The green turf was velvet underfoot. The blackbirds fluted in the hazels there.

The persons most abhorrent from blood, and treason, and arbitrary confiscation, might remain silent spectators of this civil war between the vices.

I ask you, William, could I suppose that the Emperor of Austria was a damned traitor—a traitor, and nothing more? I don’t mince words—a double-faced infernal traitor and schemer.

Now during the days preceding the time of Mordecai's Bar Mitzvah, Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, known as the Maharal, had a series of dreams that had come to haunt him. In the first dream the Maharal found a letter nailed to his front door, like a proclamation, that stated that the life of the boy Mordecai, whose soul could bring great blessing to the Jewish people, hung in the balance, and that only the Maharal could save him.