From the day of my unspeakable crime, I had never joined in prayer with my people. Yet, I was still a believer in the faith of Israel. I even clung to it with the nervous violence of one who, in a shipwreck, feels that his only hope is the plank in his grasp, and that some more powerful hand is tearing even that plank away. But the sight of human beings enjoying the placid consolations of prayer had from the first moment overwhelmed me with so keen a sense of my misfortune—the pious gentleness of attitude and voice, the calm uplifted hand, and low and solemn aspiration were in so deep a contrast to the involuntary wildness and broken utterings of a heart bound in more than adamantine chains, that I shrank from the rebuke and groaned in solitude.
Eleazar, the Brother of Miriam
I went forth into the valley, and was soon lost in its thick vegetation. The sound of the hymn that sank down in mingled sweetness with the murmuring of the evening air through the leaves, and the bubbling of the brook below, alone told me that I was near human beings. I sat upon a fragment of turf, embroidered as never was kingly footstool and with my hands clasped over my eyes, to remove from me all the images of life, gave way to that visionary mood of mind in which ideas come and pass in crowds without shape, leaving no more impression than the drops of a sun-shower on the trees. I had remained long in this half-dreaming confusion, and had almost imagined myself transported to some intermediate realm of being, where a part of the infliction was that of being startled by keen flashes of light from some upper world, when I was roused by the voice of Eleazar, the brother of Miriam, at my side. His manly and generous countenance expressed mingled anxiety and gladness at discovering me. “The whole camp,” said he, “have been alarmed at your absence, and have searched for these three hours through every part of our day’s journey. Miriam’s distraction at length urged me to leave her, and it was by her instinct that I took my way down the only path hitherto unsearched, and where, indeed, from fear or reverence of the place, few but myself would have willingly come.” He called to an attendant, and, sending him up the side of the valley with the tidings, we followed slowly, for I was still feeble. As we emerged into a more open space, the moon lying on masses of cloud, like a queen pillowed on couches of silver, showed me, in her strong illumination of the forest, the flashes which had added to the bewildered pain of my reverie. While I talked with natural animation of the splendor of the heavens, and pointed out the lines and figures on the moon’s disk, which made it probable that it was, like earth, a place of habitation, he suddenly pressed my hand, and stopping, with his eyes fixed on my face: “How,” said he, “does it happen, my friend, my brother Salathiel?” I started, as if my name, the name of my illustrious ancestor, direct in descent from the father of the faithful, were an accusation. He proceeded, with an ardent pressure of my quivering hand: “How is it to be accounted for that you, with such contemplations and the knowledge that gives them the dignity of science, can yet be so habitually given over to gloom? Serious crime I will not believe in you, though the best of us are stained. But your character is pure; I know your nature to be too lofty for the degenerate indulgence of the passions, and Miriam’s love for you, a love passing that of women, is in itself a seal of virtue. Answer me, Can the wealth, power, or influence of your brother and his house, nay of his tribe, assist you?”
Speaks of Salathiel’s Gloom
I was silent. He paused, and we walked on a while, without a sound but that of our tread among the leaves; but his mind was full, and it would have way. “Salathiel,” said he, “you do injustice to yourself, to your wife, and to your friends. This gloom that sits eternally on your forehead must wear away all your uses in society; it bathes your incomparable wife’s pillow in tears, and it disheartens, nay distresses, us all. Answer me as one man of honor and integrity would another. Have you been disappointed in your ambition? I know your claims. You have knowledge surpassing that of a multitude of your contemporaries; you have talents that ought to be honored; your character is unimpeached and unimpeachable. Such things ought to have already raised you to eminence. Have you found yourself thwarted by the common artifice of official life? Has some paltry sycophant crept up before you by the oblique path that honor disdains? Or have you felt yourself an excluded and marked man, merely for the display of that manlier vigor, richer genius, and more generous and sincere impulse of heart which to the conscious inferiority of the rabble of understanding is gall and wormwood? Or have you taken too deeply into your resentment the common criminal negligence that besets common minds in power, and makes them carelessly fling away upon incapacity, and guiltily withhold from worth, the rewards which were entrusted to them as a sacred deposit for the encouragement of national ability and personal virtue?”
I strongly disavowed all conceptions of the kind, and assured him that I felt neither peculiar merits nor peculiar injuries. “I have seen too much of what ambition and worldly success were made of, to allow hope to excite or failure to depress me. I am even,” added I, “so far from being the slave of that most vulgar intemperance of a deranged heart, the diseased craving for the miserable indulgences of worldly distinction, that would to Heaven I might never again enter the gates of Jerusalem!”
Beside the Tomb of Isaiah
He started back in surprise. The confession had been altogether unintended, and I looked up to see the burst of Jewish wrath descending upon me. I saw none. My kinsman’s fine countenance was brightened with a lofty joy. “Then you have renounced. But no, it is yet too soon. At your age, with your prospects, can you have renounced the career offered to you among the rulers of Israel?”
“I have renounced.”
“Sincerely, solemnly, upon conviction?”