“That I forbid,” interrupted I.
“Not if you will trust one whom your noble son has trusted. I am not altogether without some dislike to the Romans myself, nor something between contempt and hatred for Gessius Florus.” His countenance darkened at the name. “I tell you,” pronounced he bitterly, “that fellow’s pampered carcass this day contains as black a mass of villainy as stains the earth. I have an old account to settle with him.”
His voice quivered. “I was once no rambler, no outcast of the land. I lived on the side of Hermon, lovely Hermon! I was affianced to a maiden of my kindred, as sweet a flower as ever blushed with love and joy. Our bridal day was fixed. I went to Cæsarea-Philippi to purchase some marriage presents. When I returned, I found nothing but women weeping, and men furious with impotent rage. My bride was gone. A Roman troop had surrounded her father’s house in the night and torn her away. Wild, distracted, nay, I believe raving mad, I searched the land. I kept life in me only that I might recover or revenge her. I abandoned property, friends, all! At length I made the discovery.”
To hide his perturbation, he turned away. “Powers of justice and vengeance!” he murmured in a shuddering tone, “are there no thunders for such things? She had been seen by that hoary profligate. She was carried off by him. She spurned his insults. He ordered her to be chained, to be starved, to be lashed!”
The Slowness of Revenge
Tears sprang to his eyes. “She still spurned him. She implored to die. She called upon my name in her misery. Wretch that I was, what could I, a worm, do under the heel of the tyrant? But I saw her at last; I made my way into the dungeon. There she sat, pale as the stone to which she was chained; a silent, sightless, bloodless, mindless skeleton. I called to her; she knew nothing. I pressed my lips to hers; she never felt them. I bathed her cold hands in my tears—I fell at her feet—I prayed to her but to pronounce one word, to give some sign of remembrance, to look on me. She sat like a statue; her reason was gone, gone forever!”
He flung himself upon the ground, and writhed and groaned before me. To turn him from a subject of such sorrow, I asked what he meant to do by his intercourse with Florus.
“To do?—not to stab him in his bed; not to poison him in his banquet; not to smite him with that speedy death which would be mercy—no, but to force him into ruin step by step; to gather shame, remorse, and anguish round him, cloud on cloud; to mix evil in his cup with such exquisite slowness that he shall taste every drop; to strike him only so far that he may feel the pang without being stunned; to mingle so much of hope in his undoing that he may never enjoy the vigor of despair; to sink him into his own Tartarus inch by inch till every fiber has its particular agony.”
He yelled, suddenly rose from the ground, and rushed forward and threaded the thickets with a swiftness that made my pursuit in vain.