So pregnant is this simple reasoning, that a man might ponder it and study it for a whole month, and yet find fresh strength and an ever-increasing weight in the considerations which it suggests; not even find a flaw if he made the one month twelve. Paulus's mind was determined, and so was his mother's. The son sought that same beautiful youth whom he had seen twice before; told him the new desire, the new belief, which had made his mother's and his own heart glad; and by him they were baptized as Christians, disciples of him that had been crucified—by that fair youth, I say, who was to be known for ever among men as "Saint John the Evangelist."
"After all, mother," said Paulus, when they were returning together to her dwelling, "it is not so very mysterious; I mean that difficulty about the lowliness of our divine Teacher's chosen place among men. Because, see you, if the builder of those glorious stars and that sublime firmament was to come at all amongst us, he would be certain to take the lowest and smallest lot, lest we should deem there was any difference as before him. We are all low and small together—the earth itself, I am told, being but a sort of Bethlehem among the stars; but, anyhow, we are but mites and emmets on a blade of grass in his sight, and had he taken a great relative place amidst us, it might countenance the lie and the delusion of our silly pride. That part of it is to me not so mysterious, although I don't wonder at the Jewish notion that their Messiah was to have been a great conquering prince—that is probably what the Antichrist will be. It would suit the blindness of vanity better."
As he spoke the words, they heard a quick footstep behind, and were overtaken by Longinus, who, saying he had just heard of their reception, greeted them with every demonstration of rapturous affection.
"Now," pursued he, walking by their side, "good for evil to Master Paulus's family. Forgive the apparent intrusion, dear general, if I mention that I happen to know the story of your youthful love, as all the world have witnessed your fidelity to an unavailing attachment. But learn from poor Longinus that Esther Maccabeus is now a disciple; and the Christian maiden can wed, under a still holier law, the brave Gentile whom the Jewess was bound to refuse."
With this he turned into an alley under the court of the Gentiles, and disappeared.
CHAPTER XXVI.
One still and sultry evening, the decline of a brooding day in spring, two persons were sitting on the flat roof of a house in Jerusalem. They were the Athenian Lady Aglais and her son, the comparatively youthful Roman General Paulus—he who has so largely figured, even from his gallant boyhood, in the events and affairs we have been recording.
It was the 30th of March, and a Wednesday—the first of all Easter-Wednesdays—the first in that new and perpetual calendar by which, throughout the fairest regions of earth, among all enlightened nations and civilized races, till the crash of doom, time was for evermore to be measured.
A servant, carrying a skin-cask slung over his shoulders, was watering the flowers, faint with thirst; and these, arranged in fanciful vases, which made an artificial garden of the housetop, shook their drooping heads under the fresh and grateful shower, and seemed to answer it with smiles of a thousand blooms and rays. As the man stole softly to and fro about the roof, now approaching the lady and her son, now receding, he seemed, in spite of the foreign language in which they spoke, and in spite of the low and hushed tone they observed, to follow, with intense and breathless though stealthy excitement, the tenor of their conversation; while his figure, in the last evening rays, cast a long, shifting shadow that streaked with black the yellow flood to its farthest limit, climbed the parapet, broke upon its grail-work of balusters, and then was beheaded, for it flung off its head out of sight into empty space, leaving the calm bright air unblotted above the stone guard-wall.
An occurrence took place of which (that Wednesday evening) Paulus and his mother were witnesses—an occurrence in dumb show, the significance of which they were destined, only after several years, to learn; yet the incident was so singular, so strange, so impressive—it was such a picture in such a quarter—that when, long subsequently, the explanation came, they seemed to be still actually assisting in person at the scene which, while they beheld it, they had no means of understanding. We are going, in one moment, to relate that occurrence; and we must here request the reader to grant us his full belief and his confidence when we remark that, in comparison of his amusement, his profit, and that mental gallery of pictures to be his henceforth (which we try to give to all who honor these pages with a perusal), we feel the sincerest contempt for any mere display of scholarship or learning. For this reason, and this reason alone, and certainly from no scantiness, and still less from any lack of authorities, we shall almost disencumber our narrative of references to the ancient writers and recondite documents (such as the Astronomic Formula of Philip Aridæus) which establish as positive historical facts the more striking of the occurrences still to be mentioned. In one instance the intelligent reader will discern that the most sacred of all evidence supports what we have to record. But if we were to show with what nicety of precision much profane, yet respectable and even venerable, testimony accords with the passage here meant in the Acts of the Apostles, and how abundantly such testimony corroborates and supplements the inspired account, this book would cease to be what it aims at being, and would become a historical treatise of the German criticism school.[3]