“And if I am a tyrant,” he said in a thick voice, “who made me so?  If I oppress the poor, who taught me the way to do it?  Whose clever brain devised new means of revenue?  Ransoms, promissory notes, bonds, false judgments—­what did I know of such things?  Who changed the silver dollars at nine ducats apiece?  And who bought up the debts of the people that murmured against such robbery?  Allah!  Allah!  Whose crafty head did all this?  Why, yours—­yours—­Israel ben Oliel!  By the beard of the Prophet, I swear it!”

Israel stood unmoved, and when these reproaches were hurled at him, he answered calmly and sadly, “God’s ways are not our ways, neither are His thoughts our thoughts.  He works His own will, and we are but His ministers.  I thought God’s justice had failed, but it has overtaken myself.  For what I did long ago of my own free will and intention to oppress the poor, I have suffered and still am suffering.”

All this time the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo had sat in the alcove with lips whitening under their crimson patches of paint, beating her fan restlessly on the empty air, and breathing rapid and audible breath.  And now, at this last word of Israel, though so sadly spoken, and so solemn in its note of suffering, she broke into a trill of laughter, and said lightly, “Ah!  I thought your love of the poor was young.  Not yet cut its teeth, poor thing!  A babe in swaddling clothes, eh?  When was it born?”

“About the time that you were, madam,” said Israel, lifting his heavy eyes upon her.

At that her lighter mood gave place to quick anger.  “Husband,” she cried, turning upon Ben Aboo with the bitterness of reproach, “I hope you now see that I was right about this insolent old man.  I told you from the first what would come of him.  But no, you would have your own foolish way.  It was easy to see that the devil’s dues were in him.  Yet you would not believe me!  You would believe him.  Simpleton as you are, you are believing him now!  The poor?  Fiddle-faddle and fiddlesticks!  I tell you again this man is trying to put his foot on your neck.  How?  Oh, trust him, he’s got his own schemes!  Look to it, El Arby, look to it!  He’ll be master in Tetuan yet!”

Saying this, she had wrought herself up to a pitch of wrath, sometimes laughing wildly, and then speaking in a voice that was like an angry cry.  And now, rising to her feet and facing towards the Arab soldiers, who stood aside in silence and wonder, she cried, “Arabs, Berbers, Moors, Christians, fight as you will, follow the Basha as you may, you’ll lie in the same bed yet!  But where?  Under the heels of the Jew!”

A hoarse murmur ran from lip to lip among the men, and the ghostly smile came back into the face of Ben Aboo.