“You cannot think so. You cannot believe in such utter desolation,” exclaimed Calchas, roused like some old war-horse by the trumpet sound, as he saw the task assigned him, and recognised yet another traveller on the great road, whom he could guide home.
“Do you think that you or she, or any one of us, were made to suffer, and to cause others suffering—to strive and fail, and long and sorrow, for a little while, only to drop into the grave at last, like an over-ripe fig from its branch, and be forgotten? Do you think that life is to end for you, or for me, when the one falls in his armour, at the head of the Tenth Legion, pierced by a Jewish javelin, or the other is crucified before the walls for a spy, by Titus, or stoned in the gate for a traitor, by his own countrymen? And this is the fate which may await us both before to-morrow’s sun is set. Believe it not, noble Roman! That frame of yours is no more Licinius than is the battered breastplate yonder on the ground, which you have cast aside because it is no longer proof against sword and spear; the man himself leaves his worn-out robe behind, and goes rejoicing on his journey—the journey that is to lead him to his home elsewhere.”
“And where?” asked the Roman, interested by the earnestness of his guest, and the evident conviction with which he spoke. “Is it the home to which, as our own poets have said, good Æneas, and Tullus, and Ancus have gone before? the home of which some philosophers have dreamed, and at which others laugh—a phantom-land, a fleeting pageant, impalpable plains beyond a shadowy river? These are but dreams, the idle visions of men of thought. What have we, who are the men of action, to do with aught but reality?”
“And what is reality?” replied Calchas. “Is it without or within? Look from your own tent-door, noble Roman, and behold the glorious array that meets your eye—the even camp, the crested legionaries, the eagles, the trophies, and the piles of arms. Beyond, the towers and pinnacles of Jerusalem, and the white dome of the Temple with its dazzling roof of gold. Far away, the purple hills of Moab looking over the plains of the Dead Sea. It is a world of beautiful reality. There cometh a flash from a thunder-cloud or an arrow off [pg 350]the wall, and your life is spared, but your eyesight is gone: which is the reality now, the light or the darkness? the wide expanse of glittering sunshine, or the smarting pain and the black night within? So is it with life and death. Titus in his golden armour, Vespasian on the throne of the Cæsars, that stalwart soldier leaning yonder on his spear, or the wasted captive dying for hunger in the town—are they beings of the same kind? and why are their shares so unequal in the common lot? Because it matters so little what may be the different illusions that deceive us now, when all may attain equally to the same reality at last.”
Licinius pondered for a few minutes ere he replied. Like many another thinking heathen, he had often speculated on the great question which forces itself at times on every reflective being, “Why are these things so?” He, too, had been struck ere now with the obvious discrepancy between man’s aspirations and his efforts—the unaccountable caprices of fortune, the apparent injustice of fate. He had begun life in the bold confidence of an energetic character, believing all things possible to the resolute strength and courage of manhood. When he failed, he blamed himself with something of contempt; when he succeeded, he gathered fresh confidence in his own powers and in the truth of his theories. But in the pride of youth and happiness, sorrow took him by the hand, and taught him the bitter lesson that it is good to learn early rather than late; because, until the plough has passed over it, there can be no real fertility, no healthy produce on the untilled soil. The deeper they are scored, the heavier is the harvest from these furrows of the heart. Licinius, in the prime of life, and on the pinnacle of success, became a thoughtful, because a lonely and disappointed, man. He saw the complications around him; he acknowledged his inability to comprehend them. While others thought him so strong and self-reliant, he knew his own weakness and his own need; the broken spirit was humble and docile as a child’s.
“There must be a reason for everything,” he exclaimed at last; “there must be a clue in the labyrinth, if a man’s hand could only find it. What is truth? say our philosophers. Oh, that I did but know!”
Then, in the warlike tent, in the heart of the conquering army, the Jew imparted to the Roman that precious wisdom to which all other learning is but an entrance and a path. Under the very shadow of the eagles that were gathered to devastate his city, the man to whom all vicissitudes were alike, [pg 351]to whom all was good, because he knew “what was truth,” showed to his brother, whose sword was even then sharpened for the destruction of his people, that talisman which gave him the mastery over all created things: which made him superior to hunger and thirst, pain and sorrow, insult, dishonour, and death. It is something, even in this world, to wear a suit of impenetrable armour, such as is provided for the weakest and the lowest who enter the service that requires so little and that grants so much. Licinius listened eagerly, greedily, as a blind man would listen to one who taught him how to recover his sight. Gladdening was the certainty of a future to one who had hitherto lived so mournfully in the past. Fresh and beautiful was the rising edifice of hope to one whose eye was dull with looking on the grey ruins of regret. There was comfort for him, there was encouragement, there was example. When Calchas told, in simple, earnest words, all that he himself had heard and seen of glorious self-sacrifice, of infinite compassion, and of priceless ransom, the soldier’s knee was bent, and his eyes were wet with tears.
By the orders of his commander, Licinius conducted his guest back to the Great Gate of Jerusalem with all the customary honours paid to an ambassador from a hostile power. He bore the answer of Titus, granting to the besieged the respite they desired. Placidus had been so far right that the prince’s better judgment condemned the ill-timed reprieve; but in this, as in many other instances, Titus suffered his clemency to prevail over his experience in Jewish duplicity and his anxiety to terminate the war.