"They would feel that the expectation which he had solemnly and publicly authorized them to depend upon was idle and vain; they would not and could not by any possibility feel that they had, in this great particular, reason to consider his word to have been kept. They would be discouraged to the very last degree. They would, of course, hide themselves. I would do so myself, and I believe I am no coward. In short, they would feel no reason to hope in his protection, or to expect that his other and still mightier promises concerning their own future eternal life would by him be realized. They would not incur any inconvenience, or brave any danger, or take any trouble, or risk any loss—"
It was Aglais's turn to interrupt.
"Now, is this their attitude?" she inquired.
"The reverse, the opposite, the contradictory of their attitude."
The lady continued in a low tone: "If, expecting, upon his own assurance, that some among them should see him," she asked, "not one of them had seen him, would they, at this moment, have any motive for bringing upon themselves the tortures, insults, shame, and death which he underwent, and all this in order to induce others to believe apparitions and a resurrection which in their own hearts they did not themselves believe, and for believing which they were, moreover, conscious that they possessed no ground, no reason, no pretext?"
A sweet, ringing, vibrant voice at their side here said:
"And in order by deliberate circumstantial lying, of an awful and blasphemous kind, to please the God of truth; and to compensate themselves by his protection above, in a future life, for the present and immediate destruction which they are incurring among the Pharisees and the men of power here below!"
Looking round, they beheld Esther of the Maccabees.
Never had she seemed to Paulus so beautiful; but there was a marked change; for, however intellectual had always been the translucent purity of that oval brow, through which, as through a lamp of alabaster, shone the vivid mind within, there was now the mysterious effluence of "that Essence increate" who had come to abide in, and had strangely transfigured the appearance of, the faithful-souled Hebrew maiden. And when Paulus, after she had embraced his mother, abstractedly took her hand, his heart was lifted upward with a species of wonder; and, without adverting to it, he was asking himself to what marvellous kingdom she had become heiress, in what supernal court of everlasting joy and unassailable prerogatives was this beautiful creature destined to live, loving and beloved, adorning almost the glories which she reflected, dispensed, and multiplied, as if from some holy, mysterious, and spiritual mirror.
"O dear Lady Aglais! and O legatus!" she said, with a gesture amazing in its expressiveness and pathetic fervor (she had brought the finger-tips of both hands together under the chin, and then lowered them with the palms outward toward her hearers, and so she stood in an attitude of the utmost grace and dignity combined, like one appealing to the candor and good faith of others)—"O dear friends! I was just now passing through my own garden on my way hither, when, under the fig-tree (where he used to sit poring over the holy books of our people), I beheld my dead father, but standing, and not in his old accustomed wicker-chair; and he gazed upon me with large, earnest eyes; and as he stood, his head almost touched the leaves of that hollow, embowering fig-tree; and he was pale, so extremely pale as he was never during life; and he called me: 'Esther,' he said, and his voice sounded far away. Ah! my God, from what a huge distance it seemed to come! And lo! lady, and thou, legatus, he said these words to me: 'I have been in the vast, dim house, and have seen our Father Abraham; and I have seen our great Lawgiver, and all our prophets, excepting only two, Elias and Enoch; and I asked, Where were they? And in all the dim, vast house none answered me, but the forefinger was pressed to the silent lips of those who there waited. And, suddenly, there was the noise of innumerable armies coming swiftly from afar—but your ears are mortal and your eyes veiled, and were I even permitted to tell you that which shook, beyond this little world, the large world and its eternal thrones, your mind would not at present understand my words. Enough, Esther, that I have been allowed to renew to you, in my own behalf, and that of others among our people who have been called before you to the vast, dim, silent city, the exhortation which our ancestor Judas Maccabeus sent with offerings to the high-priest; namely, that you will pray for our spirits. Our innumerable company has just been thinned; the glorious Judas Maccabeus, our ancestor, and that holy mother of the Maccabees, and almost all who were waiting with me in the dim, vast kingdom of expectation, have gone for ever; and I, and a few, have been commanded to expect yet a little time; until the incense of holy prayer shall have further gone up in the presence of the Great White Throne.'"