“The day of congratulation is clearly over,” said Jubal, pointing in scorn to the dispersed citizens. “To-day, at least, you will not receive the homage of those hypocrites of the Sanhedrin.”
“Nor perhaps to-morrow, fellow soldier, for we must first see of what material those columns are made. If we beat them, we shall save the elders the trouble of crossing the plain, and receive their honors within the walls.”
“In Jerusalem!” exclaimed he wildly; “no, never! You have dangers to encounter within those walls that no art of man could withstand; dangers keener than the dagger, more deadly than the aspic, more resistless than the force of armies! Enter Jerusalem and you are undone.”
I looked upon him with astonishment. But there was in his eyes a sad humility; a strangely imploring glance, which formed the most singular contrast to the wildness of his words.
“Be warned!” said he, pressing close, as if he dreaded that his secret should be overheard; “I have seen and heard horrid things since I last entered the city. Beware of the leaders of Jerusalem! I tell you that they have fearful power, that their hate is inexorable, and that you are their great object!”
“This is altogether beyond my conception; how have I offended, and whom?” I asked.
False Accusations
He seemed to have recovered the tone of his mind. “You are charged with unutterable acts. Your abandonment of the priesthood; sights seen in your deserted chambers, which not even the most daring would venture to inhabit; your escape from dangers that must have extinguished any other human being, have bred fatal rumors. It has been said that you worshiped in the bowels of the mountain of Masada, where the magic fire burns eternally before the image of the Evil One; nay, that you even conquered the fortress, impregnable as it was to man, by a horrid compact, and that the raising of your standard was the declared sign of that compact, dreadfully to be repaid by you and yours!”
“Monstrous and incredible calumny! Where was their evidence? My actions were before the face of the world!”
“If your virtues were written in a sunbeam, envy would darken and hatred destroy,” exclaimed my kinsman, with the bold countenance and manly feeling of his better days. “They have in their secret councils stained you with a fate more gloomy than I can comprehend; they say that you are sentenced, even here, to the miseries of guilt beyond the grave.”