“If you should hear that I had been assailed in an evil hour by an unexpected temptation which I had long labored to resist, assailed by it under the most powerful circumstances that ever yet tasked the human mind, circumstances to which, from the beginning of the world, wisdom has been proverbially folly, and resolution weakness; if it should have mastered my whole being, soul and body; if I were willing to give up the brightest prospects for its possession—to hazard life, hope, honors——”
The thought of Esther smote me. I started from him where he stood, with his fine head drooping like the Antinous and his figure the very emblem of passionate dejection.
“Roman, you are here as my guest, and as such I have listened to you with patience until now. But if any member of my family is concerned in what you say, I demand in the most distinct terms that the subject shall be mentioned no more. The daughters of Israel are sacred. Never shall a child of mine wed with those who now lord it over my unhappy country.”
He spread his hands and eyes in the broadest astonishment.
Septimius Misunderstood
“Prince, can it be possible that you have so totally mistaken me? My perplexities are of an entirely different nature. The chain with which I am bound is not of roses, but of iron; a chain of invisible, yet stern influences, that haunt my night, and even my day.”
His voice faltered, and he turned away with a shudder, as from a visionary tormentor.
“What? Has that man of desperate arts, if he be man, involved you, too, in his net? Dares the impostor soar so high?”
He clasped his hands.
“You saw how he defied, how he mocked me, how he spurned me when my abhorrence rose to the madness of attempting to strike him. I might as well have flung the weapon at the clouds. You saw the instinctive terror of my charger. That animal was celebrated in our whole cavalry for its bold, nay, fierce courage. Yet before the eye of that man of power and evil, it cowered like a hare and died of his glance. By him the temptation has been offered; of its nature I dare not speak; but it is dazzling, fearful, and must—I feel it—finally be fatal.”