“The unhappy girl knows his fate but too well. He left us a few days since, to obtain some intelligence of the siege. We sat, during the night, listening to the frightful sounds of battle. At daybreak, unable any longer to bear the suspense or sit looking at Salome’s wretchedness, I ventured to the fountain-gate, and there heard what I so bitterly anticipated—our brave Constantius was slain!”
She wept aloud, and sobs and cries of irrepressible anguish answered her from the chamber of my unhappy child.
A False Report
The danger of a too sudden discovery prevented me from drying those tears, and I could proceed only by offering conjectures on the various chances of battle, the possibility of his being made prisoner, and the general difficulty of ascertaining the fates of men in the irregular combats of a populace. But Salome sat fixed in cold incredulity. Esther sorrowfully kissed my hand, for my disposition to give them a ray of comfort; Miriam gazed on me with a sad and searching look, as if she felt that I would not tamper with their distresses, yet she was deeply perplexed for the issue. At last the delay grew painful to myself, and taking Salome to my arms, and pressing a kiss of parental love on her pale cheek, I whispered, “He lives!”
I was overwhelmed with transports and thanksgivings. Precaution was at an end. If battle had been raging in the streets, I could not now have restrained the generous impatience of friendship and love. We left the mansion. There was not much to leave besides the walls; but such as it was, the first fugitive was welcome to the possession. Night was still within the building, which had belonged to some of the Roman officers of state, and was massive and of great extent. But at the threshold the gray dawn came quivering over the Mount of Olives.
We struggled through the long and winding streets, which even in the light were nearly impassable. From the inhabitants we met with no impediment; a few haggard and fierce-looking men stared at us from the ruins,[47] but we, wrapped up in rude mantles and hurrying along, wore too much the livery of despair to be disturbed by our fellows in wretchedness. With a trembling heart I led the way to the chamber, where lay one in whose life our general happiness was centered. Fearful of the shock which our sudden appearance might give his enfeebled frame, and not less of the misery with which he must be seen, I advanced alone to the bedside. He gave no sign of recognition, tho he was evidently awake, and I was about to close the curtains and keep, at least, Salome from the hazardous sight of this living ruin, when I found her beside me. She took his hand and sat down on the bed, with her eyes fixed on his hollow features. She spoke not a word, but sat cherishing the wasted hand in her own and kissing it with sad fondness. Her grief was too sacred for our interference, and in sorrow scarcely less poignant than her own, I led apart Miriam and Esther, who, like me, believed that the parting day was come.
Such rude help as could be found in medicine—at a time when our men of science had fled the city, and a few herbs were the only resource—had not been neglected even in my distraction. But life seemed retiring hour by hour, and if I dared to contemplate the death of this beloved being, it was almost with a wish that it had happened before the arrival of those to whom it must be a renewal of agony.
Salathiel Faces Difficulties
Still, the minor cares, which make so humble yet so necessary a page in the history of life, were to occupy me. Food must be provided for the increased number of my inmates, and where was that to be found in the circle of a beleaguered city? Money was useless, even if I possessed it; the friends who would once have shared their last meal with me were exiled or slain, and it was in the midst of a fierce populace, themselves dying of hunger, that I was to glean the daily subsistence of my wife and children. The natural pride of the chieftain revolted at the idea of supplicating for food, but this was one of the questions that show the absurdity of pride, and I must beg if I would not see them die.
The dwelling had belonged to one of the noble families extinguished, or driven away, in the first commotions of the war. The factions which perpetually tore each other, and fought from house to house, had stripped its lofty halls of everything that could be plundered in the hurry of civil feud, and when I took refuge under its roof it looked the very palace of desolation. But it was a shelter, undisturbed by the riots of the crowd, too bare to invite the robber; and even in its vast and naked chambers, its gloomy passages and frowning casements, congenial to the mood of my mind. With Constantius insensible and dying before me, and with my own spirit darkened by an eternal cloud, I loved loneliness and darkness. When the echo of the winds came round me, as I sat during my miserable midnights, watching the countenance of my son, and moistening his feverish lip with the water that even then was becoming a commodity of rare price in Jerusalem, I had communed with memories that I would not have exchanged for the brightest enjoyments of life. I welcomed the sad music, in which the beloved voices revisited my soul; what was earth now to me but a tomb? Pomp—nay, comfort—would have been a mockery. I clung to the solitude and obscurity that gave me the picture of the grave.