Still, my escape from the camp was so congenial to his ideas of pleasantry that it mingled with all his topics. War and politics went for nothing compared with the adroitness of eluding Roman insolence.
His Knowledge of Masada
“By Jove!” said he, “when I played my tricks with that pearl of pearls, that supreme of horseflesh, your barb, I was clumsy; I played the clown; you beat me hollow; it was matchless; it was my purse in prospect of your generosity to its emptiness this night”—he made a profound obeisance; “to see those fellows panting up the hill after you, nearly killed me.”
“But the fortress?”
“Oh! as to the fortress, the notion of attacking it was madness. I had my doubts of your intention, and broke loose from the camp to give you the benefit of my advice. But the tribune; ha, ha! never was coxcomb so rightly served. You won the heart of the whole legion by the single blow that spared him the trouble of sitting his horse. The troopers could not keep their saddles for laughing; and as for the fat old captain, I was only afraid that he would roar himself out of the world. I owed my escape partly to him, and his last words were: ‘Rascal, if you ever fall in with the Arab, whom I suspect to be as pleasant a rogue as yourself, tell him that I wish I had a dozen such in my squadron.’”
“But is there any possibility of knowing the present state of the garrison?”
“Aye, there is the misfortune. Yesterday I could have got in, and got out again, like a wild-cat. But, after this night’s visit, it is not too much to suppose that they may be a little more select in their hospitality. The governor has a slight correspondence of his own to carry on; a trifle in the way of trade; I had the honor to be smuggler extraordinary to his Mightiness, and, as in state secrets everything ought to be kept from the vulgar, my path in and out was by a portcullis, far enough from gates and sentinels, through which portcullis I should have shown you the way, if the attack had waited for me a few hours longer. That chance is of course cut off now. But see, yonder comes the morning.”
“Then we must move, or have the garrison on us.”
“I forbid that maneuver,” interrupted the fellow, with easy audacity.
Constantius and I, in equal surprise, bade him be silent. Yet the quietness with which he took the rebuke propitiated me, and I asked his reason.