No More Learning

NATHAN: Recha, O my Recha!

DAYA: Your Recha, _yours_? My conscience bids me speak----

NATHAN: See what a charming silk I bought for you
In Babylon, and these Damascus jewels.

DAYA: I shall be silent.

NATHAN: Say, does Recha know I am arrived?

DAYA: This morn of you she dreamed; Her thoughts have only been with
you and him Who saved her from the fire.

NATHAN: Ah, who is he?

DAYA: A young knight Templar lately captive ta'en,
But pardoned by the sultan. He it was
Who burst through flame and smoke; and she believes
Him but a transient inmate of the earth--
A guardian angel! Stay, your daughter comes!

[_Enter_ RECHA.

RECHA: My very father's self! Oh, how I feared
Perils of flood for thee, until the fire
Came nigh me. Now, I think it must be balm
To die by water! But you are not drowned:
I am not burned!
We'll praise the God Who bade
My angel _visibly_ on his white wing
Athwart the roaring flame----

NATHAN (_aside_): White wing? Oh, ay.
The broad white fluttering mantle of the Templar.

RECHA: Yes, visibly he bore me through the fire
O'ershadowed by his pinions--face to face
I've seen an angel, father, my own angel!

NATHAN: A man had seemed an angel in such case!

RECHA: He was no real knight; no captive Templar
Appears alive in wide Jerusalem.

DAYA: Yet Saladin granted this youth his life,
For his great likeness to a dear dead brother.

NATHAN: Why need you, then, call angels into play?

DAYA: But then he wanted nothing, nothing sought;
Was in himself sufficient, like an angel.

RECHA: And when at last he vanished----

NATHAN: Vanished! Have you not sought him?
What if he--
That is, a Frank, unused to this fierce sun--
Now languish on a sick-bed, friendless, poor?

RECHA: Alas, my father!

NATHAN: What if he, unfriended,
Lies ill and unrelieved; the hapless prey
Of agony and death; consoled alone
In death by the remembrance of this deed.

DAYA: You kill her!

NATHAN: You kill him.