Septimius Recognized
As I led him forward and the light fell on his features, I saw Esther’s countenance glow with crimson. The Roman pronounced her name and flew over to her. Miriam—we all in the same moment recognized the stranger, and every lip at once uttered “Septimius!”
A few campaigns in the imperial guard had changed the handsome Italian boy, the friend and favorite of Constantius, into the showy officer, the friend and favorite of everybody; with the elegance of the court, and the freedom of the camp, he had inherited from nature the easy lightness and animation of temper that neither can give. Nothing could be more amusing than the restless round of anecdote that he kept up through the night. The circle in which he found himself, contrasted with the wretchedness of the few hours before, let his recollections flow with wild vivacity. His stories of the imperial tent were new to us, and he told them with the taste of a man of high breeding and the sarcastic finish of a keen observer of the absurdities that will creep in even among the mighty and the wise of the world.
In our several ways he delighted us all. Constantius seemed to gain new health in laughing at the histories of his military friends. Salome’s face glistened with the vividness so long chased away by sorrow, as the manners of Rome passed before her in the liveliest colors of pleasantry. Esthertreasured every word with an emotion that fluctuated across her beauty like the opening and shutting of a rose under the evening breeze. I was interested by the pungent sketches of public character that started up in the midst of sportive description. Miriam alone was reluctant, and her glance frequently rested with pain on Esther’s hectic cheek. But even Miriam at times gave way to the voice of the charmer; her fears were forgotten, and she joined in the general smile.
When the women retired, we held a short consultation on the means of restoring our guest to his friends. In the immediate temper of the city, to be seen was certain death, and no pacific intercourse with the besiegers could be expected after our enormous infraction of treaty. Constantius urged the despatch of a private messenger to the camp with the proposal of a plan for his escape. To my surprise, and certainly to my gratification, Septimius himself flatly negatived the measure.
A Precarious Position
“It has too much hazard for my taste,” said he sportively. “Your messenger will probably be caught by the people and as probably hanged; or if he reach the camp, he will be hanged there inevitably. Jewish credit, I regret to say, will not stand high within these twelve hours, with my countrymen. If the fellow die here like a woman, with a story in his mouth, you will all be brought under the justice of your sovereign lord the mob. If my countrymen inflict the ax, you are not the safer, for every peasant about the camp is a spy, and the news will travel here in the next half-hour, and after all, your trouble will be thrown away. Titus has good-nature enough, and probably would not wish to see me hoisted on the top of a pike on your gates; but he is a furious disciplinarian, swears by the law of honor and arms, and is, I can well believe, chafing like a roused lion against every one who has had a share in this day’s business. I myself should have a chance of hanging, for an example, if I returned before his imperial displeasure had time to cool. So I must trespass on your hospitality for a day or two.”
“But what is to be finally done?” said I. “The armistice can never be tried again.”
“Why not? Do you think that the loss of a few troopers can make any difference? Out of twenty thousand cavalry, we can easily spare a hundred. Those things have happened once a week since the beginning of the campaign. They agree with our notions admirably. The survivors get promotion, and whatever libation they may offer for their good luck; it is certainly not tears. A stupid officer, and on this occasion I fairly reckon myself among the number, is taken off the muster-roll, before he might have the opportunity of doing mischief by some blunder on a larger scale. Experience is gained; we are entrapped no more, at least in the same way; and a group of unfortunates, who have spent half their lives in being browbeaten by their superiors, suddenly start into rank, become superiors themselves, and learn to browbeat in their turn. You will have the armistice again in a week.”
This confession of soldiership repelled me a little, but its air of frankness and disregard of chance and care carried it off showily. I, too, was but a peasant-soldier, with my heart in everything. The man before me was a son of the camp, the professional warrior, whose business it was to stifle all feelings but those of the camp. Yet heroism and hard-heartedness—I could not join them. I had still something to learn, and the gay philosopher of the sword lost ground with me.
I was retiring for the night when I felt the soft hand of Miriam on my shoulder.
“I have been anxious,” she said, “to ask your opinion about this Roman.”
Her fine countenance, that reflected every emotion of her spirit like a mirror, showed that the subject was one of deep interest. “Is misfortune always to pursue us, Salathiel?”
“In what new shape now?” said I. “We have spent some hours, as amusing as I ever remember. What can have occurred since this morning, when your philosophy made so light of our actual evils?”
Miriam’s Suspicion
“For external evils I have but little feeling,” was her answer; “but I see in the chance that brought the Roman here to-night something of the fate which you have so oftenthought to follow your house. I tremble for Esther’s peace of mind. What if she should be attracted by this idolater?”
“Esther! my darling Esther! love an alien, a Roman, an idolater? What an abyss you open before me!” I exclaimed, with a sudden sense of evil.
There was a pause; my wife again spoke.
“While Septimius remained among us in the mountains, I saw with terror that Esther’s beauty attracted him. His Italian elegance was even then a dangerous charm for a mind so inexperienced and so sensitive as hers. I knew the impossibility of their union, and rejoiced when his recovery allowed of his leaving the palace. But for a long period after, Esther was evidently unhappy; her cheerfulness gave way; she became fonder of solitude, and I believe that nothing but extreme care and the change of scene which followed, preserved her from the grave.”
“Miriam! I have no comfort to offer. I am a stricken man; misfortune must be my portion. But if anything were to bereave me of that girl, I feel that my heart would break. We must delay no longer. By the first light the Roman shall quit this house—this city. He shall not stay another hour to poison the peace of my family—the only peace that I now can possess in this world.”
“Yet rashness must not disgrace what is true wisdom, my Salathiel. The Roman is here protected by the laws of courtesy. You can not send him forth without giving him over to the horrid temper of the populace. A few days may make that escape easy which would now be impossible. Besides, I may have done him injustice, and mistaken the common pleasure of seeing unexpected friends for the attempt to mislead the affections of our innocent and ardent child.”
Salathiel on His Guard
“No! By the first light he leaves this roof. The truth glares on me. I might have seen it in his looks. His language, however general, was perpetually directed to Esther by some personal allusion. His voice lost its ease when he answered a syllable of hers. After she spoke he affected abstraction—an old artifice. His manner is too well calculated to disturb the mind of woman—and most of all of womancursed with feeling and genius. Esther has already exalted this showy stranger into a wonder. I must break the spell. What is to become of her, of me, man of misery? By the first dawn the Roman takes his departure.”
The Ominous Sword Appears
In the bitterness of soul I turned from the chamber, where the lamp was still burning and the glittering table looked too bright for the gloomy spirit of the hour. The cool air that breathed through a casement led me toward it, and disinclined to speak and holding Miriam’s gentle hand, I listened to the confused murmurs of the city far below. I suddenly felt the hand in mine tremble convulsively. Miriam’s face was pale with fear; she stood with lips apart and breathless, brows raised, eyes straining upward. In utter alarm I asked the cause. She lifted the hand, which had fallen by her side, and slowly, like the staff of the soothsayer, pointed it to the heavens. The cause was there. The ominous sword had for the first time met her eye. The blaze, which even in noonday was fearfully visible, in midnight was tremendous. A blade of the deepest hue of gore stretched to the horizon, pouring from its edge perpetual showers of crimson flame, that looked like showers of fresh blood. Boundless slaughter was in the emblem. Beyond it the circle of the sky was wan; the stars sickened, and the moon, tho at the full, hung like an orb of lead. The mighty falchion, the pledge of an inevitable judgment,[49]extinguished all the beneficent splendors of heaven.
“There, there is the sign that I have seen for months in my dreams,” said Miriam in an awed voice; “that has haunted me when I laid my head upon the pillow; that has been before my mind in the day wherever I moved; that I have seen coloring every object, every moment of my life since I entered these fated walls. I have struggled to drive away the horrid image; I have wept and prayed. But it was where nothing could unfix it. It was pictured on my soul, and with it came other images, fearful, tho they brought me no terrors—melancholy sights to those who have no hope but here, yet glorious to the servants of the truth, Salathiel. I have had warnings. I must never leave the city of David.”
She knelt in the deep prayer of the soul. Her words came on me with the power of prophecy.
“King and protector of Israel!” I exclaimed, “is this to be the suffering of Thy people? On me let Thy wrath be done, but spare her who now kneels before Thee. Are the pure to be given into the hands of the merciless and Thy children to be trampled as the ashes of the unholy?”
My impatient voice caught Miriam’s ear, and she rose with a countenance beaming piety and love.
“Salathiel, we must not murmur. Even that sight of awe, that terrible emblem, has taught me the selfishness of my anxieties. What are our personal sorrows to the weight of affliction figured in that instrument of supreme justice? The wo of millions, the blood of a nation, the ruin of the glorious Law, built by the hands of the Eternal, for the glory and good of mankind, are written in words of flame before our eyes; and can I complain of the perils which may fall to my share? Henceforth, my husband and my love”—and she threw herself into my willing arms—“you shall never be disturbed with my sorrows; exercise your own powerful understanding, guard against evil by your talents and knowledge of life, as far as it can be guarded against by man, and beyond that, cease to repine or fear. In my supplication I have committed our darling child into the hands of Him who sitteth within the circle of eternity!”
Miriam Comforts Salathiel
Quivering with every finer feeling of the heart, maternal love, matron faith, and grateful adoration, she hung upon my neck, until as if a portion of her noble spirit had passed into mine, I felt a confidence and a consolation like her own.
I was spared the ungraciousness of urging the young soldier’s departure, for when I met him on the next morning his first topic was escape. He had been since daybreak examining from my turrets the accessible passages of the fortifications, and had even, by the help of a peasant, despatched a letter to his friends, requesting either a formal demand of his person from the Jews, or some private effort to extricate him.
But this glow of society was transient. In the fall of his charger he had been violently bruised. He now complained of inward suffering, and his pallid face and feeble words gave painful proof that he had much still to undergo, tho, even if he was perfectly recovered, the crowded battlements and the popular rage showed the impossibility of immediate return.
Vexed and Suspicious
Three days passed thus drearily. At home I was surrounded by sickness or vexed by suspicion—the worst sickness of the mind. Septimius lay in his chamber, struggling to laugh, talk, and read away the heavy hours, and finally, like all such strugglers, giving up the task in despair. His thoughts were in the Roman camp. He professed gratitude of the deepest nature for the service that I had done him now for the second time, if saving so unimportant a life was a service either to him or any one else. Yet he almost wished that he had been left where he was found.
At such times his voice sank, and he was evidently thinking of subjects near to his heart.
Then his soldiership would come again—a man could not finish his course better than among his gallant comrades; andwith all his anxiety to return, he felt no trivial concern as to the view which Titus might take of the whole unfortunate affair. Of justice he was secure; but to be questioned for his military conduct was in itself a degradation. The loss of Sempronius, too, the most confidential friend and counselor of the Emperor, would weigh heavily—while there was nothing but his own testimony to sustain his honor against the crowd of secret enemies that every man of military rank was certain to have.
“In short,” said he, “on my sleepless couch I have turned true penitent for the foolish curiosity which prompted me to solicit the command of an escort, which would have been by right put under the care of some mere tribune.”
I tried to cheer him by saying that his had been only the natural desire of an active mind to see so singular a scene as our city offered, or the honorable wish of a soldier to be foremost wherever there was anything to be done.
Watched by a Slave
“It was more than either,” said he; “there was actual illusion in the case. I now feel that I was practised upon. You know the strange concourse of all kinds of people that follow a camp for all kinds of purposes—plunderers, traders, and jugglers, crowding on our movements as regularly as the vultures, and with nearly the same objects. For a week past I had found myself beset by an old gibbering slave of this class. Wherever I rode, the fellow was before my eyes; he contrived to mingle with my servants, and became a sort of favorite by selling them counterfeit rings and gems at ten times their value. The wretch was clever, too, and as my tent-hours began to be disturbed by the unusual gaiety of the listeners to his lies, I ordered him to be flogged out of the lines. But twelve hours had not passed before I found him gamboling again, and was about to order the instant infliction of the discipline, when he threw himself on the ground and implored ‘a moment of my secret ear.’ Conceive who the fellow was?”
“The impostor who harangued in the square!”
“The very man. He told me that there were certain contrivances on foot to bring me into disfavor with the general, which I knew to be the fact. He gave me the names of theparties, which I felt to be sufficiently probable, and finished by saying that, having so long eaten of my bread (a week), and enjoyed my liberality (the scourge), he longed to show his gratitude by giving me an opportunity of putting my enemies to silence on the spot. This opportunity was to solicit the command of the escort required for the mission. How he gained his wisdom I know not, but I took the advice, went at once to Titus, found that an armistice was being debated in council, that there was some difficulty in the choice of an officer for the service (by no means likely to be a sinecure in point of either judgment or hazard), stepped forward, and, to the surprise of everybody, disclaimed the privileges of my rank and insisted on marching at the head of this handful, this outpost-guard, into the formidable city of Jerusalem.”
“His object, of course,” said I, “was your destruction. I now see the cause of the harangue that roused the people; he was in the pay of the conspirators against you. Yet his appearance was striking; there was a vigor about his look and language, a fierce consciousness of power somewhere, that distinguished him from his race. He came, too, and has disappeared, without my being able to discover whence or whither.”
Duped by a Juggler
“Oh, the commonest contrivance of his trade,” was the reply. “Those fellows always come and go in cloud, if they can. He was probably beside you half the day before and after. You saw how little he thought of the lance, that I sent to bring out his hidden secrets. He doubtless wore armor; otherwise there would have been one juggler the less in the world. The truth is, I have been duped, but I have made up my mind to think nothing about the dupery. The slave is certainly clever, perhaps to an extraordinary degree—a villain undoubtedly, and of the first magnitude. But he has the secret of the cabal against me, and that secret makes him at once fit to be employed, and dangerous to be provoked. The blow of the lance yesterday showed him that I am not always to be trifled with. In fact, prince, you might find it advantageous to employ him occasionally yourself. It was he who conveyed my letter to the camp this morning!”
My look probably expressed my dislike of this species of envoy.
“You may rely on my honor,” said the Roman, “not to involve you in any of the fellow’s inventions. Slippery as he is, I have a hold on him, too, that he will not venture to shake off. And now, to let you into full confidence, I expect him back this very night, when he will relieve your city of an inhabitant unworthy of remaining among so polished a people; and your house, my prince, of an inmate than whom none on earth can be more grateful for your hospitality.”
He concluded this mixture of levity, address, and frankness with a smile, and in a tone of elegance, that compelled me to take it all on the more favorable side. But against suffering the step of his strange emissary to pollute the threshold in which I lived, I expressed my plain determination.
Secret Preparations for Departure
“For that, too, I have provided,” said he. “My intercourse with the reprobate is to take place at another quarter of the city, as far as possible from this dwelling,” and he laughed, “for reasons equally of mine and yours. I have managed matters so as not to compromise any of my friends; and to make my arrangements on that point still more secure, may I express a wish that neither Constantius nor any other person of your house may be acquainted with my intention of leaving them, and I may sincerely say, leaving everything that could gratify my best feelings—this very evening.”
This was an easy and graceful avoidance of the difficulties which his longer residence threatened. I gave him the promise of secrecy, cautioning him against reposing any dangerous confidence in his emissary, of whom I had an irrepressible abhorrence, and was about to leave the chamber when he caught my hand and said in unusual emotion:
“Prince of Naphtali, I have but one word more to say. You are a man of the world and can make allowance for the giddiness of human passions. Some of them are uncontrollable, or at least I have never learned to control them, and in me perhaps they belong to inferiority of mind. But if on my departure you should hear calumnies against me——”
“Impossible, my young friend; or if I should, you may rely on my giving the calumniators a very brief answer.”
“Or if even yourself should be disposed to think severely of me, you know the circumstances under which a man of birth and fortune must be placed in our profession.”
“Fully, and am much more disposed to regret than to wonder at the consequences.”
“If you should hear that I had been assailed in an evil hour by an unexpected temptation which I had long labored to resist, assailed by it under the most powerful circumstances that ever yet tasked the human mind, circumstances to which, from the beginning of the world, wisdom has been proverbially folly, and resolution weakness; if it should have mastered my whole being, soul and body; if I were willing to give up the brightest prospects for its possession—to hazard life, hope, honors——”
The thought of Esther smote me. I started from him where he stood, with his fine head drooping like the Antinous and his figure the very emblem of passionate dejection.
“Roman, you are here as my guest, and as such I have listened to you with patience until now. But if any member of my family is concerned in what you say, I demand in the most distinct terms that the subject shall be mentioned no more. The daughters of Israel are sacred. Never shall a child of mine wed with those who now lord it over my unhappy country.”
He spread his hands and eyes in the broadest astonishment.
Septimius Misunderstood
“Prince, can it be possible that you have so totally mistaken me? My perplexities are of an entirely different nature. The chain with which I am bound is not of roses, but of iron; a chain of invisible, yet stern influences, that haunt my night, and even my day.”
His voice faltered, and he turned away with a shudder, as from a visionary tormentor.
“What? Has that man of desperate arts, if he be man, involved you, too, in his net? Dares the impostor soar so high?”
He clasped his hands.
“You saw how he defied, how he mocked me, how hespurned me when my abhorrence rose to the madness of attempting to strike him. I might as well have flung the weapon at the clouds. You saw the instinctive terror of my charger. That animal was celebrated in our whole cavalry for its bold, nay, fierce courage. Yet before the eye of that man of power and evil, it cowered like a hare and died of his glance. By him the temptation has been offered; of its nature I dare not speak; but it is dazzling, fearful, and must—I feel it—finally be fatal.”
“Be a Man—a Hero”
“Then cast it from you at once. Be a man—a hero.”
“It is hopeless—I must be the victim; I am bound irretrievably. Farewell, prince; we shall see each other no more.”
He flung himself upon the couch. I offered him assistance, advice, consolation in vain. The spirit of the soldier was extinguished. The victim of fantastic illusion lay before me. I left him to the care of the old domestics, and when I closed the door, thought that I had closed the door of the grave.
During this period the city presented the turbulent aspect that must result from the concourse of vast warlike multitudes, known only by hereditary bickerings. The clansman of Judah looked down upon every human being; and his countrymen among the rest. The Benjamite retorted it, boasted of the inheritance of Jerusalem, and looked down upon the men of the Galilees as rioters and plunderers. These, too, had their objects of scorn, and the remnants of Dan and Ephraim were held in merciless disdain as the descendants of rebels and idolaters. To deepen those ancient feuds were thrown in the mutual injuries of the factions of John and Simon. Their leaders were now but the shadow of what they had been; yet the memory of their mischiefs survived with a keenness aggravated by the public discovery of the insignificance of the instruments.
Genius in the tyrant offers the consolation that if the chain has galled us, it has been bound by a hand made for supremacy. But the last misery of the slave is to have been bound by a creature even more contemptible than himself; to have given to folly the homage due to talent; to have stooped before the base and trembled under the feeble.
The Vanity of Conquest
The obvious alarm of the enemy, who had now totally withdrawn from the plain and were occupied with raising rampart on rampart round their several camps; the triumph over the unfortunate troop; and the excitement of a crowd of pretended prophets and frantic visionaries, filled the populace with every vanity of conquest. The constant exclamation in the streets was: “Let us march to storm the camps and drive the idolater into the sea!” But the new luxuries of the city were too congenial not to act as formidable rivals to the popular ambition.No leader appeared, the boastings passed away, and the boiling temperament of the warrior had time to run into the safer channel of words and wine.
Sabat’s Wandering
Still one melancholy reminder was there. Through the wildest festivity, through the groups of drinking, dancing, bravadoing, and quarreling, Sabat the Ishmaelite moved day after day, from dawn till evening, pouring out his sentences of condemnation. Nothing could be more singular or more awful than his figure as the denouncer of ruin hurried along, like a being denuded of all objects in life but the one. The multitude in their most extravagant excesses felt undissembled fear before him. I have seen the most ferocious tumult stilled by the sound of his portentous voice; the dagger instantly sheathed; the head buried in the garment; the form often prostrate until he passed by. Where he went the song of license was dumb; the dance ceased; the cup fell from the hand; and many a lip of violence and blasphemy quivered with long-forgotten prayer.
How he sustained life none could tell. He was reduced to a shadow; his eye had the yellow glare of blindness; his once raven hair was of the whiteness of flax. He was an animated corpse. But he strode onward with a force which, if few attempted to resist, none seemed able to withstand; his gestures were rapid and nervous to an extraordinary degree, and his voice was overwhelming. It had the rush and volume of a powerful blast. Even in the clamor of the day, through the innumerable voices of the streets, it was audible from the remotest quarters of the city. I heard it through the tread and shouts of fifty thousand marching men. But in twilight and silence the eternal “Wo!—wo!—wo!” howled along the air with a sound that told of nothing human.
His unfortunate bride still followed him, never uttering a word, never looking but on him. She glided along with him in his swiftest course, as bound by a spell to wander where he wandered, an unconscious slave; her form almost a shadow; without a sound, a gesture, or a glance—her feet alone moved.
Salathiel’s Presentiment of Wo
I often attempted to render this undone pair some assistance. Sabat recognized me, and returned brief thanks, andperhaps I was the only man in Jerusalem to whom he vouchsafed either thanks or memory. But he uniformly refused aid of every kind, and reproaching himself for the moment given to human recollections, burst away and again began his denunciation of “Wo!—wo!—wo!”
The hope of treaty with the besiegers was now nearly desperate; yet I felt so deeply the ruin that must follow protracted war that I had labored with incessant anxiety to bring the people to a sense of their situation. My name was high; my decided refusal of all command gave me an influence which threw more grasping ambition into the shade; and the leading men of Jerusalem were glad to delegate their power to me, with the double object of relieving themselves from an effort to which they were unequal, and from a responsibility under which even their covetousness had begun to tremble.
But Jerusalem was not to be saved;[50]there was an opposing fatality—an irresistible, intangible power arrayed against all efforts. I felt it at my first step. If I had been treading on a volcano and heard it roar under me, I could not have been made more sensible of the hollowness and hopelessness of every effort to save the nation. In the midst of our most according council some luckless impediment was sure to start up. While we seemed on the verge of conciliating and securing the most important interests, to that verge we were suddenly forbidden all approach. Communications actually commenced with the Roman general, and which promised the most certain results, were broken off, none could tell how. There was an antagonist somewhere, but beyond our grasp; a hostility as powerful, as constant, and as little capable of being counteracted as the hostility of the plague.
After my final conversation with Septimius, I had spent the day in one of those perplexing deliberations, and was returning with a weary heart when, in an obscure street leading into the Upper City, I was roused from my reverie by the sound of one of our mountain songs. Music has been among my chief solaces through existence, and the song of Naphtali in that moment of depression keenly moved me. I stopped to listen in front of the minstrel’s tent, in which a circle of soldiersand shepherds from the Galilees were sitting over their cups. His skill deserved a higher audience. He touched his little harp with elegance to a voice that reminded me of the sportiveness and wild melody of a bird in spring. The moonlight shone through the tent, and as the boy sat under its large white folds in the fantastic dress of his art—a loose vermilion robe, belted with sparkling stones, and turban of yellow silk, that drooped upon his shoulder like a golden pinion—he resembled the Persian pictures of the Peri embosomed in the bell of the lily. The rude and dark-featured listeners round him might well have sat for the swart demons submissive to his will.
But thoughts soon returned that were not to be soothed by music, and throwing some pieces of money to the boy, I hastened on. The departure of the young Roman and the influence that it might have on my family, and peculiarly on the mind of a creature doubly endeared to me by a strange and melancholy similitude to the temper of my own excitable mind, deeply occupied me, and it was even with some presentiment of evil that I reached home.
The first sound that I heard was the lamentation of the old domestics. But I could not wait to solve their unintelligible attempts to explain the disaster. I flew to my family. Miriam was absorbed in profound sorrow; Salome was in loud affliction. Dreading everything that could be told me, yet with that sullen hardihood which long misfortune gives, I took my wife’s hands and in a voice struggling for composure desired her to tell me the worst at once.
“Esther is Gone!”
“Esther is gone!” was her answer.
She could articulate no more; the effort to speak this shook her whole frame. But Salome broke out into loud reprobation of the baseness of the wretch who had turned our hospitality into a snare, and whose life, twice saved, was employed only to bring misery on his preserver.
The blow fell upon me with the keenness of a sword.
“Was Esther, was my daughter, my innocent, darling Esther, consenting to this flight?”
“I know not,” said Miriam. “I dare not ask myself thequestion. If she can have forgotten her duty to follow the stranger; if she can have left her parents—no. It must have been through some horrid artifice. But the thought is too bitter. Raise no more such thoughts in my mind.”
She sank in silence. But Salome was not to be restrained. She asserted the total impossibility of Esther’s having thrown off her allegiance to religion and filial duty.
“She must have been,” said this generous and enthusiastic being, “either subjected to those dreadful arts in which the idolaters deal, or carried away by force. Constantius has gone already in search of her; feeble as he is, he determined to discover the robber, and tho his steps were weak and the effort may hazard his life, he would not be restrained, nor would I restrain him where I should have so much rejoiced to hazard my own.”
I rose to depart. Miriam clung to me.
“Must I lose all, Salathiel?”
Salathiel Goes to the Rescue
“I am the guilty one, wife! I should have guarded against this. I alone am to blame. I will recover Esther. Without her we all should be miserable. The Roman general is just. I will demand her of Septimius in his presence. Miriam! you shall see your child. Salome! you shall see your sister. And now, come to my heart—come both; my last hope of happiness, the remnant of all that once promised to fill my declining days with peace and prosperity. Weep no more, Miriam, Salome! I must not be unmanned at this time of trial. Go to your chambers and pray for me. Farewell!”
It was nearly midnight and the city sounds were hushed, except where the crowds, which still poured in, struggled for their quarters. The very fear of being thus disturbed kept up the disturbance of the population, and in the leading avenues the tents showed fierce watchers against this violence sitting round their tables, until wine either sent them to sleep or roused them into daggers-drawing. Subordination was now at an end; plunder and blood were to be dreaded by every man who ventured among those champions of freedom and property; and more than once this night I was compelled to show that I wore a weapon.
Yet the disorder which left the city a seat of dissolute riot was not suffered to interfere with its actual defense. That singular mixture of rabble giddiness and sacred care which distinguished my countrymen above all nations was fully displayed in those final hours, and the walls that enclosed a million of rioters and robbers were guarded with the solemn vigilance of a sanctuary.
No argument could prevail with the peasantry at the gates to let me pass. My rank, and even my public name, went for little in the scale against the possibility of my renewing the treaty with an enemy whom they now scorned, and I was doubting whether I must not lose the night by the reluctance of those rough but honest sentinels, when I was cheered by seeing one of the head men of their tribe arrive. He had been a furious partizan; honor and honesty were his declared worship, and his horror of humbler motives was fierceness itself. This was enough for me. I knew what public vehemence means. I took him aside, without ceremony put gold into his grasp, and saw the gate thrown open before me by the immaculate hand of the patriotic Jonathan.
While I had scarcely congratulated myself on having passed this formidable barrier and was still within the defenses, the trampling of horse echoed on the road. The night was clear, and there was no hope of avoiding them. A large body of Idumean horsemen came on, escorting wagons of provision. The foremost riders were half asleep, and I was in strong hope of eluding them all when one of the drivers, in the wantonness of authority, laid his whip on me. I rashly returned the blow, and the man fell off his horse. I was surrounded, charged with murder; was brought before their chieftain, and found that chieftain Onias!
Salathiel’s Old Enemy
My old enemy recognized me instantly, and with undying revenge firing every feature demanded whither I was going.
“To the Roman camp,” was the direct answer.
“The purpose?”
“To have an interview with the Roman general.”
“You come deputed by the authorities?”
“By not one of them.”
The Right of the Stronger
“I long ago knew you to be a daring fellow, but you exceed my opinion. We can not spare heroes from Jerusalem at this time; you must turn back with us.”
“By what right?”
“By the right of the stronger.”
“With what object?”
“That you may be hanged as a deserter. It will save you the trouble of going to Titus, to be hanged as a spy.”
I disdained reply, and in the midst of a circle of barbarians exulting over their capture, as if they had taken the chief enemy of the state, was marched back to the walls.
There I was not the only person disturbed by the adventure. The first glimpse of me caught by Jonathan exhibited everything that could be ludicrous in the shape of consternation. To the inquiries how I was suffered to pass he answered by an appeal to his “honor,” which he again valued, in my presence too, “as the most invaluable possession of the citizen soldier.” He said the words without a blush, and I even listened to them without a smile. He probably trembled a little for his bribe; but he soon discovered by my look that I considered the money as too far gone to be worth pursuing.
Yet Onias, who seemed to know him as well as I, fixed on him a scrutinizing aspect, of all others the most hateful to a delicate conscience, and his only resource was to heap opprobrium upon me.
“How I had contrived to escape the guard,” said Jonathan, “was totally inconceivable, unless it was by”—I gave him an assuring glance—“by imposing on the credulity of some of the ignorant peasants; possibly even by direct corruption. But to put the matter out of future possibility he would proceed to examine the prisoner’s person.”
He proceeded accordingly, and from my sash took my purse, as a public precaution. He was a vigilant guardian of the state, for the purse was never restored.
Onias looked at him during his harangue with a countenance between contempt and ridicule.
“I must go forward now,” said he; “but, captain, see to your prisoner. He must answer before the council to-morrow,and as you have so worthily disabled him from operations with the guard, your own head is answerable for his safe-keeping.”
Salathiel Confined in a Tower
My enemy, to make all sure, himself saw me lodged within the tower over the gate, comforted his soul by a parting promise that my time was come, and rode off with his Idumeans—to the boundless satisfaction of the scrupulous and much-alarmed Jonathan.
The tower was massive, and there was no probability that anything less than a Roman battering-ram would ever lay open its solid sides. The captain had recovered his virtue at the instant of my losing my purse, and I now could no more dream of sapping his integrity than of sapping the huge blocks of the tower. Whether I was to be prisoner for the night, or for the siege, or to glut the ax by morning, were questions which lay in the bosom of as implacable a villain as long-delayed revenge ever made malignant; but what was to become of my child, of my family, of my share in the great cause, for which alone life was of value?
The chamber to which I was consigned was at the top of the tower and overlooked a vast extent of country. Before me were the Roman camps, seen clearly in the moonlight, and wrapt in silence, except when the solitary trumpet sounded the watch, or the heavy tread of a troop going its rounds was heard. The city sounds were but the murmurs of the sinking tide of the multitude. The spring was in her glory. The air came fresh and sweet from the fields. All was tranquillity; yet what a mass of destructive power was lying motionless under that tranquillity! Fire, sword, and man were before me—elements of evil that a touch could rouse into tempest, not to be allayed but by torrents of blood and the ruin of empires.
“‘Esther is gone!’ was her answer.”[see page 420.Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.
“‘Esther is gone!’ was her answer.”
[see page 420.
Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.
A Basket of Wine
While my mind was wandering away in thoughts of the madness of ambition in so brief a being as man, I heard a loud clamor of voices in the chambers below. The rustic guards had been enjoying themselves, but their wine was already out, and they set their faces boldly against the discipline which pretended to limit the wine of patriots so true and thirsty. The clamor arose from the discovery that the cellars of the tower had been examined by a previous guard, who provided for the temperance of their successors by taking the whole temptation to themselves. High words followed between the abettors of discipline and the partizans of the vintage, and if my door were but unbarred I might have expeditiously relieved the captain of his charge. But its bolts were enormous, and I tried them in vain. As I was giving up the effort, a light footstep ascended the stairs; a key turned in the ponderous wards, and the minstrel of the tent stood before me.
“If you wish to escape from certain death,” he whispered, “do as I bid you.”
A Minstrel’s Aid
He looked from the casement, sang a few notes, and on being answered from without pulled up a rope, which we hauled in together. The task was of some difficulty, but at length a weighty basket appeared, loaded with wine. He took a portion of the contraband freight in his hands and without a word disappeared. I heard his welcome proclaimed below with loud applause. Half the guard were instantly on the stairs to assist him down with the remainder, but against this he firmly protested, and threatened in case of a single attempt to interfere with his operations that he would awake the captain and publicly give back this incomparable privatestore to the legitimate hand. The threat was effective; the unlading of the basket was left to his own dexterity, and at length but one solitary flask lay before us.
“You deserve some payment for your trouble,” said he, with the careless and jovial air of his brethren. “Here’s to your night’s enterprise, whatever it be,” pouring out a few drops and tasting them, while he gave a large draft to my feverish lips. “And now, good-night, my prince, unless you love the tower too much to take leave of this gallant guard by a window.”
“But, boy, if you should be detected in assisting my escape?”
“I have no fear of that,” said he. “I have been detected in all sorts of frolics in my time, and yet here I am. The truth is, my prince, I have traveled in your country and have an old honor for your name. No later than to-day you gave me the handsomest present I have got since I came within the walls. I know the noble captain of the guard to be a thorough knave, and the mighty Onias to want nothing for wickedness but the opportunity. In short, the thought occurred to me, on seeing you, to help the honest revelers below to a little more wine than was good for their understandings, the contraband being a commodity in which, between ourselves, I deal; and further to break the laws by assisting you to leave captain, sentinels, and all behind.”
I asked what was to be done.
“If you value your life, be the substitute for the empty flasks and make your way through the air like a bird. I shall be safe enough. You need have no fears for me.”
I coiled the rope round a beam, forced myself through the narrow casement, and launched out into air at a height of a hundred feet. If I felt any distrust, it was brief. I was rapidly lowered, passing the various casements, in which I saw the successive watches of the guard drinking, sleeping, singing, and discussing public affairs with village rationality. Luckily no eye turned upon the fugitive, and the ground was touched at last.
In another moment the minstrel came, rather flying thansliding, down the rope. I said something in acknowledgment of this service, but he laid his finger on his lip, and pointing to a rampart, where a moving torch showed me that we were still within observation, led on through paths beset with thickets that no eye could penetrate, but, as he laughingly said, “that of a supplier of garrisons with contraband.” But their intricacy offered no obstruction to this stripling; and after amusing himself with my perplexities he led me to the verge of the plain.
“I have detained you,” said he, “in these brambles for the double purpose of avoiding the lookout from the battlements and of giving the moon time to hide her blushing beauties.”
She lay reddening with the mists on the horizon.
“She has been often called our mother, and as her children the minstrels are allowed the privilege of keeping later hours and being madder than the mob of mankind. But like other children we are sometimes engaged in matters which would dispense with the maternal eye, and to-night I wished that she was many a fathom below the ocean. Mother,” said he, throwing himself into an attitude, “take a child’s blessing and begone.”
The words were spoken to a touch on his little harp—rambling, but singularly sweet.
“Do you know,” said he with a sigh, as he turned and saw me gazing in admiration of his skill, “I am weary to death of my profession.”
“Then why not leave it? You are fit for better things. Your skill is of the very nature that makes its way in the world.”