The Ominous Sword Appears
In the bitterness of soul I turned from the chamber, where the lamp was still burning and the glittering table looked too bright for the gloomy spirit of the hour. The cool air that breathed through a casement led me toward it, and disinclined to speak and holding Miriam’s gentle hand, I listened to the confused murmurs of the city far below. I suddenly felt the hand in mine tremble convulsively. Miriam’s face was pale with fear; she stood with lips apart and breathless, brows raised, eyes straining upward. In utter alarm I asked the cause. She lifted the hand, which had fallen by her side, and slowly, like the staff of the soothsayer, pointed it to the heavens. The cause was there. The ominous sword had for the first time met her eye. The blaze, which even in noonday was fearfully visible, in midnight was tremendous. A blade of the deepest hue of gore stretched to the horizon, pouring from its edge perpetual showers of crimson flame, that looked like showers of fresh blood. Boundless slaughter was in the emblem. Beyond it the circle of the sky was wan; the stars sickened, and the moon, tho at the full, hung like an orb of lead. The mighty falchion, the pledge of an inevitable judgment,[49] extinguished all the beneficent splendors of heaven.
“There, there is the sign that I have seen for months in my dreams,” said Miriam in an awed voice; “that has haunted me when I laid my head upon the pillow; that has been before my mind in the day wherever I moved; that I have seen coloring every object, every moment of my life since I entered these fated walls. I have struggled to drive away the horrid image; I have wept and prayed. But it was where nothing could unfix it. It was pictured on my soul, and with it came other images, fearful, tho they brought me no terrors—melancholy sights to those who have no hope but here, yet glorious to the servants of the truth, Salathiel. I have had warnings. I must never leave the city of David.”
She knelt in the deep prayer of the soul. Her words came on me with the power of prophecy.
“King and protector of Israel!” I exclaimed, “is this to be the suffering of Thy people? On me let Thy wrath be done, but spare her who now kneels before Thee. Are the pure to be given into the hands of the merciless and Thy children to be trampled as the ashes of the unholy?”
My impatient voice caught Miriam’s ear, and she rose with a countenance beaming piety and love.
“Salathiel, we must not murmur. Even that sight of awe, that terrible emblem, has taught me the selfishness of my anxieties. What are our personal sorrows to the weight of affliction figured in that instrument of supreme justice? The wo of millions, the blood of a nation, the ruin of the glorious Law, built by the hands of the Eternal, for the glory and good of mankind, are written in words of flame before our eyes; and can I complain of the perils which may fall to my share? Henceforth, my husband and my love”—and she threw herself into my willing arms—“you shall never be disturbed with my sorrows; exercise your own powerful understanding, guard against evil by your talents and knowledge of life, as far as it can be guarded against by man, and beyond that, cease to repine or fear. In my supplication I have committed our darling child into the hands of Him who sitteth within the circle of eternity!”
Miriam Comforts Salathiel
Quivering with every finer feeling of the heart, maternal love, matron faith, and grateful adoration, she hung upon my neck, until as if a portion of her noble spirit had passed into mine, I felt a confidence and a consolation like her own.