“What might not in those hours be doing in Jerusalem?” mused I; “what fanatic violence, personal revenge, or public license might not be let loose while I was lingering among the costly vanities of the pagan? My enemy at least was there in the possession of unbridled authority”; and the thought was in itself a history of evil. “And where was Esther, my beloved, the child of my soul, the glowing and magnificent-minded being whose beauty and whose thoughts were scarcely mortal? Might she not be in the last extremity of suffering, upbraiding me for having forgotten my child; or in the hands of robbers, dragging her delicate form through rocks and sands; or dying, without a hand to succor, or a voice to cheer her in the hour of agony?”
Thought annihilates time, and I had lain one day thus sinking from depth to depth, I know not how long, until I was roused by the entrance of the usual endless train of attendants; and the chief steward, a venerable man of my country, whom Titus had generously continued in the office where he found him, came to acquaint me that the banquet awaited my pleasure. The old man wept at the sight of a chieftain of Israel in captivity; his heart was full, and when I had dismissed the attendants with their untasted banquet, he gave way to his recollections.
In the Palace of Ananus
The palace was once the dwelling of Ananus, the high priest whose death under the cruelest circumstances was the leading triumph of the factions and the ruin of Jerusalem. In the very chamber where I sat he had spent the last day of his life, and left it only to take charge of the Temple on the fatal night of the assault by the Idumæans. He was wise and vigorous, but what is the wisdom of man? A storm, memorable in the annals of devastation, had raged during the night. Ananus, convinced that all was safe from human hostility in this ravage of the elements, suffered the wearied citizens to retire from their posts. The gates were opened by traitors; the Idumæans, furious for blood and spoil, rushed in; the guard, surprised in their sleep, were massacred; and by daylight eight thousand corpses lay on the sacred pavements of the Temple, and among them the noblest and wisest man of Judea, Ananus.
“I found,” said the old man, “the body of my great and good lord under a heap of dead, but was not suffered to convey it to the tomb of his fathers, in the valley of Jehoshaphat. I brought his sword and his phylactery here, and they are now the only memorials of the noblest line that perished since the Maccabee. In these chambers I have remained since, and in them it is my hope to die. The palace is large; the Roman senators and officers reside in another wing, which I have not entered for years, and shall never enter; mild masters as the Romans have been to me, I can not bear to see them masters within the walls of a chief of my country.”
The story of Naomi occurred to me, but she was so much beyond my hope of discovery that I forbore to renew the old man’s griefs by her name. A sound of trumpets and the trampling of cavalry were now heard from the portal.
“It is but the nightly changing of the troops,” said the steward, “or perhaps the arrival of officers from the camp; they often ride here after nightfall to supper, spend a few hours, and by daybreak are gone. But of them and their proceedings I know nothing. No Jew enters, or desires to enter, the banquet-hall of the enemies of his country.”
In Closer Confinement
A knocking at the door interrupted him, and an officer appeared with an order for the prisoner in the palace to be removed into strict confinement. The venerable steward gave way to tears at the new offense to a leader of his people. I felt some surprise, but merely asked what new alarm had demanded this harsh measure.