A voice at my side aroused me; a cross had just been fixed on the spot, and at its foot stood, preparing for death, the man who had spoken. I looked upon his face and gave an involuntary cry. For seven-and-thirty years I had not seen that face; but I had seen it on a NIGHT never to be erased from my remembrance or my soul! I knew every feature of it through all the changes of years!
Manhood had passed into age; the bold and sanguine countenance was furrowed with cares and crimes. But I knew at once the man who had on that night been foremost at my call; the daring rabble-leader who had first shouted at my fatal summons, and maddened the multitude, as I had maddened myself and him. He turned his glance upon me at the cry. His pale visage grew black as death. The past flashed upon his soul. He shook from head to foot with keen convulsion. He gasped and tried to speak, but no words came. He beat his breast wildly and pointed to the cross with dreadful meaning. The executioner, a brutal slave, scoffed at him as a dastard. He heard nothing, but with his pallid eyes staring on me and his hand pointed upward, stood stiffening. Life departed as he stood! The executioner, impatient, laid his grasp upon him, but he was beyond the power of man. He fell backward like a pillar of stone!
I started from the corpse, and utterly unnerved, looked wildly round for some way of escape from this scene of despair. As I tried to penetrate the dusk toward the bottom of the valley, Eleazar was seen at the head of his little band, standing at the foot of a cross, surrounded by soldiers. I thought no more of safety, and plunging into the valley, forced my way through the rocks and snowdrifts until I reached the foot of the declivity on which this true hero was about to die. But there an impenetrable fence of spears stopped me. I implored, execrated, struggled; Eleazar’s look fell on me, and the smile on his uplifted countenance showed at once how much he thanked me and how calmly he was prepared to bid the world farewell. My struggles were useless, and I had but one resource more. I flew with a swiftness that baffled pursuit to the camp; passed the entrenchments by the breaches left since the battle, and before I could be stopped or questioned, entered the tent of Titus.
News from Rome
The supper-lamps were burning, and three stately-looking men still lingered over the table, one of the few unpopular luxuries of the general. A large packet of letters was being distributed by a page, and while I stood in the shade of the tent-curtain a moment, until I should ascertain whether Titus was among the three, I was made the unwilling sharer of the secrets of Rome.
“All is going on well,” said one of the readers; “here, that truest of courtiers, my showy friend, Statilius, sends, compiled by his own hand, an endless list of the pomps and processions, games and congratulations, in the Emperor’s progress through Italy. The intelligence is not the newest in the world, but it would break my courtly friend’s heart to think that he had not the happiness of giving it first. So let him think, and so let him worship the rising sun, until another dynasty comes, and he discovers that if this sun has risen in the East, a much finer one may rise in the West. Thus runs the world.”
“War with the Britons,” read another; “they have marched a hundred of their naked clans from the hills. The remnant of the Druids are busy again with their incantations, and it is more than suspected that the whole is stirred up by our incomparable governor of western Gaul, who affects the diadem, like all the ridiculous governors of the age.”
“Well then, he shall have his wish,” said a third, “the Emperor will give him, of course, a court fit for a rebel: his council, lictors; and his palace, the Mamertine. But as to the Britons, I doubt if they care one of their own leather pence whether he wears the diadem or the halter. The savages have probably been vexed by some new attempt to squeeze money from them—the quickest way to try the national sensibilities. They have the spirit of trade in them already, and are as keen in the barter of their wolf-skins and bulls’-hides as if they supplied the world with Tyrian canopies and Indian pearls.”
A Letter from Sempronius
“A letter from Sempronius!” was the next topic; “its exquisite intaglio and elaborate perfumes would betray it all the world over; full of scandals, as usual, and full of discontent. He seems quite dismantled, and complains that—the sex is growing ugly, the seasons comfortless, and mankind dull; a certain sign that my emptiest of friends and the best dresser in Italy is growing old.”