“Man, the sport of nature!” said he, pointing to a bead of dew that hung glittering on a leaf of the vine. “Say man, the sovereign of nature! With but so feeble an instrument as this dew-drop he might control and scorn the wind and the wave! Or would you defy the storm in darkness, without sun or star speed through the unknown ocean, and add a new world to the old? Within this fragment lies the secret.”
He struck off a brown splinter from the stone of the balcony.
Exiled—Desperate—Undone
“Or would you behold regions to which the stars that now blaze above our heads are but the portal,” he said; “kingdoms of light never penetrated by mortal vision; generations of worlds? By what splendid influence, think you, that the miracle is to be wrought? Even by this dust!”
He took up a few grains of the sand at his feet and poured them into my robe. He saw his time.
“Would you,” exclaimed he, “be master of those magnificent secrets? Then bind this girdle round you and invoke the name that I shall name.”
I shuddered; the arts of the diviner flashed upon me. But I had listened too long not to be enfeebled by the temptation. I felt the passion which lost us paradise—the thirst of forbidden knowledge. Still I resisted. The young deceiver pressed me with more distinct promises.
“In your fate,” said he, “the fate of your nation is bound up. Has it not been declared that a great deliverer is to come, by whom the face of the enemies of Judah is to be withered, and the scepter of the earth given to the hand of Israel? Pledge yourself to me and be that deliverer! You shrink! Know then—that even while I speak, every creature of your blood is in chains; your house is desolate; your fortunes are overthrown; you are cut off root and branch; you are exiled—desperate—undone!”
I felt a dreadful certainty that his words were true. My heart bled at the picture of ruin. I wavered. The temptation tingled through my veins.