The town of Samaria crowned the hill that rises from the centre of a magnificent valley, like an inverted cup in a lordly dish. Far away to the east stand the mountain walls of Gilead and Ammon and Moab; while on the west stretch the uplands of Ephraim and the gleaming waters of the Great Sea. The nearer hills, terraced into gigantic steps, and ordinarily luxuriant with vineyards and fig gardens, were now covered with rankest vegetation of wild growth, at once nature's rebuke and invitation to the husbandman.
The old palace of Ahab, built with bankrupting magnificence by that renegade king of Israel, had long since fallen to ruin. Hard by stood a sarcophagus in which had once rested the spice-embalmed body of some fair princess, but which was now the feeding-trough for a herd of swine. A superb pillar of porphyry, polished until it had once reflected the gay lights that flashed about it, was now a scratching-post for the cattle that roamed at will through the valley.
Since the Persian king had appointed Sanballat, the Moabite chieftain, to be satrap of Samaria, the land had been somewhat improved. The bats had been frightened out of the niches in the palace. The storks no longer sat enthroned upon the stately columns, nor posed upon one leg, with drooping wings, looking down lugubriously upon the passer-by—the symbolic funeral directors of dead empires since time began. The great cedar roof that once spanned the hall had been succeeded by a double awning of canvas—the outer covering of black goat's hair, the inner of white linen, upon which were wrought tapestries whose gay colors compensated for their rude forms.
By the side of the grand doorway, with its enormous lintels and cracked cross-piece of stone, stood the tall banner-staff of the satrap, in sight of a hundred tents which sheltered the standing army of Samaria. This band of braves was composed chiefly of Moabitish men, swarthy, long-limbed, with treacherous looks, as if seeking to repel the historic taunt of their ill-begetting as a race from the incestuous daughter of Lot. Their officers were lithe and gallant Persians, each one of whom boasted the various deeds he would have performed if the last expedition against the Greeks had not been chiefly a naval affair. More plausible, perhaps, were their stories of hair-breadth escapes in their adventures connected with the harems of Babylon and Susa.
Sanballat, the satrap, was not in military mood as he reclined upon a long divan in his pavilion. Seated upon the floor beside him, fondling his long beard, was a young girl. A glance could detect their relationship. The stiff black bristles that stood upon the man's head were surely of kin to the raven locks that fell softly about her temples. Both had the same jet eyes. In hers the pupils contrasted finely with the pure white balls; in his they were set in blood-shot orbs. Her forehead was low and broad, but moulded as if by some sculptor; his was of the same outline, but knobbed, as if with fiercer passions, and wrinkled by a hundred cares, no one of which had as yet dropped a shadow upon her brow. The father's straight lips were slightly arched in the daughter. Her lips won by asking; his evidently gained only by commanding. His skin was tanned and roughed by years of exposure to the elements, perhaps discolored by excessive use of wine; hers was bronzed by the kissing of the Syrian sun, but not enough to hide the healthy blood that tinted itself through, and displayed her beauty in all the delicate shades of blushes. The crimson upon her cheeks and temples was just now of a deeper hue than usual, as Sanballat was saying:
"My Nicaso must let her father keep charge of her heart. The satrap's daughter shall not be as other maidens, the prey of any fine fellow whose manner may be pleasing. Such a face and form as yours, to say nothing of your lineage, would gain you admission to the court of Susa or Memphis. Old Orpha, your nurse, tells me that you talk overmuch of some young swain. I do not ask who, for none worthy of my fair one lives in Samaria."
"I believe you," replied the girl, playfully plucking a gray hair from his beard. "No one in Samaria is good enough for the great Sanballat's daughter. I will sell for too much; for—a satrapy of all Palestine, if Artaxerxes likes my looks! or for an alliance with the new king of Tyre, if the daughter of the rich Ahimelek dies broken-hearted because Baal will not send back her Hiram."
She leaped to her feet, and, catching up a timbrel, gracefully performed the movement of a dance.
"By Astarte!" cried the satrap, "such a woman never graced this place since Jezebel. Aha! no little Ahab shall catch my wild pigeon. Have a care, Nicaso, who sets a snare for you!"