"The defeat at Bethhoron," he declared, "was owing not to any superior force of the Jews, but to the folly of General Seron in marching his army so as to invite assault. Indeed, when the forward phalanges recoiled upon those coming after, the Greeks defeated themselves. That disaster might have occurred had no enemy attacked us. But the force that Judas has, while sufficient to start a panic by its sudden irruption under such circumstances, is too small to attempt the capture of the city. His men are only peasants, and without armaments of siege. Upon the walls one man could withstand many assailants; and from within the citadel a woman might resist a company of men. Beside this, intelligence has come that Lysias, the new Governor, has despatched our most noted generals, Ptolemy, Nicanor, and Gorgias, with a force of forty thousand footmen and seven thousand horse to utterly exterminate the Maccabæans. If the rebels elude our new armies, it will be only by leaving Judea, and taking refuge across the Jordan in the mountains of Moab, where they will be as harmless to Jerusalem as are the beasts which infest those wilds."
Under such counsel the people were calmed. As the terrible Judas did not appear at the gate of the city—nor, as some imagined, like a bat as big as a cloud, scale the walls with armed men under his wings—life resumed its usual course among the inhabitants.
The reaction from fright did not even stop with a general sense of security. The pleasure-loving people sought to recompense their days of abstinence by extravagant indulgence.
In this they were charmingly led by the Princess Helena, whose grief for Apollonius had been completely healed, if rumor were correct, by the attentions of Glaucon. The enamored man had purchased her favor by a relinquishment to her of his interest in the estate of Shattuck. This transaction, told by Helena in confidence to Lydia, had come to the knowledge of her husband Menelaos, the High Priest, who, claiming to be partner with the renegade Jew in all ventures that paid, insisted upon Glaucon's turning over to him, as through former agreement, one-half the estimated prospective value of the estate. An open breach between the two men was prevented by a stroke of business shrewdness manipulated by the two women. Glaucon was induced to repurchase the claim by payment to the Princess of a sum of ready money; which money, it is needless to say, was shared by that gracious lady with the High Priest himself, who still retained his half interest in the Shattuck property.
Glaucon was readily reconciled to his loss through this deal, not only by the affectionate rewards of his mistress, but by new discoveries relative to the estate of Shattuck. Its value was greater than he had at first surmised, embracing heavy mortgages upon adjacent property.
All this time Glaucon's relations with the Princess were an offense to Deborah which, with all her art, she could scarcely conceal. She must tear the fair veil from this hideous creature. But how could she do so without confessing her own double life, since it was in the spy's disguise she had discovered all that she really knew of the woman? In her remonstrances with Glaucon she dared not go beyond interrogations and insinuations, which her brother resented with warmth.
"If we have not known her, others have," said he. "Her coming to meet Apollonius in Samaria was an event in the camp."
"And excited no scandal?"
"Scandal? Hera, the wife and sister of Jove, did not escape the taunt of tongues. The fairer the flower the fouler the insect that stings it. You yourself, Berenice, have had unsavory things said of you; but who would believe them?"
"Still," interposed Deborah, "you know for a certainty nothing about her lineage."