Eleazar’s Advice
“Stop, madman! Is it with hands dipped in blood that you are to solicit the heart of Salome? Give me that horrid weapon; and you, Salathiel, curb your wild spirit and listen to a brother who can have no interest but in the happiness of both and all. If Salome, whom I loved an infant on the knee and love to this moment, the most ingenuous and happy-hearted being on earth, has been betrayed into a fondness for this stranger, have we the right to force her inclinations? I know the depth of understanding that lies under her playfulness; can she have been deceived, and least of all by those arts? Impossible! If she has sacrificed her obedience to the noble form and high accomplishments of the Greek, we can only lament her exposure to a captivation made to subdue the heart of woman since the world began.”
“Jubal,” interrupted I, “give me that manly and honest hand; Eleazar’s wisdom is too calm to understand a father or a lover. You shall return with me, you shall be my son; Salathiel has no other. This foolish girl will be sorry for her follies and rejoice to receive you. The Greek is driven from my house. And let me see who there will henceforth disobey.” The lover’s face brightened with joy.
“Well, make your experiment,” said Eleazar, rising. “So ends all councils of war in more confusion than they began. But if I had a wife and daughters——”
“Of course you would manage them to perfection. So say all who have never had either.”
Eleazar’s cheek colored slightly; but with his recovering smile of benevolence he followed us to the porch, and wished us success in our expedition.
A Forced Betrothal
We found the household tranquillized again. Miriam received me with one of those radiant smiles that are a husband’s best welcome home. She had succeeded in calming the minds of her daughters, and—a much more difficult task—in suppressing the wrath of the numerous female domestics who had, as usual, constructed out of the graces of the Greek and the beauty of Salome a little romance of their own. In the whole course of my life I never met a female, from the flat-nosed and ebony-colored monster of the tropics to the snow-white and sublime divinity of a Greek isle, without a touch of romance; repulsiveness could not conceal it, age could not extinguish it, vicissitude could not change it. I have found it in all times and places, like a spring of fresh waters starting up even from the flint, cheering the cheerless, softening the insensible, renovating the withered; a secret whisper in the ear of every woman alive, that to the last, passion might flutter its pinions round her brow. The strong prejudices of our nation had here given way, rebellion was but hushed, and I was warned by many a look of the unwelcome suitor that I brought among them.
But from Salome there was no remonstrance. I should have listened to none. The consciousness of my own want of judgment in suffering a man so calculated to attract the eye of innocent youth to become an inmate in my house; the vexation which I felt at the dismissal of my brother’s heir; and last and keenest pang, the inroad made in the faith of a daughter of Israel, combined to exasperate me beyond the bounds of patience. I loved my child with the strongest affection of a heart rocked by all the tides of passion; but I could bear to look upon the pale beauty of her face—nay, in the wrath of the hour, could have seen her borne to the grave—rather than permit the command to be disputed by which she was to wed in our tribe.
The Flight of Salome