CHAPTER XXX

_The Revenge of a Victor_

[Sidenote: The Beggar’s Garb]

Resistance was at an end, and we had now only to prevent the conflagration from snatching the prize out of our hands. The flames rose fiercely, and another hour might see the famous arsenal beyond the power of man. Leaving to Constantius the care of securing the prisoners, I entered the palace, followed by a detachment. In the tumult I had missed my deliverer, yet scarcely could think of him, or anything else, while the enemy were showering lances and shafts upon us. But now, some fears of his extravagance recurred to me, and I ordered strict search to be made for him. The fire had seized on but a wing of the palace and was soon extinguished. I was ascending the stairs when a figure bounded full against me from a side door. It was the beggar. His voice, however, was my only means of recognition, for his outward man had undergone a total change. He wore a rich cuirass and helmet, a Greek falchion glittered in his embroidered belt, a tissued mantle hung over his shoulder, and a spear ponderous, but inlaid and polished with the nicest art, was brandished in his hand.

“What,” said he, “is all over? May all the fogs of earth and skies cloud me, but I was born under the most malignant planet that ever did mischief; I left you only to do some business of my own; I failed there. My next business was to join and help you to give a lesson to those Roman hounds; or, if they were to give the lesson to us, take chance along with you and exhibit as a soldier. I ventured to borrow the governor’s arms, as you see, but I am always unlucky.”

“If it was you who set this roof on fire, your torch was worth an army.”

[Sidenote: The Beggar Confronts Florus]

“Aye, I never saw fire fail; no man is ashamed of running away from a blaze; and I thought that the Romans were tired enough, to be glad of the excuse. But I had a point besides to carry. Florus is somewhere under these ceilings. I determined to burn him out, and pay home my long arrear, as he attempted to make his escape. But you have just extinguished the cleverest earthly contrivance for the discovery of rascal governors, and I must break an oath I made long ago, against his ever dying in his bed.”

“Florus here! then we must find him without delay. But who comes?”

At the word I seized a slave of the palace, attempting to escape. He begged hard for his life, and promised to conduct us where the procurator was concealed. We hurried on through a succession of winding passages; a strong door stopped us.

“There,” said the slave.

“By the beard of my fathers, the wolf shall not be long in his den!” cried the son of El Hakim. “Procurator, your last crime is committed.”

He threw himself against the door with prodigious force; the bars burst away, and before us lay the terror of Judea.

He was to be a terror no more. A cup, the inseparable amethystine cup, stood on the table beside his couch. He lay writhing in pain. His countenance wore the ghastliest hue of death. I bade him surrender. He smiled, took the cup in his trembling hand, and eagerly swallowed the remaining drops in its bottom.

“What! poison!” exclaimed my companion; “has the villain escaped me? Here is my planet again; never was man so unlucky. But he is not dead yet.”

He drew his falchion, and lifted it up with the look of one about to offer a solemn sacrifice. I seized his arm.

“He is dying,” said I; “he is beyond earthly vengeance.”

The wretched criminal before us was nearly insensible to his brief preservation. The poison, acting upon a frame already broken with public and private anxieties, was making quick work, and the glazed eye, the fallen countenance, and the collapsed limb showed that his last hour was come.

[Sidenote: The Death-Bed of Gessius Florus]

“And this is the thing,” soliloquized the son of El Hakim, “that men feared! In this senseless flesh was the power to make the free tremble for their freedom, and the slave curse the hour that he was born. This mass of mortality could stand between me and happiness—could make me a beggar, a wanderer, miserable, mad!”

He caught up the hand that hung nerveless from the couch.

“Accursed hand!” exclaimed he, “what torrents of blood have owed their flowing to thee! A word written by these fingers cost a thousand lives. And, O Heaven! in this cruel grasp was the key of thy dungeon, my Mary!—that dungeon of more than the body, the hideous prison-house that extinguished thy mind!”

He let fall the hand and wept bitterly.

To my utter surprise the procurator started upon his feet, and with the look that had so often made the heart quake, haughtily demanded who we were, and how we dared to interrupt his privacy? I felt as if a spirit had started up before me from the shroud. But this extraordinary revival was merely the last effort of a fierce mind. He tottered, and was falling, when my companion darted forward, grasped him by the bosom with one hand, and waving the falchion above him with the other—

“He hears! he sees!” exclaimed he exultingly. “Who are we? Who am I? Look upon me, Gessius Florus, before the sight leaves your eyes forever. See Sabat the Ishmaelite, the despised, the insulted, the trampled, the undone! But never did you prosper from the hour of my ruin. I was your spy, but it was only to bring you into a snare; I fed your pride, but it was only that it might turn the hearts of all men against you; I tempted your avarice, only that wealth might make your nights sleepless, and your days, days of fear; I roused your wrath into rage; I inflamed your ambition into frenzy! This night, I led your conquerors upon you. But I had made all sure. In another week, Gessius Florus, if you had escaped this sword, you would have been seized by order of the Emperor, stripped of your wealth, your accursed power, and your wretched life. The command for your blood is this night crossing the Mediterranean!”

The dying man struggled to get free, wrenched himself by a violent effort from the strong grasp that at once held and sustained him, and fell. He was dead!

The son of El Hakim stood gazing on the body in silence, when the glitter of a ring on the hand, as it lay spread upon the floor, struck his eye. He seized it with an outcry; the man was wholly changed; his frowning visage flashed with joy. I in vain demanded the cause. He pressed the signet to his lips.

“Farewell, farewell,” he exclaimed.

“Will you not wait for your share of the spoil, your ample and deserved reward?”

“Farewell!” he repeated, and burst from the chamber.

[Sidenote: The Change in Constantius]

This memorable night made changes in more than the Ishmaelite. Constantius was at last in his element. I had hitherto seen him disguised by circumstances; the fugitive from his country, the lover under the embarrassments of forbidden passion, the ill-starred soldier. His native vigor of soul was under a perpetual cloud. But now the cloud broke away, and the consciousness of having nobly retrieved his check, and the still prouder consciousness of the career that this triumph laid open before him, brought the character of his mind into full light. He was now the lofty enthusiast that nature made him. He breathed generous ambition; his step was the step of command; and when he rushed to my embrace with almost the eagerness of a boy, and a voice stifled with emotion, I saw in him the romance, the soaring spirit, and the passionate love of glory that molded the Greek hero.

He had done his duty nobly. All were in admiration of the assault. The Romans had been fully prepared. He scaled the rampart, and scaled it in their teeth. His men followed gallantly. He pressed on; the second rampart was stormed. I had found him at the foot of the third, checked by its impregnable mass, but defying the whole garrison to drive him back. When I afterward saw the strength of those bulwarks, I felt that with such a leader at the head of troops animated by his spirit, there was nothing extravagant in the boldest hope of war.

This was an eventful night, and there was still much to be done before we slept. I threw over my tattered garments one of the many mantles that lay loose round the chamber, flung another on the body of the procurator, and sallied forth to give the final orders of the night. The prisoners had been already secured, and I found the great hall of the palace crowded with centurions. The interview was whimsical; for a while I escaped recognition; the gashed faces and torn raiment of my hunters, which bore the marks of our dreary march through the subterranean; the rough heads and hands stained with the fight, a startling contrast to the perfect equipment of the Roman under all circumstances, gave them the look of the robber tribes. My disguise was in the contrary way, yet complete. The cloak was accidentally one of the most showy in the procurator’s wardrobe. I found myself enveloped in furs and tissues; and their Arab acquaintance was forgotten in what seemed to them the legitimate monarch of the mountains.

[Sidenote: Salathiel Meets the Captain]

I was received by the circle of captives with the decent dignity of the brave. There was but one exception, which I might have guessed—the tribune. He was all humiliation, stooped to make some abject request about his baubles, and was probably on the point of apologizing for his ever having taken up the trade of war, when I turned on my heel and shook hands with my old friend the captain. He looked in evident perplexity. At last, through even the grim evidences of the night’s work on my countenance, and the problem of my pompous mantle, his brightening eye began to recognize me, and he burst out with: “The Arab, by Jupiter!” But when I asked him what had become of his baggage, I touched a tender string, and, with a countenance as grave as if he had sustained an irreparable calamity, he told me that his whole traveling cellar was in the hands of my men, and it was his full belief that he was at that moment not worth a flask in the wide world!

The tribune turned away in conscious disgrace, and I sent him to a dungeon to meditate till morn on the awkwardness of insolence to strangers. With the others, I sat down to such entertainment as a sacked fortress could supply, but which hunger, thirst, and fatigue rendered worth all the banquets of the idle. The old captain cheered his soul and grew rhetorical.

“Wine,” said he, flask in hand, “does wonders. It is the true leveler, for it leaves no troublesome inequality of conditions. It is the true sponge that pays all debts at sight, for it makes us forget the existence of a creditor. It is the true friend that sticks by a man to the last drop; the faithful mistress that forsakes no man; and the most charming of wives, whose tongue no husband hears, whose company is equally delightful at all hours, and who is as bewitching to-day as she was fifty years ago.”

The panegyric was popular. The governor’s cellar flowed. The Italian connoisseurship in vintages was displayed in the most profound style, and long before we parted the great “sponge” which wipes away debt had wiped away every recollection of defeat. The idea of their being prisoners never clouded a sunbeam that came from the bottle. The letters scattered from the tribune’s saddle were an unfailing topic. The legion had picked them up on the march; they had the piquancy of the scandal of particular friends; and the addition made to their intelligence by my wild associate was unanimously declared the most dexterous piece of frolic, the most pleasant venom, and the most venomous pleasantry, that ever emanated from the wit of man.

[Sidenote: The Armory of Herod]

My task was not yet done. I left those gay soldiers to their wine, and with Constantius and some torch-bearers hastened to the Armory of Herod—the forbidden ground; the treasure-house of war; and, if old rumor were to be believed, the place of many a mysterious celebration unlawful to be seen by human eyes.

The building was in the center of the citadel,[33] and was of the stateliest architecture. The massive doors were now thrown open. At the first step, I shrank from the blaze of steel and gold that shot back against the torches. The walls of this gigantic hall were covered with arms and armor of every nation—cuirasses, Persian, Roman, and Greek; the plate mail of the Gaul; the Indian chain-armor; innumerable headpieces, from the steel cap of the Scythian to the plumed and triple-crested helmet of the Greek, that richest combination of strength and beauty ever borne by soldiership; shields of every shape and sculpture; the Greek orb, the Persian rhomb, the Cimmerian crescent; all arms—the ponderous spear of the phalanx; the Thracian pike; the German war-hatchet; the Italian javelin; the bow, from the Nubian, twice the height of man, to the small half-circle of the Assyrian cavalry; swords, the broad-bladed and fearful falchion of the Roman, every thrust of which let out a life; the huge two-handed sword of the Baltic tribes; the Syrian simitar; the Persian acinaces; the deep-hilted knife of the Indian islander; the Arab poniard; the serrated blade of the African—all were there in their richest models, the collection of Herod’s life. War had raised him to a rank which allowed the indulgence of his most lavish tastes of good and ill; the sword was his true scepter, and never king bore the sign of his sovereignty more royally emblazoned.

[Sidenote: The Secret Hall]

After long admiration of this display of the wealth dearest to the soldier, I was retiring, when a slave approached, and prostrating himself, told me that a hall remained, still more singular, “the hall in which the great Herod received his death-warning.”

I gazed round the armory; there was no door but the one by which we had entered——

“Not here,” said the Ethiopian, “yet it is beside us. The foot of a Roman has never entered it. The secret remains with me alone. Does my lord command that it shall be revealed?”

The order was given. The slave took down one of the coats of mail, pushed back a valve, and we entered a winding stair which led us downward for some minutes. The narrow passage and heavy air reminded me of the subterranean. Our torches burned dimly, and the visages of my attendants showed how little their gallantry was to be relied on, if we were to be brought into contact with magic and ghosts.

“Here,” said the Ethiopian, “it was the custom of the great king in his declining years, when his heart was broken by the loss of the most beloved of wives, and maddened by the conspiracies of the princes, his sons, to come and consult others than the God of Jerusalem. Here the Chaldee men of wisdom came to summon the spirits of the departed and show the fates of kingdoms. We are now in the bowels of the mountain.”

He loosed a chain, which disappeared into the ground with a hollow noise. A huge mass of rock slowly rolled back, and showed a depth of darkness through which our twinkling torches scarcely made way.

“Stop,” said the slave; “I should have first lighted the shrine.”

[Sidenote: The Skeleton Warriors]

He left us, and we shortly saw a blaze of many colors on a tripod in the center. As the blaze strengthened, a scene of wonder awoke before the eye. A host of armed statues grew upon the darkness. The immense vault was peopled with groups of warriors, all the great military leaders of the world in their native arms, and surrounded by a cluster of their captains; the disturbers of the earth, from Sesostris down to Cæsar and Antony, brandishing the lance or reining the charger, each in his known attitude of command. There rushed Cyrus in the scythed chariot, surrounded by his horsemen, barbed from head to foot. There was to be seen Alexander, with the banner of Macedon waving above his head, and armed as when he leaped into the Granicus; there Hannibal, upon the elephant that he rode at Cannæ; there Cæsar, with the head of Pompey at his feet. Those, and a long succession of the masters of victory, each in the moment of supreme fortune, made the vault a representative palace of human glory. But the view from the entrance told but half the tale. It was when I advanced and lifted the torch to the countenance of the first group that the moral was visible. All the visages were those of skeletons. The costly armor was hung upon bones. The spears and scepters were brandished by the thin fingers of the grave. The vault was the representative sepulcher of human vanity. This was one of the fantastic fits of a mind which felt too late the emptiness of earthly honors. Half pagan, the powerful intellect of the man gave way to the sullen superstitions of the murderer. Egypt was still the mystic tyrant of Palestine, and Herod, in his despair, sank into the slave of a credulity at once weak and terrible.

[Sidenote: Herod’s Death]

In the last hours of a long and deeply varied life, exhausted more by misery of soul than disease, when medicine was hopeless, and he had returned from trying the famous springs of Callirhoë in vain, the king ordered himself to be brought into this vault, and left alone. He remained in it during some hours. The attendants were at length roused by hideous wailings; they broke open the entrance, and found him in a paroxysm of terror. The vault was filled with the strong odors of some magical preparations, still burning on the tripod. The sound of departing feet was heard, but Herod sat alone. In accents of the wildest wo he declared that he had seen the statues filled with sudden life, and charging him with the death of his wife and children.

He left Masada instantly, pronouncing a curse upon the hour in which he first listened to the arts of Egypt. He was carried to Jericho, and there laid on a bed, from which he never rose. Alternate bursts of blasphemy and remorse made his parting moments frightful. But tyranny was in his last thought, and he died, holding in his hand an order for the massacre of every leading man in Judea.