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THE JEWISH DOMINICAN.
35

the night and save me from my enemies. Often, when he turned his head and looked at me with his fiery eyes, it seemed to say to me, 'Do I not suffer enough for my earlier life?'

"I feared even my own shadow that danced over rock and stone, and I drove the sharp spurs still harder into the ribs of my steed.

"You, who have grown up and lived in freedom, you cannot know what a confusion is life in such moments; the earth is no longer firm, the heavens disappear, and whatever has been heard of the fearful and supernatural awakes anew. Anything supernatural, if it appeared, would be regarded without astonishment, for everything has become supernatural, incomprehensible, our own life most of all. Wearied out, I arrived at my sister's in Cordova, and first imparted to her the terrible fear that hardly let me breathe freely.

"When I went to my horse next morning in his stall, he lay dead; his great eyes gazed at me as strangely as on the previous evening.

"With a fresh Andalusian horse of my brother-in-law's I set forward on my journey. I took leave of my sister, but durst not tell her that I saw her for the last time.

"When I arrived at home the old rest and tranquillity had disappeared from the house. In each friend who bade me heartily welcome, in each stranger whom I saw in the streets, I imagined a