“I’ll have your love. You shall have to belong to me. If not willingly, then by force. I am all-powerful; you know that. Your life is in my hands, and the life of your sweetheart, and the life of all those near and dear to you.”
Athaliah now regained her voice. “No! No!” she shrieked. “Kill me! Slay me alone!”
“You shall belong to me. I do not wish your death. I desire you in your living beauty. I am very wealthy,—the richest of all our people. I will clothe you in gold and silver, and bedeck you with precious stones. Ask what you wish and it shall be granted. Why do you fear me so? I am old in years, but strong in body, and I wish to enjoy that strength. Be mine and you shall never regret it.”
His words, which echoed with gold, and his arm, which spoke of great masculine strength, changed Athaliah’s mind. She became the mistress of the High Priest, but for a few days only. For a savage fury befell the High Priest; he desired to enjoy the pleasures of the senses more and more, and he changed his mistresses every day, intoxicated with lust and wine. Then, to the great horror of his people, he also took to drinking.
His wife, his children, and all those who were truly pious and decent, together with all to whom the honour of their people was very dear, tried with despair in their hearts to turn him from the terrible life he had begun to lead. They also tried to learn how all this had so suddenly come to him,—how he could so completely have forgotten God. But he did not speak to them; he was as one dumb. And it seemed that no invocation of God or the Torah could touch his heart or his ear.
And many who were not decent, and to whom the honour of their people was worth less than the smallest coin that fell into their purses, became his flatterers and pandered to his desires. For he was prodigal with his gold, and that was all they desired of him; the deeper he sank into lust and dissipation, the more gold came into their clutches.
Soon, however, his eighty years began to tell. He grew weak and impotent, but he could still guzzle and he became a disgust and a fright.
The people felt that they must be freed of him, and his death was decided upon. They remembered, however, what he had been for eighty years and none cared to lay hands upon him. It was resolved that his death should be an honourable one, happening as if by accident. And once, on an evening in which he had drunk more than usual, he was abducted from his sycophants, taken into the mountains and left lying upon the brink of a precipice over a deep sea. No one’s hand was lifted to thrust him over the edge, and with tears in their eyes and sad shakings of their heads they abandoned him to his fate.
He lay motionless, sunk in a deep sleep. But the first rays of the rising sun awakened him. He stretched out his arms as if to reach for the wine that stood now always before him. He grasped only the air. He groped and groped about and at last opened his eyes. He opened them wider and wider, distending them more and more. Where was he? He looked around, to this side and to that, above and below. He saw the abyss. Slowly and gradually it dawned upon him that he lay upon the brink of a high precipice. How had he come hither? Who had brought him? Slowly and leisurely he looked over the edge. If he should fall in.... Then he understood. This was his death-sentence. He had been condemned to death and the hands of his judges were to remain clean. His blood boiled. He wished to arise at once, but he was not strong enough. He rolled his head about, thumped the earth with his fists, gnashed his teeth. Weary and utterly exhausted, he remained lying there and somewhat later began to gaze around him. Where on earth was he?
He beheld before him a large sea girded by green mountains. It looked like a huge cauldron, over which arose the queen of day, pure, youthful and flaming. From the mountain forests far and near there wafted up to her a thin blue mist. The earth was uncovering itself before the sun, receiving its beams with delight, shouting to her in radiant green. Quite near to him there sparkled dazzlingly the snow-capped peak of Mount Lebanon, mischievously reflecting with all the colours of the rainbow its lance-like rays of the sun. And the calm, deep sea received into its bosom all the light of heaven and earth and redoubled their splendour.