Constantius, the commander of the galley, was a specimen of the land which produced a Plato and a Pericles. When I first saw him led to me by Miriam as the champion who had restored her and her children to happiness, I saw virtue and manliness of the highest order in his features. He was in his prime, but a scar across his forehead and the severities of martial life had given early seriousness to his countenance. But his conversation had the full spirit of the spring-time of life. It was incomparably various and animated, altogether free from professional pedantry; it had the interest that belongs to professional feelings. Military adventure, striking traits of warlike intelligence, the composition of the fleets and armies of the various states that fought under the wing of the Roman eagle, were topics on which his fire was exhaustless. On those I listened to him with the strong sympathy of one to whom war must henceforth be the grand pursuit; war for national freedom—war purified of its evil by the most illustrious cause that ever unsheathed the sword.
He had conversation for us all. His intercourse with the ruling lands of the earth gave him a copious store of recollections, picturesque and strange. Esther combated and questioned the traveler. Salome listened to the warrior—listened and loved. He had higher topics of which I was yet to hear. In the inhabitants of the precipice he found a little colony of his countrymen, fugitive Christians driven out by persecution, to make their home in the wilderness of nature.[23] The long range of caverns which perforated the rock gave them a roof. The fertility of the soil, and the occasional visit of a bark sent by their concealed friends, supplied the necessaries of life, and there they awaited the close of that ferocious tyranny which at length roused the world against Nero—or awaited the end of all suffering in the grave. A succession of storms rendered traveling impossible and detained us among those hermits for some days. I found them intelligent and, in general, men of the higher ranks of knowledge and condition. Some were of celebrated families, and had left behind them opulence and authority. A few were peasants. But misfortune and, still more, principle, extinguished all that was abrupt in the inequality of ranks without leaving license in its stead. Jew as I was, and steadily bound to the customs of my country, I yet did honor to the patience, the humility, and the devotedness of those exiled men. I even once attended their worship on the first day of the week, assured that the abomination of idols was not to be found there, and that I should hear nothing insulting to the name of Israel.
A Simple Worship
The ceremonial was simple. Those who had witnessed the heaven-commanded magnificence of the Temple might smile at the bareness of walls of rock, figured only with the wild herbage; or those who had seen the extravagant and complicated rites of paganism might scorn the few and obvious forms of the homage. But there was the spirit of strong prayer, the breathing of the heart, the unanswerable sincerity. Every violence of the mere animal frame was unknown. I saw no pagan convulsion, no fierceness of outcry and gesture, not even the vehement solemnity of the Jew. All was calm; tears stole down, but they stole in silence; knees were bowed, but there was no prostration; prayers fervent and lofty were poured forth, but they were in accents uttered less from the lip than from the soul—appeals of hallowed confidence, as to a Being who was sure to hear the voice of children to a Father who, wherever two or three were gathered together, was in the midst of them.
At length the storms cleared away and the sky wore the native azure of the climate. A messenger despatched to Cyprus returned with a vessel for the embarkation of the Greeks. Camels and mules were procured from the neighboring country for our journey, and the morning was fixed on which we were to separate. Yet with so much reason for joy, few resolutions could have been received with less favor. Constantius almost shunned society or shared in it with a silence and depression that made his philosophy more than questionable. Miriam was engaged in long conferences with Salome, from which they both came away much saddened. Esther was thus my chief companion, and she talked of the shore, the sea, and even of the tempests, with heightened interest. The Greeks, sailor and soldier alike, loved too well the romantic ease and careless adventure of the place to look with complacency on the little vessel in which they were to be borne once more into the land of restraint. The fugitive colony were not the slowest in their regrets. They had been deeply prepared for human vicissitudes, and had humbled themselves to all things; yet such is the strong and natural connection of man with man that they lamented the solitude to which they must again be left, like the commencement of a new exile.
“‘Read the Scriptures. I have prayed for you. Read—’”
Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.
The Moment of Departure