"No! Any place, any condition is more desirable than residence in Jerusalem at this hour."
"If one seeks but to be comfortable. But here is a place for work and for achievement," she declared.
"Too desperate an extreme. Nothing can be done here," he observed, shrugging his shoulders.
She gazed at him with immense contempt.
"That from a son of Judas Maccabaeus!" she exclaimed.
He looked disconcerted.
"Why not?" he urged. "It is neither rational nor practical to attempt the impossible. Jerusalem is doomed. I would but add myself to the sacrifice did I interfere between destruction and its sure prey."
After a silence in which she confronted him with many emotions showing on her face, she said with infinite pity and disappointment:
"O Philadelphus, you to throw greatness away!"
"Where, O my mysterious genius, are my army, my engines, my subsistence, my advantage and the prize?"