“Lost and condemned for ever and ever—­let the earth lie heavy on her head!” exclaimed the furious priest, stamping his foot with rage, and motioning to the familiars, who instantly commenced to shovel the earth into the grave.  Not a sound was heard but the soft rustling of the leaves overhead, for this scene took place in the open ground above the Sablon, formerly mentioned as the scene of some earlier executions; and Beatrice’s grave was dug at the very foot of the tree, where the Jews, in 1370, had expiated their imputed sacrilege.

Not a murmur, not a movement betrayed an instant’s shrinking from her fate, as the cold heap of clay covered Beatrice to the very neck.  Her face was still above ground, and the infuriated bigot, whose word was to save her or stifle her voice for ever, once more approached.  He knelt beside her thrust his crucifix close to her still straining eyes, and in accents that faltered from rage, he cried out—­

“Dost thou still dare refuse?  Death is on thy lips—­hell gapes for thee!—­Wretched woman, say but one word—­kiss the blessed relic, and thou art saved.”

“There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet!” said Beatrice, in hollow and broken accents.

“It is done!  Cover her quick!  Let her perish in eternal fire!” cried the inquisitor.

The executioners heaped the earth still higher—­the head was covered in—­and only then a smothered scream burst upwards, while the struggles of natural agony shook the mound to and fro.—­Still the legal and consecrated murderers went on, with trembling hands and quaking hearts; but as they hastily closed their work, a deep and heavy groan came upon the air from a not distant part of the waste ground; and the group looking round in guilty terror, saw a man close wrapped in a cloak, but struggling with another, of aged and decrepit stature, as if he would break from his hold, and rush upon their unholy labours.  A weapon gleamed in his hand; and the whole group of guilt, inquisitor, familiars and guards, struck with panic, and imagining rescue and revenge from a hundred indignant arms, hastily fled from the scene with loud cries for help.

In a moment the grave was torn open, and Beatrice, still panting in the struggle between life and death, snatched from its re-opened jaws, and about to be borne off in the close-locked arms of her brother, when the insatiate inquisitor, his ardent vengeance overcoming his fears, turned from his flight to give one assuring glance upon his victim’s grave.  By the light of the lantern which streamed on the ground, he saw that, instead of the indignant crowd his apprehensions had imagined, only two men were on the spot, one of them old and diminutive, and the other encumbered with the exhumed body.  In the glow of fanatic fury, he forgot all personal fears, and while his dastard creatures held on their terrified course, he sprang back alone to the burial-ground, and seizing the old man with one hand, he stretched forth the other to grasp from the Moriscoe’s hold his still insensible burthen.