With her large loving eyes full of tears, she leaned towards him, nearer, nearer, till her cheek touched his shoulder, and, pointing upward, she answered in the low earnest tones that acknowledge neither doubt nor fear: “Esca, we shall never be parted hereafter.”
Moira
CHAPTER I
A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF
The Feast of the Passover was at hand; the feast that was wont to call the children of Israel out of all parts of Syria to worship in the Holy City; the feast that had celebrated their deliverance from the relentless grasp of Pharaoh: that was ordained to mark the fulfilment of prophecy in the downfall of the chosen people, and their national extinction under the imperial might of Rome. Nevertheless, even this, the last Passover held in that Temple of which Solomon was the founder, and in the destruction of which, notwithstanding its sacred character, not one stone was permitted to remain upon another, had collected vast multitudes of the descendants of Abraham from all parts of Judæa, Samaria, Galilee, Perea, and other regions, to increase the sufferings of famine, and enhance the horrors of a siege. True to the character of their religion, rigidly observant of outward ceremonies, and admitting no exemptions from the requirements of the law, they swarmed in thousands and tens of thousands to their devoted city, round which even now Titus was drawing closer and closer the iron band of blockade, over which the Roman eagles were hovering, ere they swooped down irresistible on their prey.
There was the hush of coming destruction in the very stillness of the Syrian noon, as it glowed on the white carved pinnacles of the temple, and flashed from its golden roof. There was a menace in the tall black cypresses, pointing as it were with warning gesture towards the sky. There was [pg 312]a loathsome reality of carnage about the frequent vulture, poised on his wide wings over every open space, or flapping heavily away with loaded gorge and dripping beak, from his hideous meal. Jerusalem lay like some royal lady in her death-pang; the fair face changed and livid in its ghastly beauty, the queenly brow warped beneath its diadem, and the wasted limbs quivering with agony under their robe of scarlet and gold.
Inside the walls, splendour and misery, unholy mirth and abject despair, the pomp of war and the pressure of starvation, were mingled in frightful contrast. Beneath the shadow of princely edifices dead bodies lay unburied and uncared-for in the streets. Wherever was a foot or two of shelter from the sun, there some poor wretch seemed to have dragged himself to die. Marble pillars, lofty porches, white terraces, and luxuriant gardens denoted the wealth of the city, and the pride of its inhabitants; yet squalid figures crawling about, bent low towards the ground, sought eagerly here and there for every substance that could be converted into nourishment, and the absence of all offal and refuse on the pavement denoted the sad scarcity even of such loathsome food.