Amid this scurrying crowd, amid tattered wealth and paupers bedizened with their stolen finery, went an exquisite carriage, in which, covered with the robes at the feet of Clarissa, the harlot dancer and poisoner of Antioch, crouched the form of Glaucon, son of Elkiah.
Jonathan begged permission to dash upon the fugitives and make an end of them, even as his father had slain the renegade Jew at the gate of Modin.
But Judas refused. "Let them depart. Let the wound of Israel slough off its foulness; it will the sooner heal."
XL
"A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM"
When the overthrow of Gorgias became known in the city, many of the soldiers of Antiochus fled even more precipitately than did the traitorous Jews. The grim towers beat upon the fugitives with shadows like the wings of an avenging spirit, which, indeed, some declared they saw descend from the sky. A few companies under Meton's closer discipline kept within the Citadel. Even that Commandant's courage had been well shaken by the previous disaster to Seron, and his nerves permanently disordered by the tragedy of the General's suicide in his presence. The new discomfiture of the more famous Gorgias—a defeat so thorough that even that great soldier's genius seemed utterly paralyzed, so that he did not attempt a retaliatory blow—completed the demoralization of Meton, so that he gave no orders for the defence of the city at large, being fully content to keep his own skin unpunctured within the walls of his castle. Judas, having no artillery for assailing the fortifications which had withstood every assault since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, was equally content to let Meton be his own jailer.
The house of Elkiah became the resting-place of the Jewish hero on the few and brief occasions when he rested anywhere. He was incessant in his watch. For days he would be absent with his brothers scouting the country to the eastward. He commissioned the brightest men as messengers to the tribes not yet allied with him, offering them either peace or war as their Sheikhs might elect. Envoys were sent to the Romans, to the Egyptians. He laid out extensive plans for the restoration and fortification of the city walls. In this he was aided by Dion, who had already attained a certain celebrity as an engineer among the Greeks.
For such projects there was urgent call, and for all the resources of Judas' fertile brain. Lycias, the new Governor of Syria, was collecting the remnants of Gorgias' army, compacting them with those of Nicanor and Ptolemy, and enlarging them by daily arriving contingents sent from all parts of Antiochus' kingdom. The Governor quickly marshalled a force of sixty thousand, ready to renew the war.