“Such forever be the fate of wars against the natural freedom of the brave,” said I; “but the Cicilians had the advantage of an almost impenetrable country. Three-fourths of Judea is already in the enemy’s possession.”
“No country in which man can exist can be impenetrable to an invading army,” was the reply. “Natural defenses are trifling before the vigor and dexterity of man. The true barrier is in the hearts of the defenders. We were masters of the whole range. We could not find a thousand men assembled on any one point. Yet we were not the actual possessors of a mile of ground beyond the square of our camp. We never saw a day without an attack, nor ever lay down at night without the certainty of some fierce attempt at a surprise. It was this perpetual anxiety that broke the spirits of the troops. All was in hostility to them. They felt that there was not a secure spot within the horizon. Every man whom they saw, they knew to be one who either had drawn Roman blood or who longed in his inmost soul to draw it. They dared not pass by a single rock without a search for a lurking enemy. Even a felled tree might conceal some daring savage, who was content to die on the Roman spears, after having flung his unerring lance among the ranks or shot an arrow that went through the thickest corslet. I have seen the boldest of the legionaries sink on the ground in absolute exhaustion of heart with this hopeless and wearying warfare. I have seen men with muscles strong as iron weep like children through mere depression. With the harsher spirits, all was execration and bitterness, even to the verge of mutiny. With the more generous all was regret at the waste of honor, mingled with involuntary admiration of the barbarians who thus defied the haughty courage and boasted discipline of the conquerors of mankind. The secret spring of their resistance was its universality. Every man was embarked in the common cause. There was no room for evasion under cover of a party disposed to peace; there was no Roman interest among the people, in which timidity or selfishness could take refuge. The national cause had not a lukewarm friend; the invaders had not a dubious enemy. The line was drawn with the sword, and the cause of national independence triumphed, as it ought to triumph.”
“But we are a people split into as many varieties of opinion as there are provinces or even villages in Judea,” observed Eleazar; “the Jew loves to follow the opinions of the head of his family, the chief man of his tribe, or even of the priest, who has long exercised an influence over his district. We have not the slavishness of the Asiatic, but we still want the personal choice of the European. We must secure the leaders, if we would secure the people.”
“Men,” said Constantius, “are intrinsically the same in every climate under heaven. They will all hate hazard, where nothing but hazard is to be gained. They will all linger for ages in slavery, where the taskmaster has the policy to avoid sudden violence; but they will all encounter the severest trials, where in the hour of injury they find a leader prepared to guide them to honor.”
“And to that extent they shall have trial of me!” I exclaimed. “Before another Sabbath I shall make the experiment of my fitness to be the leader of my countrymen. At the head of my own tribe I will march to the Holy City, seize the garrison, and from Herod’s palace, from the very chair of the Procurator, will I at once silence the voice of faction and lift the banner to the tribes of Israel.”
“Nobly conceived,” said Constantius, his countenance glowing with animation; “blow upon blow is the true tactic of an insurrectionary war. We must strike at once, suddenly, and boldly. The sword of him who would triumph in a revolt must not merely sound on the enemy’s helmet, but cut through it.”
“Yet to a march on Jerusalem,” said Eleazar, “the objections are palpable. The city would be out of all hope of a surprise, difficult to capture, and beyond all chance to keep.”
“Ever tardy, thwarting, and contradictory!” I exclaimed; “if the Roman scepter lay under my heel, I should find Eleazar forbidding me to crush it. My mind is fixed; I will hear no more.”
I started from my seat and paced the chamber. Eleazar approached me.
“My brother,” said he, holding out his hand with a forgiving smile, “we must not differ. I honor your heart, Salathiel; I know your talents; there is not a man in Judea whom I should be prouder to see at the head of its councils. I agree with you in your views, and now I offer you myself and every man whom I can influence to follow you to the last extremity. The only question is, where the blow is to fall.”
Constantius had been gazing on the chart of Judea, which lay between us on the table.
“If it be our object,” said he, “to combine injury to the Romans with actual advantage to ourselves, to make a trial where failure can not be ruinous and where success may be of measureless value, here is the spot.” He pointed to Masada.[31]
The fortress of Masada was built by Herod the Great as his principal magazine of arms. A fierce and successful soldier, one of his luxuries was the variety and costliness of his weapons, and the royal armory of Masada was renowned throughout Asia. Pride in the possession of such a trophy, probably aided by some reverence for the memory of the friend of Cæsar and Antony, whom the legions still almost worshiped as tutelar genii, originally saved it from the usual Roman spoliation. But no native foot was permitted to enter the armory, and mysterious stories of the sights and sounds of those splendid halls filled the ears of the people. Masada was held to be the talisman of the Roman power over Judea by more than the people; the belief had made its way among the legions, and no capture could be a bolder omen of the war.
I still preferred the more direct blow on Jerusalem, and declaimed on the vital importance in all wars, of seizing on the capital. But I was controlled. Eleazar’s grave wisdom and the science of Constantius deprived me of argument, and the attack on Masada was finally planned before we left the chamber. Nothing could be more primitive than our plan for the siege of the most scientific fortification in Judea, crowded with men and furnished with every implement and machine of war that Roman experience could supply. Our simple preparations were a few ropes for ladders, a few hatchets for cutting down gates and palisadoes, and a few faggots for setting on fire what we could. Five hundred of our tribe, who had never thrown a lance but in hunting, formed our expedition, and at the head of those, Constantius, who claimed the exploit by the right of discovery, was to march at dusk, conceal himself in the forests during the day, and on the evening of his arrival within reach of the fortress attempt it by surprise. Eleazar was, in the mean time, to rouse his retainers, and I was to await at their head the result of the enterprise, and if successful, unfurl the standard of Naphtali and advance on Jerusalem.
The remainder of this memorable day lingered on with a tardiness beyond description. The criminal who counts the watches of the night before his execution has but a faint image of that hot and yet pining anxiety, that loathing of all things unconnected with the one mighty event, that mixture of hopelessness and hope, that morbid nervousness of every fiber in his frame, which make up the suspense of the conspirator in even the noblest cause.
When the hour of banquet came, I sat down in the midst of magnificence, as was the custom of my rank. The table was filled with guests; all around me was gaiety and pomp, high-born men, handsome women, richly attired attendants; plate, the work of Tyrian and Greek artists, in its massive beauty; walls covered with tissues; music filling the air cooled by fountains of perfumed waters. I felt as little of them as if I were in the wilderness. The richest wines, the most delicate fruits, palled on my taste. If I had one wish, it was that for the next forty-eight hours oblivion might amount to insensibility! At my wife and daughters I ventured but one glance. I thought that I had never before seen them look so fitted to adorn their rank, to be the models of grace, loveliness, and honor, to society, and the thought smote my heart—how soon may all this be changed!
My eyes sought Constantius; he had just returned from his preparations, and came in glowing with the enthusiasm of the soldier. He sat down beside Salome, and his cheek gradually turned to the hue of death. He sat like myself, absorbed in frequent reverie, and to the playful solicitations of Salome that he would indulge in the table after his fatigue, he gave forced smiles and broken answers. The future was plainly busy with us both; with all that the heart of man could love beside him, he felt the pang of contrast, and when on accidentally lifting his eyes, they met mine, the single conscious look interchanged told the perturbation that preyed on both in the heart’s core.
I soon rose, and under pretense of having letters to despatch to our friends in Rome, retired to my chamber. There lay the chart still on the table, the route to Masada marked by pencil lines. With what breathlessness I now traced every point and bearing of it! There, within a space over which I could stretch my arm, was my world. In that little boundary was I to struggle against the supremacy that covered the earth! Those fairy hills, those scarcely visible rivers, those remote cities, dots of human habitation, were to be henceforth the places of siege and battle, memorable for the destruction of human life, engrossing every energy of myself and my countrymen, and big with the fates of generations on generations.
It was dusk, and I was still devouring with my eyes this chart of prophecy when Constantius entered.
“I have come,” said he gravely, “to bid you farewell for the night. In two days I hope we shall all meet again.”
“No, my brave son,” I interrupted, “we do not leave each other to-night.”
He looked surprised. “I must be gone this instant. Eleazar has done his part with the activity of his honest and manly mind. Two miles off, in the valley under the date-grove, I have left five hundred of the finest fellows that ever sat a charger. In half an hour Sirius rises; then we go, and let the governor of Masada look to it! Farewell, and wish me good fortune.”
“May every angel that protects the righteous cause hover above your head!” I exclaimed; “but no farewell, for we go together.”
“Do you doubt my conduct of the enterprise?” asked he strongly. “’Tis true I have been in the Roman service, but that service I hated from the bottom of my soul. I was a Greek and bound to Rome no longer than she could hold me in her chain. If I could have found men to follow me, I should have done in Cyprus what I now do in Judea. The countryman of Leonidas, Cimon, and Timeleon was not born to hug his slavery. I am now a son of Judea; to her my affections have been transplanted, and to her, if she does not reject me, shall my means and my life be given.”
He relaxed the belt from his waist and dropped it with his simitar on the ground. I lifted it and placed it again in his hand.
“No, Constantius,” I replied, “I honor your zeal, and would confide in you if the world hung upon the balance. But I can not bear the thought of lingering here while you are in the field. My mind, within these few hours, has been on the rack. I must take the chances with you.”
“It is utterly impossible,” was his firm answer; “your absence would excite instant suspicion. The Roman spies are everywhere. The natural result follows, that our march would be intercepted, and I am not sure but that even now we may be too late. That inconceivable sagacity by which the Romans seem to be masters of every man’s secret has been already at work; troops were seen on the route to Masada this very day. Let it be known that the prince of Naphtali has left his palace, and the dozen squadrons of Thracian horse which I saw within those four days at Tiberias will be riding through your domains before the next sunset.”
This reflection checked me. “Well then,” said I, “go, and the protection of Him whose pillar of cloud led His people through the sea and through the desert be your light in the hour of peril!”
I pressed his hand; he turned to depart, but came back, and after a slight hesitation said: “If Salome had once offended her noble father by her flight, the offense was mine. Forgive her, for her heart is still the heart of your child. She loves you. If I fall, let the memory of our disobedience lie in my grave!”
His voice stopped, and mine could not break the silence.
“Let what will come,” resumed he with an effort, “tell Salome that the last word on my lips was her name.”
He left the chamber, and I felt as if a portion of my being had gone forth from me.
This day was one of the many festivals of our country, and my halls echoed with sounds of enjoyment. The immense gardens glittered with illumination in all the graceful devices of which our people were such masters, and when I looked out for the path of Constantius, I was absolutely pained by the sight of so much fantastic pleasure while my hero was pursuing his way through darkness and danger.
At length the festival was over. The lights twinkled fainter among the arbors, the sounds of glad voices sank, and I saw from my casement the evidences of departure in the trains of torches that moved up the surrounding hills. The sight of a starlit sky has always been to me among the softest and surest healers of the heart, and I gazed upon that mighty scene which throws all human cares into such littleness, until my composure returned.
The last of the guests had left the palace before I ventured to descend. The vases of perfumes still breathed in the hall of the banquet; the alabaster lamps were still burning; but excepting the attendants who waited on my steps at a distance, and whose fixed figures might have been taken for statues, there was not a living being near me of the laughing and joyous crowd that had so lately glittered, danced, and smiled within those sumptuous walls. Yet what was this but a picture of the common rotation of life? Or by a yet more immediate moral, what was it but a picture of the desertion that might be coming upon me and mine? I sat down to extinguish my sullen philosophy in wine. But no draft that ever passed the lip could extinguish the fever that brooded on my spirit. I dreaded that the presence of my family might force out my secret, and lingered with my eyes gazing, without sight, on the costly covering of the board.
A sound of music from an inner hall to which Miriam and her daughters had retired, aroused me. I stood at the door, gazing on the group within. The music was a hymn with which they closed the customary devotions of the day. But there was something in its sound to me that I had never felt before. At the moment when those sweet voices were pouring out the gratitude of hearts as innocent and glowing as the hearts of angels, a scene of horror might be acting. The husband of Salome might be struggling with the Roman sword; nay, he might be lying a corpse under the feet of the cavalry, that before morn might bring the news of his destruction in the flames that might startle us from our sleep, and the swords that might pierce our bosoms.
And what beings were those thus appointed for the sacrifice? The lapse of even a few years had perfected the natural beauty of my daughters. Salome’s sparkling eye was more brilliant; her graceful form was molded into more easy elegance, and her laughing lip was wreathed with a more playful smile. Never did I see a creature of deeper witchery. My Esther, my noble and dear Esther, who was perhaps the dearer to me from her inheriting a tinge of my melancholy, yet a melancholy exalted by genius into a charm, was this night the leader of the song of holiness. Her large uplifted eye glowed with the brightness of one of the stars on which it was fixed. Her hands fell on the harp in almost the attitude of prayer, and the expression of her lofty and intellectual countenance, crimsoned with the theme, told of a communion with thoughts and beings above mortality. The hymn was done, the voices had ceased, yet the inspiration still burned in her soul; her hands still shook from the chords’ harmonies, sweet, but of the wildest and boldest brilliancy; bursts and flights of sound, like the rushing of the distant waterfall at night, or the strange, solemn echoes of the forest in the first swell of the storm.
Miriam and Salome sat beholding her in silent admiration and love. The magnificent dress of the Jewish female could not heighten the power of such beauty; but it filled up the picture. The jeweled tiaras, the embroidered shawls, the high-wrought and massive armlets, the silken robes and sashes fringed with pearl and diamond, the profusion of dazzling ornament that form the Oriental costume to this day, were the true habits of the beings that then sat, unconscious of the delighted yet anxious eye that drank in the joy of their presence. I saw before me the pomp of princedoms, investing forms worthy of thrones.
My entrance broke off the harper’s spell, and I found it a hard task to answer the touching congratulations that flowed upon me. But the hour waned, and I was again left alone for the few minutes which it was my custom to give to meditation before I retired to rest. I threw open the door that led into a garden thick with the Persian rose and filling the air with cool fragrance. At my first glance upward, I saw Sirius—he was on the verge of the horizon.
The thoughts of the day again gathered over my soul. I idly combined the fate of Constantius with the decline of the star that he had taken for his signal. My senses lost their truth, or contributed to deceive me. I fancied that I heard sounds of conflict; the echo of horses’ feet rang in my ears. A meteor that slowly sailed across the sky struck me as a supernatural summons. My brain, fearfully excitable since my great misfortune, at length kindled up such strong realities that I found myself on the point of betraying the burden of my spirit by some palpable disclosure.
Twice had I reached the door of Miriam’s chamber to tell her my whole perplexity. But I heard the voice of her attendants within and again shrank from the tale. I ranged the long galleries perplexed with capricious and strange torments of the imagination.
“If he should fall,” said I, “how shall I atone for the cruelty of sending him upon a service of such hopeless hazard—a few peasants with naked breasts against Roman battlements? What soldier would not ridicule my folly in hoping success; what man would not charge me with scorn of the life of my kindred? The blood of my tribe will be upon my head forever. There sinks the prince of Naphtali! In the grave of my gallant son and his companions is buried my dream of martial honor; the sword that strikes him cuts to the ground my last ambition of delivering my country.”
The advice of Constantius returned to my mind, but like the meeting of two tides, it was only to increase the tumult within. I felt the floor shake under my hurried tread. I smote my forehead—it was covered with drops of agony. The voices within my wife’s chamber had ceased. But was I to rouse her from her sleep, perhaps the last quiet sleep that she was ever to take, only to hear intelligence that must make her miserable?
I leaned my throbbing forehead upon one of the marble tables, as if to imbibe coolness from the stone. I felt a light hand upon mine. Miriam stood beside me.
“Salathiel!” pronounced she in an unshaken voice, “there is something painful on your mind. Whether it be only a duty on your part to disclose it to me, I shall not say; but if you think me fit to share your happier hours, must I have the humiliation of feeling that I am to be excluded from your confidence in the day when those hours may be darkened?”
I was silent, for to speak was beyond my strength, but I pressed her delicate fingers to my bosom.
“Misfortune, my dear husband,” resumed she, “is trivial but when it reaches the mind. Oh, rather let me encounter it in the bitterest privations of poverty and exile; rather let me be a nameless outcast to the latest year I have to live, than feel the bitterness of being forgotten by the heart to which, come life or death, mine is bound forever and ever.”
I glanced up at her. Tears dropped on her cheeks, but her voice was firm.
“I have observed you,” said she, “in deep agitation during the day, but I forbore to press you for the cause. I have listened now, till long past midnight, to the sound of your feet, to the sound of groans and pangs wrung from your bosom; nay, to exclamations and broken sentences which have let me most involuntarily into the knowledge that this disturbance arises from the state of our country. I know your noble nature, and I say to you, in this solemn and sacred hour of danger, follow the guidance of that noble nature.”
I cast my arms about her neck and imprinted upon her lips a kiss as true as ever came from human love. She had taken a weight from my soul. I detailed the whole design to her. She listened with many a change from red to pale, and many a tremor of the white hand that lay in mine. When I ceased, the woman in her broke forth in tears and sighs.
“Yet,” said she, “you must go to the field. Dismiss the thought that for the selfish desire of looking even upon you in safety here I should hazard the dearer honor of my lord. It is right that Judea should make the attempt to shake off her tyranny. The people can never be deceived in their own cause. Kings and courts may be deluded into the choice of incapacity, but the man whom a people will follow from their firesides must bear the stamp of a leader.”
“Admirable being!” I exclaimed, “worthy to be honored while Israel has a name! Then I have your consent to follow Constantius. By speed I may reach him before he can have arrived at the object of the enterprise. Farewell, my best-beloved—farewell!”
She fell into my arms in a passion of tears, but at length recovered and said:
“This is weakness, the mere weakness of surprise. Yes; go, prince of Naphtali. No man must take the glory from you. Constantius is a hero, but you must be a king, and more than a king; not the struggler for the glories of royalty, but for the glories of the rescuer of the people of God. The first blow of the war must not be given by another, dear as he is. The first triumph, the whole triumph, must be my lord’s.”
She knelt down and poured out her soul to Heaven in eloquent supplication for my safety. I listened in speechless homage.
“Now go,” sighed she, “and remember in the day of battle who will then be in prayer for you. Court no unnecessary peril, for if you perish, which of us would desire to live?”
She again sank upon her knees, and I in reverent silence descended from the gallery.
My preparations were quickly made. I divested myself of my robes, led out my favorite barb, flung a haik over my shoulders, and by the help of my Arab turban might have passed for a plunderer in any corner of Syria. This was done unseen by any eye, for the crowd of attendants that thronged the palace in the day were now stretched through the courts, or on the terraces, fast asleep, under the double influence of a day of feasting and a night of tepid summer air. I rode without stopping until the sun began to throw up his yellow rays through the vapors of the Lake of Tiberias. Then to ascertain alike the progress of Constantius and to avoid the chances of meeting with some of those Roman squadrons which were continually moving between the fortresses, I struck off the road into a forest, tied my barb to a tree, and set forth to reconnoiter the scene.
Traveling on foot was the common mode in a country which, like Judea, was but little fitted for the breed of horses, and I found no want of companions. Pedlers, peasants, disbanded soldiers, and probably thieves diversified my knowledge of mankind within a few miles. I escaped under the sneer of the soldier and the compassion of the peasant. The first glance at my wardrobe satisfied the robber that I was not worth the exercise of his profession, or perhaps that I was a brother of the trade. I here found none of the repulsiveness that makes the intercourse of higher life so unproductive. Confidence was on every tongue, and I discovered, even in the sandy ways of Palestine, that to be a judicious listener is one of the first talents for popularity all over the world. But of my peculiar objects I could learn nothing, though every man whom I met had some story of the Romans. I ascertained, to my surprise, that the intelligence which Septimius brought from the imperial cabinet was known to the multitude. Every voice of the populace was full of tales, probably reckoned among the profoundest secrets of the state. I have made the same observation in later eras, and found, even in the most formal mysteries of the most frowning governments, the rumor of the streets outruns the cabinets. So it must be while diplomatists have tongues and while women and domestics have curiosity.
But if I were to rely on the accuracy of those willing politicians, the cause of independence was without hope. Human nature loves to make itself important, and the narrator of the marvelous is always great, according to the distention of his news. Those who had seen a cohort, invariably magnified it into a legion; a troop of cavalry covered half a province; and the cohorts marching from Asia Minor and Egypt for our garrisons, were reckoned by the very largest enumeration within the teller’s capacity.
As I was sitting by a rivulet, moistening some of the common bread of the country which I had brought to aid my disguise, I entered into conversation with one of those unhoused exiles of society whom at the first glance we discern to be nature’s commoners, indebted to no man for food, raiment, or habitation, the native dweller on the road. He had some of the habitual jest of those who have no care, and congratulated me on the size of my table, the meadow, and the unadulterated purity of my potation, the brook. He informed me that he came direct from the Nile, where he had seen the son of Vespasian at the head of a hundred thousand men. A Syrian soldier, returning to Damascus, who joined our meal, felt indignant at the discredit thus thrown on a general under whom he had received three pike-wounds and leave to beg his way home. He swore by Ashtoreth that the force under Titus was at least twice the number.
A third wanderer, a Roman veteran, of whom the remainder was covered over with glorious patches, arrived just in time to relieve his general from the disgrace of so limited a command, and another hundred thousand was instantly put under his orders; sanctioned by asseverations in the name of Jupiter Capitolinus, and as many others of the calendar as the patriot could pronounce. This rapid recruiting threw the former authorities into the background, and the old legionary was, for the rest of the meal, the undisputed leader of the conversation. They had evidently heard some rumor of our preparations.
“To suppose,” said the veteran, “that those circumcized dogs can stand against a regular-bred Roman general is sacrilege. Half his army, or a tenth of his army, would walk through the land, north and south, east and west, as easily as I could walk through this brook.”
“No doubt of it,” said the Syrian, “if they had some of our cavalry for flanking and foraging.”
“Aye, for anything but fighting, comrade,” said the Roman with a laugh.
“No; you leave out another capital quality,” observed the beggar, “for none can deny that whoever may be first in the advance, the Syrians will be first in the retreat. There are two maneuvers to make a complete soldier—how to get into the battle, and how to get out of it. Now, the Syrians manage the latter in the most undoubted perfection.”
“Silence, villain,” exclaimed the Syrian, “or you have robbed your last hen-roost in this world.”
“He says nothing but the truth for all that,” interrupted the veteran. “But neither of us taxed your cavalry with cowardice. No; it was pure virtue. They had too much modesty to take the way into the field before other troops, and too much humanity not to teach them how to sleep without broken bones.”
The beggar, delighted at the prospect of a quarrel, gave the assent that more embroiled the fray.
“Mark Antony did not say so,” murmured the indignant Syrian.
“Mark Antony!” cried the Roman, starting upon his single leg, “glory to his name! But what could a fellow like you know about Mark Antony?”
“I only served with him,” dryly answered the Syrian.
“Then here’s my hand for you,” exclaimed the brave old man, “we are comrades. I would love even a dog that had seen the face of Mark Antony. He was the first man that I ever carried buckler under. Aye, there was a soldier for you; such men are not made in this puling age. He could fight from morn till night, and carouse from night till morn, and never lose his seat on his charger in the field the day after. I have seen him run half naked through the snows in Armenia, and walk in armor in the hottest day of Egypt. He loved the soldier, and the soldier loved him. So, comrade, here’s to the health of Mark Antony. Ah, we shall never see such men again.”
He drew out a flask of ration wine, closely akin to vinegar, of which he hospitably gave us each a cup, and after pouring a libation to his hero’s memory, whom he evidently placed among his gods, swallowed the draft, in which we devoutly followed his example.
“Yet,” said the beggar, “if Antony was a great man, he has left little men enough behind him. There’s, for instance, the present gay procurator—six months in the gout, the other six months drunk, or if sober only thinking where he can rob next. This will bring the government into trouble before long, or I’m much mistaken. For my part, I pledge myself if he should take any part of my property——”
“Why, if he did,” said the Syrian, “I give him credit for magic. He could find a crop of wheat in the sand or coin money out of the air. Where does your estate lie?”
“Comrade,” said the veteran, laughing, “recollect; if the saying be true that people are least to be judged of by the outside, the rags of our jovial friend must hide many a shekel; and as to where his estate lies, he has a wide estate who has the world for his portion, and money enough who thinks all his own that he can lay his fingers on.”
The laugh was now loud against the beggar. He, however, bore all, like one accustomed to the buffets of fortune, and, joining in it, said:
“Whatever may be my talents in that way, there is no great chance of showing them in this company; but if you should be present at the sack of Masada, and I should meet you on your way back——”
“Masada!” exclaimed I instinctively.
“Yes, I left the town three days ago. On that very morning an order arrived to prepare for the coming of the great and good Florus, who in his wisdom, feeling the want of gold, has determined to fill up the hollows of the military chest and his own purse by stripping the armory of everything that can sell for money. My intelligence is from the best authority. The governor’s principal bath-slave told it to one of the damsels of the steward’s department, with whom the Ethiopian is mortally in love, and the damsel, in a moment of confidence, told it to me. In fact, to let you into my secret, I am now looking out for Florus, in whose train I intend to make my way back into this gold-mine.”
“The villain!” cried the veteran; “disturb the arms of the dead! Why, they say that it has the very corselet and buckler that Mark Antony wore when he marched against the Idumeans.”
“I fear more the disturbance of the arms of the living,” said the Syrian; “the Jews will take it for granted that the Romans are giving up the business in despair, and if I’m a true man, there will be blood before I get home.”
“No fear of that, fellow soldier,” said the veteran gaily; “you have kept your two legs, and when they have so long carried you out of harm’s way, it would be the worst treatment possible to leave you in it at last. But there is something in what you say. I had a dream last night. I thought that I saw the country in a blaze, and when I started from my sleep, my ears were filled with a sound like the trampling of ten thousand cavalry.”
I drew my breath quickly, and to conceal my emotion, gathered up the fragments of our meal. On completing my work, I found the beggar’s eye fixed on me,—he smiled.
“I too had a dream last night,” said he, “and of much the same kind. I thought that I saw a cloud of cavalry, riding as fast as horse could lay hoof to ground; I never saw a more dashing set since my first campaign upon the highways of this wicked world. I’ll be sworn that whatever their errand may be, such riders will not come back without it. Their horses’ heads were turned toward Masada, and I am now between two minds, whether I may not mention my dream to the procurator himself.”
I found his keen eye turned on me again.
“Absurd!” said I; “he would recommend you only to his lictor.”
“I rather think he would recommend me to his treasurer, for I never had a dream that seemed so like a fact. I should not be surprised to find that I had been sleeping with my eyes open.”
His look convinced me that I was known! I touched his hand, while the soldiers were busy packing up their cups, and showed him gold. He smiled carelessly. I laid my hand on my poniard; he but smiled again.
“The sun is burning out,” said he, “and I can stand talking here no longer. Farewell, brave soldiers, and safe home to you! Farewell, Arab, and safe home to those that you are looking after!”
He stalked away, and as he passed me, said in a low voice, “Glory to Naphtali!”
After exchanging good wishes with the old men, I followed him; he led the way toward the wood at a pace which kept me at a distance. When I reached the shade, he stopped, and prostrated himself before me.
“Will my lord,” said he, “forgive the presumption of his servant? This day, when I first met you, your disguise deceived me. I bear intelligence from your friends.”
I caught the fragment of papyrus from him, and read:
“All’s well. We have hitherto met with nothing to oppose us. To-morrow night we shall be on the ground. If no addition be made to the force within, the surprise will be complete. Our cause itself is victory. Health to all we love!”
“Your mission is now done,” said I; “go on to Naphtali, and you shall be rewarded as your activity has deserved.”
“No,” replied he, with the easy air of a licensed humorist; “I have but two things to think of in this world—my time and my money; of one of them, I have infinitely more than I well know how to spend, and of the other infinitely less. I expected to have killed a few days in going up to Naphtali. But that hope has been cut off by my finding you half-way. I will now try Florus, and get rid of a day or two with that most worthy of men.”
“That I forbid,” interrupted I.
“Not if you will trust one whom your noble son has trusted. I am not altogether without some dislike to the Romans myself, nor something between contempt and hatred for Gessius Florus.” His countenance darkened at the name. “I tell you,” pronounced he bitterly, “that fellow’s pampered carcass this day contains as black a mass of villainy as stains the earth. I have an old account to settle with him.”
His voice quivered. “I was once no rambler, no outcast of the land. I lived on the side of Hermon, lovely Hermon! I was affianced to a maiden of my kindred, as sweet a flower as ever blushed with love and joy. Our bridal day was fixed. I went to Cæsarea-Philippi to purchase some marriage presents. When I returned, I found nothing but women weeping, and men furious with impotent rage. My bride was gone. A Roman troop had surrounded her father’s house in the night and torn her away. Wild, distracted, nay, I believe raving mad, I searched the land. I kept life in me only that I might recover or revenge her. I abandoned property, friends, all! At length I made the discovery.”
To hide his perturbation, he turned away. “Powers of justice and vengeance!” he murmured in a shuddering tone, “are there no thunders for such things? She had been seen by that hoary profligate. She was carried off by him. She spurned his insults. He ordered her to be chained, to be starved, to be lashed!”
Tears sprang to his eyes. “She still spurned him. She implored to die. She called upon my name in her misery. Wretch that I was, what could I, a worm, do under the heel of the tyrant? But I saw her at last; I made my way into the dungeon. There she sat, pale as the stone to which she was chained; a silent, sightless, bloodless, mindless skeleton. I called to her; she knew nothing. I pressed my lips to hers; she never felt them. I bathed her cold hands in my tears—I fell at her feet—I prayed to her but to pronounce one word, to give some sign of remembrance, to look on me. She sat like a statue; her reason was gone, gone forever!”
He flung himself upon the ground, and writhed and groaned before me. To turn him from a subject of such sorrow, I asked what he meant to do by his intercourse with Florus.
“To do?—not to stab him in his bed; not to poison him in his banquet; not to smite him with that speedy death which would be mercy—no, but to force him into ruin step by step; to gather shame, remorse, and anguish round him, cloud on cloud; to mix evil in his cup with such exquisite slowness that he shall taste every drop; to strike him only so far that he may feel the pang without being stunned; to mingle so much of hope in his undoing that he may never enjoy the vigor of despair; to sink him into his own Tartarus inch by inch till every fiber has its particular agony.”
He yelled, suddenly rose from the ground, and rushed forward and threaded the thickets with a swiftness that made my pursuit in vain.
The violence of the beggar’s anguish, and the strong probabilities of his story, engrossed me so much that I at first regretted the extraordinary flight which put it out of my power to offer him any assistance. I returned with a feeling of disappointment to the spot where I had left my horse, and was riding toward the higher country, to avoid the enemy’s straggling parties, when I heard a loud outcry. On a crag so distant that I thought human speed could scarcely have reached it in the time, I saw this strange being making all kinds of signals, sometimes pointing to me, then to some object below him, and uttering a cry which might easily be mistaken for the howl of a wild beast.
I reined up; it was impossible for me to ascertain whether he were warning me of danger or apprising others of my approach. Great stakes make man suspicious, and the prince of Naphtali, speeding to the capture of the principal armory of the legions, might be an object well worth a little treachery. I rapidly forgot the beggar’s sorrows in the consideration of his habits; decided that his harangue was a piece of professional dexterity, probably played off every week of his life, and that if I would not be in Roman hands before night, I must ride in the precisely opposite direction to that which his signals so laboriously recommended. Nothing grows with more vigor than the doubt of human honesty. I satisfied myself in a few moments that I was a dupe, and dashed through thicket, over rock, forded torrent, and from the top of an acclivity, at which even my high-mettled steed had looked with repugnance, saw with the triumph of him who deceives the deceiver, the increased violence of the impostor’s attitudes. He leaped from crag to crag with the activity of a goat, and when he could do nothing else, gave the last evidence of Oriental vexation by tearing his robes. I waved my hand to him in contemptuous farewell, and dismounting, for the side of the hill was almost precipitous, led my panting Arab through beds of wild myrtle, and every lovely and sweet-smelling bloom, to the edge of a valley that seemed made to shut out every disturbance of man.
A circle of low hills, covered to the crown with foliage, surrounded a deep space of velvet turf, kept green as the emerald by the moisture of a pellucid lake in its center, tinged with every color of heaven. The beauty of this sylvan spot was enhanced by the luxuriant profusion of almond, orange, and other trees that in every stage of production, from the bud to the fruit, covered the little knolls below and formed a broad belt round the lake.
Parched as I was by the intolerable heat, this secluded haunt of the very spirit of freshness looked doubly lovely. My eyes, half-blinded by the glare of the sands, and even my mind, exhausted by the perplexities of the day, found delicious relaxation in the verdure and dewy breath of the silent valley. My barb, with the quick sense of animals accustomed to the travel of the wilderness, showed her delight by playful boundings, the prouder arching of her neck, and the brighter glancing of her eye.
“Here,” thought I, as I led her slowly toward the steep descent, “would be the very spot for the innocence that had not tried the world, or the philosophy that had tried it and found all vanity. Who could dream that within the borders of this distracted land, in the very hearing, almost within the very sight, of the last miseries that man can inflict on man, there was a retreat which the foot of man perhaps never yet defiled, and in which the calamities that afflict society might be as little felt as if it were among the stars!”
A violent plunge of the barb put an end to my speculation. She exhibited the wildest signs of terror, snorted and strove to break from me; then fixing her glance keenly on the thickets below, shook in every limb. Yet the scene was tranquillity itself; the chameleon lay basking in the sun, and the only sound was that of the wild doves, murmuring under the broad leaves of the palm-trees. But my mare still resisted every effort to lead her downward; her ears were fluttering convulsively; her eyes were starting from their sockets. I grew peevish at the animal’s unusual obstinacy, and was about to let her suffer thirst for the day, when I was startled by a tremendous roar.
A lion stood on the summit which I had but just quitted. He was not a dozen yards above my head, and his first spring must have carried me to the bottom of the precipice. The barb burst away at once. I drew the only weapon I had—a dagger—and hopeless as escape was, grasping the tangled weeds to sustain my footing, awaited the plunge. But the lordly savage probably disdained so ignoble a prey, and remained on the summit, lashing his sides with his tail and tearing up the ground. He at length stopped suddenly, listened, as to some approaching foot, and then with a hideous yell, sprang over me, and was in the thicket below at a single bound.