"To Judas Maccabeus, our hero," cried Zarah; "his camp is the rallying-place for all fugitives from oppression."
"Maccabeus!" exclaimed Pollux; "he would loathe—would spurn an apostate!"
"Oh no, he would never spurn the father of Zarah," cried the maiden, for once realizing and exulting in the secret power which she exercised over the leader of the Hebrews; "Judas would welcome you, his brave companions would welcome, coming as you would come to redeem the past by devoting your sword to your country! God would receive you; and Hadassah," continued Zarah, her enthusiasm kindling into rapture as she went on, "Hadassah, in her joy, her ecstasy, would forget all her grief—the thought of her long-lost son being with Maccabeus would enable her almost to rejoice at her Zarah being—with God."
"Impossible, impossible," muttered Pollux, rising from his seat as if to depart; but Zarah detected indecision in his tone. She threw herself at his feet, she clasped his knees, she pleaded with passionate fervour, for she deemed that a parent's life and soul were at stake.
"Oh, father, if you would but consent to leave for ever this horrible, horrible place, to return to your people, your mother, your God, I feel as if I could die happy, so happy; we should then meet again in a brighter world, all, all re-united, and for ever!"
It was as the voice of his guardian angel—as if his once fondly-loved wife had been suffered to visit Abner in mortal form, to counsel, warn, entreat; to tell him that there yet might be mercy for him if he would but turn and repent! There was a terrific struggle in the renegade's mind. He could not at once decide on taking so bold and sudden a leap as that to which he was urged, though conscious of the peril as well as misery of his present position at the court. As the deer, driven by wolves to the precipice's brink, hesitates on making the plunge down—though it give him the only chance of escape from the ravening jaws of his fierce pursuers—so hesitated the wretched Pollux.
He would have felt no indecision had he known that, at the very time when Zarah was pleading in tears at his feet, Antiochus was signing, in the presence of the exulting Lysimachus, a warrant for the execution of Pollux on the morrow. His rival had succeeded in working his ruin; the only door of safety yet open to the apostate was that towards which his child, with fervent entreaties, was trying to draw him; shortly—little dreamed Pollux how shortly—that door of safety would be closed. Unable to form a sudden resolution, to come to a prompt decision, seeing difficulties and dangers on every side, fearing to remain where he was, yet afraid to fly, Pollux wasted the precious time yet given him, he let the golden moments escape. In a state of strong excitement, he at length quitted his daughter's presence, to seek that solitude in which his perturbed mind might become sufficiently calm to form a judgment which must be as the pivot upon which his whole future life would turn. Pollux left Zarah still on her knees, nor did she rise when he had torn himself from her clinging arms and left the apartment. When the daughter could no longer plead with, she pleaded for, her father—she implored that grace and wisdom might be given to him at this momentous crisis. There was no more sleep for Zarah on that eventful night.
CHAPTER XXIV.
DECISION.
Tossed backwards and forwards on a wild sea of doubt—a vessel without ballast, compass, or rudder—was the mind of the miserable Pollux. The courtier paced for hours up and down a verandah where the cool breeze of heaven could fan him, and where he would be secure from interruption. Ever and anon Pollux tore his beard, or smote his breast; unconsciously giving expression by outward gesture to the inward torture which he felt. Was he to give up all at once—all for which he had bartered his soul, rank, wealth, position—to begin life again on the lowest round of the ladder, with the brand of disgrace, the burden of shame upon him? Could he endure to appear in the presence of Maccabeus, to sue from him the place of hewer of wood and drawer of water; to exchange the pride of power and pomp of wealth for hardship and want, poverty and peril? Pollux felt that he could not bring his pride to submit to the degradation, or his worldliness to the loss. The leap to be taken was from such a height, and into such an abyss, that it seemed as if he must be dashed in pieces by the fall.