CHAPTER XXXIII

_Jubal’s Warning_

[Sidenote: Salathiel Views Jerusalem]

In pain and terror I drew my unfortunate kinsman from the gaze of the troops, and entreated him to tell me by what melancholy chance his feelings had been thus disturbed. He looked at me with a fierce glance, and half unsheathed his dagger. But I was not to be repelled, and still labored to soothe him. He hurriedly grasped the weapon, flung it down the steep, and sinking at my feet, burst into tears.

An uproar in the valley roused me from the contemplation of this wreck of youth and hope. The enemy, tho defeated, had suffered little comparative loss. The pride of the legions could not brook the idea of defeat by what they deemed the rabble of the city and the fields. Cestius, under cover of the broken country on our flanks, had rallied the fugitives of the camp, and now, between me and the city, were rapidly advancing in columns, forty thousand men.

The maneuver was bold. It might force us either to fight at a ruinous disadvantage, or to leave the city totally exposed. But, like all bold games, it was perilous, and I determined to make the Roman feel that he had an antagonist who would not leave the game at his discretion.

From the pinnacle on which I stood, the whole champaign lay beneath me. Nothing could be lovelier. The grandest combinations of art and nature were before the eye—Jerusalem on her hills, a city of palaces, and in that hour displaying her full pomp; her towers streaming with banners; her battlements crowded with troops; her priesthood and citizens in their festal habits pouring from the gates and covering the plain with the pageant; that plain itself colored with the richest produce of the earth; groves of the olive; declivities, purple with the vine or yellow with corn, gleaming in the sun, sheets of vegetable gold.

[Sidenote: Salathiel Talks to Jubal]

The signals of my advance parties along the heights soon told me that the enemy were in movement. My plan was speedily adopted. On the right spread the plain; on the left lay the broken and hilly country through which the enemy were advancing by its three principal ravines. I felt that, if they could unite, success with our undisciplined levies was desperate. The only hope was that of beating the columns separately as they emerged into the plain. Cavalry had now begun to ride down upon the processions, which, startled at the sight, were instantly scattered and flying toward Jerusalem.

“The day of congratulation is clearly over,” said Jubal, pointing in scorn to the dispersed citizens. “To-day, at least, you will not receive the homage of those hypocrites of the Sanhedrin.”

“Nor perhaps to-morrow, fellow soldier, for we must first see of what material those columns are made. If we beat them, we shall save the elders the trouble of crossing the plain, and receive their honors within the walls.”

“In Jerusalem!” exclaimed he wildly; “no, never! You have dangers to encounter within those walls that no art of man could withstand; dangers keener than the dagger, more deadly than the aspic, more resistless than the force of armies! Enter Jerusalem and you are undone.”

I looked upon him with astonishment. But there was in his eyes a sad humility; a strangely imploring glance, which formed the most singular contrast to the wildness of his words.

“Be warned!” said he, pressing close, as if he dreaded that his secret should be overheard; “I have seen and heard horrid things since I last entered the city. Beware of the leaders of Jerusalem! I tell you that they have fearful power, that their hate is inexorable, and that you are their great object!”

“This is altogether beyond my conception; how have I offended, and whom?” I asked.

[Sidenote: False Accusations]

He seemed to have recovered the tone of his mind. “You are charged with unutterable acts. Your abandonment of the priesthood; sights seen in your deserted chambers, which not even the most daring would venture to inhabit; your escape from dangers that must have extinguished any other human being, have bred fatal rumors. It has been said that you worshiped in the bowels of the mountain of Masada, where the magic fire burns eternally before the image of the Evil One; nay, that you even conquered the fortress, impregnable as it was to man, by a horrid compact, and that the raising of your standard was the declared sign of that compact, dreadfully to be repaid by you and yours!”

“Monstrous and incredible calumny! Where was their evidence? My actions were before the face of the world!”

“If your virtues were written in a sunbeam, envy would darken and hatred destroy,” exclaimed my kinsman, with the bold countenance and manly feeling of his better days. “They have in their secret councils stained you with a fate more gloomy than I can comprehend; they say that you are sentenced, even here, to the miseries of guilt beyond the grave.”

I felt as if he had stricken a lance through my heart. Fiery sparkles shot before my eyes. I instinctively put my hand to my brow, to feel if the mark of Cain was not already there. I gave one hurried glance at heaven, as if to see the form of the destroying angel stooping over me. But the consciousness that I was in the presence of the multitude compelled me to master my feelings. I commanded Jubal to be ready with his proofs of those calumnies against the time when I should confound my accusers. But I now spoke to the winds. The interval of reason was gone. He burst out into the fiercest horrors.

“They pursue me!” exclaimed he; “they come by thousands, with the poniard and the poison! They cry for blood! They would drive me to a crime black as their own!”

He flung himself at my feet, and, clasping them, prevented every effort to save him from this degradation. He buried his face in my robe, and, casting up a scared look from time to time, as if he shrank from some object of terror, apostrophized his vision.

[Sidenote: Salathiel Arms Jubal]

“Fearful being,” he cried, “spare me! turn away those searching eyes! I have sworn to do the deed, and it shall be done. I have sworn it, against the ties of nature, against the laws of Heaven; but it shall be done. Now, begone! See!”—he cowered, pointing to a cloud that floated across the sun—“see! he spreads his wings; he hovers over me; the thunders are flaming in his hands. Begone, Spirit of Evil! It shall be done! Look, where he vanishes into the heights of his kingdom! the prince of the power of the air.”

The cloud which fed the fancy of my unfortunate kinsman dissolved, and with it his fear of the tempter. But he lay exhausted at my feet, his eyes closed, his limbs shuddering—the emblem of weakness and despair. I tried to rouse him by that topic which would once have shot new life into his heroic heart.

“Rise, Jubal, and see the enemy. This battle must not be fought without you. To-day neither magic nor chance shall be imputed to the conqueror, if I shall conquer. Jerusalem sees the battle, and before the face of my country I will show myself the leader, or will leave the last drop of my blood upon those fields.”

The warrior kindled within him. He sprang from the ground and shot down an eagle glance at the enemy, who had now made rapid progress, and were beginning to show the heads of their columns in the plain. He was unarmed. I gave him my sword, and the proud humility with which he put it to his lips was a pledge to me that it would be honored in his hands.

“Glorious thing!” he exclaimed, as he flashed it before the sun, “that raises man at once to the height of human honors, or sends him where no care can disturb his rest; the true scepter that graces empire; the true talisman, more powerful than all the arts of the enchanter! What, like thee, can lift up the lowly, enrich the destitute, and even restore the undone? What talent, knowledge, gift of nature, nay, what smile of fortune can, like thee, in one hour, bid the obscure stand forth the hero of a people or the wonder of a world? Now for glory!” he shouted to the listening circle of the troops, who answered him with shouts.

“Now for glory!” they cried, and poured after him down the side of the mountain.

[Sidenote: The Onslaught]

The three gorges of the valleys through which the enemy moved, opened into the plain at wide intervals from one another. I saw that the eagerness of Cestius to reach the open ground was already hurrying his columns; and that, from the comparative facilities of the ravine immediately under my position, the nearest column must arrive unsupported. The moment came. The helmets and spears were already pouring from the pass, when a gesture from me let loose the whole human torrent upon them. Our advantage of the ground, our numbers, and still more, our brave impetuosity, decided the fate of this division at once. The legionaries were not merely repulsed, they were absolutely trampled down; there they lay, as if a mighty wall or a fragment of the mountain had fallen upon them.

The two remaining columns were still to be fought. The compact and broad mass of iron that rushed down the ravines seemed irresistible, and when I cast a glance on the irregular and waving lines behind me I felt the whole peril of the day. Yet I feared idly. The enemy charged and forced their way into the very center of the multitude like two vast wedges, crushing all before them. But, tho they could repel, they could not conquer. The spirit of the Jew fighting before Jerusalem was more than heroism. To extinguish a Roman, tho at the instant loss of life; to disable a single spear, tho by receiving it in his bosom; to encumber with his corpse the steps of the adversary, was reward enough for the man of Israel.

I saw crowds of those bold peasants fling themselves on the ground, creep in between the feet of the legionaries, and die stabbing them; others casting away the lance to seize the Roman bucklers and encumber them with the strong grasp of death; crowds mounting the rising grounds, to leap down upon the spears. The enemy, overborne with the weight of the multitude, at length found it impossible to move farther; yet their strength was not to be broken. Wherever we turned there was the same solid wall of shields, the same thick fence of leveled lances. We might as well have assaulted a rock. Our arrows rebounded from their impenetrable armor; the stones that poured on them from innumerable slings rolled off like the hail of a summer shower from a roof. But to have stopped the columns and prevented their junction was in itself a triumph. I felt that we had scarcely to do more than fix them where they stood, and leave the intense heat of the day, thirst, and weariness to fight our battle. But my troops were not to be restrained. They still rolled in furious heaps against the living fortification. Every broken lance in that impenetrable barrier, every pierced helmet, was a trophy; the fall of a single legionary roused a shout of exultation and was the signal for a new charge.

But the battle was no longer to be left to our unassisted efforts; the troops in Jerusalem moved down with Constantius at their head. In the perpetual roar of the conflict, their shouts had escaped my ear, and my first intelligence of their advance was from Jubal, who had well redeemed his pledge during the day. Hurrying with him to one of the eminences that overlooked the field, I saw with pride and delight the standard of Naphtali spreading its red folds at the head of the advancing multitude.

“Who commands them?” asked Jubal eagerly.

“Who should command them, with that banner at their head,” replied I, “but my son, my brave Constantius?”

[Sidenote: Constantius Arrives]

He heard no more, but, bending his turban to the saddle-bow, struck the spur into his horse, and with a cry of madness plunged into the center of the nearest column. The stroke came upon it like a thunderbolt; the phalanx wavered for the first time; an opening was made into its ranks. The chasm was filled up by a charge of my hunters. To save or die with Jubal was the impulse! That charge was never recovered; the column loosened, the multitude pressed in upon it, and Constantius arrived, only in time to see the remnant of the Roman army flying to the disastrous shelter of the hills.

[Sidenote: Salathiel the Conqueror]

The day was won—I was a conqueror! The invincible legions were invincible no more. I had conquered under the gaze of Jerusalem! Where was the enmity that would dare to murmur against me now? What calumny would not be crushed by the force of national gratitude? A flood of absorbing sensations filled my soul. No eloquence of man could express the glowing and superb consciousness that swelled my heart, in the moment when I saw the Romans shake, and heard the shouts of my army proclaiming me victor. After that day, I can forgive the boldest extravagance of the boldest passion for war. That passion may not be cruelty, nor the thirst of possession, nor the longing for supremacy; but something made up of them all, and yet superior to all—the essential spirit of the stirring motives of the human mind—ambition, kindled by the loftiest objects and ennobled by them—a game where the stake is an endless inheritance of renown, a sudden lifting of the man into the rank of those on whose names time can make no impression—immortals, without undergoing the penalty of the grave!