The Rulers of the Empire
“Even that knowledge,” said the minstrel, “may not be beyond the flight of the human intellect; but prejudices must be first overcome; we must learn to scorn idle names, defy idle fears, and use the powers of nature to give us the mastery of nature! There are virtues in plants, in metals, even in words, that to seek, alarms the feeble, but to possess, constitutes the mighty. There are influences of the air, of the stars, of even the most neglected and despised things, that may be gifted to confer the sovereignty of mankind.”
I listened with the passive indulgence of one listening under a spell; his voice had the sweetness and the flow of song, and his language was made impressive by gestures of striking intelligence and beauty. He pointed to the skies, to the flowers, to the horizon, that glowed like an ocean of amber; and his fine countenance assumed a changing character of loftiness, loveliness, or repose as he gazed on the sublime or the serene.
“Boy,” said I faintly, “are not such the studies by which the pagan world is made evil?”
He smiled. “No! Light is not further from darkness than wisdom from the superstition of the pagan. Rome is filled with the madness that falls upon idolatry for its curse—that has fallen since the beginning of the world—that shall fall until its end. She is the slave of ghostly fear. This hour, among the proudest, boldest, wisest, within the borders of paganism, there lives not a man unenslaved by the lowest delusion. The soothsayer, the interpreter of dreams, the sacrificer, the seller of the dust of the dead, the miserable pretender to magic—those are the true rulers of the haughty empire—those are the scepter-bearers to whom the Emperor is a menial—those are the men of might who laugh at authority, set counsel at naught, and are sapping the foundations of the state, were they deep as the center, by sapping the vigor of the national mind.”
The King of Metals
While he spoke he was with apparent unconsciousness sketching some outlines on one of the large marble slabs of the wall. My eyes had followed the sun until the balcony, darkened by an old vine, was in the depth of twilight. To my surprise, the marble began to be covered with fire, but fire of the softest and most silvery hue. The surprise was increased by seeing this glowworm luster kindle into form. I saw the portrait of Constantius, and by his side Naomi and her lover. As the lines grew clearer still, I saw them in chains and in a dungeon! The extraordinary information which the minstrel had the means of obtaining made me demand in real alarm whether the picture told the truth, and that if it did, I should be instantly acquainted with whatever might enable me to save them.
“And trifles like those fires can excite your astonishment?” he replied; “what if I were to tell you of wonders such as it has not entered into the mind of the world to imagine, yet which are before us in every hour of our lives, are mingled with everything, are grasped in our insensate hands, are trodden by our careless feet? See these crystals”—he scraped a portion of the niter exuding from the wall—“in these is hidden a power to which the strength of man is but air—to which the bulwarks round us are but as the leaf on the breeze—at whose command armies shall vanish, mountains shake, empires perish—the whole face of society shall change; yet by a sublime contradiction, combining the greatest evil with the greatest good—the most lavish waste of life with the most signal provision for human security!”
“Judea must fall!”