afforded me concealment if I required it. There was no one in the room, and I had time to study its singular furniture at leisure.

“There was a table covered with cloth; on it were placed a vessel of a singular construction, a book, into whose pages I looked, but could not make out a single letter. I therefore wisely took it for a book of magic, and closed it with a feeling of exculpatory horror. (It happened to be a copy of the Hebrew Bible, marked with the Samaritan points). There was a knife too; and a cock was fastened to the leg of the table, whose loud crows announced his impatience of further constraint(1).

“I felt that this apparatus was somewhat singular—it looked like a preparation for a sacrifice. I shuddered, and wrapt myself in the volumes of the drapery which hung before the door my fall had broken open. A dim lamp, suspended from the ceiling, discovered to me all these objects, and enabled me to observe what followed almost immediately. A man of middle age, but whose physiognomy had something peculiar in it, even to the eye of a Spaniard, from the clustering darkness of his eye-brows, his prominent nose, and a certain lustre in the balls of his eyes, entered the room, knelt before the table, kissed the book that lay on it, and read from it some sentences that were to precede, as I imagined, some horrible sacrifice;—felt the edge of the knife, knelt again, uttered some words which I did not understand, (as they were in the language of that book), and then called aloud on some one by the name of Manasseh-ben-Solomon. No one answered. He sighed, passed his hand over his eyes with the air of a man who is asking pardon of himself for a short forgetfulness, and then pronounced the name of “Antonio.” A young man immediately entered, and answered, “Did you call me, Father?”—But while he spoke, he threw a hollow and wandering glance on the singular furniture of the room.

“I called you, my son, and why did you not answer me?”—“I did not hear you, father—I mean, I did not think it was on me you called. I heard only a name I was never called by before. When you said ‘Antonio,’ I obeyed you—I came.”—“But that is the name by which you must in future be called and be known, to me at least, unless you prefer another.—You shall have your choice.”—“My father, I shall adopt whatever name you choose.”—“No; the choice of your new name must be your own—you must, for the future, either adopt the name you have heard, or another.”—“What other, Sir?”—“That of parricide.” The youth shuddered with horror, less at the words than at the expression that accompanied them; and, after looking at his father for some time in a posture of 

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