“Will you not wait for your share of the spoil, your ample and deserved reward?”
“Farewell!” he repeated, and burst from the chamber.
The Change in Constantius
This memorable night made changes in more than the Ishmaelite. Constantius was at last in his element. I had hitherto seen him disguised by circumstances; the fugitive from his country, the lover under the embarrassments of forbidden passion, the ill-starred soldier. His native vigor of soul was under a perpetual cloud. But now the cloud broke away, and the consciousness of having nobly retrieved his check, and the still prouder consciousness of the career that this triumph laid open before him, brought the character of his mind into full light. He was now the lofty enthusiast that nature made him. He breathed generous ambition; his step was the step of command; and when he rushed to my embrace with almost the eagerness of a boy, and a voice stifled with emotion, I saw in him the romance, the soaring spirit, and the passionate love of glory that molded the Greek hero.
He had done his duty nobly. All were in admiration of the assault. The Romans had been fully prepared. He scaled the rampart, and scaled it in their teeth. His men followed gallantly. He pressed on; the second rampart was stormed. I had found him at the foot of the third, checked by its impregnable mass, but defying the whole garrison to drive him back. When I afterward saw the strength of those bulwarks, I felt that with such a leader at the head of troops animated by his spirit, there was nothing extravagant in the boldest hope of war.
This was an eventful night, and there was still much to be done before we slept. I threw over my tattered garments one of the many mantles that lay loose round the chamber, flung another on the body of the procurator, and sallied forth to give the final orders of the night. The prisoners had been already secured, and I found the great hall of the palace crowded with centurions. The interview was whimsical; for a while I escaped recognition; the gashed faces and torn raiment of my hunters, which bore the marks of our dreary march through the subterranean; the rough heads and hands stained with the fight, a startling contrast to the perfect equipment of the Roman under all circumstances, gave them the look of the robber tribes. My disguise was in the contrary way, yet complete. The cloak was accidentally one of the most showy in the procurator’s wardrobe. I found myself enveloped in furs and tissues; and their Arab acquaintance was forgotten in what seemed to them the legitimate monarch of the mountains.
Salathiel Meets the Captain
I was received by the circle of captives with the decent dignity of the brave. There was but one exception, which I might have guessed—the tribune. He was all humiliation, stooped to make some abject request about his baubles, and was probably on the point of apologizing for his ever having taken up the trade of war, when I turned on my heel and shook hands with my old friend the captain. He looked in evident perplexity. At last, through even the grim evidences of the night’s work on my countenance, and the problem of my pompous mantle, his brightening eye began to recognize me, and he burst out with: “The Arab, by Jupiter!” But when I asked him what had become of his baggage, I touched a tender string, and, with a countenance as grave as if he had sustained an irreparable calamity, he told me that his whole traveling cellar was in the hands of my men, and it was his full belief that he was at that moment not worth a flask in the wide world!
The tribune turned away in conscious disgrace, and I sent him to a dungeon to meditate till morn on the awkwardness of insolence to strangers. With the others, I sat down to such entertainment as a sacked fortress could supply, but which hunger, thirst, and fatigue rendered worth all the banquets of the idle. The old captain cheered his soul and grew rhetorical.
“Wine,” said he, flask in hand, “does wonders. It is the true leveler, for it leaves no troublesome inequality of conditions. It is the true sponge that pays all debts at sight, for it makes us forget the existence of a creditor. It is the true friend that sticks by a man to the last drop; the faithful mistress that forsakes no man; and the most charming of wives, whose tongue no husband hears, whose company is equally delightful at all hours, and who is as bewitching to-day as she was fifty years ago.”