I was one day immersed in Polybius, with my master in soldiership at my side, guiding me by his living comment through the wonders of the Punic campaigns, when Eleazar entered, with a look that implied his coming on a matter of importance. Constantius rose to withdraw.

“No,” said my brother, “the subject of my mission is one that should not be concealed from the preserver of our kindred. It may be one of happiness to us all. Salome has arrived at the age when the daughters of Israel marry. She must give way to our general wish and play the matron at last.”

He turned with a smile to Constantius, and asked his assent to the opinion; he received no answer. The young Greek had plunged more deeply than ever into the passage of the Alps.

“And who is the suitor?” I inquired.

“One worthy of her and you. A generous, bold, warm-hearted kinsman, in the spring of life, sufficiently opulent, for he will probably be my heir, prepared to honor you, and, I believe, long and deeply attached to her.”

“Jubal! There is not a man in our tribe to whom I would more gladly give her. Let my friend Jubal come. Congratulate me, Constantius; you shall now at last see festivity in our land in scorn of the Roman. You have seen us in flight and captivity; you shall now witness some of the happiness that was in Judah before we knew the flapping of an Italian banner, and which shall be, if fortune smile, when Rome is like Babylon.”

Constantius suddenly rose from his volume, and thrusting it within the folds of his tunic, was leaving the apartment.

“No,” said I, “you must remain; Miriam and Salome shall be sent for, and in your presence the contract signed.”

For the first time I perceived the excessive pallidness of his countenance, and asked whether I had not trespassed too much on his patience with my studies.

His only reply was: “Is there no liberty of choice in the marriages of Israel? Will you decide without consulting her, whom this contract is to render happy or miserable while she lives?” He rushed from the room.

Miriam came—but alone. Her daughter had wandered out into one of our many gardens. She received Eleazar with sisterly fondness, but her features wore the air of constraint. She heard the mission, but “she had no opinion to give in the absence of Salome. She knew too well the happiness of having chosen for herself to wish to force the consent of her child. Let Salome be consulted.”

The flourish of music and the trampling of horses broke up our reluctant conference. Jubal had already come with a crowd of his friends. We hastened to receive him at the porch, and he bounded into the court on his richly caparisoned barb, at the head of a troop in festal habiliments.

The men of Israel loved pomp of dress and handsome steeds. The group before me might have made a body-guard for a Persian king. Jubal had long looked on my daughter with the admiration due to her singular beauty; it was the custom to wed within our tribe; he was the favorite and the heir of her uncle; she had never absolutely banished him from her presence, and in the buoyancy of natural spirits, the boldness of a temperament born for a soldier, and perhaps in the allowable consciousness of a showy form, he had admitted none of the perplexities of a trembling lover. Salome was at length announced, and the proposed husband was left to plead his own cause.

CHAPTER XVII
A Declaration of Love

We received the friends of our intended son with the accustomed hospitality, but to me the tumult of many voices, and even the sight of a crowd, however happy, still excited the old disturbances of a shaken mind.

I left my guests to the care of Eleazar, and galloped into the fields to gather composure from the air of fruits and flowers. A homeward glance showed me, to my surprise, the whole troop mounted, and in another moment at speed across the hills. I hastened back. Miriam met me. My kinsman had openly disclaimed my alliance.

Indignant and disappointed, I prepared to follow him and demand the cause of this insult. As I passed one of the pavilions, my daughter’s voice arrested me. She was talking to Constantius. Scorning mere curiosity, I yet was anxious for sincere explanation. I felt that if Salome had a wish which she feared to divulge to her father, this was my only hope of obtaining the knowledge. The voices were low, and I could, for a while, catch but a broken sentence.

“I owed it to him,” said she, “not to deceive his partiality. He offered all that it could have done a Jewish maiden honor to receive—his heart, hand, and fortune.”

“And you rejected them all?” said Constantius. “Have you no regrets for the lover—no fears of the father?”

“For the lover I had too high an esteem to give him a promise which I could not keep. I knew his generous nature. I told him at once that there was an invincible obstacle!”

“I should like incomparably to know what that obstacle could be?” said Constantius.

Astonishment fixed me to the spot. I was unable to move a step.

The natural playfulness of the sweet and light-hearted girl became manifest, and she replied “that a philosopher ought to know all things without questioning.”

“But there is much in the world that defies philosophy, my fair Salome; and of all its problems, the most perplexing is the mind of woman!—of young, lovely, dangerous woman!”

“Now, Constantius, you abandon the philosopher and play the poet.”

“Yet without the poet’s imagination. No; I need picture no beauty from the clouds—no nymph from the fountains—no loveliness that haunts the trees, and breathes more than mortal melody on the ear. Salome! my muse is before me.”

“You are a Greek,” said she, after a slight interval, “and Greeks are privileged to talk—and to deceive.”

“Salome! I am a Greek no longer. What I shall yet be may depend upon the fairest artist that ever fashioned the human mind. But mine are not the words of inexperience. I am on this day five-and-twenty years old. My life has led me into all that is various in the intercourse of earth. I have seen woman in her beauty, in her talent, in her art, in her accomplishment; from the cottage to the throne—but I never felt her real power before.”

“Which am I to believe—the possible or the impossible? A soldier! a noble! a Greek! and of all Greeks, one of Cyprus! the offerer of your eloquence at every shrine where your own lovely countrywomen stood by the altar!—I too have seen the world.”

“May all the Graces forbid that you should ever see it, but what it would be made by such as you—a place of gentleness and harmony—a place of fondness and innocence—a paradise!”

“Now you are further from the philosopher than ever; but—I must listen no more; the sun is taking its leave of us, and blushing its last through the vines for all the fine romance that it has heard from Constantius. Farewell, philosophy.”

“Then farewell, philosophy,” said Constantius, and caught her hand as she was lightly moving from the pavilion. He led her toward the casement. “Then farewell, philosophy, my sweet; and welcome truth, virtue, and nature. I loved you in your captivity; I loved you in your freedom; on the sea, on the shore, in the desert, in your home, I loved you. In life I will love you, in death we shall not be divided. This is not the language of mere admiration, the rapture of a fancy dazzled by the bright eyes of my Salome. It is the language of reason, of sacred truth, of honor bound by higher than human bonds; of fondness that even the tomb will render only more ardent and sublime. Here, in the sight of Heaven, I pledge an immortal to an immortal.”

Astonishment and grief alone prevented my exclaiming aloud against this bond on the affections of my child. The marriage of the Israelite with the stranger was prohibited by our law, and still more severely prohibited by the later ordinances of our teachers. But marriage with a fugitive, an alien, a son of the idolater, whose proselytism had never been avowed, and whose skill in the ways of the world might be at this hour undermining the peace or the faith of my whole family—the idea was tenfold profanation! I checked myself only to have complete evidence.

“But,” said my daughter, in a voice mingled with many a sigh, “if this should become known to my father—and known it must be—how can we hope for his consent? Now, Constantius, you will have to learn what it is to deal with our nation. We have prejudices, lofty, tho blind—indissoluble, tho fantastic. My father’s consent is beyond all hope.”

“He is honorable—he has human feeling—he loves you.”

“Fondly, I believe, and I must not thus return his love; no, tho my happiness were to be the forfeit, I must not pain his heart by the disobedience of his child.”

“But Salome, my sweet Salome! are obstinacy and prejudice to be obeyed against the understanding and the heart? Can a father counsel his child to a crime, and would it not be one to give your faith to this Jubal, if you could not love him?”

“I have decided that already. Never will I wed Jubal.”

“Yet what is it that you would disobey—a cruel and fantastic scruple of your teachers, the perverters of your law? Must we sacrifice reason to prejudice, truth to caprice, the law of nature and of heaven to the forgeries and follies of the Scribes? Mine you are, and mine you shall be, my wife by a law more sacred, more powerful, and more pure. The time of bondage is passed. A new law, a new hope, have come to break the chains of the Jew and enlighten the darkness of the Gentile. You have heard that law; your generous heart and unclouded understanding have received it, and now by that common hope, my beloved, we are one, tho seas and mountains should separate us—tho the malice of fortune and the tyranny of man should forbid our union; still, in flight, in the dungeon, in the last hour of a troubled existence, we are one. Now, Salome, I will go, but go to seek your father.”

My indignation rose to its height. I had heard my child taught to rebel. I had heard myself pronounced the slave of prejudice. But the open declaration that my authority was to be to my child a law no more let loose the whole storm of my soul. I rushed forward; Salome uttered a cry and sank senseless upon the ground. Constantius raised her up and bore her to a vase, from which he sprinkled water upon her forehead.

“Leave her!” I exclaimed; “better for her to remain in that insensibility, better to be dead than an apostate. Villain, begone! it is only in scorn that a father’s vengeance suffers you to live. Fly from this house, from this country. Go, traitor, and let me never see you more.”

I tore the fainting girl from his arms. He made no resistance, no reply. Salome recovered with a gush of tears, and feebly pronounced his name.

“I am with you still, my love,” Constantius assured her.

She looked up and, as if she had then first seen me, sprang forward with a look of terror.

“Go,” said I, “go to your chamber, weak girl, and on your knees, atone for your disobedience, for your abandonment of the faith of your fathers. But no, it is impossible; you can not have been so guilty; this Greek—this foreign bringer-in of fables—this smooth intruder on the peace of families, can not have so triumphed over your understanding.”

“I have been rash, sir,” said Constantius loftily; “I may have been unwise, too, in my language; but I have been no deceiver. Not for the wealth of kings—not even for the more precious treasure of the heart I love—would I sully my lips with a falsehood.”

“Begone!” cried I; “I am insulted by your presence. Go and pervert others—hypocrite; or rather, take my contemptuous forgiveness and repent, in sackcloth and ashes, the basest crime of the basest mind. Come, daughter, and leave the baffled idolater to think of his crime.”

I was leading her away—she hesitated, and I cast her from me. Constantius, with his cheek burning and his eye flashing, approached her. My taunts had at length roused him.

“Now, Salome,” said he, haughtily glancing on me, “injured as I am, I disclaim an idle deference for an authority used only to give pain. You are my betrothed; you shall be my bride. Let us go forth and try our chance together through the world.”

She was silent and wept only more violently. But with one hand covering her face, she repelled him with the other.

“Then you will be the wife of Jubal?” said he.

“Never!” she firmly pronounced. “So help me heaven, never!”

“Retire, girl,” I exclaimed, “and weep tears of blood for your rebellion! Go, stranger—ingrate—deceiver—and never darken my threshold more. Aye, now I see the cause of my brave kinsman’s departure. He was circumvented. A wilier tongue was here before him. He disdained to reveal the daughter’s folly to the insulted father. But this shall not avail either of you. He shall return.”

Salome cast an imploring glance to heaven and sank upon her knees before me. Constantius advanced to her; but I bounded between them—my dagger was drawn.

“Touch her, and you die.”

He smiled scornfully, and approached to raise her from the ground.

“Give that wretched child up to me this moment,” I exclaimed in fury, “or may the bitterness of a father’s curse be on her head!”

He staggered back; then pressing his lips upon her forehead, gave her to me and strode from the pavilion.

I flew to the house of Eleazar. I found him anxious and agitated. Calm as his usual manner was, the late transaction had left its traces on his demeanor and countenance. Jubal was in the apartment, which he traversed backward and forward in high indignation. He made no return to my salute but by stopping short and gazing full on me with a look of mingled anger and surprise.

“Jubal,” said I, “kinsman, we must be friends.” I held out my hand, which he took with no fervent pressure. “I am here only to explain this idle offense.”

“It requires no explanation,” interrupted Jubal sternly; “I, and I alone, am to blame—if there be any one to blame in the matter. The offer may have been hasty, or unwelcome, or unpardonable, from one like me, still without rank in the tribe; it may have been fit that I should be haughtily rejected by the family of the descendant of Aaron; but,” said he, pressing his strong hand upon his throat, as if to keep down a burst of passion, “the subject is at an end—now and forever at an end.”

He recommenced his striding through the chamber.

“Let us hear all, my friend,” said I; “I know that Salome thinks highly of your spirit and of your heart. Was there any palliation offered? Did she disclose any secret reason for a conduct which is so opposite to her natural regard for you, and which, she must feel, is so offensive to me? But insult from my family, impossible!”

“Hear, then. I had not alighted from my horse when I saw displeasure written in the face of every female in your household. From the very handmaids up to their mistress, they had, with the instinct of woman, discovered my object, and, with the usual deliberation of the sex, had made up their minds without hearing a syllable. Your wife received me, it is true, with the grace that belongs to her above women, but she was visibly cold. My kinswoman Esther absolutely shrank from me and scorned to return a word. Salome fled. As for the attendants, they frowned and muttered at me in all directions, with the most candid wrath possible. In short, I could not have fared worse had I been a Roman come to take possession, or an Arab riding up to rifle every soul in the house.”

“Ominous enough!” said Eleazar, with his grave smile. “The opinions of the sex are irresistible. With half my knowledge of them, Jubal, you would have turned your horse’s head homeward at once, and given up your hopes of a bride at least till the next day, or the next hour, or whatever may be the usual time for the sex’s change of mind. Cheer up, kinsman; caparison yourself in another dress, let time do its work—ride over to Salathiel’s dwelling to-morrow and find a smile for every frown of to-day.”

“But you saw Salome!” said I. “I am impatient to hear how she could have ventured to offend. Could she dare to refuse my brother’s request without a reason?”

“No; her conduct was altogether without disguise. She first tried to laugh me out of my purpose, then argued, then wept; and finally, told me that our alliance was impossible.”

“Rash girl! but she has been led into this folly by others; yet the chief folly was my own. Aye, my eyes were dim, where a mole would have seen. I suffered a showy, plausible villain to remain under my roof till he has, by what arts I know not, wiled away the duty and the understanding—nay, I fear, the religion of my child.” I smote my breast in sorrow and humiliation.

Jubal burst from the apartment and returned with his lance in his hand, quivering with wrath.

“Now all is cleared,” cried he; “the true cause was the magic of that idolater. I know the arts of paganism to bewitch the senses of woman—the incantations, the perfumes, the midnight fires, and images and songs. But let him come within the throw of this javelin and then try whether all his magic can shield him.”

Eleazar grasped his robe as he was again rushing out.

“Stop, madman! Is it with hands dipped in blood that you are to solicit the heart of Salome? Give me that horrid weapon; and you, Salathiel, curb your wild spirit and listen to a brother who can have no interest but in the happiness of both and all. If Salome, whom I loved an infant on the knee and love to this moment, the most ingenuous and happy-hearted being on earth, has been betrayed into a fondness for this stranger, have we the right to force her inclinations? I know the depth of understanding that lies under her playfulness; can she have been deceived, and least of all by those arts? Impossible! If she has sacrificed her obedience to the noble form and high accomplishments of the Greek, we can only lament her exposure to a captivation made to subdue the heart of woman since the world began.”

“Jubal,” interrupted I, “give me that manly and honest hand; Eleazar’s wisdom is too calm to understand a father or a lover. You shall return with me, you shall be my son; Salathiel has no other. This foolish girl will be sorry for her follies and rejoice to receive you. The Greek is driven from my house. And let me see who there will henceforth disobey.” The lover’s face brightened with joy.

“Well, make your experiment,” said Eleazar, rising. “So ends all councils of war in more confusion than they began. But if I had a wife and daughters——”

“Of course you would manage them to perfection. So say all who have never had either.”

Eleazar’s cheek colored slightly; but with his recovering smile of benevolence he followed us to the porch, and wished us success in our expedition.

We found the household tranquillized again. Miriam received me with one of those radiant smiles that are a husband’s best welcome home. She had succeeded in calming the minds of her daughters, and—a much more difficult task—in suppressing the wrath of the numerous female domestics who had, as usual, constructed out of the graces of the Greek and the beauty of Salome a little romance of their own. In the whole course of my life I never met a female, from the flat-nosed and ebony-colored monster of the tropics to the snow-white and sublime divinity of a Greek isle, without a touch of romance; repulsiveness could not conceal it, age could not extinguish it, vicissitude could not change it. I have found it in all times and places, like a spring of fresh waters starting up even from the flint, cheering the cheerless, softening the insensible, renovating the withered; a secret whisper in the ear of every woman alive, that to the last, passion might flutter its pinions round her brow. The strong prejudices of our nation had here given way, rebellion was but hushed, and I was warned by many a look of the unwelcome suitor that I brought among them.

But from Salome there was no remonstrance. I should have listened to none. The consciousness of my own want of judgment in suffering a man so calculated to attract the eye of innocent youth to become an inmate in my house; the vexation which I felt at the dismissal of my brother’s heir; and last and keenest pang, the inroad made in the faith of a daughter of Israel, combined to exasperate me beyond the bounds of patience. I loved my child with the strongest affection of a heart rocked by all the tides of passion; but I could bear to look upon the pale beauty of her face—nay, in the wrath of the hour, could have seen her borne to the grave—rather than permit the command to be disputed by which she was to wed in our tribe.

To shorten a period of which I felt the full bitterness, the marriage preparations were hurried on. Never was the ceremony anticipated with less joy; we were all unhappy. Eleazar remonstrated, but in vain. Jubal retracted, but I compelled him to adhere to his proposal. Miriam was closeted perpetually with the betrothed, and of the whole household Esther alone walked or talked with me, and it was then only to give me descriptions of her sister’s misery or to pursue me through the endless mazes of argument on the hardship of being forced to be happy. The preparations proceeded. The piece of silver was given, the contracts were signed, the presents of both families were made; the portion was agreed upon. It was not customary to require the appearance of the bride until the celebration itself, and Salome was invisible during those days of activity in which, however, I took the chief interest, for nothing could be further from zeal than the conduct of the other agents, Jubal alone excepted. He had regained the easily recovered confidence of youth, and perhaps prided himself on the triumph over a rival so formidable. Two or three petitions for an interview came to me from my daughter. But I knew their purport, and steadily determined not to hazard the temptation of her tears.

The day came, and with it the guests; our dwelling was full of banqueting. The evening arrived when the ceremony was to be performed and the bride led home to her husband’s house in the usual triumph. One of our customs was that a procession of the bridegroom’s younger friends, male and female, should be formed outside the house to wait for the coming forth of the married pair. The ceremony was borrowed by other nations; but in our bright climate and cloudless nights, the profusion of lamps and torches, the burning perfumes, glittering dresses, and fantastic joy of the dancing and singing crowd, had unequaled liveliness and beauty. I remained at my casement, gazing on the brilliant escort that, as it gathered and arranged itself along the gardens, looked like a flight of glow-worms. But no marriage summons came. I grew impatient. My only answer was the sight of Jubal rushing from the house and an outcry among the women. Salome was not to be found! She had been left by herself for a few hours, as was the custom, to arrange her thoughts for a ceremony which we considered religious in the highest degree. On the bridegroom’s arrival, she had disappeared!

The blow struck me deep. Had I driven her into the arms of the Greek by my severity? Had I driven her out of her senses, or out of life? Conjecture on conjecture stung me. I reprobated my own cruelty, refused consolation, and spent the night in alternate self-upbraidings and prayers for my unhappy child.

Search was indefatigably made. The fiery jealousy of Jubal, the manly anxiety of Eleazar, the hurt feelings of our tribe, insulted by the possibility that their chieftain’s heir should have been scorned, and that the triumph should be to an alien, were all embarked in the pursuit. But search was in vain; and after days and nights of weariness, I returned to my home, there to be met by sorrowing faces, and to feel that every tear was forced by my own obstinacy. I shrank into solitude. I exclaimed that the vengeance, the more than vengeance of my crime, had struck its heaviest blow on me in the loss of my child.

CHAPTER XVIII
Salathiel Faces a Roman

I was in one of those fits of abstraction, revolving the misery in which my beloved daughter might be, if indeed she were in existence, when the door of my chamber opened softly and one of my domestics appeared, making a signal of silence. This was he whom I had detected in correspondence with the Roman agent and forgiven through the entreaties of Miriam. The man had since shown remarkable interest in the recovery of my daughter, and thus completely reinstated himself. He knelt before me, and with more humility than I desired, implored my pardon for having again held intercourse with the Roman.

“It was my zeal,” said he, “to gain intelligence, for I knew that nothing passed in the provinces a secret from him. This letter is his answer, and perhaps I shall be forgiven for the sake of what it contains.”

I read it with trembling avidity. It was mysterious; described two fugitives who had made their escape to Cæsarea, and intimated that as they were about to fly into Asia Minor, the pursuit must be immediate and conducted with the utmost secrecy.

I was instantly on horseback. Dreading to disturb my family by false hopes, I ordered out my hounds, ranged the hills in sight of my dwelling; and then turning off, struck in the spur, and attended only by the domestic, went full speed to Cæsarea. From the summit of Mount Carmel I looked down upon the city and the broad Mediterranean. But my eyes then felt no delight in the grandeur of art or nature. The pompous structures on which Herod the Great had expended a treasure beyond count, and which the residence of the governor made the Roman capital of Judea, were to me but so many dens and dungeons in which my child might be hidden. The sea showed me only the path by which she might have been borne away, or the grave in which her wanderings were to close.

By extraordinary speed I entered the gates just as the trumpet was sounding for their close. My attendant went forth to obtain information, and I was left pacing my chamber, to which I had been brought in feverish suspense. I did not suffer it long. The door opened, and a group of soldiers ordered me to follow them. Resistance was useless. They led me to the palace. There I was delivered from guard to guard, through a long succession of apartments, until we reached the door of a banqueting-room. The festivity within was high, and if I could have then sympathized with singing and laughter, I might have had full indulgence during the immeasurable hour that I lingered out, a broken wretch, exhausted by desperate effort, sick at heart, and of course eager for the result of an interview with the Roman procurator, a man whose name was equivalent to vice, extortion, and love of blood throughout Judea.

At length the feast was at an end. I was summoned, and for the first time saw Gessius Florus,[25] a little bloated figure, with a countenance that to the casual observer was the model of gross good-nature, a twinkling eye, and a lip on the perpetual laugh. His bald forehead wore a wreath of flowers, and his tunic and the couch on which he lay breathed perfume. The table before him was a long vista of sculptured cups, and golden vases and candelabra.

“I am sorry to have detained you so long,” said he, “but this was the Emperor’s birthday, and as good subjects we have kept it accordingly.”

During this speech he was engaged in contemplating the wine-bubbles as they sparkled above the brim of a large amethystine goblet. A pale and delicate Italian boy, sumptuously dressed, the only one of the guests who remained, perceiving that I was fatigued, filled a cup and presented it.

“Right, Septimius,” said the debauchee; “make the Jew drink the Emperor’s health.”

The youth bowed gracefully before me, and again offered the cup; but the time was not for indulgence, and I laid it on the table.

“Here’s long life and glory to Nero Claudius Cæsar, our pious, merciful, and invincible Emperor!” cried Florus, and only when he had drunk to the bottom of the goblet, found leisure to look upon his prisoner.

He either felt or affected surprise, and, turning to his young companion, said: “By Hercules, boy, what grand fellows those Jews make! The helmet is nothing to the turban, after all. What magnificence of beard! No Italian chin has the vigor to grow anything so superb; then the neck, like the bull of Milo; and those blazing eyes! If I had but a legion of such spearsmen——”

I grew impatient and said: “I stand here, procurator, in your bonds. I demand why? I have business that requires my instant attention and I desire to be gone.”

“Now have I treated you so inhospitably,” said he, laughing, “that you expect I shall finish by shutting my doors upon you at this time of night?” He glanced upon his tablets and read my name. “Aye,” said he, “and after I had been so long wishing for the honor of your company. Jew, take your wine and sit down upon that couch, and tell me what brought you to Cæsarea.”

I told him briefly the circumstances. He roared with laughter, desired me to repeat them, and swore that “By all the gods! it was the very best piece of pleasantry he had heard since he set foot in Judea.” I stood up in irrepressible indignation.

“What!” said he, “will you go without hearing my story in return?”

He filled his goblet again to the brim, buried his purple visage in a vase of roses, and having inhaled the fragrance, and chosen an easy posture, said coldly: “Jew, you have told me a most excellent story, and it is only fair that I should tell you one in return; not half so amusing, I admit, but to the full as true. Jew, you are a traitor!” I started back. “Jew,” said he, “you must in common civility hear me out. The truth is, that your visit has been so often anticipated and so long delayed that I can not bear to part with you yet; you are an apostate; you encourage those Christian dogs. Why does the man stare? You are in communication with rebels, and I might have had the honor of meeting you in the field, if you had not put yourself into my hands in Cæsarea.”

He pronounced those words of death in the most tranquil tone; not a muscle moved; the cup which he held brimful in his hand never overflowed.

“Jew,” said he, “now be honest, and so far set an example to your nation. Where is the money that has been gathered for this rebellion? You are too sagacious a soldier to think of going to war without the mainspring of the machine.”

I scorned to deny the intended insurrection, but “money I had collected none.”

“Then,” said he, “you are now compelling me to a measure which I do not like. Ho! guard!” A soldier presented himself. “Desire that the rack shall be got ready.” The man retired. “You see, Jew, this is all your own doing. Give up the money, and I give up the rack. And the surrender of the coin is asked merely in compassion to yourselves, for without it you can not rebel, and the more you rebel the more you will be beaten.”

“Beware, Gessius Florus,” I exclaimed; “beware! I am your prisoner, entrapped, as I now see, by a villain, or by the greater villain who corrupted him. You may rack me if you will; you may insult my feelings, tear my flesh, take my life, but for this there shall be retribution. Through Upper Galilee, from Tiberias to the top of Libanus, this act of blood will ring, and be answered by blood. I have kinsmen many, countrymen myriads. A single wrench of my sinews may lift a hundred thousand arms against your city, and leave of yourself nothing but the remembrance, of your crimes.”

He bounded from his couch; the native fiend flashed out in his countenance. I waited his attack, with my hand on the poniard within my sash. My look probably deterred him, for he flung himself back again, and bursting into a loud laugh, exclaimed:

“Bravely spoken. Septimius, we must send the Jew to Rome, to teach our orators. Aye, I know Upper Galilee too well not to know that rebellion is more easily raised there than the taxes. And it was for that reason that I invited you to come to Cæsarea. In the midst of your tribe, capture would have cost half a legion; here a single jailer will do the business. Ho! guard!” he called aloud.

I heard the screwing of the rack in the next room and unsheathed the poniard. The blade glittered in his eyes. Septimius came between us, and tried to turn the procurator’s purpose.

“Let your guard come,” cried I, “and by the sacredness of the Temple, one of us dies. I will not live to be tortured, or you shall not live to see it.”

If the door had opened, I was prepared to dart upon him.

“Well,” said he, after a whispered expostulation from Septimius, “you must go and settle the matter with the Emperor. The fact is, that I am too tender-hearted to govern such a nation of dagger-bearers. So, to Nero! If we can not send the Emperor money, we will at least send him men.”

He laughed vehemently at the conception; ordered the singing and dancing slaves to return; called for wine, and plunged again into his favorite cup.

Septimius arose, and led me into another chamber. I remonstrated against the injustice of my seizure. He lamented it, but said that the orders from Rome were strict, and that I was denounced by some of the chiefs in Jerusalem as the head of the late insurrection and the projector of a new one. The procurator, he added, had been for some time anxious to get me into his power without raising a disturbance among my tribe; the treachery of my domestic had been employed to effect this, and “now,” concluded he, “my best wish for you—a wish prompted by motives of which you can form no conjecture—is that you may be sent to Rome. Every day that sees you in Cæsarea sees you in the utmost peril. At the first rumor of insurrection, your life will be the sacrifice.”

“But my family! What will be their feelings? Can I not at least acquaint them with my destination?”

“It is impossible. And now, to let you into a state secret, the Emperor has ordered that you should be sent to Rome. Florus menaced you only to extort money. He now knows you better, and would gladly enlist you in the Roman cause. This I know to be hopeless. But I dread his caprice, and shall rejoice to see the sails hoisted that are to carry you to Rome. Farewell; your family shall have due intelligence.”

He was at the door of the chamber, but suddenly returned, and pressing my hand, said again: “Farewell, and remember that neither all Romans, nor even all Greeks, may be alike!” He then with a graceful obeisance left the room.

Fatigue hung with a leaden weight upon my eyelids. I tried vain experiments to keep myself from slumber in this perilous vicinage. The huge silver chandelier, that threw a blaze over the fretted roof, began to twinkle before me; the busts and statues gradually mingled, and I was once more in the land of visions. Home was before my eyes. I was suddenly tossed upon the ocean.

I stood before Nero and was addressing him with a formal harangue, when the whole tissue was broken up by a sullen voice commanding me to rise. A soldier, sword in hand, soon entered; he pointed to the door where an armed party were seen, and informed me that I was ordered for immediate embarkation.

It was scarcely past midnight; the stars were still in their splendor; the pharos threw a long line of flame on the waters; the city sounds were hushed, and silent as a procession to the grave, we moved down to where the tall vessel lay rocking with the breeze. At her side, a Nubian slave put a note into my hand; it was from the young Roman, requesting my acceptance of wine and fruits from the palace, and wishing me a prosperous result to my voyage. The sails were hoisted; the stately mole, that even in the night looked a mount of marble, was cleared; the libation was poured to the Tritons for our speedy passage, and the blazing pharos was rapidly seen but as a twinkling star.

CHAPTER XIX
On Board a Trireme

Our trireme flew before the wind. By daybreak the coast was only a pale line along the waters; but Carmel still towered proudly eminent, and with its top alternately clouded and glittering in the sun might have been taken for a gigantic beacon throwing up alternate smoke and flame. With what eyes did I continue to look, until the mighty hill, too, sank in the waters! But thought still lingered on the shore. I saw, with a keenness more than of the eye, the family circle; through many an hour of gazing on the waters, I was all but standing in the midst of those walls which I might never more see; listening to the uncomplaining sighs of Miriam, the impassioned remonstrances of my sole remaining child, and busied in the still harder task of finding out some defense against the self-accusation that laid the charge of rashness and cruelty heavy upon my soul.

But the scene round me was the very reverse of moody meditation. The captain was a thorough Italian trierarch, ostentatious, gay, given to superstition, and occasionally a little of a free thinker. His ship was to him child, wife, and world; and at every maneuver he claimed from us such tribute as a father might for the virtues of his favorite offspring; perpetual luck was in everything that she did; she knew every headland from Cyprus to Ostia; a pilot was a mere supernumerary; she could run the whole course without the helm, if she pleased. She beat the Liburnian for speed; the Cypriot for comfort; the Sicilian for safety; and every other vessel on the seas for every other quality. All he asked was to live in her, while he lived at all, and to go down in her when the Fates were at last to cut his thread, as they did those of all captains, whether on sea or land.

The panegyric of the good ship Ganymede was in some degree merited; she carried us on boldly. For a sea in which the winds are constant when they come, but in which the calms are as constant as the winds, nothing could have been more perfectly adapted than the ancient galley. If the gale arose, the ship shot along like the eagle that bore her Trojan namesake—light, strong, with her white sails full of the breeze, and cleaving the surge with the rapidity of an arrow. If the wind fell we floated in a pavilion, screened from the sun, refreshed with perfumes burning on poop, brow, and masts, surrounded with gilding and, the carvings and paintings of the Greek artists, drinking delicious wines, listening to song and story, and in all this enjoyment gliding insensibly along on a lake of absolute sapphire encircled and varied by the most picturesque and lovely islands in the world.

The Ganymede had been under especial orders from Rome for my transmission; but the captain felt too much respect for the procurator not to trespass on the letter of the law so far as to fill up the vacancies of his hold with merchandise, in which Florus drove a steady contraband trade. Having done so much to gratify the governor’s distinguishing propensity, he next provided for his own; and loaded his gallant vessel mercilessly with passengers, as much prohibited as his merchandise. While we were yet in sight of land, I walked a lonely deck; but when the salutary fear of the galleys on the station was passed, every corner of the Ganymede let loose a living cargo.

For the Jewish chieftain going from Florus on a mission to the Emperor, as the captain conceived me and my purpose to be, a separate portion of the deck was kept sacred. But I mingled from time to time with the crowd, and thus contrived to preserve at once my respect and my popularity. Never was there a more miscellaneous collection. We transported into Europe a Chaldee sorcerer, an Indian gymnosophist, an Arab teacher of astrology, a Magian from Persepolis, and a Platonist from Alexandria. Such were our contributions to Oriental science.

We had, besides, a dealer in sleight-of-hand from Damascus; an Egyptian with tame monkeys and a model of a pyramid; a Syrian serpent-teacher; an Idumean maker of amulets against storm and calm, thirst and hunger, and every other disturbance and distress of life; an Armenian discoverer of the stone by which gold-mines were to be found; a Byzantine inventor of the true Oriental pearls; a dealer from the Caspian in gums superseding all that Arabia ever wept; an Epicurean philosopher who professed indolence, and who, to do him justice, was a striking example of his doctrine; and a Stoic who, having gone his rounds of the Roman garrisons as a teacher of dancing, a curer of wines, and a flute-player, had now risen into the easier vocation of a philosopher.