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ESTHER.
When the Sabbath has already begun?
SACHEL.
Well, what do we have this Christian for? Rosa!
_Enter ROSA._
ESTHER.
Rosa, open this letter and read it.
ROSA.
[_Reading._] "I shall be at your house to-night, on a matter of business.--AARON HEINE." [_Exit ROSA._
SACHEL.
Business? What business can he have with me?
ESTHER.
His daughter, I think. There was something in the way he spoke that made me feel it!
SACHEL.
To marry his Rebecca to my son. H'm! I'll make him speak first. I'll worry him! I'll make him sweat.
ESTHER.
Rosa! Put up the shutters.
SACHEL.
I will not trust her to put up the shutters.
ESTHER.
You never had a better servant in your house.
SACHEL.
[_Fetches shutters and awkwardly adjusts them._] She is a Christian.
It is bad luck--it was wrong for us to take her in.
ESTHER.
You were glad enough to have her. Would a Jewess light your fire on Sabbath--would a Jewess open your letters for you? Shall I send her away?
SACHEL.
Not yet.
ESTHER.
No. Because on Sabbath your feet would be cold and your letters would lie unopened, even if you were not blind. I pity the girl; I have heard that her father was a gentleman and died poor and in exile, because he had given succour to the persecuted Jews.
_Enter ROSA._
SACHEL.
Who can prove it? It is a good story to work upon our sympathies. They cannot deceive me. I will have no sympathies.
ESTHER.
[_To ROSA._] Isn't it warm.
[_They look off over the river._
ROSA.
But aren't those clouds beautiful? They are bringing a blessed rain; but they lower as if they brought a pestilence.
ESTHER.
You call them beautiful? You know very well that we are speculating in produce: if the drought keeps on the rich will have to pay dear for their vegetables, and the poor won't have any; it will profit us handsomely! And you only think of your own pleasure!
ROSA.
It was only the beauty, the majesty of the clouds; they are ma.s.sed together like enemies ready to destroy us. But the poor; ah, I can see the hand of G.o.d in those clouds!
ESTHER.
Which G.o.d, Rosa?
ROSA.
The G.o.d of all peoples, of all faiths--the G.o.d who knows no ceremony but the way of living, and no creed but what He plants in the hearts of every one.
ESTHER.
You are a strange sort of Christian! You talk like Rafael! [_Exit ROSA, as if to avoid the subject._] I wonder if she ever talks with Rafael! Sachel, I see Aaron!
SACHEL.
I'll make him speak first.
_Enter AARON._
