His--" Messala broke in upon him with a biting laugh.
"Oh, I understand you now.

Ishmael, you say, is a usurper, yet to believe an Idumaean sooner than Ishmael is to sting like an adder.
By the drunken son of Semele, what it is to be a Jew! All men and things, even heaven and earth, change; but a Jew never.

To him there is no backward, no forward; he is what his ancestor was in the beginning.

In this sand I draw you a circle--there! Now tell me what more a Jew's life is?
Round and round, Abraham here, Isaac and Jacob yonder, God in the middle.

And the circle--by the master of all thunders! the circle is too large.