BOOK II

The Christian Speaks

He pointed to the headless bodies round him.

“For what have these my brethren died? Answer me, priests of Rome; what temple did they force—what altar overthrow—what insults offer to the slightest of your public celebrations? Judges of Rome, what offense did they commit against the public peace? Consuls, where were they found in rebellion against the Roman majesty? People of Rome, whom among your thousands can charge one of these holy dead with extortion, impurity, or violence; can charge them with anything but the patience that bore wrong without a murmur, and the charity that answered tortures only by prayer?”

He then touched upon the nature of his faith.

“Do I stand here demanding to be believed for opinions? No, but for facts. I have seen the sick made whole, the lame walk, the blind receive their sight, by the mere name of Him whom you crucified. I have seen men, once ignorant of all languages but their own, speaking with the language of every nation under heaven; the still greater wonder of the timid defying all fear, the unlearned instantly made wise in the mysteries of things divine and human, the peasant putting to shame the learned—awing the proud, enlightening the darkened; alike in the courts of kings, before the furious people, and in the dungeon, armed with an irrepressible spirit of knowledge, reason, and truth that confounded their adversaries. I have seen the still greater wonder of the renewed heart; the impure suddenly abjuring vice; the covetous, the cruel, the faithless, the godless, gloriously changed into the holy, the gentle, the faithful, worshipers of the true God in spirit and in truth—the conquest of the passions which defiedyour philosophers, your tribunals, your rewards, and your terrors, achieved in the one mighty name. Those are facts, things which I have seen with these eyes; and who that had seen them could doubt that the finger of God was there? Dared I refuse my belief to the divine mission of the Being by whom, and even in memory of whom, things baffling the proudest human means were wrought before my senses? Irresistibly compelled by facts to believe that Christ was sent by God, I was with equal force compelled to believe in the doctrines declared by that glorious revealer of the King alike of quick and dead. And thus I stand before you this day, at the close of a long life of labor and love, a Christian.”

The Faith of a Christian

This appeal to the understanding, divested as it was of all studied ornament, was listened to by the immense multitude with the most unbroken interest. It was delivered with the strong simplicity of conviction. He then spoke of the Founder of his faith.

“Men may be insane for opinions, but who can be insane for facts? The coming of Christ was prophesied a thousand years before! From the beginning of His ministry, He lived wholly before the eyes of mankind. His life corresponds with the prophecies in circumstances totally beyond human conjecture, contrivance, or power. The Virgin Mother, the village in which He was born, the lowliness of His cradle, the worship paid to Him there, the hazard of His life—all were predicted. Could the infant have shaped the accomplishment of those predictions? The death that He should die, the hands by which it was to be inflicted, even the draft that He should drink, the raiment that He should be clothed in, and the sepulcher in which He should be laid, were predicted. Could the man have shaped their accomplishment? The time of His resting in the tomb, His resurrection, His ascent to heaven, the sending of the Holy Spirit after He was gone—all were predicted; all were beyond human collusion, human power, even beyond human thought; all were accomplished! Is not here the finger of God?

Christ, the Crucified

“Those things, too, were universally known to the nation most competent to detect collusion. Did Christ come toRome, where every new religion finds adherents, and where all pretensions might be advanced without fear; where a deceiver might have quoted prophecies that never existed, and vaunted of wonders done where there was no eye to detect them? No! His life was spent in Judea. He made His appeal to the Scriptures, in a country where they were in the hands of the nation. His miracles were brought before the eyes of a priesthood that watched him step by step; His doctrines were spoken, not to the mingled multitude holding a thousand varieties of opinion, and careless of all, but to an exclusive race, subtle in their inquiries, eager in their zeal, and proud of their peculiar possession of divine knowledge.

“Yet against His life, His miracles, or His doctrine, what charge could they bring? None. There is not a single stigma on the purity of His conduct; the power of His wonder-working control over man and nature; the holiness, wisdom, and grandeur of His views of Providence; the truth, charity, and meekness of His counsels to man. Their single source of hatred was the pride of worldly hearts, that expected a king where they were to have found a teacher.

“Their single charge against Him was His prophecy that there should be an end to their Temple and their state within the life of man.

“They crucified Him; He died in prayer, that His murderers might be forgiven; and His prayer was mightily answered. He had scarcely risen to His eternal throne when thousands believed and were forgiven. To Him be the glory, forever and ever!”

All this was heard in wonder. I could see eyes lifted to heaven, and lips as if moved in prayer.

A Face Inspired

“Compare Him with your legislators. He gives the spirit of all law in a single sentence: ‘Do unto others as you would they should do unto you.’ Compare Him with your priesthood. He gives a single prayer, containing the substance of all that man can rationally implore of heaven. Compare Him with your moralists. He lays the foundation of virtue in love to God! Compare him with your sages. He leads a life of privation without a murmur; He dies a death of shame,desertion, and agony, and His last breath is mercy! Compare him with your conquerors. Without the shedding of a drop of blood He has already conquered hosts that would have resisted all the swords of earth; hosts of stubborn passions, cherished vices, guilty perversions of the powers and faculties of man. In proof of all, look on these glorious dead, whom I shall join before the set of yonder sun. Yes, martyrs of God! ye were His conquests, and ye too are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us and gave Himself for us. But a triumph shall come, magnificent and terrible, when all eyes shall behold Him, and the tribes of the earth, even they who pierced Him, shall mourn.”

Some raged, more listened, many wept. He spoke with still loftier energy.

“Then rejoice, ye dead! for ye shall rise; ye shall be clothed with glory; ye shall be as the angels, bright and powerful, immortal, intellectual kings! ‘For tho worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.’”

He paused, as if he saw the vision.

The sky was cloudless; the sun was in the west, but shining in his broadest beams; the whole space before me was flooded with light; when, as I gazed upon the martyr, I saw a gleam issue from his upturned face; it increased to brightness, to radiance, to an intense luster that made the sunlight utterly pale. All was astonishment in the amphitheater, all was awe. The old man seemed unconscious of the wonder that invested him. He continued with his open hands lifted up and his eyes fixed on heaven. The glory spread over his form, and he stood before us robed in an effulgence which shot from him, like a living fount of splendor, round the colossal circle. Yet the blaze, tho it looked the very essence of light, was strangely translucent; we could see with undazzled eyes every feature, and whether it was the working of my overwhelmed mind, or a true change, the countenance appeared to have passed at once from age to youth. A lofty joy, a look of supernal grandeur, a magnificent yet ethereal beauty, had transformed the features of the old man into the likeness of the winged sons of Immortality!

A Christian’s Prayer

He spoke again, and the first sound of his voice thrilled through every bosom and made every man start from his seat.

“Men and brethren! it is the desire of your Father that all should be saved—Jew and Gentile alike—for with Him there is no respect of persons. He is the Father of all! Christianity is not a philosophic dream, but a divine command—the summons of the God of gods, that you should accept His mercy—the opening of the gates of an eternal world! It is not a call to the practise of barren virtue, but a declaration of reward mightier than the imagination of man can conceive. Would you be immortals—would you be glorious as the stars of heaven—would you possess eternal faculties of happiness, supremacy, and knowledge? Ask for forgiveness of your evil, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth! What is easier than the price? What more transcendent than the reward? Who shall tell the limit of the risen soul? What resistless power, what more than regal majesty, what celestial beauty may be in His fame! What expansion of intellect, what overflowing tides of new sensation, what shapes of loveliness, what radiant stores of thought and mysteries of exhaustless knowledge, may be treasured for Him! What endless ascent through new ranks of being, each as much more glorious than the last as the risen spirit is above man! For what can be the limit to the power of God to make those happy, glorious, and mighty whom He will? For what can be the bound to the fellow heirs with Christ, their Leader in trial, their Leader in triumph? Omnipotence for their protector, for their friend, for their father! He who gave to us His own Son, will He not with Him give us all things?”

The voice sank into prayer.

The Arrival of Nero

“King of kings! if through a long life I have labored in Thy cause, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness—Thine alone be the praise, Thine the glory, O Thou who hastbrought me through them all, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. And now, Lord, Thou who shalt change my vile body into the likeness of Thy glorious body, be with Thy servant in this last hour! Savior and God! receive my spirit, that where Thou art, even I may be with Thee!”

He was silent; the splendor gradually passed away from his form, and he knelt upon the sand, bowing his neck to receive the blow. But to lift a hand against such a being seemed now an act of profanation. The ax-bearer dared not approach. The spectators sat hushed in involuntary homage; and not a word, not a gesture broke the silence of veneration.

At length a flourish of distant trumpets was heard. Cavalry galloped forward, announcing the Emperor, and Nero, habited as a charioteer in the games, drove his gilded car into the arena. The Christian had risen and, with his hands clasped upon his breast, was awaiting death. Nero cast the headsman an execration at his tardiness; the ax swept round, and when I glanced again, the old man lay beside his brethren.

This man I had sacrificed. My heart smote me; I would have fled the place of blood, but I was in the midst of guards; more of my victims were to be slain, and I must be the shrinking witness of all. The Emperor’s arrival commenced the grand display. He took his place under the curtains of the royal pavilion. The dead were removed; perfumes were scattered through the air; rose-water was sprinkled from silver tubes upon the exhausted multitude; music resounded, incense burned, and in the midst of those preparations of luxury the lion-combat began.

A portal of the arena opened and the combatant, with a mantle thrown over his face and figure, was led in surrounded by soldiery. The lion roared and ramped against the bars of its den at the sight. The guard put a sword and buckler into the hands of the Christian, and he was left alone. He drew the mantle from his face, and looked slowly and steadily round the amphitheater. His fine countenance and lofty bearing raised a universal sound of admiration. He might have stood for an Apollo encountering the Python. His eyes at lastturned on mine. Could I believe my senses? Constantius was before me!

Constantius and the Lion

All my rancor vanished. In the moment before, I could have struck the betrayer to the heart; I could have called on the severest vengeance of man and Heaven to smite the destroyer of my child. But to see him hopelessly doomed; the man whom I had honored for his noble qualities, whom I had even loved, whose crime was at worst but the crime of giving way to the strongest temptation that can bewilder man; to see this noble creature flung to the savage beast, torn piecemeal before my eyes—I would have cried to earth and heaven to save him. But my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth; I would have thrown myself at the feet of Nero, but I sat like a man of stone, pale, paralyzed—the beating of my pulse stopped—my eyes alone alive.

The gate of the den was now thrown back, and the lion rushed in with a roar and a bound that bore him half across the arena. I saw the sword glitter in the air; when it waved again it was covered with blood, and a howl told that the blow had been driven home. The lion, one of the largest from Numidia, and made furious by thirst and hunger, an animal of prodigious power, crouched for an instant as if to make sure of his prey, crept a few paces onward, and sprang at the victim’s throat. He was met by a second wound, but his impulse was irresistible, and Constantius was flung upon the ground.

A cry of natural horror rang round the amphitheater. The struggle was now for instant life or death. They rolled over each other; the lion reared on his hind feet and with gnashing teeth and distended talons plunged on the man; again they rose together. Anxiety was now at its wildest height. The sword swung round the champion’s head in bloody circles. They fell again. The hand of Constantius had grasped the lion’s mane, and the furious bounds of the monster could not loose his hold; but his strength was evidently giving way; he still struck terrible blows, but each was weaker than the one before; till, collecting his whole force for a last effort, he darted one mighty blow into thelion’s throat and sank. The savage yelled, and, spouting out blood, fled bellowing round the arena. But the hand still grasped the mane, and his conqueror was dragged whirling through the dust at his heels. A universal outcry now arose to save Constantius, if he were not already dead. But the lion, tho bleeding from every vein, was still too terrible, and all shrank from the hazard. At length the grasp gave way and the body lay motionless on the ground.

The Appearance of Salome

What happened for some moments after I know not. There was a struggle at the portal; a woman forced her way through the guards, rushed in alone, and flung herself upon the victim. The sight of a new prey roused the lion; he tore the ground with his talons; he lashed his streaming sides with his tail; he lifted up his mane and bared his fangs. But he came no longer with a bound; he dreaded the sword, and crept, snuffing the blood on the sand, and stealing round the body in circuits still diminishing.

The confusion in the vast assemblage was now extreme. Voices innumerable called for aid. Women screamed and fainted. Even the hard-hearted populace, accustomed as they were to the sacrifices of life, were roused to honest curses. The guards grasped their arms, and waited but for a sign of mercy from the Emperor. But Nero gave no sign. I glanced upon the woman’s face. It was Salome! I sprang upon my feet. I called on her name; I implored her to fly from that place of death, to come to my arms, to think of the agonies of all who loved her.

She had raised the head of Constantius on her knee, and was wiping the pale visage with her hair. At the sound of my voice she looked up, and calmly casting back the locks from her forehead, fixed her gaze upon me. She still knelt; one hand supported the head, and with the other she pointed to it, as her only answer. I again adjured her. There was the silence of death among the thousands round me. A sudden fire flashed into her eye—her cheek burned. She waved her hand with an air of superb sorrow.

“I heard the gnashing of his white fangs above me.”[see page 169.Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.

“I heard the gnashing of his white fangs above me.”

[see page 169.

Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.

The End of the Combat

“I am come to die,” she uttered, in a lofty tone. “This bleeding body was my husband. I have no father. The worldcontains for me but this clay in my arms. Yet,” and she kissed the ashy lips before her, “yet, my Constantius, it was to save that father that your generous heart defied the peril of this hour. It was to redeem him from the hand of evil that you abandoned our quiet home! Yes, cruel father, here lies the preserver who threw open your dungeon, who led you safe through conflagration, who to the last moment of his liberty only thought how he might protect you.”

Tears at length fell in floods from her eyes.

“But,” said she, in a tone of wild power, “he was betrayed, and may the Power whose thunders avenge the cause of His people pour down just retribution upon the head that dared——”

I heard my own condemnation about to be unconsciously pronounced by the lips of my child. Wound up to the last degree of suffering, I tore my way, leaped on the bars before me, and plunged into the arena by her side. The height was stunning; I tottered forward a few paces, and fell. The lion gave a roar and sprang upon me. I lay helpless under him; I felt his fiery breath; I saw his lurid eye glaring; I heard the gnashing of his white fangs above me——

An exulting shout arose. I saw him reel as if struck—gore filled his jaws. Another mighty blow was driven to his heart. He sprang high into the air with a howl. He dropped—he was dead! The amphitheater thundered with acclamation.

With Salome clinging to my bosom, Constantius raised me from the ground. The roar of the lion had roused him from his swoon, and two blows saved me. The falchion was broken in the heart of the monster. The whole multitude stood up supplicating for our lives, in the name of filial piety and heroism. Nero, devil as he was, dared not resist the strength of the popular feeling; he waved a signal to the guards; the portal was opened, and my children, sustaining my feeble steps, and showered with garlands and ornaments from innumerable hands, slowly led me from the arena.

END OF BOOK I.

A Retrospect

The first rage of the persecution was at an end;[30]the popular thirst for blood was satiated. The natural admiration that follows fortitude and innocence, and the natural hatred that consigns a tyrant to the execration of his time and of posterity, found their way, and Nero dared murder no more. I voluntarily shared the prison of Constantius and my child. Its doors were now set open. The liberality of my people supplied the means of returning to Judea, and we hastened down the Tiber in the first vessel that spread her sails from this throne of desolation.

The chances that had brought us together were soon explained. Salome, urged to desperation by the near approach of her marriage, and anxious to save herself from the perjury of vowing her love to one unpossessed of her heart, had flown with Constantius to Cæsarea. The only person in their confidence was the domestic who betrayed me into the hands of the procurator, and who assisted them only that he might lure me from home.

The Return to Judea

At Cæsarea they were wedded, and remained in concealment, under the protection of the young Septimius. My transmission to Rome struck them with terror, and Constantius instantly embarked to save me by his Italian influence. The attempt was surrounded with peril, but Salome would not be left behind. Disguised, to avoid my possible refusal of life at his hands, he followed me step by step. There were many of our people among the attendants and even in the higher offices of the court. The Empress had, in her reproaches to Nero, disclosed the new barbarity of my sentence. No time was to be lost. Constantius, at the imminent hazard of life, entered the palace. He saw the block already erectedin the garden before the window, where Nero sat inventing a melody which was to grace my departure. The confusion of the fire offered the only escape. I was witness of his consternation when he made so many fruitless efforts to penetrate to the place where Salome remained in the care of his relatives. When I scaled the burning mansion, he desperately followed, lost his way among the ruins, and was giving up all hope when, wrapped in fire and smoke, Salome fell at his feet. He bore her to another mansion of his family. It had given shelter to the chief Christians. They were seized. His young wife scorned to survive Constantius; and chance and my own fortunate desperation alone saved me from seeing their martyrdom.

We returned to Judea. In the first embrace of my family all was forgotten and forgiven. My brother rejoiced in Salome’s happiness; and even her rejected kinsman, despite his reluctance, acknowledged the claims of him who had saved the life of the father, to the daughter’s hand.

What perception of health is ever so exquisite as when we first rise from the bed of sickness? What enjoyment of the heart is so full of delight as that which follows extreme suffering? I had but just escaped the most formidable personal hazards; I had escaped the still deeper suffering of seeing ruin fall on beings whom I would have died to rescue. Salome’s heart, overflowing with happiness, gave new brightness to her eyes and new animation to her lovely form. She danced with involuntary joy, she sang, she laughed; her fancy kindled into a thousand sparklings. Beautiful being! in my visions thou art still before me. I clasp thee to my widowed heart, and hear thy sweet voice, sweeter than the fountain in the desert to the pilgrim, cheering me in the midst of my more than pilgrimage.

During the Jubilee

An accession of opulence gave the only increase, if increase could be given, to the happiness that seemed within my reach. The year ofJubileearrived. Abolished as the chief customs of Judea had been by the weakness and guilt of idolatrous kings and generations, they were still observed by all who honored the faith of their fathers. The law of Jubilee wassacred in our mountains; it was the law of a wisdom and benevolence above man.

Its peculiar adaptation to Israel, its provision for the virtue and happiness of the individual, and its safeguard of the public strength and constitutional integrity, were unrivaled amongst the finest ordinances of the ancient world.

On the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan, the land was divided, by the inspired command, among the tribes according to their numbers. To each family a portion was assigned as a gift from heaven. The gift was to be inalienable. The estate might be sold for a period; but in the fiftieth year, on the evening of the Day of Atonement, in the month of Tishri, the sound of the trumpets from the sanctuary, echoed by thousands of voices from every mountain-top, proclaimed the Jubilee. Then returned, without purchase, every family to its original possessions. All the more abject degradations of poverty, the wearing out of families, the hopeless ruin, were obviated by this great law. The most undone being in the limits of Judea had still a hold in the land. His ruin could not be final, perhaps could not extend beyond a few years; in the last extremity he could not be scorned as one whose birthright was extinguished; the Jubilee was to raise him up and place the outcast in the early rank of the sons of Israel. All the higher feelings were cherished by this incomparable hope. The man, conscious of his future possessions, retained the honorable pride of property under the sternest privations. The time was hurrying on when he should stand on an equality with mankind, when his worn spirit should begin the world again with fresh vigor, if he were young; or when he should sit under the vine and the fig-tree of his fathers, if his age refused again to struggle for the distinctions of the world.

The Allotment of Naphtali

The agrarian law of Rome and Sparta, feeble efforts to establish this true foundation of personal and political vigor, showed at once both the natural impulse and the weakness of human wisdom. The Roman plunged the people into furious dissensions, which perished almost in their birth. The Spartan was secured for a time only by barbarian prohibitions of moneyand commerce—a code which raised an iron wall against civilization, turned the people into a perpetual soldiery, and finally, by the mere result of continual war, overthrew liberty, dominion, and name.

The Jubilee was for a peculiar people, restricted by a divine interposition from increase beyond the original number. But who shall say how far the same benevolent interposition might not have been extended to all nations, if they had revered the original compact of heaven with man? How far throughout the earth the provisions for each man’s wants might not have been secured—the overwhelming superabundance of portionless life that fills the world with crime might not have been restrained; how far despotism, that growth of desperate abjectness of the understanding and gross corruption of the senses, might not have been repelled by manly knowledge and native virtue? But the time may come.

The Summons of Florus

In the first allotments of the territory, ample domains had been appointed for the princes and leaders of the tribes. One of those princedoms now returned to me, and I entered upon the inheritance of the leaders of Naphtali, a large extent of hill and valley, rich with corn, olive, and vine. The antiquity of possession gave a kind of hallowed and monumental interest to the soil. I was master of its wealth, but I indulged a loftier feeling in the recollection of those who had trod the palace and the plain before me. Every chamber bore the trace of those whom the history of my country had taught me to reverence; and often, when in some of the fragrant evenings of summer I have flung myself among the thick beds of bloom that spread spontaneously over my hills, the spirits of the loved and honored seemed to gather round me. I saw once more the matron gravity and the virgin grace; even the more remote generations, those great progenitors who with David fought the Philistine; the solemn chieftains who with Joshua followed the Ark of the Covenant through toil and battle into the promised land; the sainted sages who witnessed the giving of the law, and worshiped Him who spake in thunder from Sinai; all moved before me, for all had trod the very ground on which I gazed. Could I transfer myself backto their time, on that spot I should stand among a living circle of heroic and glorious beings before whose true glory the pomps of earth were vain; the hearers of the prophets themselves; the servants of the man of miracle, the companions of the friend of God; nay, distinction that surpasses human thought, themselves the chosen of heaven.

The cheering occupations of rural life were to be henceforth pursued on a scale more fitting my rank. I was the first chieftain of my tribe, the man by whose wisdom multitudes were to be guided, and by whose benevolence multitudes were to be sustained. I felt that mingled sense of rank and responsibility which with the vain, the ignorant, or the vicious is the strongest temptation to excess, but with the honorable and intelligent constitutes the most pleasurable and the most elevated state of the human mind.

Yet what are the fortunes of man but a ship launched on an element whose essence is restlessness? The very wind, without which we can not move, gathers to a storm and we are undone! The tyranny of our conquerors had for a few months been paralyzed by the destruction of Rome. But the governor of Judea was not to be long withheld, where plunder allured the most furious rapacity that perhaps ever hungered in the heart of man. I was in the midst of our harvest, surrounded with the fruitage of the year and enjoying the sights and sounds of patriarchal life, when I received the formidable summons to present myself again before Florus. Imprisonment and torture were in the command. He had heard of my opulence, and I knew how little his insolent cupidity would regard the pardon under which I had returned. I determined to retire into the mountains and defy him.

The Rescue of Septimius

But the Roman plunderer had the activity of his countrymen. On the very night of my receiving the summons I was roused from sleep by the outcries of the retainers, who in that season of heat lay in the open air round the palace. I started from my bed, only to see with astonishment the courtyards filled with cavalry, galloping in pursuit of the few peasants who still fought for their lord. There was no time to be lost; the torches were already in the hands of the soldiery, and Imust be taken or burned alive. Constantius was instantly at my side. I ordered the trumpet to be sounded on the hills and we rushed out together, spear in hand. The Romans, alarmed by resistance where they had counted upon capture without a blow, fell back. The interval was fatal to them. Their retreat was intercepted by the whole body of the peasantry, at length effectually roused. The scythe and reaping-hook were deadly weapons to horsemen cooped up between walls, and in midnight. No efforts of mine could stop the havoc, when once the fury of my people was roused. A few escaped, who had broken wildly away in the first onset. The rest were left to cover the avenues with the first sanguinary offerings of the final war of Judea.

I felt that this escape could be but temporary, for the Roman policy never forgave until the slightest stain of defeat was wiped away. All was consternation in my family, and the order for departure, whatever tears it cost, found no opposition. In a few hours our camels and mules were loaded, our horses caparisoned, and we were prepared to quit the short-lived pomp of the house of my fathers. Constantius alone did not appear. This noble-minded being had won even upon me, until I considered him the substitute for my lost son; and I would run the last hazard rather than leave him to the Roman mercy. With the women, the interest was expressed by a declared resolution not to leave the spot until he was found. The caravan was broken up and all desire of escape was at an end.

At the close of a day of search through every defile of the country, he was seen returning at the head of some peasants bearing a body on a litter. I flew to meet him. He was in deep affliction, and drawing off the mantle which covered the face, he showed me Septimius.

Roman Plans

“In the flight of the Romans,” said he, “I saw a horseman making head against a crowd. His voice caught my ear. I rushed forward to save him, and he burst through the circle at full speed. But by the light of the torches I could perceive that he was desperately wounded. When day broke, I tracked him by his blood. His horse, gashed by scythes, had fallenunder him. I found my unfortunate friend lying senseless beside a rill, to which he had crept for water.”

Tears fell from his eyes as he told the brief story. I too remembered the generous interposition of the youth, and when I looked upon the paleness of those fine Italian features that I had so lately seen lighted up with living spirit, and in a scene of regal luxury, I felt a pang for the uncertainty of human things. But the painful part of the moral was spared us. The young Roman’s wounds were stanched, and in an enemy and a Roman I found the means of paying a debt of gratitude. His appearance among the troops sent to seize me had been only a result of his anxiety to save the father of his friends. He had accidentally discovered the nature of the order and hoped to anticipate its execution. But he arrived only in time to be involved in the confusion of the flight. Pursued and wounded by the peasantry, he lost his way, and but for the generous perseverance of Constantius he must have died.

The public information which he brought was of the most important kind. In the Roman councils, the utter subjugation of Judea was resolved on; the last spark of national independence was to be extinguished, tho in the blood of the last native; a Roman colony established in our lands; the Roman worship introduced; and Jerusalem profaned by a statue of Nero, and sacrifices to him as a god, on the altar of the sanctuary. To crush the resistance of the people, the legions, to the number of sixty thousand men, were under orders from proconsular Asia, Egypt, and Europe. The most distinguished captain of the empire, Vespasian, was called from Britain to the command, and the whole military strength of Rome was prepared to follow up the blow.

The Principles of War

I summoned the chief men of the tribe. My temperament was warlike. The seclusion and studies of my early life had but partially suppressed my natural delight in the vividness of martial achievement. But the cause that now summoned me was enough to have kindled the dullest peasant into the soldier. I had seen the discipline of the enemy; I had made myself master of their system of war. Fortifications wherevera stone could be piled upon a hill; provisions laid up in large quantities wherever they could be secured; small bodies of troops practised in maneuver, and perpetually in motion between the fortresses; a general base of operations to which all the movements referred—were the simple principles that had made them conquerors of the world. I resolved to give them a speedy proof of my pupilage.

The Hope of Success

Indecision in the beginning of war is worse than war. I decided that whatever were the consequences, the sword must be unsheathed without delay. With Eleazar and Constantius, I cast my eyes over the map, and examined on what point the first blow should fall. The proverbial safety of a multitude of councilors was obviously disregarded in the smallness of my council; yet few as we were, we differed upon every point but one, that of the certainty of our danger; the promptitude of Roman vengeance suffered no contest of opinion. Eleazar, with a spirit as manly as ever, faced hazard, yet gave his voice for delay.

“The sole hope of success,” said he, “must depend on rousing the popular mind. The Roman troops are not to be beaten by any regular army in the world. If we attack them on the ordinary principles of war, the result can only be defeat, slaughter in dungeons, and deeper slavery. If the nation can be aroused, numbers may prevail over discipline; variety of attack may distract science; the desperate boldness of the insurgents may at length exhaust the Roman fortitude, and a glorious peace will then restore the country to that independence for which my life would be a glad and ready sacrifice. But you must first have the people with you, and for that purpose you must have the leaders of the people——”

“What!” interrupted I, “must we first mingle in the cabals of Jerusalem and rouse the frigid debaters of the Sanhedrin into action? Are we first to conciliate the irreconcilable, to soften the furious, to purify the corrupt? If the Romans are to be our tyrants till we can teach patriotism to faction, we may as well build the dungeon at once, for to the dungeon we are consigned for the longest life among us. Death orglory for me. There is no alternative between, not merely the half slavery that we now live in, and independence, but between the most condign suffering and the most illustrious security. If the people would rise through the pressure of public injury, they must have risen long since; if from private violence, what town, what district, what family has not its claim of deadly retribution? Yet here the people stand, after a hundred years of those continued stimulants to resistance, as unresisting as in the day when Pompey marched over the threshold of the Temple. I know your generous friendship, Eleazar, and fear that your anxiety to save me from the chances of the struggle may bias your better judgment. But here I pledge myself, by all that constitutes the honor of man, to strike at all risks a blow upon the Roman crest that shall echo through the land. What! commit our holy cause in the nursing of those pampered hypocrites whose utter baseness of heart you know still more deeply than I do? Linger till those pestilent profligates raise their price with Florus by betraying a design that will be the glory of every man who draws a sword in it? Vainly, madly ask a brood that, like the serpent, engender and fatten among the ruins of their country to discard their venom, to cast their fangs, to feel for human feelings? As well ask the serpent itself to rise from the original curse. It is the irrevocable nature of faction to be base until it can be mischievous; to lick the dust until it can sting; to creep on its belly until it can twist its folds around the victim. No! let the old pensionaries, the bloated hangers-on in the train of every governor, the open sellers of their country for filthy lucre, betray me when I leave it in their power. To the field, I say—once and for all, to the field.”

Salathiel’s Ardor

My mind, at no period patient of contradiction, was fevered by the perplexity of the time. I was about to leave the chamber when Constantius gravely stopped me.

“My father,” said he, with a voice calmer than his countenance, “you have hurt our noble kinsman’s feelings. It is not in an hour when our unanimity may fail that we should suffer dissensions between those whose hearts arealike embarked in this great cause. Let me mediate between you.”

The Support of the People

He led Eleazar back from the casement to which he had withdrawn to cool his blood, burning with the offense of my language.

“Eleazar is in the right. The Romans are irresistible by any force short of the whole people. They have military possession of the country—all your fortresses, all your posts, all your passes. They are as familiar as you are with every defile, mountain, and marsh; they surround you with conquered provinces on the north, east, and south; your western barrier is open to them while it is shut to you; the sea is the high-road of their armies, while at their first forbidding, you dare not launch a galley between Libanus and Idumea. Nothing can counterbalance this local superiority but the rising of your whole people.”

“Yet, are we to intrigue with the talkers in Jerusalem for this?” interrupted I. “What less than a descended thunderbolt could rouse them to a sense that there is even a heaven above them?”

“Still, we must have them with us,” said Constantius, “for we must have all. Universality is the spirit of an insurrectionary war. If I were commander of a revolt, I should feel greater confidence of success at the head of a single province in which every human being was against the enemy, than at the head of an empire partially in arms. The mind even of the rudest spearsman is a great portion of him. The boldest shrinks from the consciousness that hostility is on all sides; that whether marching or at rest, watching or sleeping, by night or by day, hostility is round him; that it is in the very air he breathes, in the very food he eats; that every face he sees is the face of one who wishes him slain; that every knife, even every trivial instrument of human use, may be turned into a shedder of his blood. Those things, perpetually confronting his mind, break it down until the man grows reckless, miserable, undisciplined, and a dastard.”

“Yet,” observed Eleazar, “the constant robbery of an insurrectionary war must render it a favorite command.”

Constantius Describes a Campaign

“Let me speak from experience,” said Constantius. “Two years ago I was attached, with a squadron of galleys, to the expedition against the tribes of Mount Taurus. While the galleys wintered in Cyprus, I followed the troops up the hills. Nothing had been omitted that would counteract the severity of the season. Tents, provisions, clothing adapted to the hills, even luxuries despatched from the islands, gave the camps almost the indulgences of cities. The physical hardships of the campaign were trivial compared with those of hundreds in which the Romans had beaten regular armies. Yet the discontent was indescribable, from the perpetual alarms of the service. The mountaineers were not numerous and were but half armed; they were not disciplined at all. A Roman centurion would have outmaneuvered all their captains. But they were brave; they knew nothing but to kill or be killed, and it made no difference to them whether Death did his work by night or by day. Sleep to us was scarcely possible. To sit down on a march was to be leveled at by a score of arrows; to pursue the archers was to be lured into some hollow, where a fragment of the rock above or a felled tree, was ready to crush the legionaries. We chased them from hill to hill; we might as well have chased the vultures and eagles that duly followed us, with the perfect certainty of not being disappointed of their meal. Wherever the enemy showed themselves they were beaten, but our victory was totally fruitless. The next turn of the mountain road was a stronghold, from which we had to expect a new storm of arrows, lances, and fragments of rock.

“The mountaineers always had a retreat,” he continued. “If we drove them from the pinnacles of the hills, they were in a moment in the valleys, where we must follow them at the risk of falling down precipices and being swallowed up by torrents, in which the strongest swimmer in the legions could not live for a moment. If we drove them from the valleys, we saw them scaling the mountains as if they had wings, and scoffing at our tardy and helpless movements, encumbered as we were with baggage and armor. We at length forced our way through the mountain range, and when with the loss of half the armywe had reached their citadel, we found that the work was to be begun again. To remain where we were was to be starved; we had defeated the barbarians, but they were as unconquered as ever, and our only resource was to retrace our steps, which we did at the expense of a battle every morning, noon, evening, and night, with a ruinous loss of life and the total abandonment of everything in the shape of baggage. The defeat was of course hushed up, and according to the old Roman policy, the escape was colored to a victory; I had the honor of carrying back the general into Italy, where he was decreed an ovation, a laurel crown, and a crowd of the usual distinctions; but the triumph belonged to the men of the mountains, and until our campaign is forgotten, no Roman captain will look for his laurels in Mount Taurus again.”

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