Without hesitating, he ventured on the flags, keeping close under the loopholes, trying to make himself part of the blackness of the long walls.  He advanced slowly, dragging himself along on his breast, forcing back the cry of pain when some raw wound sent a keen pang through his whole body.

Suddenly the sound of a sandaled foot approaching reached his ears.  He trembled violently, fear stifled him, his sight grew dim.  Well, it was over, no doubt.  He pressed himself into a niche and, half lifeless with terror, waited.

It was a familiar hurrying along.  He passed swiftly by, holding in his clenched hand an instrument of torture—­a frightful figure—­and vanished.  The suspense which the rabbi had endured seemed to have suspended the functions of life, and he lay nearly an hour unable to move.  Fearing an increase of tortures if he were captured, he thought of returning to his dungeon.  But the old hope whispered in his soul that divine perhaps, which comforts us in our sorest trials.  A miracle had happened.  He could doubt no longer.  He began to crawl toward the chance of escape.  Exhausted by suffering and hunger, trembling with pain, he pressed onward.  The sepulchral corridor seemed to lengthen mysteriously, while he, still advancing, gazed into the gloom where there must be some avenue of escape.

Oh! oh!  He again heard footsteps, but this time they were slower, more heavy.  The white and black forms of two inquisitors appeared, emerging from the obscurity beyond.  They were conversing in low tones, and seemed to be discussing some important subject, for they were gesticulating vehemently.

At this spectacle Rabbi Aser Abarbanel closed his eyes:  his heart beat so violently that it almost suffocated him; his rags were damp with the cold sweat of agony; he lay motionless by the wall, his mouth wide open, under the rays of a lamp, praying to the God of David.

Just opposite to him the two inquisitors paused under the light of the lamp—­doubtless owing to some accident due to the course of their argument.  One, while listening to his companion, gazed at the rabbi!  And, beneath the look—­whose absence of expression the hapless man did not at first notice—­he fancied he again felt the burning pincers scorch his flesh, he was to be once more a living wound.  Fainting, breathless, with fluttering eyelids, he shivered at the touch of the monk’s floating robe.  But—­strange yet natural fact—­the inquisitor’s gaze was evidently that of a man deeply absorbed in his intended reply, engrossed by what he was hearing; his eyes were fixed—­and seemed to look at the Jew without seeing him.