Deborah: A tale of the times of Judas Maccabaeus. James M. LudlowЧитать онлайн книгу.
Temple. To-morrow they celebrate the feast of Bacchus. If you go there, they will crown you with ivy, and make you drunk in honor of the god. You must go home, and stay within doors."
"Then let me go—to my own house! My God! Why was it not my sepulchre ere I saw what the Prophet foretold?"
Captain Dion led him safely along the Street of David, the crowd giving way as it gazed upon the two and remarked the contrast between the half-mummied saint and the strong-limbed, festive-crowned youth.
"Old Elkiah is about the last of this damnable race left in Jerusalem. It is a wonder that Apollonius has given him tether so long."
"Perhaps Dion knows the Jew," responded some one. "The captain is as good a Greek as ever drew sword or loved a woman, but his nose isn't straight on a line with his forehead. See, it has a Jewish twist."
"A fine observation," laughed another, "for one always follows his nose, and that may account for Dion's kindness to some of these rebels."
"Don't insult Captain Dion!" said one. "He's close in with Apollonius. Besides, he's a good fellow. He always gives a weaker man his handicap in the arena without having it ordered."
"True, or you would not have won yesterday. But I wish he wouldn't interfere with the sport of the men. I know that it is cruel, but the sooner the bigots are exterminated the sooner it will cease. Were it not for Dion's friendship for that Glaucon—as Elkiah's fool of a son now calls himself—we would soon find out what the old Jew's house has for us. They say his cellar is as good as a gold-mine."
"Better kill off Glaucon, and let the old man die himself. You saw that his life is about burned out, and his old body only like a heap of ashes with a spark in it," was the humane response.
Dion paused by the oaken door in the wall of the Jew's house. He took from a little pouch at his belt a pinch of aromatic sawdust of sandalwood, and dropped it upon a small square altar whose brazier emitted a thin curl of white smoke, clouding the entrance. This was an altar to Zeus which the Governor had commanded to be placed at all the houses which were still occupied by the Jews. Just above the altar the lintel had been torn by the destruction of the Mezuzah or wooden box which, according to the Hebrew custom, contained the sacred sentences from the Law, and through the small apertures in which a visitor to any Jewish home could see the word "Shaddai," the Almighty One, and thus make the common salutation, "Peace be to this house," into a prayer. Dion's worship at the little altar by the gate was marred by a muttered curse upon Apollonius for the needless insult perpetrated by this act of sacrilege.
The Greek had scarcely time to knock at the outer entrance when the door flew open, and with the cry "Father!" a young girl's arms were about the old man.
She drew him inside, and stood with her left arm supporting, while she raised her right hand as if it were a shield to protect him.
Captain Dion was familiar with the finest statuary in Athens and Antioch, but thought he had never seen anything to match this—the white head and beard of age shielded by the raven locks of youth and beauty. He would tell Laertes, his sculptor friend, of this pose.
The girl was apparently about seventeen years of age, tall and lithe, with sufficient muscle to give that exquisite grace which only accompanies strength. Her hair, bound about the temples with a single fillet of silver, fell in wavy profusion of jet black upon a white linen chiton. This was gathered at the shoulders, and left fully exposed a neck which might have illuminated a copy of Solomon's Song. Beneath the breasts the garment was girdled with a rope of golden threads, and thence fell below the knees. Her ankles were wound with long white sandal lacings, which were in harmony with the silver band that bound her brow. Her arms were bare. In her haste she had not put on her outer garment, and thus stood revealed in a more exquisite modelling of nature than she would have chosen had she known that she was to be beneath so critical an eye. Yet she could not have been more charming had she practised for hours before her mirror of polished brass, and passed her proud old nurse Huldah's inspection before she made her début at the gate.
Dion noted that the girl's features were perfect, but strictly on the Semitic model. Her face might be a hard one, for it well fitted the tragic feeling of the moment; or it might be sweet as any he had loved to dream about, for it also fitted the intensity of filial affection and solicitude she now displayed. The Greek seemed transfixed by her eyes. These were enlarged by her surprise, and their pupils gleamed from their deep black irises with the fire of excitement.
"A Jewish Athena!" thought Dion, as in a brief sentence or two he begged the girl to be more prudent in the care of her father. Surely there was no scorn of the Jewish race in the profound bow with which he took his departure, nor in the hasty glance he stole as the door was closing.
He plucked a leaf from his myrtle crown and dropped it upon the altar. As he went away he sighed a prayer for the maiden, and grumbled another curse upon the King's cruelty. Then he whistled a sort of musical accompaniment to his thought, which ran something like this:
"That girl is Glaucon's sister. He never told me that he had one." He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, in that he was wise, since he only knows me for a Greek adventurer, and thinks my honor like his own, a spur on the heel, to be used or not according to one's inclination. But, by the arm of Aphrodite! what a woman! Beautiful as a lioness, and as brave too. Strange that the Jew could be father of both her and Glaucon—of a lioness and a jackal! Glaucon and I must be good friends, though I despise the fool. Why doesn't he fight for his house? I would—especially with that woman in it."
Dion stopped and stood a long time looking at the narrow strip of sky visible between Elkiah's house and those which lined the opposite side of the street. There were no angels in the blue ether; but something prompted him to take from his bosom a piece of onyx enclosed in a casket of gold, and to look at a sweet face cut into the stone.
"I wonder if she was anything like Elkiah's daughter!"
He put the intaglio back into its pocket and went away.
III
THE LITTLE BLIND SEER.
The house of Elkiah was one of the most stately in Jerusalem, though inferior to the structure which, in more ancient days, rose from the same foundations. Whenever Elkiah told of his ancestral dignities he was apt to show his listeners what were now the cellars and sub-cellars of the house, the great stones of which, by the flat indentations chiselled about the borders, proved that they were as old as the days when Solomon built the Temple, and perhaps wrought by the same Phœnician workmen. The second story, and the battlements which enclosed the roof, were of newer construction, and had evidently been made of the débris of a former and more palatial edifice, for an occasional huge and broidered stone showed upon the street in ancient architectural pride—just as some moderately circumstanced people wear an occasional jewel left them by their richer forebears.
The residence of Elkiah thus maintained a relation to the other and ordinary houses of the city not unlike that which its occupant held to his fellow-citizens. He traced his blood to the days when another Elkiah stood high in the court of Solomon, and thence back to the settlement of the land by the emigrants from Egypt. This could be attested by the official records, and was illustrated by numerous priceless antiques now stored away in secret closets cut into the solid walls, but which in safer times had ornamented the house from battlement to court.
For many years Elkiah had been the Nasi, or President of the Sanhedrin, that combined ecclesiastical and secular court of seventy-two men who legislated for and judged the people. Of late years the Sanhedrin itself had become utterly debauched by the gold of Egyptian Ptolemies and Syrian Antiochuses, in their rivalry for the possession of Palestine. Most of the members of this sacred council had become Hellenized, and adopted Greek philosophies and customs; and now that the Syrian monarch had invaded the city, these renegades saved themselves from being despoiled by becoming despoilers of