In this furious warfare I took my share with the rest; handled the spear, and fought and watched without thinking of any distinction of rank. My military experience, and the personal strength which enabled me to render prominent services in those desultory attacks, often excited our warriors to offer me the command; but ambition was dead within me.
A Universal Outcry
I was one day sitting beside the bed of Constantius, and bitterly absorbed in gazing on what I thought the progress of death, when I heard a universal outcry, more melancholy than human voices seemed ever made to utter. My first thought was that the enemy had forced the gates. I took my sword down and prepared to go out and die. I found the streets filled with crowds hurrying forward without any apparent direction, but all exhibiting a sorrow amounting to agony; wringing their hands, beating their bosoms, tearing their hair, and casting dust and ashes on their heads. A large body of the priesthood came rushing from the temple with loud lamentations. The Daily Sacrifice had ceased![45] The perpetual offering, which, twice a day, burned in testimonial of the sins and the expiation of Israel, the peculiar homage of the nation to Heaven, was no more! The siege had extinguished the resources of the Temple; the victims could no longer be supplied, and the people must perish without the power of atonement! This was the final cutting off—the declaration of the sentence—the seal of the great condemnation. Jerusalem was undone!
Overpowered by this fatal sign, I was sadly returning to my worse than solitary chamber, for there lay, speechless and powerless, the noblest creature that breathed in Jerusalem—when I was driven aside by a new torrent of the people, exclaiming “The prophet! the prophet! wo to the city of David!”
Wo, Wo, Wo
They rushed on in haggard multitudes, and in the midst of them came a maniac bounding and gesticulating with indescribable wildness. His constant exclamation was “Wo!—wo!—wo!” uttered in a tone that searched the very heart. He stopped from time to time, flung out some denunciation against the popular crimes, and then recommenced his cry of “Wo!” and bounded forward again.
He at length came opposite to the spot where I stood, and his features struck me as resembling those I had seen before. But they were full of a strange impulse—the grandeur of inspiration mingled with the animal fierceness of frenzy. The eye shot fire under the sharp and hollow brows; the nostrils contracted and opened like those of an angry steed, and every muscle of a singularly elastic frame was quivering and exposed from the effects alike of mental violence and famine.
“Ho, Prince of Naphtali! we meet at last!” was his instant outcry. His countenance fell, and tears gushed from lids that looked incapable of a human feeling. “I found her,” said he, “my beauty, my bride! She was in the dungeon. The ring that I tore from that villain’s finger was worth a gold-mine, for it opened the gates of her prison. Come forth, girl!”
Sabat the Ishmaelite
With these words he caught by the hand and led to me a pale creature, with the traces of loveliness, but evidently in the last stage of mortal decay. She stood silent as a statue. In compassion, I took her hand, while the multitude gathered round us in curiosity. I now remembered Sabat, the Ishmaelite, and his story.