In what am I his inferior?
Is ours a lower order of people?
Why should I, even in Caesar's presence; feel the shrinking of a slave?
Tell me especially why, if I have the soul, and so choose, I may not hunt the honors of the world in all its fields?
Why may not I take sword and indulge the passion of war?
As a poet, why may not I sing of all themes?
I can be a worker in metals, a keeper of flocks, a merchant, why not an artist like the Greek?
Tell me, O my mother--and this is the sum of my trouble--why may not a son of Israel do all a Roman may ?" The reader will refer these questions back to the conversation in the Market-place; the mother, listening with all her faculties awake, from something which would have been lost upon one less interested in him--from the connections of the subject, the pointing of the questions, possibly his accent and tone--was not less swift in making the same reference.

She sat up, and in a voice quick and sharp as his own, replied, "I see, I see! From association Messala, in boyhood, was almost a Jew; had he remained here, he might have become a proselyte, so much do we all borrow from the influences that ripen our lives; but the years in Rome have been too much for him.

I do not wonder at the change; yet"-- her voice fell--"he might have dealt tenderly at least with you.

It is a hard, cruel nature which in youth can forget its first loves." Her hand dropped lightly upon his forehead, and the fingers caught in his hair and lingered there lovingly, while her eyes sought the highest stars in view.

Her pride responded to his, not merely in echo, but in the unison of perfect sympathy.