No More Learning

[_Enter the_ TEMPLAR.

TEMPLAR: Saladin,
Thy captive, sire, who's life is at thy service!

SALADIN: Ah, brave young man, I'm not deceived in thee.
Thou art indeed, in soul and body, Assad!
Came Nathan with thee?

TEMPLAR: Who?

SALADIN: Who? Nathan

TEMPLAR (_coldly_): No.

SALADIN: Why so cold?

TEMPLAR: I've nothing against Nathan,
But I am angry with myself alone
For dreaming that a Jew could be no Jew.
He was so cautious of my suit that I,
In swift resentment, though unwitting, gave
Him over to the Patriarch's bloody rage.
Sultan, the maiden is no child of his;
She is a Christian whom the Jew hath reared
In ignorance of her faith. The Patriarch
Foredooms him to the stake.

SALADIN: Go to, go to.
The case is scarcely hopeless.
Summon Nathan,
And I shall reconcile you. If indeed
You're earnest for the maid, she shall be thine.


SCENE III. --_The hall in_ NATHAN'S _house_. NATHAN _and the friar,_
BONAFIDES.

BONAFIDES: The Patriarch hath ever work for me,
And some I like not. Listen. He hath heard
That hereabouts there dwells a certain Jew
Who hath brought up a Christian as his child.

NATHAN: How?

BONAFIDES: Hear me out. I fear me that I gave
Occasion for this sin, when I, a squire,
Brought you, full eighteen years ago, the babe,
The orphan babe of Leonard, Lord of Filnek.
He fell at Askalon.

NATHAN: Ay so; and I,
Bereft by Christians of my wife and sons,
Received the infant as a gift from Heaven,
And made it mine. And now, belike, I suffer
For this my charity. But tell me now,
Was not the mother sister to a Templar,
Conrade of Stauffen?

BONAFIDES: Let me fetch a book,
In Arabic, I had from my dead lord.