a tithe of which might have upheld the throne of even that
; ;
honest bigot, Charles X. his bombastic but felicitous eloquence, and the consummate tact with which he contrived to confirm the French in the
notion which they were only too ready to indulge jthat every Fren9hrnan was a partner in the glory of Napoleon made that most"adroit as well, as
i
:
profound
man
The
and
politic
in
the validity and sanctity of that impostor's pretensions than did the mass of the French people in the certainty, the FATED inevitability, of Napoleon's
ultimate success.
Moscow
him
of their affections
the Emperor to the nay, even the treaty of Fontainebleau, which consigned and the restored of and island gourmand Bourbon to Elba, incapable petty the throne of France, could not abate one jot of heart or hope in the true
" He'll return with the violet," was the phrase Buonapartists of France. and the phrase gave vigour to old men, and increased hope and anticipative exultation to the young men.
;
by
He came, and the throne of France bid fair to be his until his death whom was his hope blasted? By the talents of Blucher and Wel?
lington
the boasted discipline of the Prussians ? By the sheer, bull-dogism of the soldiery of England ? By the treachery of Grouchy (to whom the Aid-de-Camp never delivered the Emperor's order ?) By the genius of the allied generals ? By the strength
By
Not to any one or the other of these did the first warrior and statesman of modern times owe his ruin but simply Nathan Meyer Rothschild armed with the talisman
?
:
!
was driven almost to distraction for money; the London refused to aid him with a shilling. They were first houses doubtful of the success of the allied powers and the very doubt was within
British minister
in
;
The
little
of being, like
many
its
own
completion,
and
Without money from England, not a small justification. of which the fought upon the blood-stained plains of troops portion to reach that scene of strife and unable would have been Waterloo carnage,
its
own
sanguinary business of the three days. This would have been something in favour of the Emperor. But even this was the smallest part of what England's want of money would have achieved
in favour of "
Le
THE GENERALS AND THE SENATORS OF FRANCE WOULD HAVE GONE UNBRIBED
THEY WERE
honour of the frequently shallow and flash, but always honest, Benjamin Constant, I must admit that he, and he alone, of all the Chamber of Deputies, refused and scorned the proffered Where did the gold) and Napoleon fell a victim to their cupidity.
bribed,
(to the
;
English
of bribing the constituted authorities of France, and of thus destroying a man, who, but for that bribery, would, to all human seeming, have beaten the armed hosts of his crowned foemen ?
means
both and would provide the millions of golden pounds, required for the instant purposes of the English
COULD
minister.
ROTHSCHILD. By my
;
he had
Alas
!
my
instructions at the
same time
to
do
As
if
that he should suppose that a half the wanderer of Jerusalem could know
but the full and zealous anything could satisfy of the in the re-establishment of Judah's kingdom performance Jew's part the rebuilding of thy Towers, oh, Jerusalem
;
any medium
as
if
ME
!
of bad jokes, history, will, no doubt, say that the lent the Nazarene Rothschild elder called Lord jew Liverpool, the sum necessary to crush Napoleon Buonaparte, in consideration of some such
interest.
it
The
as
the readers of
will,
is
egregiously and very deservedly deceived. Rothschild was commanded to lend the money on terms very different indeed from exorbitant interest. Nazarenes those terms were said in a few words The restoration of
!
!,
the guarantee of England for the independence Ruin stared the English minister in the face of the kingdom of Judea. if he refused but he hesitated Rothschild knew that the minister had
Judea
already been refused by Barings, Reid and Irving, and all the other chief an expressive sneer advised him to try them. capitalists, and, therefore, with The sneer struck home and the minister went to the council. In twelve
hours the millions were in the possession of the minister, and a secret
agreement, guaranteed by the sign manual of royalty, was in the possession of Rothschild, for the restoration of Judea in twenty-one years from the day on which Napoleon should be finally driven .from France. This very
year my task should have been completed would have been completed but he, Rothschild, who for six-and-twenty years had proved himself even as one of the elders in Israel for wisdom and faithfulness, he, HE, at the
; ;
twelfth hour, proved false, deferred my hope yet once more, and compelled me, all reluctant as I was, to consign him to inevitable ruin of fortune, or
to instant exile
au pied de
la lettre, his
reproved his
and speedy death. Though he originally obeyed my behest long round of success (unchecked save once when I presumption with the loss of a hundred thousand pounds in a and then restored
his lost talisman
it),
and
his
having the power of, at any instant, recalling the talisman, made him more and more purse proud more and more utterly and incurably devoted to the art of deluding the Nazarenes, not as a means
profound ignorance of
to a high
my
that
lips
it
and hallowed end, but as a source of fortune and power to himself, was rather with grief than surprise that I recently heard from his own that he had basely sold the agreement for the restoration of Judea
promise of a petty English Emancipation
Bill for
for the
a petty English peerage for himself. This delectable job, this high-minded be to in the ensuing years by which time the bargain, was completed
^"5, 000,000
of
money.
I
his talisman disappeared, and already worth above four took care he should know that it had disappeared for ever.
;
He was
never ventured upon the Exchange again, or the scribe his will should have been saved much trouble and time.
He
who wrote
Did I give him the talisman, to enable him like Sampson Gideon to intrude his family and found a Peerage among the Normans ? or to stifle his conscience with the weight of riches ? or to flatter it with ostentatious charities
?
No
Israelite
!
'
He returned
to
my
He
For
been
have
not
to
in
nightdream
seen
Elias
and
have
not
make a new talisman and to bear it to one shown to me and named to me by Elias ? and has not this instrument, thus immediately appointed by heaven already made essay of the power of
commanded
the talisman, and should not the vast fortune of Rothschild have swelled the already numerous triumphs of Israel's new and heaven appointed
champion
Yea, verily.
longer uncertain even as the stars in their course fought against Sisera, even so henceforth, even until the restoration of Palestine, shall the course of seemingly human events
!
Accursed Nazarenes
The
issue
is
now no
all Nazarene nations, and greatly strengthen and In the luxurious and inviting east, in the barbarous aggrandize my people. and revolting north among the degenerate dwellers in Italy among the
fight against
and weaken
and Portugal in every land and among every shall be unconsciously but potently forwarded the people the Jewish cause cause of the Nazarene as unconsciously but as potently beaten backward.
; ;
Selah, Selah,
let it
be
Jehovah
THOU
FINIS.
hast said
it
SHALL
be.
A Iready
i!'
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