CHAPTER VIII

_Salathiel Confronts the Shade of Antiochus_

[Sidenote: Salathiel’s Discontent]

Let me hasten through some years.[11] The sunshine of life was gone; in all my desire to conform to the habits of my new career, I found myself incapable of contentment. But the times, that had long resembled the stagnation of a lake, were beginning to be shaken. Rome herself, the prey of conspiracy, gradually held her foreign scepter with a feebler hand. Gaul and Germany were covered with gathering clouds, and their flashes were answered from the Asiatic hills. With the relaxation of the paramount authority, the chain of subordinate oppression, as always happens, was made tighter. As the master was enfeebled, the menials were less in awe; and Judea rapidly felt what must be the evils of a military government without the strictness of military discipline.

[Sidenote: His Painful Recollections]

I protest against being charged with ambition. But I had a painful sense of the guilt of suffering even such powers as I might possess to waste away, without use to some part of mankind. I was weary of the utter unproductiveness of the animal enjoyments, in which I saw the multitude round me content to linger into old age. I longed for an opportunity of contributing my mite to the solid possessions by which posterity is wiser, happier, or purer than the generation before it—some trivial tribute to that mighty stream of time which ought to go on, continually bringing richer fertility as it flowed. I was not grieved by the change which I saw overshadowing the gorgeous empire of Rome. My unspeakable crime may have thrown a deeper tinge on those contemplations. But by a singular fatality, and perhaps for the increase of my punishment, I was left for long periods in each year to the common impressions of life. The wisdom, which even my great misfortune might have forced upon me, was withheld; and the being who, in the conviction of his mysterious destiny, must have looked upon earth and its pursuits as man looks upon the labors and the life of flies—as atoms in the sunshine—as measureless emptiness and trifling—was given over to be disturbed by the impulses of generations on whose dust he was to sit, and to see other generations rise round him, themselves to sink alike into dust, while he still sat an image of endurance, torturing, but imperishable.

There was a season in each year when those recollections returned with overwhelming vividness. If all other knowledge of the approach of the Passover could have escaped me, there were signs, fearful signs, that warned me of that hour of my wo. A periodic dread of the sight of man, a sudden sense of my utter separation from the interests of the transitory beings around me, wild dreams, days of immovable abstraction, yet filled with the breathing picture of all that I had done on the day of my guilt in Jerusalem, rose before me with such intense reality that I lived again through the scene. The successive progress of my crime—the swift and stinging consciousness of condemnation—the flash of fearful knowledge, that showed me futurity—all were felt with the keenness of a being from whom his fleshly nature has been stripped away and the soul bared to every visitation of pain. I stood, like a disembodied spirit, in suffering.

Yet I could not be restrained from following my tribe on their annual progress to the Holy City. To see from afar the towers of the Temple was with me like a craving for life—but I never dared to set my foot within its gates. On some pretense or other, and sometimes through real powerlessness, arising from the conflict of my heart, I lingered behind, yet within the distance from which the city could be seen. There among the precipices I wandered through the day, listening to the various uproar of the mighty multitude, or wistfully catching some echo of the hymns in the Temple—sounds that stole from my eye many a tear—till darkness fell, the city slumbered, and the blast of the Roman trumpets, as they divided the night, reminded me of the fallen glories of my country.

[Sidenote: Salathiel Beside the Lake]

In one of those wanderings I had followed the courses of the Kedron, which, from a brook under the walls of Jerusalem, swells to a river on its descent to the Dead Sea. The blood of the sacrifices from the conduits of the altars curdled on its surface and stained the sands purple. It looked like a wounded vein from the mighty heart above. I still strayed on, wrapped in sad forebodings of the hour when its stains might be of more than sacrifice, until I found myself on the edge of the lake. Who has ever seen that black expanse without a shudder? There were the engulfed cities. Around it life was extinct—no animal bounded—no bird hovered. The distant rushing of the Jordan, as it forced its current through the heavy waters, or the sigh of the wind through the reeds, alone broke the silence of this mighty grave. Of the melancholy objects of nature, none is more depressing than a large expanse of stagnant waters. No gloom of forest or wildness of mountain is so overpowering as this dreary, unrelieved flatness—the marshy border, the sickly vegetation of the shore, the leaden color which even the sky above it wears, tinged by its sepulchral atmosphere. But the waters before me were not left to the dreams of a saddened fancy—they were a sepulcher. Myriads of human beings lay beneath them, entombed in sulfurous beds. The wrath of Heaven had been there! The day of destruction seemed to pass again before my eyes, as I lay gazing upon those sullen depths. I saw them once more a plain covered with richness; cities glittering in the morning sun; multitudes pouring out from their gates to sports and festivals; the land exulting with life and luxuriance: Then a cloud gathered above. I heard the thunder: it was answered by the earthquake. Fire burst from the skies: it was answered by a thousand founts of fire spouting from the plain. The distant hills blazed and threw volcanic showers over the cities. Round them was a tide of burning bitumen. The earthquake heaved again. All sank into the gulf. I heard the roar of the distant waters. They rushed into the bed of fire; the doom was done; the cities of the plain were gone down to the blackness of darkness forever!

[Sidenote: A Meeting]

I was idly watching the bursts of suffocating vapor, that shoot up at intervals from the rising masses of bitumen, when I was startled by a wild laugh and wilder figure beside me. I sprang to my feet, and prepared for defense with my poniard. The figure waved its hand, in sign to sheathe the unnecessary weapon, and said, in a tone strange and melancholy: “You are in my power, but I do not come to injure you. I have been contemplating your countenance for some time; I have seen your disturbed features—your wringing hands—your convulsed form—are you even as I am?”

The voice was singularly mild; yet I never heard a sound that so keenly pierced my brain. The speaker was of the tallest stature of man—every sinew and muscle exhibiting gigantic strength; yet with the symmetry of a Greek statue. But his countenance was the true wonder—it was of the finest mold of manly beauty; the contour was Greek, though the hue was Syrian—yet the dark tinge of country gave way at times to a corpse-like paleness. I had full leisure for the view, for he stood gazing on me without a word and I remained fixed on my defense. At length he said: “Put up that poniard! You could no more hurt me than you could resist me. Look here!” He wrenched a huge mass of rock from the ground and whirled it far into the lake, as if it had been a pebble. I gazed with speechless astonishment. “Yes,” pursued the figure, “they throw me into their prisons—they lash me—they stretch me on the rack—they burn my flesh.” As he spoke he flung aside his robe and showed his broad breast covered with scars. “Short-sighted fools! little they know him who suffers or him who commands. If it were not my will to endure, I could crush my tormentors as I crush an insect. They chain me, too,” said he with a laugh of scorn. He drew out the arm which had been hitherto wrapped in his robe. It was loaded with heavy links of iron. He grasped one of them in his hand, twisted it off with scarcely an effort, and flung it up a sightless distance in the air. “Such are bars and bolts to me! When my time is come to suffer, I submit to be tortured! When that time is past, I tear away their fetters, burst their dungeons, and walk forth trampling their armed men.”

[Sidenote: Salathiel Craves Power]

I sheathed the dagger. “Does this strength amaze you?” said the being; “look to yonder dust”—and he pointed to a cloud of sand that came flying along the shore. “I could outstrip that whirlwind; I could plunge unhurt into the depths of that sea; I could ascend that mountain swifter than the eagle; I could ride that thunder-cloud.”

As he threw himself back, gazing upon the sky with his grand form buoyant with vigor and his arm raised, he looked like one to whom height or depth could offer no obstacle. His mantle flew out along the blast, like the unfurling of a mighty wing. There was something in his look and voice that gave irresistible conviction to his words. Conscious mastery was in all about him. I should not have felt surprise to see him spring up into the clouds!

My mind grew inflamed by his presence. My blood burned with sensations for which language was no name—a thirst of power—a scorn of earth—a proud and fiery longing for the command of the hidden mysteries of nature. I felt as the great ancestor of mankind might have felt when the tempter told him, “Ye shall be even as gods.”

“Give me your power!” I exclaimed; “the world to me is worthless; with man all my ties are broken; let me live in the desert, and be even as you are; give me your power.” “My power?” he repeated, with a ghastly laugh that was echoed round the wilderness by what seemed voices innumerable until it died away in a distant groan. “Look on this forehead!”—he threw back the corner of his mantle. A furrow was drawn round his brow, covered with gore, and gaping like a fresh wound. “Here,” cried he, “sat the diadem. I was Epiphanes.”[12]

[Sidenote: Which Antiochus Promises]

“You, Antiochus! the tyrant—the persecutor—the spoiler—the accursed of Israel!” I bounded backward in sudden horror. I saw before me one of those spirits of the evil dead who are allowed from time to time to reappear on earth in the body, whether of the dead or the living. For some cause that none could unfold, Judea had been, within the last few years, haunted by those beings more than for centuries. Strange rites, dangerously borrowed from the idolaters, were resorted to for our relief from this new terror: the pulling of the mandrake at the eclipse of the moon—incantations—midnight offerings—the root of Baaras, that was said to flash flame and kill the animal that drew it from the ground. Our Sadducees and skeptics, wise in their own conceit, declared that possession was but a human disease, a wilder insanity. But, with the range and misery of madness, there were tremendous distinctions, which raised it beyond all the ravages of the hurt mind or the afflicted frame—the look, the language, the horror, of the possessed were above man. They defied human restraint; they lived in wildernesses where the very serpents died; the fiery sun of the East, the inclemency of the fiercest winter, had no power to break down their strength. But they had stronger signs. They spoke of things to which the wisdom of the wisest was folly; they told of the remotest future, with the force of prophecy; they gave glimpses of a knowledge brought from realms of being inaccessible to living man; last and loftiest sign, they did homage to HIS coming, whom a cloud of darkness, the guilty and impenetrable darkness of the heart, had veiled from my unhappy nation. But their worship was terror—they believed and trembled.

“Power,” said the possessed, and his large and unmoving eyes seemed lighting up with fire from within; “power you shall have, and hate it; wealth you shall have, and hate it; life you shall have, and hate it; yet you shall know the heights and depths of man. You shall be the worm among a nation of worms; you shall be steeped in ruin to the lips; you shall undergo the bitterness of death, until——” His brow writhed; he gnashed his teeth, and convulsively sprang from the ground, as if an arrow had shot through him.

The current of his thoughts suddenly changed. Things above man were not to be uttered to the ear unopened by the grave. “Come,” said he, “son of misfortune, emblem of the nation that living shall die, and dying shall live; that, trampled by all, shall trample upon all; that, bleeding from a thousand wounds, shall be unhurt; that, beggared, shall wield the wealth of nations; that, without a name, shall sway the councils of kings; that, without a city, shall inhabit in all kingdoms; that, scattered like the dust, shall be bound together like the rock; that, perishing by the sword, by the chain, by famine, by fire, shall yet be imperishable, unnumbered, glorious as the stars of heaven.”

[Sidenote: Salathiel Overpowered]

Overwhelmed with sensations, rushing in a flood through my heart, I had cast myself upon the ground; the flashing of the fiery eye before me consumed my blood; and, fainting, I lay with my face upon the sand. But his words were deeply heard; with every sound of his searching voice they struck into my soul. He grasped me; and I was lifted up like an infant in his clutch. “Come,” said he, “and see what is reserved for you and for your people.”

He darted forward with a speed that took away my breath; he ran—he bounded—he flew. “Now, behold,” he uttered in an accent as composed as if he had not moved a limb. I looked, and found myself on one of the hills close to the great southern gate of Jerusalem. Years had passed since I ventured so nigh. But I now gazed on the city of pomp and beauty with an involuntary wonder that I could have ever deserted a scene so lovely and so loved.

It was the twilight of a summer evening. Tower and wall lay bathed in a sea of purple; the Temple rose from its center like an island of light; the host of heaven came riding up the blue fields above; the sounds of day died in harmony. All was the sweetness, calmness, and splendor of a vision painted in the clouds.

“There,” said the possessed, “I was once master, conqueror, avenger; yet I was but the instrument to punish your furious dissensions—your guilty abandonment of the law of your leader—your more than Gentile apostasy from the worship of Him who is to be worshiped with more than the blood of bulls and goats. A power hidden from my idolatrous eyes went before me and broke down the courage of your people. I marched through your gates on the neck of the godless warrior; I plundered the wealth of your rich men, made worldly by their wealth; I slew your priesthood, already the betrayers of their altar; I overthrew your places of worship, already defiled; I covered the ruins with the blood of swine; I raised idols in the sanctuary; I bore away the golden vessels of the Temple, and gave them to the insult of the Syrian; I slew your males, I made captives of your women; I abolished your sacrifices, and pronounced in my hour of blasphemy that within the walls of Jerusalem the flame should never again be kindled to the Supreme. The deed was mine, but the cause was the iniquity of your people.”

The history of devastation roused in me those feelings native to the Jew by which I had been taught to look with abhorrence on the devastator.

“Let me be gone,” I exclaimed, struggling from his grasp. “Strange and terrible being, let me hear no more this outrage on God and man. I am guilty, too guilty, in having listened to you for a moment.”

He laid his hand upon my brow, and I felt my strength dissolve at the touch.

[Sidenote: A Prophecy of the Future]

“Go,” said he, “but first be a witness of the future. A fiercer destroyer than Epiphanes shall come, to punish a darker crime than ever stained your forefathers. A destruction shall come to which the past was the sport of children. Tower and wall, citadel and temple, shall be dust. The sword shall do its work—the chain shall do its work—the flame shall do its work. Bad spirits shall rejoice; good spirits shall weep; Israel shall be clothed in sackcloth and ashes for a time, impenetrable by a created eye. The world shall exult, trample, scorn, and slay. Blindness, madness, and misery shall be the portion of the people. Now, behold!”

He stood, with his arm stretched out toward the Temple. All before me was tranquillity itself; night had suddenly fallen deeper than usual; the stars had been wrapped in clouds, that yet gathered without a wind; a faint tinge of light from the summit of Mount Moriah, the gleam of the never-extinguished altar of the daily sacrifice, alone marked the central court of the Temple. I turned from the almost death-like stillness of the scene, with a look of involuntary disbelief, to the face of my fearful guide; even in the deep darkness every feature of it was strangely visible.

[Sidenote: The Beginning of Evil]

A low murmur from the city caught my ear; it rapidly grew loud, various, wild; it was soon intermingled with the clash of arms. Trumpets now rang; I recognized the charging shout of the Romans; I heard the tumultuous roar of my countrymen in return. The darkness was converted into light; torches blazed along the battlements; the Tower of Antonia, the Roman citadel, with its massy bulwarks and immense altitude, rose from a tossing expanse of flame below like a colossal funeral-pile; I could see on its summit the alarm, the rapid signals, the hasty snatching up of spear and shield, the confusion of the garrison which that night’s vengeance was to offer up on the pile. The roar of battle rose, it deepened into cries of agony, it swelled again into furious exultation——

I thought of my countrymen butchered by some new caprice of power; of my kinsmen, perhaps at that instant involved in the massacre; of the city, every stone and beam of which was dear to my embittered heart, given up to the vengeance of the idolater! The prediction of its ruin was in my ears, and I longed to perish with my tribe. I panted with every shout of the battle; every new sheet of flame that rolled upward from the burning houses fevered me; I longed to rush into the uproar with the speed of the whirlwind. But the terrible hand was still upon my forehead, and I was feeble as a broken reed. “Behold,” said the possessed, “those are but the beginnings of evil.” I felt a sudden return of my strength; I looked up; he was gone!