CHAPTER XLVIII

_The Sting of a Story_

In the deepest dejection that could overwhelm the human mind, I returned to the city, where one melancholy care still bound me to existence. I hastened to my comfortless shelter, but the battle had fluctuated so far around the walls that I found myself perplexed, among the ruins of a portion of the lower city, a crowd of obscure streets which belonged almost wholly to strangers and the poorer population.

[Sidenote: In the Darkness of Night]

The faction of John of Giscala, composed chiefly of the more profligate and beggared class, had made the lower city their stronghold, before they became masters of Mount Moriah; and some desperate skirmishes, of which conflagrations were the perpetual consequence, laid waste the principal part of a district built and ruined by the haste and carelessness of poverty. To find a guide through this scene of dilapidation was hopeless, for every living creature, terrified by the awful portents of the sky, had fled from the streets. The night was solid darkness. No expiring gleam from the burned rampart, no fires of the Roman camps, no torch on the Jewish battlements, broke the pitchy blackness. Life and light seemed to have perished together.

To proceed soon became impossible, and I had no other resource than to wait the coming of day. But to one accustomed as I was to hardships, this inconvenience was trivial. I felt my way along the walls, to the entrance of a house that promised some protection from the night, and flinging myself into a corner, vainly tried to slumber. But the rising of the storm and the rain pouring upon my lair drove me to seek a more sheltered spot within the ruin. The destruction was so effectual that this was difficult to discover, and I was hopelessly returning to take my chance in the open air when I observed the glimmer of a lamp through a crevice in the upper part of the building. My first impulse was to approach and obtain assistance. But the abruptness of the ascent gave me time to consider the hazard of breaking in upon such groups as might be gathered at that hour, in a period when every atrocity under heaven reigned in Jerusalem.

My patience was put to but brief trial, for in a few minutes I heard a low hymn. It paused, as if followed by prayer. The hymn began again, in accents so faint as evidently to express the fear of the worshipers. But the sounds thrilled through my soul. I listened, in a struggle of doubt and hope. Could I be deceived? and if I were, how bitter must be the discovery. I sat down at the foot of the rude stair, to feed myself with the fancied delight before it should be snatched from me forever.

[Sidenote: A Sudden Reunion]

But my perturbation would have risen to madness had I stopped longer. I climbed up the tottering steps; half-way I found myself obstructed by a door; I struck upon it, and called aloud. After an interval of miserable delay, a still higher door was opened, and a figure enveloped in a veil timidly looked out and asked my purpose. I saw, glancing over her, two faces that I would have given the world to see. I called out “Miriam!” Overpowered with emotion, my speech failed me. I lived only in my eyes. I saw Miriam fling off the mantle with a scream of joy, and rush down the steps. I saw my two daughters follow her with the speed of love; the door was thrown open, and I fell fainting into their arms.

Tears, exclamations, and gazings were long our only language. My wife hung over my wasted frame with endless embraces and sobs of joy. My daughters fell at my feet, bathed my cold hands with their tears, smiled on me in speechless delight, and then wept again. They had thought me lost to them forever. I had thought them dead, or driven to some solitude which forbade us to meet again on this side of the grave. For two years, two dreadful years, a lonely man on earth, a wifeless husband, a childless father, tried by every misery of mind and body; here—here I found my treasure once more! On this spot, wretched and destitute as it was, in the midst of public misery and personal wo, I had found those whose loss would have made the riches of mankind, beggary to me. My soul overflowed. Words were not made to tell the feverish fondness, the strong delight that quivered through me. I wept with woman’s weakness; I held my wife and children at arm’s length, that I might enjoy the full happiness of gazing on them; then my eyes grew dim, and I caught them to my heart, and in silence, the silence of unspeakable emotion, tried to collect my thoughts and to convince myself that my joy was no dream.

The night passed in mutual inquiries. The career of my family had been deeply diversified. On my capture in the great battle with Cestius, in which it was said that I had fallen, they were on the point of coming to Jerusalem to ascertain their misfortune. The advance of the Romans to Masada precluded this. They sailed for Alexandria, and were overtaken by a storm.

[Sidenote: The Terror of a Memory]

“In that storm,” said Miriam, with terror painted on her countenance, “we saw a sight that appalled the firmest heart among us, and which to this hour recalls fearful images. The night had fallen intensely dark. Our vessel, laboring through the tempest during the day and greatly shattered, was expected to go down before morn, and I had come upon the deck, prepared to submit to the general fate, when I saw a flame in the distance, and pointed it out to the mariners; but they were paralyzed by weariness and fear, and instead of approaching what I conceived to be a beacon, they left the vessel to the mercy of the wind. I watched the light; to my astonishment, I saw it advancing over the waves. It was a large ship on fire, and rushing down upon us. Then, indeed, there was no insensibility among our mariners; they were like madmen, through excess of fear—they did everything but make an effort to escape the danger.

“The blazing ship came toward us with terrific rapidity. As it approached, the figure of a man was seen on the deck, standing unhurt, in the midst of the burning. The Syrian pilot, hitherto the boldest of our crew, at this sight cast the helm from his hands in despair, and tore his beard, exclaiming that we were undone. To our questions, he would give no other answer than by pointing to the solitary being who stood calmly in the center of the conflagration, more like a demon than a man.

[Sidenote: The Solitary Figure Accursed]

“I proposed that we should make some effort to rescue this unfortunate man. But the pilot, horror-struck at the thought, then gave up the tale that it cost him agonies even to utter. He told us that the being whom our frantic compassion would attempt to save, was an accursed thing; that for some crime, too inexpiable to allow of his remaining among creatures capable of hope, he was cast out from men, stricken into the nature of the condemned spirits, and sentenced to rove the ocean in fire, ever burning and never consumed!”

I felt every word, as if that fire was devouring my flesh. The sense of what I was, and what I must be, was poison. My head swam; mortal pain overwhelmed me. And this abhorred thing I was; this sentenced and fearful wretch I was, covered with wrath and shame; this exile from human nature I was; and I heard my sentence pronounced and my existence declared hideous by the lips on which I hung for confidence and consolation against the world.

Flinging my robe over my face to hide its writhings, I seemed to listen, but my ears refused to hear. In my perturbation, I once thought of boldly avowing the truth, and thus freeing myself from the pang of perpetual concealment. But the offense and the retribution were too real and too deadly to be disclosed, without destroying the last chance of happiness to those innocent sufferers. I mastered the convulsion, and again bent my ear.

“Our story exhausts you,” said Miriam; “but it is done. After a long pursuit, in which the burning ship followed us as if with the express purpose of our ruin, we were snatched from a death by fire, only to undergo the chance of one by the waves, for we were sinking. Yet it may have been owing even to that chase that we were saved. The ship had driven us toward land. At sea we must have perished, but the shore was found to be so near, that the country people, guided by the flame, saved us, without the loss of a life. Once on shore, we met with some of the fugitives from Masada, who brought us to Jerusalem, the only remaining refuge for our unhappy nation.”

To prevent a recurrence of this torturing subject, I mastered my emotion so far as to ask some question of the siege. But Miriam’s thoughts were still busy with the sea. After some hesitation, and as if she dreaded the answer, she said:

[Sidenote: A Cry of Recognition]

“One extraordinary circumstance made me take a strong interest in the fate of that solitary being on board the burning vessel. It once seemed to have the most striking likeness to you. I even cried out to it under that impression, but fortunate it was for us all that my heedless cry was not answered, for when it approached us I could see its countenance change; it threw a sheet of flame across our vessel that almost scorched us; and then perhaps thinking that our destruction was complete, the human fiend ascended from the waters in a pillar of intense fire.”

I felt deep pain at this romantic narrative. My mysterious sentence was the common talk of mankind. My frightful secret, that I had thought locked up in my own heart, was loose as the air. This was enough to make life bitter. But to be identified in the minds of my family with the object of universal horror, was a chance which I determined not to contemplate. My secret there was still safe; and my resolution became fixed, never to destroy that safety by any frantic confidence of my own.