“Pray tell me of him,” said the young man, with a kindling face, “for I have heard absolutely nothing. And yet the Sacred Books say that the Messiah must have a forerunner like Elijah in character, if not in name. I have had a difficulty here.”
“Perhaps, then, what I have to tell may help you as it has helped me. Simeon learns that this man, who for a time filled the eye of the whole people and was then put to death by that Ahab whom we call Herod, was exceedingly like Elijah in austerity of life and fearless denunciation of sin, and that he distinctly forbade the people to count him more than the forerunner of the Christ, and even introduced Jesus to the people as being the Christ they were expecting. And this agrees with the reports that reached Alexandria at the time.”
“Many thanks for this information; it adds another link to the chain of evidence I am seeking.”
“So it has been with me,” said the maiden, while a shade of deeper thoughtfulness, if not of sadness, came over the bewildering beauty of her face as she added, “and I begin to fear that our chain when followed to the end will conduct us to some new and very unpopular interpretations of the prophets.”
“I have for some time been prepared for that,” said the young man, calmly and even cheerfully. “The great thing is to get at the truth: and I whom you have suffered to read your face as we have talked together need no further assurance that we think alike in this matter. We are both young; and youth can accommodate itself more easily than age to new views if they must come. May Aleph, the Chaldean stranger, venture so largely as to hope that in his search for the Messiah he may still have the aid of one whom he knows to be the first lady in the land in position, and whom her grandfather, who ought to know, and whom I am far from being disposed to contradict, pronounces the Gem of Alexandria?”
“You do well to smile,” said the maiden, blushing. “My grandfather is very poor authority on such matters. I happen to know that Alexandrian gems are of very poor quality and mostly fictitious. But, seriously, whatever a Jewish maiden can properly do to help in your matter she will gladly do, both for her own sake, and for his sake who has been in this city, perhaps three days, and has as many times befriended me and mine.”
Here a loud knock was heard at the street-door. They at once returned to the sick-room—and Aleph went on to answer the knock, hoping to find Seti. And Seti it proved to be. Before conducting him to the others, Aleph briefly and in a low voice explained the situation and received the full approval of the Egyptian. On entering the sick-room they found the patient awake with intelligence in her eye, and her arm about the neck of Rachel, who had kneeled at the bedside. The nurse was standing at a little distance with a bowl of food.
“I am afraid of Antis,” they heard murmured as they came near.
“You mean your husband?” inquired Rachel.