"You–you aspire–" she began and halted, suddenly impressed with the complication his announcement had effected.
"Go on," he said.
"You would take Judea?"
"I would."
"But it belongs of descent to the Maccabees!"
"To Philadelphus Maccabaeus, yes; but what is he doing?"
She dropped her head.
"Nothing," she said in a half-whisper.
"No? But let me tell you what I have done already. Three days ago Titus took revenge upon Coenopolis for her sortie against Nicanor by firing the suburbs. The citizens could not spare water to fight the fire, and after futile attempts they gathered up food and treasure and fled into Jerusalem. Now, a thousand householders in the streets of this oppressed city, with their gods and their goods in their arms, made the pillagers of Simon and John laugh aloud. They fell upon these wandering, bewildered, treasure-laden people and robbed them as readily and as joyously as a husbandman gathers olives in a fat year. Oh, it was a merry time for the men of Simon and the men of John! But I in my wanderings over the city came upon a party of Bezethans, reluctant to surrender their goods for the asking, and they were fighting with right good will a body of Idumeans twice their number. In fact they fought so well, so unanimously, so silently that I saw they lacked the essential part of the fight–the shouting. That I supplied. And when they had whipped the Idumeans and had a chance for flight before reinforcements came, they obeyed my voice in so far as they followed me into a subterranean chamber beneath a burned ruin on Zion.
"We were not followed and our hiding-place was not discovered. In fact, their resistance was a complete success. Whereupon, they were ready to unite and take Jerusalem! No–it was not strange! It is the nature of men. I never saw a wine-merchant in Ephesus, who, after clearing his shop of brawlers single-handed, was not ready thereupon to march upon Rome and besiege Cæsar on the Palatine! So it was with these Bezethans.