CHAPTER LIV

_Concerning Septimius_

I was spared the ungraciousness of urging the young soldier’s departure, for when I met him on the next morning his first topic was escape. He had been since daybreak examining from my turrets the accessible passages of the fortifications, and had even, by the help of a peasant, despatched a letter to his friends, requesting either a formal demand of his person from the Jews, or some private effort to extricate him.

But this glow of society was transient. In the fall of his charger he had been violently bruised. He now complained of inward suffering, and his pallid face and feeble words gave painful proof that he had much still to undergo, tho, even if he was perfectly recovered, the crowded battlements and the popular rage showed the impossibility of immediate return.

[Sidenote: Vexed and Suspicious]

Three days passed thus drearily. At home I was surrounded by sickness or vexed by suspicion—the worst sickness of the mind. Septimius lay in his chamber, struggling to laugh, talk, and read away the heavy hours, and finally, like all such strugglers, giving up the task in despair. His thoughts were in the Roman camp. He professed gratitude of the deepest nature for the service that I had done him now for the second time, if saving so unimportant a life was a service either to him or any one else. Yet he almost wished that he had been left where he was found.

At such times his voice sank, and he was evidently thinking of subjects near to his heart.

Then his soldiership would come again—a man could not finish his course better than among his gallant comrades; and with all his anxiety to return, he felt no trivial concern as to the view which Titus might take of the whole unfortunate affair. Of justice he was secure; but to be questioned for his military conduct was in itself a degradation. The loss of Sempronius, too, the most confidential friend and counselor of the Emperor, would weigh heavily—while there was nothing but his own testimony to sustain his honor against the crowd of secret enemies that every man of military rank was certain to have.

“In short,” said he, “on my sleepless couch I have turned true penitent for the foolish curiosity which prompted me to solicit the command of an escort, which would have been by right put under the care of some mere tribune.”

I tried to cheer him by saying that his had been only the natural desire of an active mind to see so singular a scene as our city offered, or the honorable wish of a soldier to be foremost wherever there was anything to be done.

[Sidenote: Watched by a Slave]

“It was more than either,” said he; “there was actual illusion in the case. I now feel that I was practised upon. You know the strange concourse of all kinds of people that follow a camp for all kinds of purposes—plunderers, traders, and jugglers, crowding on our movements as regularly as the vultures, and with nearly the same objects. For a week past I had found myself beset by an old gibbering slave of this class. Wherever I rode, the fellow was before my eyes; he contrived to mingle with my servants, and became a sort of favorite by selling them counterfeit rings and gems at ten times their value. The wretch was clever, too, and as my tent-hours began to be disturbed by the unusual gaiety of the listeners to his lies, I ordered him to be flogged out of the lines. But twelve hours had not passed before I found him gamboling again, and was about to order the instant infliction of the discipline, when he threw himself on the ground and implored ‘a moment of my secret ear.’ Conceive who the fellow was?”

“The impostor who harangued in the square!”

“The very man. He told me that there were certain contrivances on foot to bring me into disfavor with the general, which I knew to be the fact. He gave me the names of the parties, which I felt to be sufficiently probable, and finished by saying that, having so long eaten of my bread (a week), and enjoyed my liberality (the scourge), he longed to show his gratitude by giving me an opportunity of putting my enemies to silence on the spot. This opportunity was to solicit the command of the escort required for the mission. How he gained his wisdom I know not, but I took the advice, went at once to Titus, found that an armistice was being debated in council, that there was some difficulty in the choice of an officer for the service (by no means likely to be a sinecure in point of either judgment or hazard), stepped forward, and, to the surprise of everybody, disclaimed the privileges of my rank and insisted on marching at the head of this handful, this outpost-guard, into the formidable city of Jerusalem.”

“His object, of course,” said I, “was your destruction. I now see the cause of the harangue that roused the people; he was in the pay of the conspirators against you. Yet his appearance was striking; there was a vigor about his look and language, a fierce consciousness of power somewhere, that distinguished him from his race. He came, too, and has disappeared, without my being able to discover whence or whither.”

[Sidenote: Duped by a Juggler]

“Oh, the commonest contrivance of his trade,” was the reply. “Those fellows always come and go in cloud, if they can. He was probably beside you half the day before and after. You saw how little he thought of the lance, that I sent to bring out his hidden secrets. He doubtless wore armor; otherwise there would have been one juggler the less in the world. The truth is, I have been duped, but I have made up my mind to think nothing about the dupery. The slave is certainly clever, perhaps to an extraordinary degree—a villain undoubtedly, and of the first magnitude. But he has the secret of the cabal against me, and that secret makes him at once fit to be employed, and dangerous to be provoked. The blow of the lance yesterday showed him that I am not always to be trifled with. In fact, prince, you might find it advantageous to employ him occasionally yourself. It was he who conveyed my letter to the camp this morning!”

My look probably expressed my dislike of this species of envoy.

“You may rely on my honor,” said the Roman, “not to involve you in any of the fellow’s inventions. Slippery as he is, I have a hold on him, too, that he will not venture to shake off. And now, to let you into full confidence, I expect him back this very night, when he will relieve your city of an inhabitant unworthy of remaining among so polished a people; and your house, my prince, of an inmate than whom none on earth can be more grateful for your hospitality.”

He concluded this mixture of levity, address, and frankness with a smile, and in a tone of elegance, that compelled me to take it all on the more favorable side. But against suffering the step of his strange emissary to pollute the threshold in which I lived, I expressed my plain determination.

[Sidenote: Secret Preparations for Departure]

“For that, too, I have provided,” said he. “My intercourse with the reprobate is to take place at another quarter of the city, as far as possible from this dwelling,” and he laughed, “for reasons equally of mine and yours. I have managed matters so as not to compromise any of my friends; and to make my arrangements on that point still more secure, may I express a wish that neither Constantius nor any other person of your house may be acquainted with my intention of leaving them, and I may sincerely say, leaving everything that could gratify my best feelings—this very evening.”

This was an easy and graceful avoidance of the difficulties which his longer residence threatened. I gave him the promise of secrecy, cautioning him against reposing any dangerous confidence in his emissary, of whom I had an irrepressible abhorrence, and was about to leave the chamber when he caught my hand and said in unusual emotion:

“Prince of Naphtali, I have but one word more to say. You are a man of the world and can make allowance for the giddiness of human passions. Some of them are uncontrollable, or at least I have never learned to control them, and in me perhaps they belong to inferiority of mind. But if on my departure you should hear calumnies against me——”

“Impossible, my young friend; or if I should, you may rely on my giving the calumniators a very brief answer.”

“Or if even yourself should be disposed to think severely of me, you know the circumstances under which a man of birth and fortune must be placed in our profession.”

“Fully, and am much more disposed to regret than to wonder at the consequences.”

“If you should hear that I had been assailed in an evil hour by an unexpected temptation which I had long labored to resist, assailed by it under the most powerful circumstances that ever yet tasked the human mind, circumstances to which, from the beginning of the world, wisdom has been proverbially folly, and resolution weakness; if it should have mastered my whole being, soul and body; if I were willing to give up the brightest prospects for its possession—to hazard life, hope, honors——”

The thought of Esther smote me. I started from him where he stood, with his fine head drooping like the Antinous and his figure the very emblem of passionate dejection.

“Roman, you are here as my guest, and as such I have listened to you with patience until now. But if any member of my family is concerned in what you say, I demand in the most distinct terms that the subject shall be mentioned no more. The daughters of Israel are sacred. Never shall a child of mine wed with those who now lord it over my unhappy country.”

He spread his hands and eyes in the broadest astonishment.

[Sidenote: Septimius Misunderstood]

“Prince, can it be possible that you have so totally mistaken me? My perplexities are of an entirely different nature. The chain with which I am bound is not of roses, but of iron; a chain of invisible, yet stern influences, that haunt my night, and even my day.”

His voice faltered, and he turned away with a shudder, as from a visionary tormentor.

“What? Has that man of desperate arts, if he be man, involved you, too, in his net? Dares the impostor soar so high?”

He clasped his hands.

“You saw how he defied, how he mocked me, how he spurned me when my abhorrence rose to the madness of attempting to strike him. I might as well have flung the weapon at the clouds. You saw the instinctive terror of my charger. That animal was celebrated in our whole cavalry for its bold, nay, fierce courage. Yet before the eye of that man of power and evil, it cowered like a hare and died of his glance. By him the temptation has been offered; of its nature I dare not speak; but it is dazzling, fearful, and must—I feel it—finally be fatal.”

[Sidenote: “Be a Man—a Hero”]

“Then cast it from you at once. Be a man—a hero.”

“It is hopeless—I must be the victim; I am bound irretrievably. Farewell, prince; we shall see each other no more.”

He flung himself upon the couch. I offered him assistance, advice, consolation in vain. The spirit of the soldier was extinguished. The victim of fantastic illusion lay before me. I left him to the care of the old domestics, and when I closed the door, thought that I had closed the door of the grave.