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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 On the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan, the land was
divided, by the inspired command, among the tribes according to
their numbers. To each family a portion was assigned as a gift from
heaven. The gift was to be inalienable. The estate might be sold for
a period; but in the fiftieth year, on the evening of the Day of
Atonement, in the month of Tishri, the sound of the trumpets from
the sanctuary, echoed by thousands of voices from every mountain-
top, proclaimed the Jubilee. Then returned, without purchase, every
family to its original possessions. All the more abject degradations of
poverty, the wearing out of families, the hopeless ruin, were
obviated by this great law. The most undone being in the limits of
Judea had still a hold in the land. His ruin could not be final, perhaps
could not extend beyond a few years; in the last extremity he could
not be scorned as one whose birthright was extinguished; the
Jubilee was to raise him up and place the outcast in the early rank of
the sons of Israel. All the higher feelings were cherished by this
incomparable hope. The man, conscious of his future possessions,
retained the honorable pride of property under the sternest
privations. The time was hurrying on when he should stand on an
equality with mankind, when his worn spirit should begin the world
again with fresh vigor, if he were young; or when he should sit under
the vine and the fig-tree of his fathers, if his age refused again to
struggle for the distinctions of the world.
The agrarian law of Rome and Sparta, feeble
efforts to establish this true foundation of The
personal and political vigor, showed at once both Allotment of
the natural impulse and the weakness of human Naphtali
wisdom. The Roman plunged the people into
furious dissensions, which perished almost in their birth. The Spartan
was secured for a time only by barbarian prohibitions of money and
commerce—a code which raised an iron wall against civilization,
turned the people into a perpetual soldiery, and finally, by the mere
result of continual war, overthrew liberty, dominion, and name.
The Jubilee was for a peculiar people, restricted by a divine
interposition from increase beyond the original number. But who
shall say how far the same benevolent interposition might not have
been extended to all nations, if they had revered the original
compact of heaven with man? How far throughout the earth the
provisions for each man’s wants might not have been secured—the
overwhelming superabundance of portionless life that fills the world
with crime might not have been restrained; how far despotism, that
growth of desperate abjectness of the understanding and gross
corruption of the senses, might not have been repelled by manly
knowledge and native virtue? But the time may come.
In the first allotments of the territory, ample
domains had been appointed for the princes and The
leaders of the tribes. One of those princedoms Summons of
now returned to me, and I entered upon the Florus
inheritance of the leaders of Naphtali, a large
extent of hill and valley, rich with corn, olive, and vine. The antiquity
of possession gave a kind of hallowed and monumental interest to
the soil. I was master of its wealth, but I indulged a loftier feeling in
the recollection of those who had trod the palace and the plain
before me. Every chamber bore the trace of those whom the history
of my country had taught me to reverence; and often, when in some
of the fragrant evenings of summer I have flung myself among the
thick beds of bloom that spread spontaneously over my hills, the
spirits of the loved and honored seemed to gather round me. I saw
once more the matron gravity and the virgin grace; even the more
remote generations, those great progenitors who with David fought
the Philistine; the solemn chieftains who with Joshua followed the
Ark of the Covenant through toil and battle into the promised land;
the sainted sages who witnessed the giving of the law, and
worshiped Him who spake in thunder from Sinai; all moved before
me, for all had trod the very ground on which I gazed. Could I
transfer myself back to their time, on that spot I should stand
among a living circle of heroic and glorious beings before whose true
glory the pomps of earth were vain; the hearers of the prophets
themselves; the servants of the man of miracle, the companions of
the friend of God; nay, distinction that surpasses human thought,
themselves the chosen of heaven.
The cheering occupations of rural life were to be henceforth
pursued on a scale more fitting my rank. I was the first chieftain of
my tribe, the man by whose wisdom multitudes were to be guided,
and by whose benevolence multitudes were to be sustained. I felt
that mingled sense of rank and responsibility which with the vain,
the ignorant, or the vicious is the strongest temptation to excess,
but with the honorable and intelligent constitutes the most
pleasurable and the most elevated state of the human mind.
Yet what are the fortunes of man but a ship launched on an
element whose essence is restlessness? The very wind, without
which we can not move, gathers to a storm and we are undone! The
tyranny of our conquerors had for a few months been paralyzed by
the destruction of Rome. But the governor of Judea was not to be
long withheld, where plunder allured the most furious rapacity that
perhaps ever hungered in the heart of man. I was in the midst of
our harvest, surrounded with the fruitage of the year and enjoying
the sights and sounds of patriarchal life, when I received the
formidable summons to present myself again before Florus.
Imprisonment and torture were in the command. He had heard of
my opulence, and I knew how little his insolent cupidity would
regard the pardon under which I had returned. I determined to
retire into the mountains and defy him.
But the Roman plunderer had the activity of his
countrymen. On the very night of my receiving The Rescue
the summons I was roused from sleep by the of Septimius
outcries of the retainers, who in that season of
heat lay in the open air round the palace. I started from my bed,
only to see with astonishment the courtyards filled with cavalry,
galloping in pursuit of the few peasants who still fought for their
lord. There was no time to be lost; the torches were already in the
hands of the soldiery, and I must be taken or burned alive.
Constantius was instantly at my side. I ordered the trumpet to be
sounded on the hills and we rushed out together, spear in hand. The
Romans, alarmed by resistance where they had counted upon
capture without a blow, fell back. The interval was fatal to them.
Their retreat was intercepted by the whole body of the peasantry, at
length effectually roused. The scythe and reaping-hook were deadly
weapons to horsemen cooped up between walls, and in midnight.
No efforts of mine could stop the havoc, when once the fury of my
people was roused. A few escaped, who had broken wildly away in
the first onset. The rest were left to cover the avenues with the first
sanguinary offerings of the final war of Judea.
I felt that this escape could be but temporary, for the Roman
policy never forgave until the slightest stain of defeat was wiped
away. All was consternation in my family, and the order for
departure, whatever tears it cost, found no opposition. In a few
hours our camels and mules were loaded, our horses caparisoned,
and we were prepared to quit the short-lived pomp of the house of
my fathers. Constantius alone did not appear. This noble-minded
being had won even upon me, until I considered him the substitute
for my lost son; and I would run the last hazard rather than leave
him to the Roman mercy. With the women, the interest was
expressed by a declared resolution not to leave the spot until he was
found. The caravan was broken up and all desire of escape was at
an end.
At the close of a day of search through every defile of the country,
he was seen returning at the head of some peasants bearing a body
on a litter. I flew to meet him. He was in deep affliction, and drawing
off the mantle which covered the face, he showed me Septimius.
“In the flight of the Romans,” said he, “I saw a
horseman making head against a crowd. His voice Roman Plans
caught my ear. I rushed forward to save him, and
he burst through the circle at full speed. But by the light of the
torches I could perceive that he was desperately wounded. When
day broke, I tracked him by his blood. His horse, gashed by scythes,
had fallen under him. I found my unfortunate friend lying senseless
beside a rill, to which he had crept for water.”
Tears fell from his eyes as he told the brief story. I too
remembered the generous interposition of the youth, and when I
looked upon the paleness of those fine Italian features that I had so
lately seen lighted up with living spirit, and in a scene of regal
luxury, I felt a pang for the uncertainty of human things. But the
painful part of the moral was spared us. The young Roman’s wounds
were stanched, and in an enemy and a Roman I found the means of
paying a debt of gratitude. His appearance among the troops sent to
seize me had been only a result of his anxiety to save the father of
his friends. He had accidentally discovered the nature of the order
and hoped to anticipate its execution. But he arrived only in time to
be involved in the confusion of the flight. Pursued and wounded by
the peasantry, he lost his way, and but for the generous
perseverance of Constantius he must have died.
The public information which he brought was of the most
important kind. In the Roman councils, the utter subjugation of
Judea was resolved on; the last spark of national independence was
to be extinguished, tho in the blood of the last native; a Roman
colony established in our lands; the Roman worship introduced; and
Jerusalem profaned by a statue of Nero, and sacrifices to him as a
god, on the altar of the sanctuary. To crush the resistance of the
people, the legions, to the number of sixty thousand men, were
under orders from proconsular Asia, Egypt, and Europe. The most
distinguished captain of the empire, Vespasian, was called from
Britain to the command, and the whole military strength of Rome
was prepared to follow up the blow.
I summoned the chief men of the tribe. My
temperament was warlike. The seclusion and The
studies of my early life had but partially Principles of
suppressed my natural delight in the vividness of War
martial achievement. But the cause that now
summoned me was enough to have kindled the dullest peasant into
the soldier. I had seen the discipline of the enemy; I had made
myself master of their system of war. Fortifications wherever a stone
could be piled upon a hill; provisions laid up in large quantities
wherever they could be secured; small bodies of troops practised in
maneuver, and perpetually in motion between the fortresses; a
general base of operations to which all the movements referred—
were the simple principles that had made them conquerors of the
world. I resolved to give them a speedy proof of my pupilage.

CHAPTER XXIII
Preparing for an Attack

Indecision in the beginning of war is worse than

war. I decided that whatever were the The Hope of
consequences, the sword must be unsheathed Success
without delay. With Eleazar and Constantius, I
cast my eyes over the map, and examined on what point the first
blow should fall. The proverbial safety of a multitude of councilors
was obviously disregarded in the smallness of my council; yet few as
we were, we differed upon every point but one, that of the certainty
of our danger; the promptitude of Roman vengeance suffered no
contest of opinion. Eleazar, with a spirit as manly as ever, faced
hazard, yet gave his voice for delay.
“The sole hope of success,” said he, “must depend on rousing the
popular mind. The Roman troops are not to be beaten by any
regular army in the world. If we attack them on the ordinary
principles of war, the result can only be defeat, slaughter in
dungeons, and deeper slavery. If the nation can be aroused,
numbers may prevail over discipline; variety of attack may distract
science; the desperate boldness of the insurgents may at length
exhaust the Roman fortitude, and a glorious peace will then restore
the country to that independence for which my life would be a glad
and ready sacrifice. But you must first have the people with you, and
for that purpose you must have the leaders of the people——”
“What!” interrupted I, “must we first mingle in the cabals of
Jerusalem and rouse the frigid debaters of the Sanhedrin into
action? Are we first to conciliate the irreconcilable, to soften the
furious, to purify the corrupt? If the Romans are to be our tyrants till
we can teach patriotism to faction, we may as well build the
dungeon at once, for to the dungeon we are consigned for the
longest life among us. Death or glory for me. There is no alternative
between, not merely the half slavery that we now live in, and
independence, but between the most condign suffering and the
most illustrious security. If the people would rise through the
pressure of public injury, they must have risen long since; if from
private violence, what town, what district, what family has not its
claim of deadly retribution? Yet here the people stand, after a
hundred years of those continued stimulants to resistance, as
unresisting as in the day when Pompey marched over the threshold
of the Temple. I know your generous friendship, Eleazar, and fear
that your anxiety to save me from the chances of the struggle may
bias your better judgment. But here I pledge myself, by all that
constitutes the honor of man, to strike at all risks a blow upon the
Roman crest that shall echo through the land. What! commit our
holy cause in the nursing of those pampered hypocrites whose utter
baseness of heart you know still more deeply than I do? Linger till
those pestilent profligates raise their price with Florus by betraying a
design that will be the glory of every man who draws a sword in it?
Vainly, madly ask a brood that, like the serpent, engender and fatten
among the ruins of their country to discard their venom, to cast their
fangs, to feel for human feelings? As well ask the serpent itself to
rise from the original curse. It is the irrevocable nature of faction to
be base until it can be mischievous; to lick the dust until it can sting;
to creep on its belly until it can twist its folds around the victim. No!
let the old pensionaries, the bloated hangers-on in the train of every
governor, the open sellers of their country for filthy lucre, betray me
when I leave it in their power. To the field, I say—once and for all, to
the field.”
My mind, at no period patient of contradiction,
was fevered by the perplexity of the time. I was Salathiel’s
about to leave the chamber when Constantius Ardor
gravely stopped me.
“My father,” said he, with a voice calmer than his countenance,
“you have hurt our noble kinsman’s feelings. It is not in an hour
when our unanimity may fail that we should suffer dissensions
between those whose hearts are alike embarked in this great cause.
Let me mediate between you.”
He led Eleazar back from the casement to
which he had withdrawn to cool his blood, burning The Support
with the offense of my language. of the People
“Eleazar is in the right. The Romans are
irresistible by any force short of the whole people. They have
military possession of the country—all your fortresses, all your posts,
all your passes. They are as familiar as you are with every defile,
mountain, and marsh; they surround you with conquered provinces
on the north, east, and south; your western barrier is open to them
while it is shut to you; the sea is the high-road of their armies, while
at their first forbidding, you dare not launch a galley between
Libanus and Idumea. Nothing can counterbalance this local
superiority but the rising of your whole people.”
“Yet, are we to intrigue with the talkers in Jerusalem for this?”
interrupted I. “What less than a descended thunderbolt could rouse
them to a sense that there is even a heaven above them?”
“Still, we must have them with us,” said Constantius, “for we must
have all. Universality is the spirit of an insurrectionary war. If I were
commander of a revolt, I should feel greater confidence of success
at the head of a single province in which every human being was
against the enemy, than at the head of an empire partially in arms.
The mind even of the rudest spearsman is a great portion of him.
The boldest shrinks from the consciousness that hostility is on all
sides; that whether marching or at rest, watching or sleeping, by
night or by day, hostility is round him; that it is in the very air he
breathes, in the very food he eats; that every face he sees is the
face of one who wishes him slain; that every knife, even every trivial
instrument of human use, may be turned into a shedder of his
blood. Those things, perpetually confronting his mind, break it down
until the man grows reckless, miserable, undisciplined, and a
dastard.”
“Yet,” observed Eleazar, “the constant robbery of an
insurrectionary war must render it a favorite command.”
“Let me speak from experience,” said
Constantius. “Two years ago I was attached, with Constantius
a squadron of galleys, to the expedition against Describes a
the tribes of Mount Taurus. While the galleys Campaign
wintered in Cyprus, I followed the troops up the
hills. Nothing had been omitted that would counteract the severity of
the season. Tents, provisions, clothing adapted to the hills, even
luxuries despatched from the islands, gave the camps almost the
indulgences of cities. The physical hardships of the campaign were
trivial compared with those of hundreds in which the Romans had
beaten regular armies. Yet the discontent was indescribable, from
the perpetual alarms of the service. The mountaineers were not
numerous and were but half armed; they were not disciplined at all.
A Roman centurion would have outmaneuvered all their captains.
But they were brave; they knew nothing but to kill or be killed, and
it made no difference to them whether Death did his work by night
or by day. Sleep to us was scarcely possible. To sit down on a march
was to be leveled at by a score of arrows; to pursue the archers was
to be lured into some hollow, where a fragment of the rock above or
a felled tree, was ready to crush the legionaries. We chased them
from hill to hill; we might as well have chased the vultures and
eagles that duly followed us, with the perfect certainty of not being
disappointed of their meal. Wherever the enemy showed themselves
they were beaten, but our victory was totally fruitless. The next turn
of the mountain road was a stronghold, from which we had to
expect a new storm of arrows, lances, and fragments of rock.
“The mountaineers always had a retreat,” he continued. “If we
drove them from the pinnacles of the hills, they were in a moment in
the valleys, where we must follow them at the risk of falling down
precipices and being swallowed up by torrents, in which the
strongest swimmer in the legions could not live for a moment. If we
drove them from the valleys, we saw them scaling the mountains as
if they had wings, and scoffing at our tardy and helpless
movements, encumbered as we were with baggage and armor. We
at length forced our way through the mountain range, and when
with the loss of half the army we had reached their citadel, we found
that the work was to be begun again. To remain where we were was
to be starved; we had defeated the barbarians, but they were as
unconquered as ever, and our only resource was to retrace our
steps, which we did at the expense of a battle every morning, noon,
evening, and night, with a ruinous loss of life and the total
abandonment of everything in the shape of baggage. The defeat
was of course hushed up, and according to the old Roman policy, the
escape was colored to a victory; I had the honor of carrying back
the general into Italy, where he was decreed an ovation, a laurel
crown, and a crowd of the usual distinctions; but the triumph
belonged to the men of the mountains, and until our campaign is
forgotten, no Roman captain will look for his laurels in Mount Taurus
again.”
“Such forever be the fate of wars against the
natural freedom of the brave,” said I; “but the The Force of
Cicilians had the advantage of an almost Invasion
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 Salathiel’s
in Judea,” observed Eleazar; “the Jew loves to Determinatio
follow the opinions of the head of his family, the n
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 The
blow is the true tactic of an insurrectionary war. Stronghold of
We must strike at once, suddenly, and boldly. The Masada
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 The
in all wars, of seizing on the capital. But I was Preparations
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.

CHAPTER XXIV
The Departure of Constantius

The remainder of this memorable day lingered

on with a tardiness beyond description. The The Hour of
criminal who counts the watches of the night Banquet
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 Constantius
to my chamber. There lay the chart still on the Seeks
table, the route to Masada marked by pencil lines. Salathiel
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 Constantius
Roman service, but that service I hated from the Departs
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. The Festal
This day was one of the many festivals of our Scene
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 A Beautiful
me. I stood at the door, gazing on the group 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 The Fate of
with the decline of the star that he had taken for Constantius
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. Miriam’s
Whether it be only a duty on your part to disclose Comfort
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 Go, Prince of
take the glory from you. Constantius is a hero, but Naphtali!
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.

CHAPTER XXV
Salathiel in Strange Company

My preparations were quickly made. I divested

myself of my robes, led out my favorite barb, On the Road
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 Salathiel
the breed of horses, and I found no want of Meets
companions. Pedlers, peasants, disbanded Strangers
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 A
Roman general is sacrilege. Half his army, or a Conversation
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 Salathiel
even a dog that had seen the face of Mark Hears of
Antony. He was the first man that I ever carried Masada
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 Dreams of
company; but if you should be present at the sack Beggars
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 Salathiel
of cavalry, riding as fast as horse could lay hoof to Discovered
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 An Enemy of
world—my time and my money; of one of them, I Florus
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 The Slowness
her misery. Wretch that I was, what could I, a of Revenge
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.

CHAPTER XXVI
In the Lions’ Lair
 The violence of the beggar’s anguish, and the
strong probabilities of his story, engrossed me so A Beggar’s
much that I at first regretted the extraordinary Signals
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 A Secluded
or apprising others of my approach. Great stakes Spot
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.
The whole jungle was instantly alive; the shade
which I had fixed on for the seat of unearthly The Forest
tranquillity had been an old haunt of lions, and Kings
the mighty herd were now roused from their
noonday slumbers. Nothing could be grander or more terrible than
this disturbed majesty of the forest kings. In every variety of savage
passion, from terror to fury, they plunged, tore, and yelled; dashed
through the lake, burst through the thicket, rushed up the hills, or
stood baying and roaring in defiance, as if against a coming invader;
their numbers were immense, for the rareness of shade and water
had gathered them from every quarter of the desert.
While I stood clinging to my perilous hold, and
fearful of attracting their gaze by the slightest A Savage
movement, the source of the commotion Conflict
appeared, in the shape of a Roman soldier
issuing, spear in hand, through a ravine at the farther side of the
valley. He was palpably unconscious of the formidable place into
which he was entering, and the gallant clamor of voices through the
hills showed that he was followed by others as bold and as
unconscious of their danger as himself. But his career was soon
closed; his horse’s feet had scarcely touched the turf, when a lion
was fixed with fang and claw on the creature’s loins. The rider
uttered a cry of horror, and for an instant sat helplessly gazing at the
open jaws behind him. I saw the lion gathering up his flanks for a
second bound, but the soldier, a figure of gigantic strength, grasping
the nostrils of the monster with one hand, and with the other
shortening his spear, drove the steel at one resistless thrust into the
lion’s forehead. Horse, lion, and rider fell, and continued struggling
together.
In the next moment a mass of cavalry came thundering down the
ravine. They had broken off from their march, through the accident
of rousing a straggling lion, and followed him in the giddy ardor of
the chase. But the sight now before them was enough to appal the
boldest intrepidity. The valley was filled with the vast herd; retreat
was impossible, for the troopers came still pouring in by the only
pass, and from the sudden descent of the glen, horse and man were
rolled head foremost among the lions; neither man nor monster
could retreat.
The conflict was horrible; the heavy spears of the legionaries
plunged through bone and brain; the lions, made more furious by
wounds, sprang upon the powerful horses and tore them to the
ground, or flew at the troopers’ throats, and crushed and dragged
away cuirass and buckler. The valley was a struggling heap of human
and savage battle; man, lion, and charger writhing and rolling in
agonies until their forms were undistinguishable. The groans and
cries of the legionaries, the screams of the mangled horses, and the
roars and howlings of the lions, bleeding with sword and spear,
tearing the dead, darting up the sides of the hills in terror, and
rushing down again with the fresh thirst of gore, baffled all
conception of fury and horror. But man was the conqueror at last;
the savages, scared by the spear, and thinned in their numbers,
made a rush in one body toward the ravine, overthrew everything in
their way, and burst from the valley, awaking the desert for many a
league with their roar.
“The lions, made more furious by wounds, sprang upon the
powerful horses.”
[see page 208.
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