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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Saul of Tarsus, by Elizabeth Miller
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Saul of Tarsus
+       A Tale of the Early Christians
+
+Author: Elizabeth Miller
+
+Illustrator: André Castaigne
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2011 [EBook #37862]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAUL OF TARSUS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "The seed of his teaching has spread abroad" _Page 4_]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SAUL OF TARSUS
+
+_A TALE OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS_
+
+
+_By_
+
+ELIZABETH MILLER
+
+_Author of_ The Yoke
+
+
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+
+ANDRÉ CASTAIGNE
+
+
+
+
+INDIANAPOLIS
+
+THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT 1906
+
+THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+Chapter
+
+       I  Saul of Tarsus
+      II  A Prudent Exception
+     III  The First Martyr
+      IV  The Bankrupt
+       V  Agrippa in Repertoire
+      VI  Marsyas Assumes a Charge
+     VII  The Bondman of Hate
+    VIII  An Alexandrian Characteristic
+      IX  "--As an Army With Banners"
+       X  Flaccus Works a Complexity
+      XI  The House of Defense
+     XII  "Scattering the Flock"
+    XIII  A Trust Fulfilled
+     XIV  For a Woman's Sake
+      XV  The False Balance
+     XVI  A Matter Handled Wisely
+    XVII  A Word in Season
+   XVIII  The Ransom
+     XIX  The Deliverance
+      XX  The Feast of Flora
+     XXI  The Fining Fire
+    XXII  "In the Cloak of Two Colors"
+   XXIII  A Letter and a Loss
+    XXIV  The Digged Pit
+     XXV  The Speaking of Eutychus
+    XXVI  The Arm Made Bare
+   XXVII  The Proconsul's Deliberations
+  XXVIII  The Strange Woman
+    XXIX  In Extremis
+     XXX  The Eremite in Scarlet, and the Bankrupt in Purple
+    XXXI  The Dregs of the Cup of Trembling
+   XXXII  Sanctuary
+  XXXIII  The Dregs of the Cup of Fury
+   XXXIV  Captives of the Mighty
+    XXXV  The Approach of the Day of Visitation
+   XXXVI  On the Damascus Road
+  XXXVII  In the House of Ananias
+ XXXVIII  The Requital
+
+
+
+
+In Memory of
+
+My Soldier Brother
+
+Ralph Miller
+
+Lieutenant Sixth Cavalry
+
+U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+SAUL OF TARSUS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SAUL OF TARSUS
+
+On a certain day in March of the year 36 A.D., a Levite, one of the
+Shoterim or Temple lictors, came down from Moriah, into the vale of
+Gihon, and entered the portal of the great college, builded in
+Jerusalem for the instruction of rabbis and doctors of Law in Judea.
+
+With foot as rapid and as noiseless as that of a fox among the tombs,
+the Levite crossed the threshold into the great gloom of the interior.
+This way and that he turned his head, watchful, furtive, catching every
+obscure corner in the range of his glance.
+
+He saw that three men sat within, two together, one a little apart from
+the others.  From this to that one, the alert gaze slipped until it
+lighted upon a small, bowed shape in white garments.  Then the Levite
+smiled, his lips moved and shaped a word of satisfaction, but no sound
+issued.  Silently he flitted into an aisle which would lead him upon
+the two, and suddenly appeared before them.
+
+The small bent figure made a nervous start, but the Levite bowed and
+rubbed his hands.
+
+"Greeting, Rabbi Saul; God's peace attend thee.  Be greeted, Rabbi
+Eleazar; peace to thee!"
+
+Rabbi Eleazar raised a great head and looked with an unfavorable eye at
+the Levite; in it was to be read strong dislike of the Levite's
+stealthy manner.
+
+"Greeting, Joel," he replied in a voice quite in keeping with his
+splendid bulk, "peace to thee.  Yet take it not amiss if I suggest that
+since there is no warning in thy footfall or thy garments, thou
+shouldst be belled!"
+
+The other had dropped back in his seat, and the Levite bowed again to
+him.
+
+"I pray thy pardon, Rabbi Saul, but I came as I was sent--in haste."
+
+"It is nothing, Joel," Saul answered.  "Give us news of the High
+Priest's health."
+
+"He continues in health, God be thanked, but his spirit was sorely
+tried--" He stopped abruptly to look, as if in question, at the man
+sitting apart in the shadows.
+
+"Who is that?" he asked suspiciously.
+
+"A pupil," was Eleazar's impatient reply.  The Levite looked again,
+but, the twilight thwarting him, he hitched a slant shoulder and,
+passing to one of the windows, drew aside its heavy hanging.
+Instantly, a great golden beam shot into the cold chamber and
+illuminated it gloriously.  Saul threw his hand over his eyes to shut
+out the blinding radiance.  But the pupil, helped at his reading by the
+admitted light, straightened himself, glanced up a moment, and turned
+to his scroll without a word.
+
+"A stranger," Joel whispered, coming back to the rabbis.
+
+"What burden of mystery dost thou conceal, Joel?" Eleazar exclaimed.
+"Yonder man is an Essene; look about; the stones will take tongue and
+betray thee, sooner than he."
+
+"Let me be sure, let me be sure!" Joel insisted stubbornly.
+
+As if obedient to Eleazar, he cast an eye about the chamber.
+
+The light which came in at the west was straight from the spring sun,
+moted and warm with benevolence.  That which entered at the east was
+only a quivering reflection from the marble walls and golden gates of
+the Temple.  The chamber was immense, shadowy and draughty, the floor
+of stone, the walls of Hermon's rock, relieved by massive arcades
+supported on pilasters, and friezes of such images as were hieratically
+approved.  The ceiling was so lost in height and cold dusk that its
+structure could not be defined.  At the end opposite the doors was the
+lectern of ivory and ebony, embellished with symbolical intaglios and
+inlaid with gold.  Beside it stood the reader's chair, across which the
+rug had been dropped as he had put it off his knees.  Before the
+lectern, across and down the great chamber, were ranges of carven
+benches, among which were lamps of bronze, darkened and green about the
+reliefs and corrugations on the bowls, depending from chains or set
+about on tripods.
+
+But besides the three already noted, the Levite saw and expected to see
+no others.  Eleazar regarded his ostentatious inspection of the room
+with disgust.
+
+"Thou hast a burden on thy soul, Joel," Saul urged mildly.  "Let us
+bear it with thee."
+
+The Levite came close and bent over the rabbis.
+
+"Question your souls, brethren," he said.  "Hath Judea more to lose
+than it hath lost?" he asked in a lowered tone.
+
+"Its identity," Eleazar responded shortly.
+
+But the Levite looked expectantly at Saul.
+
+"Its faith," Saul suggested quietly.
+
+The Levite nodded eagerly.
+
+"Its faith," Saul continued, as if speaking to himself, "and after that
+there is nothing more.  Yea, restore unto it its kings and its
+dominions, yet withhold the faith and there is no Judea.  Desolate it
+until the land is sown in salt and the people bound to the mills of the
+oppressor, so but the faith abide, Judea is Judea, glorified!"
+
+"What then, O Rabbi," the Levite persisted, "if the land be sown in
+salt and the people bound to the mills of the oppressor, if the faith
+be abandoned--what then?"
+
+"God can not perish," Eleazar put in.  "Fear not; it can not come to
+pass."
+
+"Nay, but evil can enter the souls of men and point them after false
+prophets so that God is forgotten," the Levite retorted.  His lean
+figure bent at the hips and he thrust his face forward with triumph of
+prophecy on it.  Saul looked at him.
+
+"What hast thou to tell, Joel?" he asked with command in his voice.
+The Levite accepted the order as he had worked toward it--with energy.
+
+"Listen, then," he began in a whisper.  "Dost thou remember Him whom
+they crucified at Golgotha, a Passover, four years ago?"
+
+Eleazar nodded, but Saul made no sign.
+
+"Know ye that they killed the plant after it had ripened," the Levite
+hastened on.  "The seed of His teaching hath spread abroad and wherever
+it lodgeth it hath taken root and multiplied.  Wherefore, there is a
+multitude of offspring from the single stem."
+
+Saul stood up.  He did not gain much in stature by rising, but the
+temper of the man towered gigantic over the impatience of Eleazar and
+the craft of the Levite.
+
+"What accusation is this that thou levelest at Judea?" he demanded.
+
+"A truth!" Joel replied.
+
+"That Israel hath a blasphemer among them, which hath been spared,
+concealed and not put away?" questioned Saul.
+
+"Dare ye?" the Levite cried.
+
+"Dare ye not!" Saul answered sternly.  "It is the Law!"
+
+The Levite came toward him.  "Go thou unto the High Priest Jonathan,"
+he whispered evilly; "he hath work for thee to do!"
+
+Eleazar doubled his huge hand and whirled his head away.  There was
+tense silence for a moment.
+
+"Is there a specific transgression discovered?" Saul demanded.
+
+The Levite weighed his answer before he gave it.
+
+"Rumor hath it," he began, "that certain of the sect are in the city
+preaching--"
+
+"Rumor!" Saul exclaimed.  "Hast rested on the testimony of rumor?"
+
+"Can ye track pestilence?" he asked craftily.
+
+"By the sick!" was the retort.  "Go on!"
+
+"It is the High Priest's vow to attack it," Joel declared.  "He hath no
+other thought.  It is said that one of the disputants, who yesterday
+troubled them in the Cilician synagogue with an alien doctrine,
+preached the Nazarene's heresy."
+
+"In the Cilician--in mine own synagogue!" Saul repeated, in amazement.
+
+"In thine, in the Libertine, the Cyrenian and the Alexandrian."
+
+"And they suffered him?" Saul persisted with growing earnestness.
+
+"They did not understand him, then; he is but a new-comer from Galilee."
+
+"And I was not there; I was not there!" Saul exclaimed regretfully.
+"What is he called?"
+
+"Stephen."
+
+There was a sound from the direction of the silent pupil.  They looked
+that way to see that he had dropped his scroll and had sprung to his
+feet.  The Levite dropped his head between his shoulders and
+scrutinized him sharply.  But the young man had fixed his eyes upon
+Saul, as if waiting for his answer.
+
+"Stephen of Galilee," the Levite added, watching the young man.  "A
+Hellenist; and he wrapped his blasphemy so subtly in philosophy that
+none detected it until after much thought."
+
+The young man turned his face toward the speaker and a glimmer of anger
+showed in his black eyes.
+
+"It is bold blasphemy which ventures into a synagogue," Saul said half
+to himself.
+
+"Ah! thou pointest to the sign of peril," the Levite resumed.
+"Boldness is the banner of strength; strength is the fruit of numbers;
+and numbers of apostates will be the ruin of Judea and the forgetting
+of God!"
+
+Saul caught up his scrip which lay beside him, but Eleazar continued to
+gaze at the beam of light penetrating the chamber.
+
+"Wherefore the High Priest is troubled, and, laying aside all his
+private ambitions, henceforward he will devote himself to the
+preservation of the faith," the Levite continued.
+
+"Which means," Eleazar interrupted, "the persecution of the apostate."
+
+The Levite spread out his hands and lifted his shoulders.  The Rabbi
+Eleazar forged too far ahead.
+
+"It is our duty, Eleazar," Saul said, "to discover if this Galilean
+preaches heresy.  Let us go to the synagogue."
+
+Eleazar arose, a towering man, broad, heavy and slow, but his rising
+was as the rising of opposition.
+
+"I am enlisted in the teaching of the Law, not in the suppression of
+heresy," he said bluntly.  "Furthermore, my work here is not yet
+complete.  Wilt thou excuse me, my brother?"
+
+"Let me not keep thee from thy duty," Saul answered courteously.
+
+"Joel!  Come with me," Eleazar commanded, and together the two
+disappeared into the interior of the college.
+
+Then the young man who had held his place came out of the shadows into
+the broad beam of the sun, which fell now over Saul.
+
+"Peace to thee, Saul," he said; "peace and greeting."  The voice, in
+contrast to the tones of the men who had lately discussed, was very
+calm and level, restrained by cultivation, yet one which is never
+characteristic of an undecided nature.
+
+"Thou, Marsyas!" Saul exclaimed in sudden recognition.  He extended his
+hands to meet the other's in a greeting that was more affectionate than
+conventional.  The young man with sudden impulsiveness raised the hands
+and pressed them to his breast.
+
+"Saul!  Saul!" he repeated with a quiver of emotion in his voice.
+
+"And none hath supplanted me in thy loves, Marsyas?" Saul smiled.  "Art
+thou come hither for instruction?  Am I to have thee by me now in
+Jerusalem?"
+
+The glow of warmth in the rabbi's manner did not contribute its
+confidence to the young man.  He seemed not less troubled than moved.
+With searching eyes, he looked down from his superior height into
+Saul's face.  As the two stood together, physical extremes could not
+have been more perfect.
+
+The rabbi was not well-formed, and his frame had a note of feebleness
+in its make-up in spite of its youth and flesh.  The face was pale, the
+eyes so deep-set as to appear sunken, the hair, thin, curling and
+lightly silvered, the beard, short, full and touched with the same
+early frost.  Though no recent alien blood ran in his veins, his
+features were only moderately characteristic of the sons of Jacob.  He
+was not erect, and the stoop in his shoulders was more extreme than the
+mere relaxation from rigidity, yet less pronounced than actual
+curvature.  The veins on the backs of his hands stood up from the
+refined whiteness of the flesh, and when his head turned, the great
+artery in his throat could be seen irregularly beating.  It was the
+physique of a man not only weak but sapped by a subtle infirmity.
+
+He wore the head-dress and the voluminous white robes of a rabbi,
+girded with the blue and white cord of his calling.  But his class as a
+Pharisee was marked by the heavy undulating fringes at the hem of his
+garment, and by the little case of calf-skin framing a parchment
+lettered in Hebrew which was bound across his forehead.  Herein, by
+fringe, phylactery and the traditional colors, he published his
+submission to the minutiæ of the Law.
+
+In so much the rabbi could have had twenty counterparts over Judea, but
+his aggressive nature stamped him with an individuality which has had
+no equal in all time.  Over his countenance was a fine assumption of
+humility curiously inconsistent with a consciousness of excellence
+which made an atmosphere about him that could be felt.  Yet, holding
+first place over these conflicting attributes was the stamp of
+tremendous mental power, and a heart-whole sweetness that was
+irresistible.  The union of these four characteristics was to produce a
+man that would hold fast to theory, though all fact arise and shouted
+it down; who would maintain form, though the spirit had in horror long
+since fled the shape.  Thus, inflexibly fixed in his convictions, he
+was unlimited in his capacity for maintaining them.  In short, he was a
+leader of men, a zealot, a formalist and an inquisitor--one of great
+mentality dogmatized, of great spirit prejudiced, of immense
+capabilities perverted.
+
+Such was Saul of Tarsus.
+
+But the other was a Jew of blood so pure, of type so pronounced, that
+the man of mixed races before him appeared wholly foreign.  His line
+had descended from the persistent love of Jacob for Rachel, through the
+tents of them that slew the Midianitish women in the wilderness,
+through the households of Esdras and the camps of Judas Maccabæus.
+
+He was above average height, and built ruggedly, as were Judah the
+lion, and Jacob who wrestled with the angel.  One of in-door habit, he
+was fair on the forehead, under the soft young beard and the shining
+black curls at his temples.  But his cheeks were crimson, his eyes
+intensely black and sparkling, his teeth, glittering ranges of shaded
+ivory.  And the bold strength of his profile and the brilliance of his
+color seemed finished by the deep cleft distinctly discernible.
+
+On his face was written an attribute common among men of a time of
+Messianic hopes and crises.  Asceticism with its blank purity of brow
+set him apart from the sordid souls in his walk.  Yet about him there
+seemed to be an atmosphere surcharged with physical radiations, with
+human electricity that fairly sparkled in its strength.
+
+Even Saul, his long-time friend, on this occasion of sudden meeting,
+remarked this equal power of body and spirit.  The Pharisee glanced at
+the young man's garments,--simple robes without fringes, without gaud,
+and white as the snows of Hermon.
+
+"Strange," the Pharisee said after his peculiar manner of talking with
+himself, "strange that thou shouldst elect to be an Essene."  A little
+proud surprise appeared on Marsyas' face.
+
+"I can not be anything else," the young man answered.
+
+"Thou hast not ventured.  But, nevertheless, thou wilt be noted in the
+college.  The Essenes are very few these days in Jerusalem; En-Gadi
+receives them all.  And thou art a doctor of Laws--a master Essene.
+How long wilt thou study here?"
+
+"Five years, Rabbi."
+
+Yet the young man was at least twenty-five years of age.  What course
+of instruction was it which carried a man into middle life before it
+was finished?  What but the tremendous complexities of the Mosaic and
+the Oral Law.  But these things had been taught the young man in the
+forecourt of the little synagogue in Nazareth where he was born.  So,
+because his learning extended beyond the reach of the provincial
+Essenic philosopher who had taught him in his youth, the young man had
+quitted the little hill town in Galilee to come to the feet of the
+master Essene in the great college of Jerusalem.
+
+To be an Essene was to live a celibate under the regime of community
+laws, under a common roof, at a common board; to be bodily and
+spiritually spotless, to believe in the resurrection of the soul, the
+brotherhood of man, and the frailty and the incontinence of women; to
+accept no hospitality from one not an Essene and to own no possessions
+apart from the common ownership of the order.  But to be an Essenic
+doctor was to be the most ascetic scholar and the most scholarly
+ascetic in the world, at that time.
+
+But Marsyas had no thought on Saul's contemplation of him.
+
+"I heard the talk of the Levite," he said.  "Because it concerns me
+much, I could not shut mine ears against it.  I, too, have heard the
+creed of the Nazarenes."
+
+"How, Marsyas?  Harkened unto the heretics?"
+
+"I have heard their creed," he persisted in his calm way.  "It differs
+little from the teachings of mine own order, the Essenes, except that
+they believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and the receptiveness
+of the Gentile."
+
+"And thou callest that a little difference?"
+
+"Not so great that one going astray after the Nazarenes could not be
+satisfied with the Essenes, if he were obliged to give up his apostasy.
+I seek a remedy."
+
+"Moses supplied the remedy," Saul averred with meaning.
+
+"The Essenes are not inflicters of punishment," was the even reply.
+
+The Pharisee made a conciliatory gesture.  "It is then only a
+discussion of the practices of my class and of thine."
+
+But Marsyas was not satisfied.
+
+"Thou knowest Stephen?" he asked after a pause.
+
+"Stephen of Galilee?  Only by report."
+
+"Perchance, then, thou knowest Galilee," the Essene resumed after a
+short pause.  "Galilee that sitteth between Phoenicia the menace and
+Samaria the pollution, and is not soiled; that standeth between the
+Middle Sea, the power, and the Jordan, the subject, and is not humbled.
+She is Israel's brawn, not easily governed of the mind which is
+enthroned Jerusalem.
+
+"We are rustics in Galilee, tillers of the soil, mountaineers and
+fishers, simple rugged folk who live in the present, expecting
+miracles, seeing signs, discovering prophets and wonders.  We are
+patriots, bound and hooped against an alien, but bursting wide with
+whatever chanceth to ferment within us.  Let there but arise a Galilean
+who hath a gift or a grudge or a devil, and  proclaim himself anointed,
+and he can gather unto himself a following that would assail Cæsar's
+stronghold, did he say the word."
+
+He paused and seemed to recall what he had said.
+
+"Yet, we are good Jews," he added hastily, "faithful followers of the
+Law and such as Israel might select to die singly for Israel's sake.
+No Galilean is ashamed of himself except when he permits himself to be
+led so far into folly that he can not turn back."
+
+The Pharisee foresaw intuitively the young man's climax.
+
+"The Law does not remit punishment for blasphemy, even if a soul turn
+back from its folly," he observed.
+
+Marsyas' face became grave and he gazed at the place on the wall where
+quivered the reflection from the splendors of the Temple.
+
+"Stephen is my friend," he said earnestly, "a simple soul, generous,
+fervid, and a true lover of God."
+
+"If he be such, he is safe," Saul replied.
+
+The young man fingered the scarf that girded him.
+
+"The brothers at En-Gadi would receive him," he said.
+
+"What need of him to retire from the world if he be a good Jew?" Saul
+persisted.
+
+Again the young man hesitated.  Saul was driving him into a declaration
+that he would have led forth gradually.  Then he came to the Pharisee
+and laid a persuading band on his arm.
+
+"Go not to the synagogue," he entreated.  "Wait a little!"
+
+"Wait in the Lord's business?" Saul asked mildly.
+
+"Be not hastier than the chastening of the Lord; if He bears with
+Stephen, so canst thou a little longer.  Give love its chance with
+Stephen before vengeance undoes him wholly!"
+
+"Marsyas," Saul protested in a tone of kindly remonstrance, "thou dost
+convict him by thy very concern."
+
+"No!" the young Essene declared, pressing upon the Pharisee in
+passionate earnestness.  "I am only troubled for him.  Let me go first
+and understand him, for it seems that there is doubt in the hearts of
+his accusers, and after that--"
+
+"Thine eye shall not pity him," Saul repeated in warning.
+
+"Saul!  Saul!  He is my beloved friend!"
+
+"Moses prepared us for such a sorrow as apostasy among those whom we
+love.  What says the Lawgiver--'thy friend, which is as thine own soul,
+thy hand shall be the first upon him to put him to death!'"
+
+The lifted hands of the young Essene dropped as if they had been struck
+down.
+
+"Death!" he repeated, retreating a step.  "Wilt thou kill him?"
+
+"I am more thy friend, Marsyas," the Pharisee went on, "because I am
+zealous for the Law.  The heresy is infectious and thou art no more
+safe from it than any other man.  And I would rather sit in judgment
+over Stephen, whom I do not know, than over thee, who art dear to me as
+a brother."
+
+The young man drew near again.
+
+"Dear as a brother!" he said.  "Stephen is that to me.  Even now didst
+thou ask if any had supplanted thee in my loves.  No; yet my loves have
+broadened, so that I can take another into my heart.  The Lord God be
+merciful unto me, that I may not be driven to choose one, for defense
+against the other!  Even as ye both love me, love one another!  Saul!
+Thou wast my earlier friend!  I can no more endure Stephen's peril than
+I can uproot thee from my heart!"
+
+Saul flinched before the concealed intimation in the words.  A wave of
+pallor succeeded by hardness swept over his face, and Marsyas,
+observing the change, seized the Tarsian's hands between his own.
+
+"Wait until I have seen him," he besought, "and if there be any taint
+in his fidelity to the faith, I shall stop at no sacrifice to save him.
+He is, if at all, only momentarily drawn aside, and as the Lord God
+daily forgives us our sins, let us forgive a brother--"
+
+Saul tried to draw away, but the young Essene's imploring hands held
+his in a desperate clasp.
+
+"I will give up mine instruction," he swept on.  "I will retire into
+En-Gadi and take him with me!  I will give over everything and become
+one of their husbandmen; I will have no aim for myself, but for
+Stephen!  And if I fail I will take sentence with him!  Wait!  Wait!
+Let me return to Nazareth and get my patrimony!  I will come then and
+take him at once to En-Gadi!  Saul!"
+
+But Saul threw off the beseeching hands and stepped back from the young
+man.  The two gazed at each other, the Pharisee to discover a crisis in
+the Essene's look; the Essene to see immovability in the Pharisee.
+
+Then the distress in Marsyas' face changed swiftly, and an ember burned
+in his black eyes.  He straightened himself and stretched out a hand.
+
+"I have spoken!" he said.  Turning purposefully away, he went back to
+his place and took up his scroll.  For a moment he held it, his eyes on
+the pavement.  Slowly his fingers unclosed and the scroll
+dropped--dropped as if he had done with it.
+
+Catching up his white mantle, he walked swiftly out of the chamber and
+Saul looked after him, yearning, wistful and sad.
+
+Joel came out of the interior of the building.
+
+"I will go with thee to the synagogue," he offered.
+
+The Pharisee looked at him with cold dislike in his eyes, and,
+inclining his head, led the way out.
+
+At the threshold of the porch he halted.  In the street opposite two
+young men were walking slowly.  One was slight, young, graceful and
+simply clad in a Jewish smock.  The other was Marsyas, the Essene, who
+went with an arm over the shoulders of the first, and, bending, seemed
+to speak with passionate earnestness to his companion.  The faces of
+the two young men thus side by side showed the same spiritual mode of
+living, and youthful purity of heart.  But the expression of the
+slighter one was less ascetic than happy, less rigorous than confident.
+
+As Marsyas spoke, the other smiled; and his smile was an illumination,
+not entirely earthly.
+
+Joel seized Saul's arm, and held it while the two approached,
+unconscious of the watchers in the shadow of the porch.
+
+"That is he," he whispered avidly.  "That is he!  Stephen, the
+apostate!"
+
+Stephen turned his head casually, and, catching the Pharisee's eye,
+returned the gaze with a little friendly questioning; then he raised
+his face to Marsyas and so they passed.
+
+The pallor on Saul's face deepened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A PRUDENT EXCEPTION
+
+After he had separated from Stephen, Marsyas went to the house of a
+resident Essene with whom he made his home, to be fed, to be washed, to
+offer supplication and to announce his decision to go on a journey.  At
+the threshold of his host's house he put aside his sandals and let
+himself in with a murmured formula.  In a little time he came forth
+with a wallet flung over his shoulder and took the streets toward
+Gennath Gate.  It was not written in the laws of his order that he
+should make greater preparation for a journey.  He had already
+acquainted himself with the abiding-places of Essenes in villages
+between Jerusalem and Nazareth and, assured of their hospitality and
+the provision of the Essene's God, he knew that he would fare well to
+the hill town of Galilee.
+
+So he passed through the city by the walk of the purified, garments
+well in hand lest they touch women or the wayside dust, meeting the eye
+of no man, proud of his humility, punctilious in his simplicity, and
+wearing unrest under his shell of calm.  He had an unobstructed path, a
+path ceremonially clean.  He had but to hesitate on the edge of a
+congestion, and the first gowned and bearded Jew that observed him
+signed his companions and the way was opened.  For the Essenes were the
+best of men, the truly holy men of Israel.
+
+He went down between the fronts of featureless houses, through the
+golden haze of sun and dust that overhung the narrow, stony mule-ways,
+until the distant dream towers of Mariamne, of Phasælus and of Hippicus
+became imminent, brooding shapes of blackened masonry, and the wall cut
+off the mule-ways and the great shady arch of the gate let in a glimpse
+of the country without.  On one hand was the Prætorium, the Roman
+garrison encamped in the upper palace of Herod the Great; on the other,
+the houses of the Sadducees, the Jewish aristocrats, covered the ridge
+of Akra.  Marsyas came upon an obstruction.  At a gate opening into the
+street, camels knelt, servants of diverse nationality but of one livery
+clustered round them, several unoccupied Jewish traveling chairs in the
+hands of bearers stood near.  In the center of the considerable crowd,
+a number of Sadducees, priests of high order and Pharisees in garments
+characteristic of their several classes were taking ceremonious
+farewell of a man already seated in a howdah.  No one took notice of
+the Essene, who stood waiting with assumed patience until he should be
+given room.
+
+Presently the camel-drivers cried to their beasts which arose with a
+lurch, priests and Sadducees hurried into their chairs, the servants
+fell into rank, the crowd shifted and ordered itself and a procession
+trailed out alongside the swaying camels toward Gennath Gate.  A
+distinguished party was taking leave under escort.
+
+Marsyas repressed the impatient word that arose to his lips and
+followed after the deliberate, moving blockade.
+
+The rank of the departing strangers did not encourage the city rabble
+to follow, and as the escort kept close to the head of the procession
+the hindmost camel was directly before Marsyas and the occupant of the
+howdah in his view.  Over head and shoulders the full skirts of a vitta
+fell, erasing outline, and, contrasting the stature with that of the
+attending servant, he concluded that the small traveler was a child.
+
+Under the dripping shade and chill of the ancient Gate they passed and
+out into the road worn into a trench through the rock and dry gray
+earth and on to the oval pool which supplied Hippicus, where a halt for
+a final farewell was made.  Again Marsyas was delayed, and for a much
+longer time.  He might have climbed out of the sunken roadway and
+passed around the obstruction, but the banks above were lined with
+clamoring mendicants, women and lepers, and he could not escape
+ceremonial defilement that might more seriously delay his journey.
+
+Meanwhile the courtly leave-taking progressed with dignified sloth.
+Gradually Sadducee, priest and Pharisee moved one by one from the
+departing aristocrat.  At the hindmost camel the Pharisees stopped not
+at all, but saluting without looking at the traveler, the priests
+merely raised their hands in blessing; but the Sadducees to a man
+salaamed profoundly, and passed on if they were old, or lingered
+uncertainly if they were young.
+
+A little flicker of enlightenment showed in the young Essene's
+brilliant eyes, an angry tension in his lips straightened their curve
+and he drew himself up indignantly.  The young aristocrats tarried and
+laughed his precious time away with a woman!  That was the traveler in
+the last howdah!  Twice and thrice the time they had spent speeding the
+rest of the party they consumed bidding the woman farewell, and every
+moment carried danger nearer to Stephen.
+
+Then an old voice, refined and delicate as the note of an ancient lyre,
+lifted in laughing protest from the front, the young men laughed,
+responding, but moved away to their chairs, the camel swung out into a
+rapid walk, and crying farewells the party separated.
+
+With abating irritation Marsyas moved after them.  At the intersection
+of the first road, he would pass these travelers and hasten on.
+
+A breeze from the hills cut off the smell of the city with a full
+stream of country freshness.  Marsyas lifted his head and drew in a
+long breath that was almost a sigh.  His first trouble weighed heavily
+upon him and its triple nature of distress, heart-hurt and
+apprehension, sensations so new and so near to nature as to be at wide
+variance with anything Essenic, moved him into a mood essentially
+human.  Then an exhalation from aft the fragrant spring-flowered groves
+stole into the pure air about him, bewildering, sweet, and through it,
+as harmoniously as if the perfume had taken tone, a distant hill bird
+sent a single stave of liquid notes.  The small figure in the howdah at
+that moment turned and looked back, and Marsyas for the first time in
+his life gazed straight into the eyes of a beautiful girl.
+
+Spring-fragrance, bird-song and flower-face were harmony too perfect
+for Essenism to discountenance.  Without the slightest discomposure,
+and absolutely unconscious of what he was doing, Marsyas gazed and
+listened until the vitta fell hastily over the face, the bird flew away
+and the garden incense died.
+
+He passed just then the intersecting road, but he continued after the
+last camel.  He walked after that through many drifts of fragrance, and
+many hill birds sang, but he knew without looking that the flower face
+was not turned back toward him again.
+
+He halted for the night at a little village and sought the hospitality
+of an Essene hermit that lived on the outskirts.  But in the night,
+terror for Stephen, of that unknown kind which is conviction without
+evidence and irrefutable, seized him.  He endured until the early
+watches of the morning and took the road to Nazareth while the stars
+still shone.
+
+He had forgotten his fellow wayfarers of the previous afternoon until
+their camels, speeding like the wind, overtook him beyond Mt. Ephraim.
+In a vapor of flying scarves he caught again a glimpse of the flower
+face turned his way.
+
+Then for the first time in his life he reviled his poverty that forced
+him to walk when the life of the much-beloved depended upon despatch.
+Nazareth, clinging like a wasps' nest under the eaves of its chalky
+hills, was many leagues ahead, and the sun must set and rise again
+before he could climb up its sun-white streets.
+
+His hope was not strong.  His plan had won such little respect from him
+that he had not ventured to propose it to Stephen.  It was extreme
+sacrifice for him to make, a sacrifice lifelong in effect, and in that
+he based his single faith in its success.  Stephen loved him and would
+not persist in the fatal apostasy, if he knew that his friend, the
+Essene, was to deny himself ambition and fame for Stephen's sake.
+
+He would get his patrimony of the old master Essene who held it in
+trust for him, formally give over his instruction, bind himself to the
+perpetual life of husbandry and seclusion, and then tell Stephen what
+he had done and why he had done it.
+
+Everything else but the appeal to Stephen's love for him had failed,
+and he had shrunk from forcing that trial.
+
+But Saul had meant to go to the Synagogue at once; there were
+innumerable chances that he was already too late.
+
+At noon he came upon the party of travelers again.  A fringed tent had
+been pitched under a cluster of cedars and the slaves were putting away
+the last of the meal.  He saw now as he hurried by that there was a
+spare and elegant old man, in magistrate's robes, reclining with
+singular grace on a pallet of rugs before the lifted side of the tent.
+The girl sat near.  He noted also that the master and the slaves fell
+silent as he approached and looked at him with interest.
+
+But he sped on, forgetting that it was the noon and that he was hungry,
+heated and weary, and remembering only that the time and the distance
+were deadly long.
+
+There was the soft pad-pad of a camel-hoof behind him and a servant of
+the aristocrat that he had passed drew up at his side.  With a light
+leap the man dropped from the beast's neck and bowed low.  The ease of
+his salaam and the purity of his speech were strong evidences of
+training among the loftiest classes of the time.  The attitude asked
+permission to address the Essene.
+
+Marsyas signed him to speak.
+
+"I pray thee accept my master's apologies," the man said, "for
+interrupting thy journey.  He bids me say that he is a stranger and
+unfamiliar with the land.  We have found no water for the meal.  Wilt
+thou direct us to a pool?"
+
+Marsyas checked his impatience.
+
+"Save that I am in great haste I would tarry to direct him.  But let
+him send hence into the country to the westward, half a league to the
+hill of the flat summit.  There is a grove by a well of sweet water."
+
+"Nay, the country is as obscure to us as the whereabouts of the pool,"
+the servant protested.  "We are Alexandrians and as good as lost in
+these hills.  If thou wilt speak to my master, he will understand
+better than his foolish servant."
+
+Irritation forced its way up through the Essenic calm.  The servant
+salaamed again.
+
+"The Essenes are noted even in Alexandria for their charity," he said
+deftly.  Marsyas turned with him and went back to the fringed tent.
+
+The old aristocrat still lounged gracefully, as no thirsty man does, on
+his pallet of rugs, but the girl had drawn farther away and her eyes
+were veiled.
+
+"I perceived by thy garments that thou art an Essene," the old man
+said, "and therefore a safe guide in this land of few milestones."
+
+Marsyas thanked him and waited restlessly on the inquiry.
+
+"We have not found a well since mid-morning and I crave fresh drink.
+The water we bear is brackish."
+
+"Bid thy servants go westward without deviation for less than half a
+league, until they come unto a hill with a flat summit, which can be
+seen afar off.  They will find there a grove with a well."
+
+"And none is nearer?" the old man asked idly.
+
+"There is none nearer."
+
+"My servants were bred to the desert; they are ill mountaineers.  Thou
+wilt show them the way?"
+
+"They can not lose the way," Marsyas protested; "it is the flock's well
+and all the hill paths lead to it.  Think not ill of me, that I can not
+go, for I am in haste."
+
+The old man smiled a little.
+
+"An Essene, and he will not stop to give an old man water?"
+
+Marsyas frowned resentfully, but turned to the servant at hand.
+
+"Get thy fellows and the water-skins and follow!"
+
+He turned off the Roman road and struck into the hills to the west.
+The servitors of the Alexandrian caught up amphoras and hastened after
+him.
+
+In less than an hour he reappeared before the man under the fringed
+tent.
+
+"Thy servants are returned.  Peace and farewell."
+
+"Nay, but it is the noon.  Wilt thou not tarry and rest?"
+
+"I go," Marsyas said resolutely, "to save a life."
+
+"Ah, then I did wrong to delay thee!  I remember that Essenes are
+physicians."
+
+"We can not cure the wicked of their evil intent, so I haste to save
+one threatened with another's malice.  My friend is in peril.  I must
+go unto Nazareth and return unto Jerusalem, before I can save him.  And
+even now I may be too late!"
+
+The magistrate searched the young man's face and then the
+half-incredulous curiosity passed out of his manner.
+
+"Pardon mine idle wasting of thy precious minutes," he said soberly.
+"Go, and the Lord speed thee!"
+
+Marsyas bowed low, and keeping his eyes fixed on the gray earth, lest
+they stray in search of the flower face, he turned again toward
+Nazareth.  He heard a very soft, very hurried and almost imperious
+whisper, as he moved away, but he knew that it was not for him to hear,
+and he did not tarry.  But a word from the magistrate brought him up.
+
+"Stay!  It is not customary for any outside of thine order to offer an
+Essene assistance, since we would spare thee the pain of refusal.
+But--it hath been suggested that thy haste may permit thee to waive thy
+scruples and accept help from me--as it hath been suggested--I filched
+precious time from thee.  Thou canst ride with us, if thou wilt, and
+take my daughter's camel.  She will come with me."
+
+The brilliant eyes no longer obeyed the restraint which would keep them
+from the flower face.  He turned to the girl, shyly withdrawn under the
+shade of the fringed tent, and knew by the lowered eyes and the warmer
+flush mantling the cheek that it was she that had made these
+suggestions.
+
+Twenty reasons why he should accept the magistrate's offer arose to
+combat the single stern admonition of Custom.  He was not yet under the
+Essenic vow to accept hospitality from none but Essenes, though he had
+lived in its observance all his life; he could not reach Nazareth under
+a day's journey and these swift beasts could carry him into the village
+by midnight.  And Stephen's life depended on it.
+
+"We depart even now," the magistrate added, "and I promise thee no
+further delay."
+
+Ancient usage accused the young man on account of the woman, but by
+this time she had arisen and passed out of his sight, as if in good
+faith that he should not be troubled by her presence.
+
+"Thou yieldest me invaluable aid," he said in a lowered tone, "and
+since I am not an elected Essene, but a ward of the brotherhood and a
+postulant, I am free and most glad to have thy help.  Be thou blessed."
+
+The magistrate acknowledged the young man's acceptance by a wave of a
+withered white hand and the slaves made the camels ready to proceed.
+
+At midnight, the rocking camels sped without apparent weariness up the
+uneven streets of Nazareth, white under the stars.  At the lewen of the
+single khan, the drivers drew up and Marsyas alighted to go forward and
+thank his host, but the magistrate slept, even while his servants
+lifted him down from the howdah.  As he turned away, regretfully, he
+confronted the veiled girl, almost childlike in stature under the
+protection of her tall handmaiden.  She dropped her head modestly and
+moved aside to let him pass, but he hesitated, and stopped.  Few indeed
+had been the words he had addressed to women in his lifetime, and now
+his speech was more than ever unready.
+
+"Thy father sleeps, yet I would not depart with my thanks unsaid.  Be
+thou the messenger and give him my gratitude when he waketh."
+
+"It shall be my pleasure," she answered softly, "and may thy hopes come
+to pass.  Farewell."
+
+"Thou hast my thanks.  The peace of the Lord God attend thee.
+Farewell."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FIRST MARTYR
+
+Mid-March in Judea was the querulous age of the young year.  It was a
+time of a tempered sun and intervals of long rains and chill winds.
+Under such persuasion, the rounded hills which upbore and encompassed
+Jerusalem took on a coat green as emerald and thick as civet-fur.
+Above it the leaning cedars, newly-tipped with verdure, spread their
+peculiar flat crowns like ancient hands extended in benediction over
+the soil.  Shoals of wild flowers, or rather flowers so long in
+fellowship with the fields of Palestine as to become domesticated, were
+scarlet and gold in shallows of green.  Almond orchards snowed in the
+valleys and every wrinkle and crevice in the hills trickled with clear
+cold water.  The winds whimpered and had the snows of Lebanon yet in
+mind; the days were not long and the sun shone across vales filled with
+undulating vapors, smoky and illusory.
+
+The shade was not comfortable and within doors those apartments which
+denied entrance to the sun had to be made tenantable by braziers.
+Loiterers, wayfarers and outcasts betook themselves to protected angles
+and sat blinking and comatose in the benevolent warmth of the sun.
+
+It was late afternoon and without the cedar hedge of Gethsemane, where
+the ancient green wall cut off the streaming wind, was a group sitting
+close together on the earth.
+
+One, much covered in garments barbarously striped, and who bestirred
+long meager limbs now and then, was an Arab.  Next to him a Jewish
+husbandman from Bethesda squatted awkwardly, the length of his coarse
+smock troubling him, while his hide sandals had been put off his hard
+brown feet.  His neighbor was a Damascene, and two or three others sat
+about two who were employed in the center of this racial miscellany.
+
+One of these was a Greek, the ruin of a Greek, not yet thirty and
+bearing, in spite of the disfigurement of degradation, solitary
+evidences of blood and grace.  Opposite him sat a Roman, in a scarlet
+tunic.
+
+The two were playing dice, but the end of the game was in sight, for
+the neat pile of sesterces beside the Roman was growing and the Greek
+had staked his last on the next throw.
+
+Presently the Greek took the tesseræ and threw them.  The Roman glanced
+at the numbers up and smiled a little.  The Greek scowled.
+
+"The old defeat," he muttered.  "Fortune perches on the standards of
+Rome even in a game of dice.  Oh, well, we have had our day!"
+
+The Roman stowed away the sesterces in a wallet and hung it again
+inside his tunic.
+
+"Yes, you have had your day," he replied.  "Marathon, Thermopylæ and
+Platæa--in my philosophy you can afford to lose a game of dice to a
+wolf-suckled Roman!"
+
+The Greek sat still with his chin upon his breast, and the Roman,
+getting upon his feet, scrutinized the sluggish group of on-lookers.
+
+His interest was not idle curiosity in the men.  Such as they were to
+be seen cumbering the markets and streets of Jerusalem by day or by
+night throughout the year.  They were types of that which the world
+calls the rabble--at once a strength and a destruction, a creature or a
+master, as the inclination of its manipulators is or as the call of the
+situation may be.  Individually, it has a mind; collectively, it has
+not; at all times it is a thing of great potentialities overworked, and
+of great needs habitually ignored.  That the man in scarlet should scan
+each one of these, as one appraises another's worth in drachmæ, was a
+natural proceeding, old as the impulse in the shrewd to prey upon the
+unwary.  Out of this or that one, perhaps he could turn an odd denarius
+at another game of dice.
+
+But when he looked reflectively at the west, where the broad brow of
+the hills was outlined against a great radiance, he calculated on the
+hour of remaining daylight and the distance from that point to another
+in Bezetha far across Jerusalem, and felt of his wallet.
+
+It was bulky enough for one day's winnings, and entirely too bulky to
+be lost to some of the criminals or vagrants that would walk the night.
+With a motion of his hand he saluted the defeated Greek and the gaping
+group which sat in its place and watched him, and turned down the Mount
+toward Jerusalem.
+
+To a casual observer it would appear that he was a Roman.  He wore the
+short garments characteristic of the race, was smooth-shaven, and
+displayed idolatrous images on his belt, and, in disregard of Judean
+custom, uncovered his head.  But his features under analysis were
+Arabic, modified, not by the solidity of Rome but by the grace of the
+classic Jew.
+
+He was built on long, narrow lines, spare as a spear stuck in the sand
+before a dowar, but Judean flesh rounded his angles and reduced the
+Arabian brownness of complexion.  He was strikingly handsome and tall;
+not imposing but elegant, modeled for symmetry of his type, not for
+ideality, for refinement, not for strength.  His hands were delicate
+almost to frailty, his feet slender and daintily shod.  Never a Roman
+walked so lightly, never a Jew so jauntily.
+
+His presence was captivating.  Naïveté or impudence, carelessness or
+recklessness, gravity or mockery were ever uncertain in their
+delineation on his face, and one gazed trying to decide and gazing was
+undone.  Never did he reveal the perspective of a single avenue in his
+intricate and indirect disposition.  He forwent the human respect that
+is given to the straight-forward man, for the excited interest which
+the populace pays to the elusive nature.
+
+It was hard to name his years.  He was too well-knit to be young, too
+supple to be old.  The only undisputed evidence that he was past
+middle-age was not in his person but behind the affected mood in his
+soft black eyes.  There was another nature, literally in ambush!
+
+He had reached the gentler slopes of the Mount, when a young man
+dressed wholly in white approached from the north.  The wayfarer walked
+hesitatingly, his eyes roving over the towered walls of the City of
+David.  There were other wayfarers on Olivet besides the man in white
+and the man in scarlet.  There were rustics and traveling Sadducees, in
+chairs borne by liveried servants, Pharisees with staff and scrip,
+marketers, shepherds, soldiers on leave and slaves on errands, men,
+women and children of every class or calling which might have affairs
+without the walls of Jerusalem.  But each turned his steps in one
+direction, for the night was not distant and Jerusalem would shelter
+them all.
+
+The hill was busy, but many took time to observe the one in white.  The
+men he met glanced critically at his fine figure and passed; the women
+looked up at him from under their wimples, and down again, quickly;
+some of the children lagged and gazed wistfully at his face as if they
+wanted his notice.  Even the man in scarlet, attracted by the wholesome
+presence of the comely young man, studied him carelessly.  He was a
+little surprised when the youth stopped before him.
+
+"Wilt thou tell me, brother, how I may reach the Gate of Hanaleel from
+this spot?" he asked.  His manner was anxious and hurried, his eyes
+troubled.
+
+"Thou, a son of Israel, and a stranger in the city of thy fathers?" the
+other commented mildly.
+
+"The Essenes are rare visitors to Jerusalem," was the reply.
+
+"Ah!" the other said to himself, "the bleached craven of En-Gadi.  Dost
+thou come from the community on the Dead Sea?" he asked aloud.
+
+"I journey thither," the Essene answered patiently.  "I come from
+Galilee."
+
+The man in scarlet looked a little startled and put his slender hand up
+to his cheek so that a finger lay along the lips.  "Now, may thy haste
+deaden thy powers of recognition, O white brother," he hoped in his
+heart, "else thou seest a familiar face in me."
+
+He lifted the other arm and pointed toward the wall of the city.
+
+"Any of these gates will lead thee within," he said.
+
+"Doubtless, but once within any but the one I seek, I am more lost than
+I am here.  Wilt thou direct me?"
+
+The man in scarlet motioned toward a splendid mass of masonry rising
+many cubits above the wall toward the north.  "There," he said.  "Go
+hence over the Bridge of the Red Heifer and follow along the roadway on
+the other side of Kedron."
+
+As the man in white bowed his thanks, his elbow struck against an
+obstruction which yielded hastily.  The two looked, to see the Greek
+who had been defeated at dice make off up the hill.  The Essene caught
+at his pilgrim wallet which hung at his side and found it open.
+
+"Ha! a thief!" the man in scarlet cried.  "Did he rob thee?"
+
+His quick eyes dropped to the wallet.  There were many small round
+cylinders wrapped in linen within, evidently stacks of coin of various
+sizes from the little denarius to the large drachma; a handful of loose
+gold and several rolls of parchment which might have been bills of
+exchange.  The Essene frowned and closed the mouth of the purse.
+
+"A trifle is gone," he said.  "He was discovered in time."
+
+"If thou carryest this to the Temple, friend," the older man urged,
+"get it there to-night, else thou walkest in danger continually."
+
+"I give thee thanks; I shall be watchful; peace to thee,"--and the
+young man walked swiftly away.
+
+"Wary as the eyes of Juno!" the man in scarlet said to himself.
+"Essenes never make offering at the Temple; that treasure goes into the
+common fund of the order.  Now, what a shame that the unsated maw of
+the Essenic treasury should swallow that and hold it uselessly when I
+need gold so much!  Would that I had been born a good thief!"
+
+He sauntered after the young Essene and idly kept him in sight.
+
+"He walks like a legionary and talks like a patrician, but doubtless he
+hath the spirit of an ass, or he would not have let that knave of a
+Greek make off with so much as a lepton.  I wonder if I should not seek
+out the thief and win his pilferings from him."
+
+The Essene in the distance, just before he reached the Bridge of the
+Red Heifer, unslung his wallet and resettled the strap over his
+shoulder, but the purse did not reappear at his side.  He had concealed
+it within his gown.
+
+"I wish he were not in such uncommon haste; I might persuade him to
+loan it me.  Money-lending is second nature to a Jew.  There must be
+several thousand drachmæ in that wallet--enough to take me to
+Alexandria.  I wonder if he sped so all the way from--_Hercle!_  What
+an aristocrat!"--noting the Essene draw aside his robes from contact
+with the unclean mob at the opposite end of the causeway.
+
+"What! do they resent it?" he exclaimed, lifting himself on tiptoe to
+watch the young man, who seemed suddenly pressed upon and swallowed up
+by rapidly assembling numbers.
+
+Distant shouts arose, the Sheep Gate choked suddenly with a mass,
+Kedron's banks, the tombs of Tophet and the rubbish heaps there yielded
+up clambering, running people.  The hurry was directed along the brook
+outside the wall; stragglers closed up and the whole, numbering
+hundreds, flung itself toward the north.
+
+The man in scarlet, moved by amazement and a half-confessed interest in
+the man he had seen disappear, ran down the Mount and after the crowd.
+
+But a glance ahead now showed him that the Essene had not called forth
+this demonstration.  The gate next beyond the heavy shape of Hanaleel
+was discharging a struggling mass that instantly expanded in the open
+into a great party-colored ring, dozens deep.  The flying body the man
+in scarlet believed to encompass the young Essene swept up to the
+circle and melted into it.
+
+Meanwhile, around him came running eagerly the travelers, the
+marketers, shepherds, soldiers and slaves, and behind, the loiterers,
+who had watched him defeat the Greek.  Focalizing at the Bridge of the
+Red Heifer which spanned Kedron at a leap, the mob caught and
+precipitated him into its heart.  Rushed toward the road on the
+opposite side, he seized a corner of the parapet, and, holding fast,
+let the mass stream by him.
+
+When the rush trailed out, thinned and ceased altogether, he leisurely
+drew near the huge compact circle and stood on its outskirts.  But he
+could hear and see nothing but the crowd about him.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, touching a man in front of him.  The man shook
+his head and stood fruitlessly on tiptoe.
+
+Presently unseen authority in the hollow ring pressed the crowd back.
+In the ferment and resistance, he caught, through a zigzag path of
+daylight between many kerchiefed heads, a glimpse of a segment of the
+center.  A young man stood there.  About his forehead was bound the
+phylactery of a Pharisee.  At his feet was a tumbled heap of white
+outer garments.  Then the breach closed up.
+
+"A sacrifice?" the man in scarlet asked himself.  But such a deduction
+would not answer for the behavior of the crowd.  Its temper was
+ferocious.  They howled, they spat, they shook arms and clenched hands
+above their heads and forward over their neighbors' shoulders; they
+cursed in Greek and Aramic; they twisted their faces into furious
+grimaces; they pressed forward and were driven back and the foremost
+rank which knew wherefore it raged was not more violent than the
+rearmost which was perfectly in the dark.
+
+It was typically the voice of the Beast in man.  Some circumstance,
+unknown to the greater body, had waived restraint.  Therefore the
+wolves of Perea could have come down from the bone-whited wadies of the
+wilderness and said to them with truth: "We be of one blood, ye and we!"
+
+Each felt the support of numbers, the momentum of unanimity, the
+incentive of relaxed order, and the original cause, however heinous,
+was forgotten in the joy of the reversion to primordial savagery.
+Their quiet fellow stood on the outskirts and listened to the yelp of
+the jackal in man.  Before him was a wall of variously clad backs and
+upstretched heads, beside him rows of raving men in profile, with
+strained eyes, open mouths and working beards; and one of them was the
+man who had shown, when asked, that he did not understand this
+demonstration.
+
+The man in scarlet finally shrugged his shoulders.  He had suddenly
+evolved an explanation--the blood of a fellow man.  He turned away, not
+because he had revolted--he had seen too many spectacles in the Circus
+in Rome--but because he was disinclined to stand till he had learned
+the particulars of the uproar.  A gnarly hummock, white, harsh and dry,
+as if it were a heap of disintegrated ashes, rose several rods away on
+the brink of Kedron.  He mounted it and sat.  Yes; he would wait, also,
+till he saw the Essene again, who, he was sure, had been buried in the
+ring.  It would be unkind to himself to permit a chance for a loan to
+pass untried.
+
+The tumult continued many minutes before he noticed abatement in the
+forward ranks.  Movement which had been general throughout the interval
+increased at times, but the mob showed no signs of dispersing.
+
+The western slope of Olivet was now in its own shadow, its ravines
+already purpling with night.  Only the glory on the summit of Moriah
+blazed with undiminished fire, as the gold of the gates gave back the
+gold of the sunset.
+
+Presently a number of men, dressed alike in priestly robes, hurried
+back through Hanaleel into the city.  Hardly had they disappeared
+before the gate gave up a number of radiant shapes in a column, which
+broke suddenly and flung itself upon the great raving circle.  The
+flash of armor and the glitter of swords were suddenly interjected into
+a demoralized eddy of stampeded hundreds.  Another sort of clamor
+arose, no less voluminous, no less fervid, but it was a howl of panic
+and protest against the methods of Vitellius' legionaries sent to
+disperse a crowd.
+
+A solid core of fugitives drove through the gate beside Hanaleel and
+the Sheep Gate; fragments, detachments and individuals rolled down the
+banks into Kedron; screaming, tumbling, falling bodies fled north and
+south by the roadway and wherever there was a gate or a niche or a
+crevice it received fugitives who appeared no more.  Dust arose and
+obscured everything but the flash of arms and armor which rived through
+it like lightning in a cloud.  The uproar began to subside, and
+presently the laughter and jests of the soldiers mounted above the
+protest.  Fainter and fainter the cries grew, fewer the sounds of
+flying feet, and at last, strong, harsh and biting as the clang of a
+sledge upon metal, the command of the centurion to fall in settled even
+the shouts of the soldiers.
+
+There was the even, musical ring of whetting armor as the column filed
+back through Hanaleel, and silence.  The man in scarlet, who had sat on
+his ash-heap and smiled throughout the dispersing of the mob, a royal
+creature enthroned and entertained by the discomfiture of the mass,
+suddenly realized that the obscurity, which he had expected to lift,
+was the shadow of night.  He arose and, dusting off his scarlet skirt,
+moved out into the road.
+
+At that moment, a figure moving nearer the wall passed him, walking
+swiftly.  It was the Essene.
+
+"Ho! a discreet youth! a cautious youth!" the man in scarlet said to
+himself; "profiting by experience, he waited in safety somewhere until
+this light-fingered rabble was dispersed.  That must be a fat purse, a
+fat purse!  And I am looking for such!"
+
+He quickened his pace to overtake the young man and in his interest
+forgot the late riot.  Suddenly the young Essene stopped as if he had
+been commanded.  The man in scarlet brought up and looked.
+
+Before them was an immense trampled dusty ring.  In the falling
+twilight, he saw several huddled shapes, in attitudes of suffering and
+sorrow, kneeling together in its center over something which was
+stretched on the sand.
+
+A strangling gasp attracted the older man's attention once more to the
+Essene.  His figure seemed to shrink, his cheeks fell in.  Swiftly
+about his lips crawled the gray pallor of one physically sick from
+shock to the senses.  His eyes flared wide and the next instant he flew
+at the mourning cluster about the prostrate shape in the ring.  One or
+two fell back under his hand, and he leaned over and looked.
+
+A cry, heartrending in its agony, broke from his lips.  He dropped to
+his knees and fell forward with his face in the dust.  A murmur of
+compassion arose from the little group around him, and the man in
+scarlet lifted his shoulders and turned his back on the blighting
+spectacle of the young man's anguish.
+
+He walked hurriedly out of the falling night on the Mount, through
+Hanaleel, into the lights and noise of the City of David.  Soldiers on
+the point of closing the great gate paused to let him through.
+
+"Comrade," he said to one, "what did they out yonder?"
+
+"They stoned a Nazarene named Stephen," was the reply.
+
+[Illustration: "They stoned a Nazarene named Stephen"]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BANKRUPT
+
+Somewhat subdued, the man in scarlet walked through the night in the
+City of David.  After his first sensations he was discomfited.
+
+"Now this is what comes of the irregular barbarity in Judean
+executions," he ruminated.  "In Rome this Nazarene would have been
+despatched in order and his body borne away to the puticuli and no
+opportunity given for that painful scene outside.  Doubtless I should
+have convinced the young man and borrowed his gold of him, by this
+time.  Certainly, Fortune is a haughty jade when once offended.  But I
+shall be fortunate again; by all the gods, Jewish or Gentile, I will
+compel her smiles!
+
+"It would be my luck never to see him again; he will probably linger
+only to see this dead man buried, and go on to En-Gadi, as he said he
+would.  It would hardly be seemly to approach him about his gold, in
+his unhappiness, or I would waylay him, yet.  A pest on the zealots!
+Why did they not hold off this stoning for a day?"
+
+Moodily occupied by his thoughts, he passed unconscious of the careless
+people about him.  The huge tower of Antonia set on the brink of Mount
+Moriah frowned blackly over the street and in its shadow the idle life
+of the night laughed and reveled and sauntered.  The woman of the city
+was there, the Roman soldier in armor, the alien that bowed to Brahm or
+Bel, the son of the slow Nile, of the Orontes and of the yellow Tiber.
+It was not the resort of the lowest classes, but of those that were at
+variance with the spirit of the city, or the times and their
+philosophies.  Light streamed from open doorways, the wail of lyres and
+the jingle of castanets resounded within and without.  Now and then
+belated carters, driving slow donkeys, would plod through the
+revelry--a note of relentless duty which would not be forgotten.
+Again, humbler folk would retreat into wagon-ways or hug the walls to
+permit the passage of a Sadducee and his retinue, or a decurion and his
+squad--rank and power asserting their inexorable prerogative.
+
+Presently there approached the click of hoofs upon flagging.  A
+soldier, passing through a broad shaft of light from a booth, stopped
+short, drew himself up and swung his short sword at present.  Up the
+street, from lip to lip of every arms-bearing man, ran his abrupt call
+to attention.
+
+A body of legionaries appeared suddenly in the ray of light--brassy
+shapes in burnished armor, picked for stature and bearing.  Not even
+the plunge into blackness again broke the precision and confidence of
+that tread before which the world had fled as did now the mule-riders
+and the pedestrians of Jerusalem.
+
+After them, the beam of light projected two horsemen into sudden view.
+There was the rattle and ring of saluting soldiers by the way.  The
+radiance showed up a typical Roman in the armor of a general, but in
+deference to Israelitish prejudice against images, the eagle was
+removed from his helmet, the bosses of Titan heads from breastplate and
+harness.  This was Vitellius, Proconsul of Syria and the shrewdest
+general on Cæsar's list.  By his side rode Herrenius Capito, Cæsar's
+debt-collector, a thin-faced Roman in civilian dress, and with the
+ashes of age sprinkled on his hair.
+
+The man in scarlet took one glance at the gray old countenance frowning
+under the sudden light of the lamp and slid into the obscurity of an
+open alley at hand.  He did not emerge till the hoof-beats had died
+away.
+
+"So thou comest in search of me, sweet Capito," he muttered, "and I am
+penniless.  But it is comforting to know that thou hast no more hope of
+getting the three hundred thousand drachmæ which I owe to Cæsar, than I
+have of paying it!"
+
+After a little silence, he said further to himself, with added regret:
+
+"Now, had I that young Essene's gold, Capito would not find me in
+Jerusalem!  O Alexandria!  I must reach thee, though I turn dolphin and
+swim!"
+
+He continued on his way to the north wall, where he found exit
+presently into Bezetha, the unwalled suburb of Jerusalem.  Here the
+houses were comparatively new, less historic, less pretentious than
+those in the old city.  Here were inns in plenty, relaxed order and a
+general absence of the racial characteristics and the influence of
+religion.  The middle classes of Jerusalem dwelt here.
+
+It was dark, poorly paved, and the man in scarlet laid his hand on his
+purse under his tunic and walked with circumspection toward a khan.  It
+was no surprise to him to hear the sounds of struggle and outcry.  He
+stopped to catch the direction of the conflict that he might avoid it.
+It came out of a street so narrow, in a district so squalid, that
+happiness seemed to have fled the spot.  If ever the wealthy entered
+the place, it was to seek out human beings hungry enough to sell
+themselves as slaves.
+
+The commotion centered before a hovel, a tragedy in sounds, ghastly
+because the night made it unembodied.  The man in scarlet located it as
+out of his path and would have continued but for the insistent screams
+of a woman in the struggle.  Harsh shouts attempted to cry her down,
+but desperation lent her strength and the suburb shuddered with her mad
+cries.
+
+The man in scarlet lagged, shook his shoulders as if to throw off the
+influence of the appeal and finally stopped.  At that moment several
+torches of pitch, lighted at once, threw a smoky light over the scene.
+The passage was obstructed by a group of men uniformly dressed, and
+several spectators attracted by the commotion.  Assured that this was
+arrest and not violence, the curiosity of the man in scarlet drew him
+that way.  At a nearer view, he saw that the aggressors were Shoterim
+or Temple lictors, under command of a Pharisee wearing the habiliments
+of a rabbi.  The man in scarlet identified him as the referee in the
+center of the ring about the stoning.  The sudden lighting of the
+torches convinced him that the attack had its inception in secret.
+
+In the center of the fight was a middle-aged woman clinging desperately
+about the bodies of a young man and a young woman.  It was the efforts
+of the Shoterim to tear her away and her resistance that had made the
+arrest violent.
+
+Shouts and revilings told the man in scarlet the meaning of the
+disturbance.  The ferrets of the High Priest, Jonathan, had discovered
+a house of Nazarenes and were taking them.
+
+"More ill-timed zeal!" he muttered to himself.  "Or let me be exact:
+more bloody politics!"
+
+He had turned to leave when a figure in white, directed from the city,
+drove past him and through to the center of the crowd, with the
+irresistible force of a hurled stone.  Spectators fell to the right and
+left before it and the man in scarlet drawing in a breath of amazement
+turned to see what the light had to disclose.
+
+It was the young Essene, hardly recognizable for the distortion of
+deadly hate and passion on his face.  There were dark stains on his
+garments and dust on his black hair.  Every drop of blood had left his
+cheeks, but his eyes blazed with a light that was not good to see.
+
+He went straight at the Pharisee.  His grasp fell upon Saul's shoulder,
+drove in and seized upon its sinews.  The startled Tarsian turned and
+the young Essene with bent head gazed grimly down at him.  An
+interested silence fell over both captor and captive.  The blaze in the
+young man's eyes reddened and flickered.
+
+"I have been seeking thee, Saul of Tarsus," he said in a voice of
+deadly silkiness.  "Thou hast been most zealous for the Law in
+Stephen's case.  Look to it that thou fail not in the Law, for I shall
+profit by thy precept!  And even as Stephen fell, so shalt thou fall;
+even as Stephen came unto death, so shalt thou come!  Mark me, and
+remember!"
+
+The words were menace made audible; it was more than a threat: it was
+prophecy and doom.
+
+A tingle of admiration ran over the man in scarlet.  He who could leave
+the bier of a murdered friend to visit vengeance on the head of the
+murderer was no weakling.
+
+"A Roman, by the gods!" he exclaimed to himself.  "A noble adversary! a
+man, by Bacchus!"
+
+A threatening murmur arose from the spectators.  But there was no
+responsive fury kindled in Saul's eyes.  Instead he looked at Marsyas
+with unutterable sorrow on his face.  Presently his shoulders lifted
+with a sigh.
+
+"The city festereth with Nazarenes as a wound with thorns," he said to
+himself; aloud he called, "Joel."
+
+The Levite materialized out of obscurity and bowed jerkily.
+
+"Bear witness to this young man's behavior.  Lictors, take him.  We
+shall hold him for examination as a Nazarene and an apostate."
+
+Marsyas started and his hand dropped.  Plainly, he had not expected to
+be accused of apostasy.  But the old mood asserted itself.
+
+"This for thy slander of Stephen in the college," he said with
+premonitory calm when the Levite approached him, and struck with
+terrific force.  The Levite's body shot backward and dropped heavily on
+the earth.  The rest of the lictors precipitated themselves upon the
+young man, and, in desperation and in fury, the one man and the numbers
+fought.
+
+Meanwhile the man in scarlet thought fast.  His Roman love of defiance
+and war had roused in him a most compelling respect for the young
+Essene, but cupidity put forth swift and convincing argument even
+beyond the indorsement of admiration.  If the Shoterim took the young
+man in ward, he would be executed and the treasure come into the hands
+of the state for disposition.  In view of the fact that Herrenius
+Capito had traced the bankrupt to Jerusalem, Jerusalem was no longer
+tenantable for the bankrupt.  He had to have money to escape to
+Alexandria and the Essene was too profitable a chance to be lost to the
+murdering hands of fanatics.
+
+Excited and bent only on preventing the arrest, the man sprang into the
+crowd and forced his way to the Essene's side.  But the next instant he
+also was sent reeling by a blow delivered by Marsyas in his blind
+resolution not to be taken without difficulty.  Before the bankrupt
+could recover, the united force of spectators and lictors flung itself
+upon Marsyas.
+
+Steadying himself, the man in scarlet urged his bruised brain to think.
+Half of his life for a ruse! for nothing but a ruse could save the
+young man, now.
+
+Then, with a half-suppressed cry of eagerness, the bankrupt took to his
+heels and ran toward the city as only an Arab trained in Roman gymnasia
+could run.
+
+The sentry at the gate passed him and he entered on the marble
+pavements of the streets for the finest exhibition of speed he had
+shown since he had carried off the laurel in Rome.  He knew the city as
+a hare knows its runways.  He cut through private passages, circled
+watchful constabulary, eluded congestions, and took the quick slopes of
+Jerusalem's hills as though the deep lungs of a youth supplied him.
+
+When the broad, marble-paved street, which let in some glimpse of the
+starry sky upon the passer, opened between the rich residences of the
+Sadducees, the white luster of many burning torches lighted an area on
+a distant slope at its head.  The running man sped on, taking the rise
+of Mount Zion without slackening, until he rushed upon a sentry
+obscured under the brooding shadow of a heavy wall.
+
+"Halt!"  The challenge of the sentry brought him up.
+
+"Without the password, comrade," he panted.  "Call the officer of the
+guard.  And by our common quarrels in Rome do thou haste, for if I see
+not Vitellius and Herrenius Capito this instant I expire!"
+
+The cry of the sentry passed from post to post until the centurion of
+the guard emerged from a small gate.
+
+"One cometh without the countersign," the sentry said.
+
+"A visitor for Vitellius and Herrenius Capito," the bankrupt explained.
+
+"The general and his guest have retired," was the blunt reply.
+
+"Hip! but thou art the same glib liar thou always wast, Aulus," the
+bankrupt laughed.  "Take me into the light, and slap me with thy sword
+if I am frank beyond the privileges of mine acquaintance with thee!"
+
+The gate-keeper, in response to a short word from the dubious Aulus,
+let down the chains with a rattle and a small side portal swung in,
+revealing an interior of semi-dusk.
+
+The centurion conducted his visitor within.  Torches stuck in sconces
+high up in the walls lighted a quadrangle of tessellated pavement,
+terminating distantly in banks of marble stairs of such breadth and
+stature that their limits were lost in the unilluminated night.
+
+After a quick glance, the centurion started and slapped his helmet in
+salute to the bankrupt.  The other responded with a skill and grace
+that could not have been assumed for the moment.  The dexterity of the
+camp was written in the movement.
+
+"I am expected of Capito," the bankrupt said, which was true only in a
+very limited sense.
+
+"I know, and do thou follow.  Thou shalt see him.  Were he dead and
+inurned he would arise to thee."
+
+The man in scarlet smiled a little grimly and followed his conductor
+out of the light up the marble heights of stairs duly set with
+sentinels, to a porch that even the Royal Colonnade of the Temple could
+not shame.  A huge cresset with a jeweled hood, depending from a
+groining so high that its light was feeble, showed dimly the giant
+compound arch of the portal.  An orderly, a veritable pygmy within the
+outline of the dark entrance, appeared and saluted.
+
+"A visitor for the proconsul and his guest," the centurion said,
+passing the man in scarlet to the orderly.
+
+He was led through a valve groaning on its granite hinges into the
+vestibule of Herod the Great's palace.
+
+It was a lofty hall, nobly vaulted, lined with costly Indian onyx and
+florid with pagan friezes, arabesques and frescoes.  Yet, though its
+jeweled lamps were dark and cold, its fountains still, its hangings and
+its carpets gone, its bloody genius held despotic sway from a shadowy
+throne, over the note of brute force which the Roman garrison had
+infused into it.
+
+At the far end was a small carven table at which two Romans sat, a lamp
+and a crater of wine at their elbows, the tesseræ of a dice-game
+between them.
+
+Without waiting for the orderly to speak, the man in scarlet stepped
+forward.
+
+"Greeting, Vitellius.  Capito, I salute you," he said.  His voice was
+that of a composed man speaking with equals.
+
+Vitellius turned his head toward the speaker; Capito drew up his lids
+and his lower jaw relaxed.  Slowly then both men got upon their feet.
+
+"By the bats of Hades--" Vitellius began.
+
+"By the nymphs of Delphi!" Capito's aged falsetto broke in.  "It is the
+Herod himself!"
+
+"Herod Agrippa!" Vitellius exclaimed.
+
+"From the faces of you," Agrippa declared, "I might have been the shade
+of my grandsire.  But I have been hunting you.  I need help.  And as
+thou hopest to return three hundred thousand drachmæ to Cæsar from my
+purse, do thou aid me in urging Vitellius to yield it, Capito."
+
+"Help," Capito repeated.
+
+"What manner of help?" Vitellius demanded, fixing Agrippa with a
+suspicious eye.
+
+"Arrest me an Essene from the hands of Jonathan."
+
+"Jonathan!" the proconsul exclaimed darkly.
+
+"The High Priest, the Nasi, thy sweet and valued friend!" the Agrippa
+explained with amiable provoke.  "He has arrested an Essene on a
+trifling charge of apostasy and he is my voucher before the Essenic
+brotherhood for a loan to repay Cæsar.  I left him in the hands of the
+Shoterim, in Bezetha.  If he be not speedily rescued, they will stone
+him without the walls to-morrow and my debt to Cæsar--" he drew up his
+shoulders and spread out his hands in a gesture highly Jewish.
+
+Capito frowned and Vitellius glowered under his grizzled brow at
+Agrippa.
+
+"It is one to me," Agrippa continued coolly, as he noted signs of
+dissent in the contemplation.  "I am just as happy and as like to
+escape Cæsar's displeasure by failing to pay it, as thou wilt be,
+Capito, if thou failest to collect it."
+
+Capito nervously fingered the tesseræ at his hand.
+
+"Meanwhile," added the Herod, perching himself on the edge of the
+table, "the youth proceeds to Jonathan's stronghold."
+
+Vitellius looked at Cæsar's debt-collector.  "Dost thou see anything
+more in this than appears on the face of it?" he asked.
+
+Capito scratched his white head.  He had learned to look for ulterior
+motives in every move of this slippery Herod, but he was too little
+informed in the matter to see more than the surface.
+
+"We--can look into it, first," he opined.
+
+"Jonathan will not await your pleasure," Agrippa put in.  "He is
+hurried now with the responsibility of executing enough blasphemers to
+save himself popular favor.  The Sanhedrim may sit to-morrow, the
+prisoner come for trial and be executed--even more expeditiously
+because the Nasi expects thee to interfere, Vitellius."
+
+The proconsul bit through an expletive.  Jonathan was a thorn in his
+side.
+
+"What is it you wish me to do?" he demanded.
+
+"Arrest me this youth.  The claim of the proconsul's charge will take
+precedence over the hieratic."
+
+"But he has not offended--"
+
+"Save the protest; he has; he struck me, a Roman citizen.  But draw up
+the warrant, good Vitellius, and send a centurion after the young man.
+Thou canst make no error by so doing and thou canst save Capito the
+favor of his emperor."
+
+Vitellius summoned a clerk and while the warrant for Marsyas' arrest
+was written, despatched an orderly for an officer.  One of the
+contubernalis to Vitellius, or one of the sons of a noble family
+serving his apprenticeship in warfare, appeared.
+
+"Take four," Vitellius said grimly, in compliance with Herod's demand,
+when the young centurion approached, "and go with this man.  Arrest by
+superior claim the High Priest's prisoner, who shall be pointed out.
+Fetch him and this man back to me!"
+
+The young centurion saluted and Agrippa assented with a nod.
+
+"Thanks," he added nonchalantly.  "Come, brother," he said to the young
+officer, "if we be late it may take the whole machinery of Rome to undo
+the work of Jonathan."
+
+Agrippa and the Roman legionaries passed out of the Prætorium and
+turned directly up the slanting street toward the palace of Jonathan,
+which stood a little above the camp.
+
+The Herod had lost little time and the progress of the arresting party
+toward the stronghold would not have been rapid with the resistance of
+Marsyas and the friends of the Nazarenes to retard the movement.  After
+a quick walk of a short distance, the Roman group came upon the
+Temple's emissaries, entering from an intersecting street.
+
+Saul and Joel walked a little ahead of the broken-spirited prisoners
+who were centered in a group of armed lictors and a hooting escort of
+half a hundred vagrants.  The flaring torch-light shone down on bowed
+heads and disordered garments, and showed fugitive glints of manacles
+and knives.
+
+Among them, unbroken and silent, was Marsyas, heavily shackled.  He was
+marked with blows, but several besides the Levite Joel staggered as
+they walked, and Agrippa, lifting himself on tiptoe to point out his
+prisoner to the centurion, eyed the young man with approval.
+
+The officer nodded abruptly and broke through the crowd.  The light
+dropping on his shining armor instantly displayed his authority to halt
+the group.  His command to stop elicited almost precipitate obedience.
+The hooting vagrants scattered.
+
+The centurion laid his hand on Marsyas' shoulder.
+
+"Thou art a prisoner of the proconsul," he said.
+
+The halt and the dismayed silence caught Saul's attention.  He turned
+back and pushed his way into the center of the circle.
+
+"Unhand him," he said to the centurion.  "He is wanted of the
+Sanhedrim."
+
+The young officer smiled derisively and thrust off the hold of the
+apprehensive lictors.  The four made way through the crowd and the
+officer passed Marsyas into their hands.
+
+"Make my excuses to the Sanhedrim," the officer said sarcastically.
+The Pharisee glanced over the Roman's party.  Then he stepped without
+ostentation in the centurion's way--a weak, small figure in fringes and
+phylactery, living up to his nature as he fronted brassy Rome.
+
+"Show me thy warrant," he said quietly.
+
+The centurion drew forth the parchment and flourished it.  Saul took it
+with a murmured courtesy, and, holding it near a torch, read it
+carefully.  Then he passed it back.
+
+"After the proconsul hath done with this young man," he observed, "the
+Sanhedrim will claim him.  Say this much to the proconsul.  We shall
+wait.  Peace!"
+
+He motioned his party to proceed and the crowd moved on, leaving
+Marsyas in the hands of new captors.
+
+"Back to the Prætorium," the centurion said to Agrippa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+AGRIPPA IN REPERTOIRE
+
+On the way two dark figures emerged from the shadows and halted to let
+the soldiers pass.  Agrippa peered at them intently through the gloom,
+and raising his arm made a peculiar gesture.  Both figures approached
+immediately.
+
+"Do thou fetch my civilian's dress, Silas, to the gate of the Prætorium
+to-morrow, early, and my umber toga broidered with silver.  And thou,
+Eutychus, prepare our belongings so thou canst carry them and bring
+them also that we may proceed at once to En-Gadi.  I remain at the
+Prætorium to-night.  Be gone and fail not!"
+
+The two men bowed and disappeared.
+
+When the party reëntered the gates of the camp, Herod's vestibule was
+dark.  The prisoner and Agrippa were led to the barracks and turned
+into a cubiculum, or sleeping-chamber.  One of the four was manacled to
+Marsyas and the bolts shot upon them.
+
+The soldier immediately stretched himself on the straw and, bidding the
+others hold their peace, fell asleep promptly.
+
+After a long time, when the sounds from the pallet assured Agrippa that
+the soldier could not be easily aroused, he arose and came over to the
+side of the young Essene.
+
+The torch-light for the officer of the guard, flaring on the wall
+without, shone through the high ventilation niche in the cell and cast
+a faint illumination over the dusky interior.  Under the half-light the
+face of Marsyas looked fallen and lifeless,--his dark hair in disorder
+on his forehead, his shadowed eyes and slight black beard making for
+the increase of pallor by contrast.  Agrippa looked at him a moment
+before the young man had noticed his approach.
+
+"The medicine for thy hurts, young brother," he said to himself, "is
+only one--the comforting arms of a woman.  I have had experience; I
+know!  But if thou art an Essene that comfort is denied thee.  Now, I
+wonder what demon-ridden Jew it was who first thought of an order of
+celibates!"
+
+He drew closer and the somber eyes of the young man lighted upon him.
+
+"So thou dost not sleep," Agrippa said in Hebrew.  Marsyas' face showed
+a little surprise at the choice of tongue, but he answered in the same
+language.
+
+"Why am I here?" he asked.
+
+"Better here than there," Agrippa responded under his breath,
+indicating the direction of Jonathan's stronghold.
+
+"Listen," he continued, "and may Morpheus plug this soldier's ears if
+he knows our fathers' ancient tongue.  Canst see my face, brother?"
+
+Marsyas signed his assent.
+
+"Thou sayest thou art a Galilean," Agrippa pursued.  "Look now and see
+if thou discoverest aught familiar in me."
+
+Marsyas raised himself on an elbow and gazed into the Herod's face.
+Finally he said slowly:
+
+"I have seen thee in Tiberias--in power--as--as prefect!  Thou art
+Herod Agrippa!"
+
+There was silence; the Essene's eyes filled with question and the Herod
+gave him time to think.
+
+"I had thee arrested," Agrippa resumed when he believed that Marsyas'
+ideas had reached the point of asking what the Herod had to do with
+him.  "To-morrow thou wilt be fined for striking me and turned
+loose--to Jonathan--unless thou art helped to escape."
+
+"I understand," said Marsyas with growing light, but without enthusiasm.
+
+"Thou seest I am virtually a prisoner here.  I became so, to save thee
+from Jonathan."
+
+"For me!  Thou becamest a prisoner to save me?" Marsyas repeated,
+astounded.
+
+"Because I need thee as much as thou needest me," was the frank
+admission.
+
+"What can I do for thee that thou shouldst need me?" Marsyas asked
+softly, but still wondering.
+
+"Hast--hast thou ever lacked friends so wholly that thou wast willing
+to purchase one?" Agrippa asked.
+
+"I am thy grateful servant; yet I am an Essene, poor, persecuted,
+homeless, hungry and heartbroken.  What wilt thou have of me?"
+
+In that was more earnestness than blandishment, more appeal than
+offering.  The young man published his helplessness and asked after the
+other's use of him.  Agrippa was silent; after a pause Marsyas put out
+his hand and lifting the hem of the pagan tunic pressed it to his lips.
+The act could not fail to reach to the innermost of the Herod's heart.
+His head dropped suddenly into his hands, and the young Essene's touch
+rested lightly on his shoulder.
+
+Finally Agrippa raised his head.
+
+"Dost thou know my history, brother?" he asked.
+
+"From the lips of others, yes; but let me hear thee."
+
+"Thou art a just youth; nothing so outrages a slandered man as to pen
+his defense within his lips.  Hear me, then.  To be a Herod once meant
+to be beloved by the Cæsars.  In my early childhood, after the death of
+my young father, I was taken to Rome by my mother and reared among
+princes and the sons of consuls.  Best of all my friends was Drusus,
+Cæsar's gallant son, and we studied together, raced and gambled and
+feasted together, loved and hated--and fought together, and never was
+there a difference between us except in purse!
+
+"While he lived, I lived as he lived, but when he died his sire drove
+me out of Rome because I had been the living Drusus' shadow and it
+stung the father that the shadow should live while the sweet substance
+perished.
+
+"When Drusus died my living died with him, and when I took ship at
+Puteoli for Palestine I owed three hundred thousand drachmæ to Cæsar
+and forty tradesmen barked about my heels.
+
+"I had a ruined castle in Idumea.  I forgot that I owned it till I was
+in actual want of shelter.  Thither I went.  But I was a young man,
+hopeless, and young hopelessness is harder than the hopelessness of
+age.  I should have put an end to myself, but Cypros, my princess,
+prevented me by the gentle force of her love and devotion.
+
+"She could not have balked me more thoroughly had she tied me hand and
+foot.  I railed, but while I railed she wrote and sent a messenger, and
+in a little time an answer came.  It was from my brother-in-law, Herod
+Antipas, who is tetrarch of Galilee.  Cypros had besought him to help
+us.  He wrote courteously, or else his scribe, for it is hard to
+reconcile that letter with the man I met, and begged me come and be his
+prefect over Tiberias.  I went."
+
+The prince paused and when he went on thereafter it seemed as if his
+account were expurgated.
+
+"At Tyre before an hundred nobles assembled at a feast he twitted me
+with my poverty and boasted his charity.  I tore off the prefect's
+badge and flung it in his face.  And that same night I took the road to
+Antioch, my princess with me, a babe on either arm.
+
+"The proconsul of Antioch took us in, but there was treachery against
+me afoot in his household, and I lost his friendship through it.  His
+was my last refuge under roof of mine own rank.  I heard recently that
+Alexander Lysimachus, Alabarch of Alexandria, was in Jerusalem,
+presenting a Gate to the Temple, and sending my wife and children to
+Ptolemais, I hastened hither to get a loan of him.  But he had departed
+some days before I came.  So here am I as a player of dice to win me
+money enough to take me back to Ptolemais.  But Herrenius Capito,
+Cæsar's debt-collector, hath found me out."
+
+He looked down at Marsyas' interested face.
+
+"Let me be truthful," he corrected.  "I found him.  I could have flown
+him successfully, but for thy close straits.  All that would save thee
+would be the interference of Rome, and I could command it at sacrifice."
+
+Public version of Agrippa's story had enlarged much on certain phases
+of his adventures which he had curtailed, and these minutiæ had not
+been to Herod's credit.  Yet, though Marsyas knew of these things, his
+heart stirred with great pity.  His was that large nature which turns
+to the unfortunate whether or not his misfortune be merited.  It seemed
+to him that the prince's fall had been too hapless for comment.  But
+the word here and there, which suggested the prince's intercession in
+his behalf, stirred him.
+
+"How shall I make back to thee thy effort in my behalf?" he asked
+earnestly.  "Thou sayest that thou needest me; what can I do?"
+
+"First let me know of thyself."
+
+Marsyas relinquished his thought on Agrippa to turn painfully to his
+own story.
+
+"I am Marsyas, son of Matthew, of Nazareth.  He was a zealot who fought
+beside Judas of Galilee.  I was born after his death, and at my birth
+my mother died, and being the last of their line, I am, and have been
+all my life alone.  I was taken in mine infancy by the Essenic master
+of the school in Nazareth and reared to be an Essene.  But I developed
+a certain aptness for learning and in later youth a certain aptness for
+teaching, and my master by the consent of the order, whose ward I was,
+designed me for the scholar-class of Essenes, which do not reside in
+En-Gadi but without in the world.  The vows of the order were not laid
+upon me; they are reserved for the sober and understanding years when
+my instruction should be completed."
+
+Agrippa frowned.  "Art thou not a member of the brotherhood, then?" he
+asked.
+
+"No, I am a neophyte, a postulant."
+
+The Herod ran his fingers though his hair, and Marsyas went on.
+
+"I had two friends, both older than I.  One was Saul of Tarsus; one,
+Stephen of Galilee.  Neither knew the other.  Stephen was born an
+Hellenist, and until the coming of his Prophet, a good Jew.  But when
+Jesus arose in Nazareth, Stephen followed Him, and, after the Nazarene
+was put away, he remained here in Jerusalem.  When I came hither to
+complete mine instruction in the college, I found the synagogue aroused
+against him.
+
+"Chief among the zealous in behalf of the Law is Saul of Tarsus.  Him I
+most feared, when the rumors of Stephen's apostasy spread abroad.  An
+evil messenger finally set Saul upon Stephen, and I pleaded with him to
+spare Stephen, until I could win him back to the faith.  But Saul would
+not hear me.
+
+"I meant to give over mine ambition to become a scholar and take
+Stephen into the refuge of En-Gadi--"
+
+He stopped for control and continued presently with difficulty.
+
+"But when I returned from Nazareth, whither I had gone to get my
+patrimony which the Essene master held in ward, his enemies stoned him
+before mine eyes!"
+
+Stephen's death and not his own peril was the climax of his story and
+he ceased because his heart began to shrink under its pain.
+
+"And this Saul of Tarsus, whom I heard you threaten over in Bezetha,
+mistaking your natural grief and hunger for vengeance as signs of
+apostasy, would stone you also," Agrippa remarked, filling in the rest
+of the narrative from surmise.  Marsyas assented; it hurt him as much
+to think on Saul as it did to remember that Stephen was dead.
+
+"It was doubtless his intent."
+
+"Implacable enough to be Cæsar!  And thou art not a member of the
+Essenic order--only a neophyte.  That is disconcerting.  Hast thou any
+influence with the brethren?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+Perplexity sat dark on the Herod's brow.  Marsyas, with his eyes on the
+prince's face, observed it.
+
+"Can I not help thee?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"I thought once that thou couldst; but thou sayest that thou hast no
+power with the Essenes.  Now, I do not know."
+
+"What is it thou wouldst have had me do?"
+
+"I have said that I owe three hundred thousand drachmæ to Cæsar.
+Unless I discharge it, under the Roman law I can be required to become
+the slave of my creditor.  That I might secure intercession in thy
+behalf, I had to promise Capito and Vitellius that thou couldst help me
+to repay this sum."
+
+"I!" Marsyas cried, sitting up.
+
+The legionary stirred and Agrippa laid a warning finger on his lip.
+The two sat silent until the sleeper fell again into total
+unconsciousness.
+
+"Three hundred thousand drachmæ!" Marsyas repeated.  "I, to get that!"
+
+"I knew that the Essenic brotherhood have a common treasury and that
+they are believed to be rich.  I thought that thou couldst persuade
+them to lend me the sum."
+
+Marsyas shook his head.  "They are poor, poor!  Their fund is not
+contributed in great bulk, and the little they own must be expended in
+hospitality and in maintaining themselves.  Their treasury would be
+enriched by the little I bring."
+
+"O Fortune!" Agrippa groaned aloud.  "I am undone and so art thou!"
+
+Marsyas lapsed into thought, while the Herod looked at the solid door
+that stood between him and liberty.  He had set the subject aside as
+profitless and was a little irritated when Marsyas spoke again.
+
+"What hopes hast thou in Alexandria?"
+
+"The alabarch, Alexander Lysimachus, is my friend.  He is rich; I could
+borrow of him."
+
+"Take thou my gold and go thither," Marsyas offered at once.
+
+"It is not so easy as it sounds, for the sound of it is most generous
+and kindly.  How am I to get out of Capito's clutches, here?"
+
+Marsyas gazed straight at Agrippa with the set eyes of one plunged into
+deep speculation.  Then he leaned toward the prince.
+
+"Will this gold in all truth help thee to borrow more in Alexandria?"
+
+"I know it!"
+
+"And then what?"
+
+"To Rome!  To imperial favor!  To suzerainty over Judea!"
+
+Marsyas laid hold on the prince's arm.
+
+"Thou art a Herod," he said intensely.  "Ambition natively should be
+the very breath of thy nostrils.  Yet swear to me that thou wilt
+aspire--aye, even desperately as thy grandsire!  Swear to me that thou
+wilt not be content to be less than a king!"
+
+At another time, Agrippa might have found amusement in the young man's
+earnestness, but the cause was now his own.
+
+"Thou tongue of my desires!" he exclaimed.  "I have sworn!  Being a
+Herod, mine oaths are not idle.  I have sworn!"
+
+"Then, let us bargain together," Marsyas said rapidly.  "I have told
+thee my story: thou heardest my vow to-night!  For my fealty, yield me
+thy word!  As I help thee into power, help me to revenge!  Promise!"
+
+"Promise!  By the beard of Abraham, I will conquer or kill anything
+thou markest; yield thee my last crust, and carry thee upon my back, so
+thou help me to Alexandria!"
+
+"Swear it!"
+
+Agrippa raised his right hand and swore.
+
+The legionary roused and growled at the two to be quiet.  Marsyas fell
+back on the straw and lay still.  Agrippa made signs and urged for more
+discussion, but the Essene, masterful in his silence, refused to speak.
+Presently the Herod lay down and slept from sheer inability to engage
+his mind to profit otherwise.
+
+A little after dawn the following morning, the Essene and the Herod
+were conducted into the vestibule of Herod the Great, for a hearing
+before Vitellius and Herrenius Capito.  But Marsyas' offense against a
+Roman citizen was held in abeyance; it was Agrippa's debt to Cæsar
+which engaged the attention of the judges.
+
+Vitellius was in a precarious temper and Capito looked as grim as
+querulous old age may.  Agrippa's nonchalance was only a surface air
+overlaying doubts and no little trepidation.  But Marsyas, white and
+sternly intent, was the most resolute of the four.
+
+Capito stirred in his chair and prepared to speak, but Vitellius cut in
+with a point-blank demand on the young Essene.
+
+"Dost thou know this man?" he asked, indicating Agrippa.
+
+"I do, lord," Marsyas answered, turning his somber eyes on the legate.
+
+"He owes three hundred thousand drachmæ to Cæsar; he says that thou
+canst help him pay it; is it so?"
+
+"It is, lord."
+
+Agrippa's eyes were perfectly steady; it would not do to show amazement
+now.
+
+"How?" was the next demand flung at the Essene.
+
+"I can place him in the way of certain wealth," was the assured reply.
+
+"How?"
+
+"The noble Roman's pardon, but there are certain things an Essene may
+not divulge."
+
+Agrippa's well-bred brows lifted.  Was this evader and collected
+schemer the innocent Essene he had met on the slopes of Olivet the
+previous evening?
+
+"Answer!  Dost thou promise to provide the Herod with three hundred
+thousand drachmæ which shall be paid unto Cæsar's treasury?"
+
+"I promise to place the prince where he will provide himself with three
+hundred thousand drachmæ.  If he pay it not unto Cæsar, the fault shall
+be his, not mine."
+
+"Will the Essenes do it?"
+
+"It shall be done," Marsyas replied, his composure unshaken by the
+menace implied in the questioning.
+
+"Capito, what thinkest thou?" Vitellius demanded.
+
+The old collector shuffled his slippered feet, and his antique treble
+took on an argumentative tone.
+
+"Cæsar wants his money, not a slave; I want the emperor's commendation,
+not his blame.  But let us bind this young Jew to this."
+
+Vitellius motioned to an orderly.  "Send hither a notary; and let us
+take down this Jew's promise.  Now, Herod, speak up.  There are no
+rules of an order to bind you.  Where shall you get this money?"
+
+"Of two sources," Agrippa declared, unblushing.  "From the young man
+himself and from the Essenes."
+
+"If you had so many moneyers, why have you not paid your debt long ago?"
+
+"I had not the indorsement of this young Essenic doctor to validate my
+note, O Vitellius," the Herod responded with equanimity.
+
+The two Romans frowned; the clerk finished his transcription.
+
+"Sign!" Vitellius ordered Marsyas threateningly.
+
+Marsyas calmly wrote his name in Greek under the voucher.  After him
+Agrippa signed the document.
+
+"Now, listen," Vitellius began conclusively.  "I believe neither of
+you.  But for the fact that Cæsar would be burdened with a useless
+chattel I should let Capito foreclose upon you, Agrippa.  But there is
+a chance that this rigid youth may be telling the truth; if he is
+not--" the legate closed his thin lips and let the menace of his hard
+eyes complete the sentence.  Marsyas contemplated him, unmoved,
+undismayed, no less inflexible and determined.
+
+"The punishment for his offense against you, Agrippa, is remitted.  Get
+you gone.  Capito!  Follow them!"
+
+Totally undisturbed by this sudden entanglement in a supposedly clear
+skein, Agrippa waved his hand and smiled.
+
+"Many thanks, Vitellius," he said.  "Would I could get my debts paid if
+only to deserve thy respect once more.  But thy hospitality must be a
+little longer strained.  The wolves of Jonathan wait without to lay
+hands on this young man.  He must be passed the gates in disguise.  I
+provided for that last night.  Admit my servants, I pray thee."
+
+"Have your way, Herod, and fortune go with you, curse you for a winsome
+knave," Vitellius growled.
+
+Agrippa laughed, but there was no laughter in his eyes.
+
+The two were led through a second hall instinct with barbaric
+splendors, to a small apartment where they were presently attended by
+two servants.
+
+One was a slow, stolid Jew of middle-age, with stubbornness and honesty
+the chief characteristics of his face.  The other would have won more
+interest from the casual observer.  He was young, well-formed, but of
+uncertain nationality.  His head was like a cocoanut set on its smaller
+end, and covered with thick, stiff, lusterless black hair, cut close
+and growing in a rounded point on his forehead.  One eye was smaller
+than the other and the lid drooped.  The fault might have given him a
+roguish look but for the ill-natured cut of his mouth.  Both wore the
+brown garments of the serving-class.
+
+When Agrippa and Marsyas stood up from the ministrations of these two,
+they were fit figures for a procession of patricians on the Palatine
+Hill.  Marsyas' soiled white garments had been put off for a tunic and
+mantle of fine umber wool, embroidered with silver.  A tallith of silk
+of the same color was bound with a silver cord about his forehead.
+Agrippa's garments were only a short white tunic of extraordinary
+fineness belted with woven gold, and a toga of white, edged with
+purple.  But the prince examined Marsyas with an interested eye.
+
+"By Kypris!" he said aloud, "and thou art to entomb thyself in En-Gadi!"
+
+But Marsyas did not understand.
+
+Capito awaited them when they emerged, and announced himself ready to
+proceed.  Procedure was to be an elaborate thing.  A squad of soldiery
+had been detailed as escort, and stood prepared in marching order; the
+collector's personal array of apparitors was assembled; his baggage
+sent forth to his pack-horses,--himself, duly arrayed after the fashion
+of a conventional old Roman afraid of color.
+
+Agrippa placed himself beside the collector with an equanimity that was
+almost disconcerting.  The old man signed his apparitors to proceed and
+followed with his two virtual prisoners.
+
+Through the envelope of grief and rancor, the grave difficulties of his
+predicament reached Marsyas.  Unless he could be rid of the
+surveillance of Capito, both he and the Herod were in sore straits.
+But Agrippa's amiable temper presaged something, and Marsyas merged the
+new distress with the burden of misery which bowed him.
+
+They passed out of the simpler portions of the royal house into the
+state wing and emerged in the great audience-chamber.
+
+It would have been impossible for a scion of that bloody house to pass
+for the first time in years through that royal chamber without comment
+upon it.  Agrippa after crossing the threshold slackened his step and
+his eyes took on the luster of retrospection.
+
+"I remember it," he said in a preoccupied way, "but only as a dream.  I
+went this way when my father and mother fared hence to Rome!"
+
+Capito lagged also, and Marsyas and the men following slackened their
+steps, until by the time the center of the vast hall was reached they
+paused as if by one accord.
+
+The hall was an octagonal, faced half its height, or to the floor of
+its galleries, in banded agate from the Indies; from that point upward
+the lining was marble panels and frescoes, alternating.  The galleries
+were supported by a series of interlaced oriental arches, rich with
+tracery and filigree.  With these main features as groundwork, the
+barbaric fancy of Herod the Great threw off all restraint and reveled
+in magnitude, richness and display.  He did not permit Greece, the
+_arbiter elegantarium_, to govern his building or his garnishment.  He
+harkened to the Arab in him and made a bacchanal of color; he
+remembered his one-time poverty and debased the hauteur of gold to the
+humility of wood and clay and stone.  He imaged Life in all its forms
+and crowded it into mosaics on his pavement, subjected it in the
+decoration of his scented wood couches, tables, taborets, weighted it
+with the cornices of his ceilings, the rails of his balustrades, the
+basins of his fountains--until he seemed to shake his scepter as despot
+over all the beast kind.  He was a hunter, a warrior and a statesman;
+the instincts of all three had their representation in this, his high
+place.  He was a voluptuary, a tyrant, and a shedder of blood; his
+audience-chamber told it of him.  Thus, though he had crumbled to ashes
+forty years before, and the efforts of the world to forget him had
+almost succeeded, he left a portrait behind him that would endure as
+long as his palace stood.
+
+The light of the Judean sun came in a harlequinade of twenty colors,
+but, where it fell and was reproduced, Nature had mastered the
+kaleidoscope and made it a glory.  The immense space, peopled with
+graven images, yet animated with ghostly swaying of hangings, had its
+own shifting currents of air, drafts that were streaming winds, cool
+and scented with the aromatic woods of the furniture.  The portals were
+closed, and there was no sound.  Sun, wind and silence ennobled Herod's
+mistakes.
+
+The four stood longer than they knew.  Then Agrippa made a little
+sound, a sudden in-taking of the breath.
+
+"See!" he whispered, laying a hand on Capito's shoulder and pointing
+with the other.  "That statue!"
+
+Following his indication, their eyes rested on the sculptured figure of
+a woman, cut from Parian marble.  It was a drowsy image, the head
+fallen upon a hand, the lids drooping, the relaxation of all the
+muscles giving softness and pliability to the pose.  So perfect was the
+work that the marble promised to be yielding to the touch.  Some
+imitator of Phidias had achieved his masterpiece in this.  Indeed, at
+first glance there was startlement for the four.  A warm human flush
+had mantled the stone, and Marsyas' brows drew together, but he could
+not obey the old Essenic teaching and drop his eyes.
+
+"A statue?" Capito asked, uncertainly taking his withered chin between
+thumb and forefinger.
+
+"A statue," Agrippa assured him.  "The illumination is from the
+batement light above.  Come nearer!"
+
+He led them to the angle in which the image stood, not more than three
+paces from the wall.
+
+"It is my grandsire's queen, Mariamne," he continued softly, for
+ordinary tones awakened ghostly echoes in the haunted hall.
+
+"Murdered Mariamne!" the old man whispered with sudden intensity.
+
+"He loved her, and killed her in the fury of his love.  They said that
+the king was wont to come in the morning when the sun stood there,
+drive out the attendants so that none might hear, and cling about this
+fair marble's knees in such agony of passion and remorse and grief that
+life would desert him.  They would come in time to find him there,
+stretched on the pavement, cold and inert, to all purposes dead!  And
+it was said that these groins here above held echoes of his awful grief
+after he had been borne away."
+
+Capito shivered.
+
+"What punishment!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Punishment!  They who curse Herod's memory could not, if they had
+their will, visit such torture upon him as he invented for himself!"
+
+But Capito was lost now in contemplation of the statue.
+
+"She was beautiful," he said after a silence.
+
+"Didst ever see her?" Agrippa asked eagerly.  The collector's back was
+turned to the prince, that he might have the advantageous view, and he
+answered with rapt eyes.
+
+"Once; through an open gate which led into her own garden.  So I saw
+her in the lightest of vestments, for the day was warm and half of her
+beauty usually hidden was unveiled."
+
+"Well for thee my grandsire never knew," Agrippa put in, leaning
+against one of the cestophori which guarded a blank panel in the wall.
+
+"He never knew; but I would have died before I would give over the
+memory of it.  She was slight, willowy, with the eyes of an Attic
+antelope, yet braver and more commanding than any woman-eye that ever
+bewitched me.  Her mouth--Praxiteles would have turned from Lais' lips
+to hers."
+
+Agrippa's hand slid down the side of the cestophorus and fumbled a
+little within the edge of the molding.
+
+"Her hair was loose," the old man went on, "the sole drapery of her
+bosom--a very cloud of night loomed into filaments--"
+
+An inert, moldy breath reached Marsyas.  He turned his head.  The panel
+between the cestophori was gone and a square of darkness yawned its
+miasma into the hall.
+
+The prince made a lightning movement; noiselessly the two servants
+dived into the blackness; Marsyas followed; after him, the prince.
+
+An eclipsing wall began to slide between them and the hail they had
+left.
+
+"Her arms were languidly lifted--arms that for whiteness shamed this
+marble--" the old man was saying as the panel glided back into place
+and shut them in darkness.
+
+"Ow!" Agrippa whispered in delight, "he tells that story better every
+year!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MARSYAS ASSUMES A CHARGE
+
+Agrippa crowded past the three that had preceded him into the black
+passage and, whispering a command to follow, led on.  They kept track
+of him by the sound of his shoes on the stone, but the absolute
+darkness and the unfamiliar path made their steps uncertain and slow.
+Frequently the sure footfall before them receded and in fear of losing
+their guide they stumbled forward in nervous haste.
+
+Presently the darkness about them lifted; the sensation was not that
+light had entered in, but that the darkness had simply failed in
+strength.  There was a perceptible increase in temperature and the
+atmosphere, changing from a chill, became muggy and oppressive.
+Marsyas, drawing in a full breath in search of freshness, told himself
+that this was the original air of chaos, penned in at the hour of
+creation.
+
+The floor under his feet became irregular, the instinctive realization
+that a roof was imminent overhead, passed, and, when the darkness
+became sufficiently feeble, they discovered that they were following
+through an immense chamber.  Light came in through air-holes in the
+rock above.
+
+Agrippa spoke aloud.
+
+"This is a quarry-chamber.  It was also my grandsire's secret
+stronghold, trial-chamber and tomb where many of his private grudges
+were satisfied.  But there are no evidences, now.  The place was open
+to the hill-jackals, by another passage which, if my memory has not
+failed me, shall lead us out."
+
+One of the servitors, whose teeth had been chattering, made a
+shuddering sound.  Agrippa laughed.
+
+"Thou, Eutychus?" he said.  "Comfort thee; the jackals have ceased to
+haunt the place since their hunger was last satisfied, thirty years
+ago."
+
+An irregular spot of blackness in one of the walls swallowed up the
+prince as he spoke.  Eutychus halted at the edge and drew back with a
+whimper.  But the second servitor, who had not spoken since Marsyas had
+first seen him, muttered contemptuously some inarticulate word and
+pushed Eutychus into the blackness.  Marsyas followed.
+
+Thereafter it was only time which ensued.  Sound, sight and, except for
+the stone under their feet, feeling were defeated.  They moved
+interminably.  Once or twice Eutychus became hysterical from the
+depression, but the stolid servitor smote him and bundled him on.
+Ahead a light laugh floated back to them in appreciation of the humor
+in Eutychus' predicament.
+
+In time a yellow star with ragged points appeared ahead of them, high
+above the level upon which they had been walking.  Eutychus trembled
+before it, but Agrippa quickened his steps.
+
+"What a memory I have," he observed cheerfully.  "Any other than myself
+would have been hopelessly entangled in these galleries and perished
+miserably some days hence."
+
+The star enlarged, lost substantiality and presently Eutychus with a
+gasp of joy faltered that it was daylight.  Several minutes later they
+emerged through an open tomb into high noon over Judea.
+
+Before their blinded vision, the green hills swimming in sunlight
+upheaved between them and all points of the horizon.  The City of David
+was nowhere to be seen; the sun stood directly in the zenith.  Marsyas
+was lost; but the prince smiled in immense satisfaction and, seeking a
+grassy spot, sat down and breathed deeply.  Presently he motioned to
+the others to sit.  Marsyas came close to him; the others remained at a
+respectful distance.
+
+For a long time no one spoke.
+
+At last Agrippa fell to inspecting his delicate hands and his garments
+for marks of the long journey under the earth, and the embroidered
+shoes for evidences of contact with jagged rock.  Satisfied that he was
+clean and intact, he laughed a little.
+
+"By the hat of Hermes, this was noble apparel to wear through the
+bowels of the earth.  _Eheu_!  I was at my best, and not so much as a
+she-bat saw me!"
+
+Eutychus, entirely recovered, chuckled, and a grin overspread the face
+of Silas; but Marsyas was plunged in his own reflections.
+
+"This is the country-side west of Jerusalem," Agrippa resumed
+presently, for the young Essene's information.  "Yonder," pointing
+north, "the road runs which shall lead us hence.  We are an hour's
+journey by daylight above ground, from the Tower of Hippicus.  But we
+are not beyond the zone of danger yet."
+
+Marsyas did not answer.  Reaction had set up within him against the
+foreign interest which had engaged his attention since sunrise.  He had
+thought of himself and had been concerned for Agrippa; he had planned
+and had achieved ends.  Entanglements straightened, immediate danger
+passed, the cloud of his sorrow embraced him wholly.  He did not want
+to see that Canaan was beautiful, indeed a land of milk and honey.  The
+wind laden with spring sweets struck a chill in his soul; the singing
+birds hurt him with a pain greater than he could endure.  His heart was
+bruised, his every sensation sore and weighted with a numb
+consciousness that a dread thing had happened and that it was useless
+to pray and hope now.  The presence of others was an obstacle, vaguely
+realized, that kept him from yielding to his desire to lie down on his
+face and hate everything and give himself up to whatever chose to
+befall him.  Agrippa's hand, presently laid on his shoulder, irritated
+him.  He had to restrain himself to keep from shaking it off.  But the
+prince spoke, and his words were helpful.
+
+"Marsyas, I know thy pain.  I, too, had a beloved friend foully
+murdered, and the agony of helplessness against the power that did him
+to death sowed ashes on my heart.  But the time of the Lord God, slow
+as it approaches, fell at last.  The only bitterness in my cup of
+fierce triumph was that it was another, and not I, who accomplished, at
+the end, the undoing of the murderer."
+
+"The Lord God forfend any such misfortune from me!" was the bitter
+rejoinder.  "Vengeance can not be vengeance, if it fall from any hand
+but mine!"
+
+"Thou speakest truly: be thy requital sweeter than mine!"
+
+It was good to find the reflection of his own hurt in another's
+experience.  It did not lessen his pain; but it gave him expression and
+the assurance of sympathy.  Agrippa continued in his pleasant voice.
+
+"This persecution will cease ere long.  It is only Jonathan's device to
+make him noted as one zealous for the faith.  He is much disliked.  It
+is reproach enough for a High Priest to be popular with the Sadducees:
+it is well-nigh unforgivable to be set up by Rome; it is an
+insurmountable obstacle to be other than eligible, Levitically; but
+this man hath been wholly undone by these and an offensive personality.
+Wherefore the people hate him with a fervor which Vitellius must
+respect.  But Jonathan fancies that if he can make him a name as a
+defender of the faith, the rabble will applaud, and thou and I and
+Vitellius and the discerning Jews will achieve no more against him than
+flies whining about a wall!  What folly!  How oft we believe a thing to
+be so, because we wish it to be so!  Vitellius does not see how the
+stoning of blasphemers indorses a man whom he dislikes.  So Jonathan's
+time is short and the persecution will cease with him.  His minion will
+be discountenanced with the master, and thine opportunity is made.  Be
+of hope; thy day is not distant."
+
+But Marsyas' brow blackened.
+
+"A noble reflection!" he exclaimed passionately, "and one that should
+soothe the Tarsian's dreams!  Binding and stoning and killing in his
+zeal for an usurper of the robes of Aaron!  Shedding sweet blood--doing
+irreparable deeds to serve a vain end, to further a useless attempt--a
+thing to be given over to-morrow!  O thou God of wrath!  If it be not
+sin to pray it, let him stumble speedily in the Law!"
+
+Meanwhile Agrippa observed the sun, and after a little silence that his
+return to spirits seem not to grate upon the young Essene's distress,
+arose briskly.
+
+"Up! up!" he said.  "It is not at variance with Vitellius' extreme
+methods to empty the whole Prætorium into the hills in search of us.
+Up, fellows!  To Ptolemais!"
+
+Marsyas arose with the others, but he hesitated and glanced down at the
+fine garments that covered him.  He remembered that he had not brought
+his soiled Essenic robes with him.  He unslung his wallet and extended
+it to Agrippa.
+
+"Take it, and forget not that I shall ask payment from the strength of
+that high place to which this may help thee!  The vengeful spirit is
+not of choice a patient thing!  I shall wait--but to achieve mine ends.
+God prosper thee!  If thy servants will lend me each a garment thou
+shalt have back thy dress once more and I will depart."
+
+"Whither?" asked Agrippa without taking the purse.
+
+"To En-Gadi, for the present."
+
+"But the brotherhood will then be guilty of befriending thee and thou
+art a living example of that which befalls him who befriends one of
+Saul's marked creatures."
+
+"So I am become as a pestilence," Marsyas said grimly.  It was another
+count against the Pharisee.
+
+"Thou art much beset.  Doubt not that Vitellius will seek for thee in
+En-Gadi, and it were better for thee and for the brotherhood that thou
+be not found.  Thou must leave Judea, for the arm of the Sanhedrim is
+long."
+
+To leave Judea meant to be banished among the Gentiles, to step out of
+four whitewashed walls into unknown turmoil; to leave the pleasures of
+solitude, the peoples of parchment, the events of old history, the
+ambitions of the soul and go forth amid arrogant heathen godlessness to
+meet precarious fortunes.  The whole course of his life had been
+entirely reversed in a few hours.  Resolute and strong as the Essene
+was, his face contracted painfully.
+
+Agrippa laid a hand on his arm.
+
+"Remember, it is our faith that this persecution will cease and then
+thou canst return to thy study in safety," he said as gently as if he
+were speaking to a child.  But in that moment, Marsyas told himself
+that there would be no returning to his old peace.
+
+"Come with me," Agrippa continued.  "I will afford thee protection and
+thou shalt provide me with funds."
+
+He paused and, taking Marsyas' arm, led him down to a little meandering
+vale, sweet with blossoming herbs.
+
+"Look," he said, pointing back toward the east.
+
+The hills stood aside in a long, full-breasted series, and revealed
+through a narrow, green-walled aisle a distant view of Jerusalem, white
+and majestic on her heights.  The morning blue that encroaches upon the
+noon in early spring softened the spectacle with a tender atmosphere;
+distance glorified its splendors, and the light upon it was other than
+daylight--it was a nimbus, the ineffable crown.
+
+Thus seen it was no longer the city of subjection, filled with wrongs
+and griefs and hopelessness.  It was the Holy City, upright with the
+godliness of David, lawful in the government of Solomon; sacred with
+the presence of the Shekinah in the Holy of Holies.  Here, Sheba might
+have stood first to be shown the glories of Solomon; here, Alexander
+might have drawn up his Macedonian quadriga to behold what excellence
+he was next to conquer.  Marsyas felt emotion seize him, the mighty
+welling of tears in their springs.
+
+"Behold it!" Agrippa said.  "We go forth beaten and ashamed, but thou
+shalt return to it justified; I shall return to it crowned.  Believe in
+that as thou believest in Jehovah!"
+
+He drew the young Essene away and signed to the servitors.
+
+In the days that followed, Agrippa tactfully and little by little won
+Marsyas out of his brooding.  Delicately, he sounded the young man's
+nature and discovered the channel into which his sorrowful thoughts
+could be diverted.  Stirring incidents of the Herod's own astounding
+history, graphic accounts of great pageants, of contests of famous
+athletæ, or of gorgeous cities, vivaciously told, engaged Marsyas'
+attention in spite of himself.  Gradually his sharpened interest began
+to choose for itself.  Expectancy of things to come communicated by
+Agrippa presently possessed Marsyas.
+
+All this was a new and inviting experience for the young Essene, as
+well as an alleviation.  He had lived a placid, passionless life with
+the old Essenic master and centered his broad loves on one or two.
+Evil happenings had wrenched these from him and his affections wandered
+and wavered, lost only for an hour.  By the time the journey to
+Ptolemais was ended, Agrippa had stepped into his own place in the
+heart of the bereaved young man.
+
+Ptolemais was built for solidity and strength.  Its houses were
+defenses, its public buildings were fortifications; its mole, harbor
+front and wall the most unassailable on the Asiatic seaboard.  From the
+plains of Esdraelon in their dip toward the sea, the city was seen, set
+broadside to the waves, stanch, regular, square and bulky--embodied
+defiance for ever uttered to whatever sea-faring nation turned its
+triremes into her roadsteads.
+
+In a narrow street near the southernmost limits of the city, Agrippa
+stopped.  A house of a single story stood before them, its roof barely
+higher than its door; a heavy wall before it, a narrow gate in that.
+
+"Enter," said the prince to Marsyas, "into the unctuous hospitalities
+of Agrippa's palace."
+
+He unlatched the gate, and, leading his companion across a small court,
+knocked at the door, which after a little wait swung open.
+
+An uncommonly pretty waiting-woman stepped aside to let them enter.
+Marsyas put off his sandals and followed the prince into a small recess
+cut off by curtains from the interior of the house.  A bronze lamp was
+in a niche in the wall and a taboret stood in the corner.  No other
+furniture was visible.
+
+The prince dismissed the two servitors and they passed behind the
+curtains, Eutychus stumbling as he went, because his eyes were engaged
+in attempting to attract the attention of the pretty waiting-woman, who
+seemed quite oblivious of his glances.
+
+"Send hither your mistress, Drumah," Agrippa said to her.  She bowed
+and departed and presently one of the curtains lifted and a woman
+hastened into the apartment.
+
+With a low cry of joy she ran to the prince and flung herself on his
+breast.
+
+"Oh, that thou shouldst come and none to watch for thee!" she
+exclaimed.  "That thou shouldst enter thy house and none but thy
+hireling to meet thee!"
+
+He laughed lightly and kissed her.
+
+"I have brought also a guest, Cypros," he said.  For the first time her
+eyes lighted on Marsyas and blushing she drew away from her husband.
+
+"I pray thy pardon," she murmured.
+
+The light from the day without shone full on her through a lattice, and
+since his journey to Nazareth Marsyas had learned to look on women with
+an interested eye.
+
+She was small, but her figure showed the perfect outlines of the
+matron, and the Jewish dress, bound about the hips with a broad scarf,
+let no single grace lose itself under drapery.  But it was the face
+that held the young Essene's attention.  There, too, was the blood of
+the Herod, for Agrippa had married his cousin, but its attributes were
+refined almost to ethereal extremes.  Flesh could not have been whiter
+nor coloring more delicate.  The effect rendered was an impression of
+exquisite frailty, produced as much by the pathos in the over-large
+black eyes and the serious cut of the tender mouth as by the
+transparency of the exceedingly small hand which lay on her breast as
+if to still a fluttering heart.  Her beauty was not aided by strength
+of character or intellectuality; it was distinctly the simple,
+defenseless, appealing type which is an invincible conqueror of men.
+
+"This is Marsyas of Nazareth, an Essene in distress, yet not so
+unfortunate that he is not willing to help us.  What comfort canst thou
+offer him from thy housekeeping?"
+
+The Essenes were the holy men of Israel; the large eyes filled with
+deference and she bowed.
+
+"Welcome in God's name.  My lord has bread and a roof-tree.  I pray
+thee share them freely with us."
+
+Marsyas' formality so serviceable among the women of Nazareth suddenly
+seemed infelicitous here, but it was all he had for response to this
+different personage.
+
+"The blessing of God be with thee; I give thee thanks."
+
+She summoned the pretty waiting-woman.
+
+"Let my lord and his guest be given food and drink; set wine and such
+meats as we have, and let the children come and greet their father."
+
+The prince thrust the curtains aside and, motioning to Marsyas', waited
+until his princess and the young man had passed within.
+
+The apartment was a second recess larger than the first, shut in by
+hangings of sackcloth and furnished with rough seats and tables of
+unoiled cedar.  It was a cheerless room, fit for the humblest man in
+Ptolemais, but the unconquered Herod and his lovely princess ennobled
+it.
+
+There was a scarf of damask thrown over one of the tables and two or
+three pieces of magnificent plate sat upon it.
+
+"That," said Agrippa, pointing to the silver, "hath been my moneyer for
+years.  I have lived a month on a flagon."
+
+Cypros sighed, but three pretty children, a boy and two girls, rushed
+in from the rear of the house and engaged the prince's attention.
+
+Meanwhile, the attractive servant entered with plates for the table and
+Eutychus followed with a platter of food.  As she passed the young
+Essene she tripped on an unevenness in the floor and would have fallen,
+but Marsyas, with a quick movement, more instinctive than gallant,
+threw out a hand and stayed her.
+
+She thanked him composedly and went about her work, but Marsyas,
+chancing to raise his eyes to Eutychus' face, caught a look from the
+servitor that was livid with hate.  Shocked and astonished, Marsyas
+turned his back and wondered how he had crossed the creature.
+
+Agrippa sat at the table, and, with Cypros at his left, bade Marsyas
+sit beside him.  The children were carried protesting away.
+
+The prince filled a goblet of silver with a pale wine, slightly
+effervescent and exhaling a bouquet peculiarly subtle and penetrating.
+He raised the frosty cup between his fingers--drink, drinker and cup of
+a type--and looked at the strip of sky visible through the lattice.
+
+"This to the gods," he said, "or whatever power hath fortune to give,
+and a heart to be won of libation.  I yield you my soul for a laurel!"
+
+The princess leaned her forehead against his arm and whispered:
+
+"It is wicked--forbidden!"
+
+"I poured but one glass: I make the prayer; I have not asked thee or
+our young friend to pray it with me.  But my devices are exhausted.  I
+make appeal now, haphazard, for I grope!"
+
+"And didst thou fail in Jerusalem?"
+
+"As I have failed from Rome to Idumea."
+
+She drew in a little sobbing breath and hid her eyes against his
+sleeve.  Marsyas sat silent.  This first evidence of despair on the
+prince's part was most unwelcome.  His own fortunes were too much
+entangled with Agrippa's for him to contemplate their fall.  He felt
+the prince's eyes upon him.  The silver cup had been refilled and was
+extended to him.
+
+Marsyas took it.
+
+"This to success," he said, "not fortune!"
+
+Cypros stirred.  "Success is so deliberate!" she sighed.
+
+Marsyas made no answer; would it be long before he should have his
+bitter wish?
+
+"Thou seest Judea," Agrippa began, "thou heardest me aspire to it and
+thou didst abet me in mine ambition.  But learn, for thy own comfort,
+Marsyas, the vagabond to whom thou hast attached thyself doth not grasp
+after another man's portion.  Judea is mine!  And Rome must yield me
+mine inheritance!"  The prince's eyes glowed with youth's ambition.
+
+Marsyas listened intently.
+
+"A Herod's word is in disrepute," the prince continued.  "Hence I am
+limited to action to prove myself.  But look thou here, Marsyas.  Judea
+is pillaged: so am I.  Judea is despised: so am I!  Judea weltereth in
+her own blood: am I not sprung from a murdered sire, who was son of a
+murdered mother--each dead by the same hand of father and husband?
+Dear Lord, I am an offspring of the shambles, mother-marked with
+wounds!"
+
+He shuddered and drew his hand across his forehead.
+
+"Having thus suffered the same miseries which are Judea's, is it not
+natural that I should relieve her when I, myself, am relieved?  I
+should rule Judea as Judea would rule herself--"
+
+He broke off with a gesture of impatience.
+
+"How I hate the blatant vower of vows!  Help me to mine opportunity,
+Marsyas."
+
+As between Rome and Herod the Great as sovereign, there was no choice.
+Though the Asmonean Slave, as the Jewish patriots named the capable
+fiend, gave Judea the most brilliant reign since the glories of Solomon
+and the most monstrous since Ahab, the nominal independence offered by
+his administration was absolutely submerged and lost in the terror of
+his absolutism and the devilish genius in him for oppression.
+
+Herod and Abaddon were names synonymous in Judea, and the mildness of
+his sons or their inefficiency had not been able to set the reproach
+aside.  No able Herod had arisen since the founder of the house,
+except, as Marsyas hopefully believed, this man before him.  Herod
+Agrippa was the son of Aristobolus, who was murdered in his youth
+before his capabilities developed.  The Herods, Philip and Antipas, had
+been mild because they were incapable.  The recurrence of mental
+strength in the blood was an untried contingency.  All this came to
+Marsyas, now, suggested by the implied self-defense in the prince's
+words, and for a moment he wavered between concern for his people and
+anxiety for his own cause.  Agrippa and Cypros watched him.
+
+"Thou art a just youth," the prince went on in the winning voice that
+had already made its conquest over the Essene.  "I can not prove myself
+until I am given trial, and judgment without trial is an abomination
+even unto the tyrant Rome!"
+
+"I have not judged, lord," Marsyas protested.
+
+"And thou wilt not until I have shown myself unworthy of thy
+confidence.  Thou hast even now bespoken God's favor for me--be then,
+His instrument!  Thou art the first ray of light in a decade of
+darkness that has enveloped me and mine!"
+
+Marsyas put out his hand to the prince.  The peril in the Herod blood,
+in his calculations, had dropped out of sight.
+
+"What dost thou say to me, my prince?" he said.  "How is it that thou
+beseechest me--me, the suppliant, praying thy help for mine own ends?
+But hear me!  Thou aspirest to that place of which I have no knowledge,
+among peoples whose paths I never cross, into the calling of the great!
+Yet, though most unequipped to yield thee support, I am thy substance.
+Use me!  Thou knowest my price."
+
+Agrippa smiled.
+
+"Though I die owing even mine embalmer, I shall pay thee that debt.  I
+have said.  And now to the process.  What money hast thou?"
+
+Agrippa was silent and Marsyas, watching his face, waited.
+
+"I need," the prince said slowly, "twenty thousand."
+
+Marsyas got upon his feet, and for a moment there was silence.
+
+"I will get it for thee," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE BONDMAN OF HATE
+
+In a city like Ptolemais, where many pagans lived extravagantly and
+many Jews lived thriftily, there were, as naturally follows, many
+money-lenders among the sons of Abraham.
+
+"Seek them all," was Agrippa's charge, "but Peter, the usurer.  Him,
+thou hadst better avoid."
+
+The young Essene laid aside the prince's dress, with its embroidery of
+precious metal, and, getting into a simpler garment affected by the
+stewards to men of rank, went out into the city to borrow twenty
+thousand drachmæ.
+
+He did not get the twenty thousand drachmæ, but he found, instead, that
+Herod Agrippa was the most notorious bankrupt in the world.  Being a
+Jew and by heritage thrifty, the discovery shook him in his respect for
+the prince, but at the same time a resolution shaped itself in him
+against the usurers.  But, on a certain day, he returned to the little
+house in the suburbs of the city to report that he had been placidly
+refused by every money-lending Jew or Gentile, except Peter, in the
+seaport.
+
+But he delivered his tidings unmoved.
+
+"Be of hope," he said to Cypros, whose head drooped at the news; "there
+are many untried ways."
+
+He went again into the city, and visited the khans.  There might be
+new-comers who were money-lenders in other cities.
+
+There were such as guests in Ptolemais, but from their lips he learned
+that Agrippa was black-listed from the Adriatic to the Euphrates; but
+Marsyas did not return to the house in the suburbs that night.  The
+weight of his obligation was too heavy to endure the added burden which
+the sight of Agrippa's suspense had become.
+
+He went to the rabbis of Ptolemais; they told him that they were not
+money-lenders.  He applied to the prefect of the city, who laughed at
+him.  Hoping that the name of Agrippa as a bankrupt had not penetrated
+into the fields he journeyed into the country-side of Syria and tried
+an oil-merchant, a rustic, rich and unlettered.  But the oil-merchant
+came up to Ptolemais and made inquiry, shrugged his shoulders, glowered
+at Marsyas and went back to his groves.
+
+An Egyptian seller of purple landed at Ptolemais from Alexandria.  The
+name of the city of hope attracted Marsyas and he met the merchant at
+the wharves.  But the seller of purple had been to Rome and the topmost
+name on his list of debtors was Herod Agrippa.
+
+At the end of three days, Marsyas returned to the house in the suburbs
+to assure the prince that he had not deserted and went again on his
+search.
+
+His invariable failures began to teach him a certain shrewdness.  He
+discovered early that Essenic frankness would not serve his ends.  He
+found that men were approachable through certain channels; that it was
+better to speak advisedly than frankly; to lay plans, rather than to
+wait on events; to use devices rather than persuasion.  These things
+admitted, he discovered that he had unconsciously subordinated them to
+his use.  Though momentarily alarmed, he did not hate himself as he
+should.  On the other hand, it was pleasurable to lay siege to men and
+try them at their own scheming.
+
+At night in a dutiful effort to cleanse himself of the day's
+accumulation of worldliness, he went to the open proseuchæ, where in
+the dark of the great out-of-doors, he was least likely to be noticed,
+to comfort himself with stolen worship, stolen profit from the Law.
+But the Law was not tender to those who lived as Stephen lived, and
+died as Stephen died.  Not in all that great and holy scroll which the
+Reader read was there compassion for the blasphemer.  Also, he heard of
+the great plague of persecution which Saul had loosed upon the
+Nazarenes in Jerusalem and how the Pharisee had become a mighty man
+before the Council, and an awe and a terror to the congregation.  So he
+came away from the proseuchæ, not only unhelped but harmed, embittered,
+enraged, alienated from his faith, and hungering for vengeance.
+
+By day, he walked through the commercial districts of Ptolemais and
+pushed his almost hopeless search with an energy that did not flag at
+continued failure.  He knew that if he obtained the twenty thousand
+drachmæ, he bound Agrippa the surer to his oath of allegiance to the
+cause against Saul.  Despair, therefore, was a banished and forbidden
+thing.
+
+His plans, however, had been tried and proved fruitless.  Typically a
+soldier of fortune, he was relying upon the exigencies of chance.
+
+Ptolemais was a normal town, with large interest and pleasures, and the
+fair day was too fleeting for one to stop and take heed of another.
+Passers pushed and hurried him when he came upon those more busy than
+he.  Sailors, bronzed as Tatars, were probably the sole loiterers
+besides the inevitable oriental feature, the sidewalk mendicant.
+
+So it was that on a certain day when Marsyas overtook a lectica in the
+street, the old man within complained aloud and had no audience, except
+his plodding bearers, or the attention of a glance, or a slackened step
+now and again among the citizens.
+
+"They rob me!" he was crying when Marsyas came up with him.
+
+The young man turned quickly; the declaration was alarming.  His eyes
+encountered the face of Peter, the usurer, a stout, gray old Jew, in
+the apparel of a Sadducee.
+
+Seeing that he had won the young man's notice the old usurer seized the
+opportunity to enlarge.
+
+"They ruin me!" he cried.
+
+Marsyas bowed gravely.  "Thy pardon, sir," he said.  "May I be of
+service?"
+
+"They sap my life!" the old man continued more violently, as if the
+young man's question had excited him.  "They take, and demand more;
+they waste, and must be replenished!  I drop into the grave and there
+will be nothing left to buy a tomb to receive me!"
+
+The words were directed to Marsyas, and the young man having halted
+could not go on without awkwardness.
+
+"I pray thee," he urged, "tell me who plagues thee thus."
+
+"The tradesmen!  Because I am wealthy, they augment their hire; because
+I must buy, they increase their price; they hold necessities out of my
+reach!  It is a conspiracy between them because I am of lowly birth,
+and I go from one to another and find no relief!  Behold!"  He shook
+out a shawl which had been folded across his knees.  "I must have it to
+protect me against the cold.  It is inferior; it is scant; yet it cost
+me fifteen pieces of silver!"
+
+Marsyas glanced at the mantle; even with his little knowledge of
+fabrics it appeared not worth its price.
+
+"Thou hast servants, good sir, and camels," he said, drawn into
+suggestion in spite of himself.  "Do I overstep my privilege to suggest
+that thou mayest send to Anthedon or to Cæsarea and buy in other
+cities?"
+
+"But the hire--the hire!  And how should I know that the knavery does
+not extend to Anthedon and Cæsarea?"
+
+"Then," said Marsyas, "establish thine own booths here and undersell
+the robbers."
+
+There was silence; the small eyes of the old man narrowed and ignited.
+
+"A just punishment," he muttered.  "A proper punishment!"
+
+"Or this," Marsyas continued, interested in his own conspiracy.  "Thou
+sayest they oppress thee because thou art a lowly man!  They are
+foolish.  Display them thy power and punish them.  Thou art a great
+usurer; powerful families here are in thy debt.  How strong a hand thou
+holdest over them!  What canst thou not compel them to do!  Nay, good
+sir; to me, it seemeth thou hast the whip-hand over these tradesmen!"
+
+The old man rubbed his hands.  "An engaging picture," he said.  "But
+unless I haste, they will ruin me yet!"
+
+Marsyas shook his head.  "Not if the tales of thy famous wealth be
+true."
+
+The lectica had moved along beside him and he waited now to be
+dismissed; but, contrary to custom of that rank which is privileged to
+command, the old man waited for Marsyas to take his leave.
+
+"Methinks," he began, "I have seen thee--"
+
+"Doubtless," Marsyas interrupted hastily.  "I am a steward here in
+Ptolemais.  But I have an errand here, good sir; by thy leave, I shall
+depart."
+
+The old man made a motion of assent, but he followed the young Essene
+with a thoughtful eye.
+
+"If I am to know the world's way," Marsyas said to himself, "I can use
+it, if need be."
+
+He did not visit another usurer, but on the following day went to those
+places likely to be the haunts of Peter.  When, presently, he
+discovered the old man near a fountain, Marsyas did not attempt to
+catch his eye.  But one of Peter's servants touched him on the arm and
+told him that the master beckoned, and he hastened to the old man's
+side.
+
+"Who is thy master?" Peter asked.
+
+Marsyas winced, but restrained a declaration of his free-born state.
+
+"A Roman citizen who is preparing to return to Italy."
+
+"A Roman!" Peter repeated.  "But thou art a Jew, or the blood of the
+race in thee lies."
+
+"A Jew without taint of other blood in all the line."
+
+"Art satisfied with thy service--serving a Roman?" was the demand.
+
+"None has a better lord!" replied Marsyas quietly, but with an inward
+delight in leading the old man on.
+
+"But it should be more lawful for thee to serve a Jew," Peter declared.
+"A Roman's slave, a slave for ever; a Jew's slave, a slave but six
+years--"
+
+Marsyas could rest no longer under the intimation of bondage.
+
+"Good sir, I am not a slave."
+
+"Ho! a hireling."
+
+"No; a free man, unattached and serving for love."
+
+Peter scratched his head.  "For love only?  Then why not come and be my
+steward for wages?"
+
+"Thou canst not pay my price," he said with meaning.
+
+The old man lifted his withered chin.
+
+"Thy price!" he repeated haughtily.  "And pray, sirrah, what is thy
+price?"
+
+A figurative answer to add to his first sententious remark was on
+Marsyas' lips, but he halted suddenly, and a little pallor came into
+his face.
+
+"On another day, I shall tell thee," he said after a silence, and the
+old man impatiently dismissed him.
+
+Marsyas turned away from the heart of the city and went straight to the
+house in the suburbs.
+
+He found Agrippa stretched on a couch where the air entered through the
+west lattice, and the place otherwise solitary.  The princess and the
+children with the servants had gone into the city.
+
+Marsyas came uncalled to Agrippa's side, and the prince noted the
+change on the young man's face.  He looked expectant.
+
+"My lord," Marsyas said, "thou didst say to me several days ago that
+thou didst hate a vower of vows.  Yet no man is chafed by a vow except
+him who finds it hard to keep.  Wherefore, I pray thee, for the
+prospering of the cause and mine, assure me once more of thy good
+intent toward Judea."
+
+The Herod raised his fine brows.
+
+"How now, Marsyas?  Has the knowledge that I am a Herod been slandering
+me to you?"
+
+"Nay, my lord; thou hast won me; and I shall not stop at sacrifice for
+thy cause, which is mine."
+
+"What canst thou do, my Marsyas?"
+
+"Get thee money."
+
+"I give thee my word, Marsyas.  It has been sorely battered dodging
+debts, yet it is still intact enough to contain mine honor.  I give
+thee my word."
+
+Marsyas lingered with an averted face, which Agrippa tried in vain to
+understand.  He added nothing to emphasize his avowal; perhaps he
+realized at that moment, more keenly than ever afterward, how much a
+man wants to be believed.
+
+Presently the young man spoke in another tone.
+
+"Who is this Peter, that I may not ask him for a loan?"
+
+"I owe him a talent already," Agrippa answered with a lazy smile,
+"which he advanced to me while he was yet my mother's slave."
+
+"Then thou knowest him!  How--how is he favored in disposition?"
+
+"How is Peter favored?  Are slaves favored?  Nay, they are tempered
+like asses, cattle and apes--like beasts.  Wherefore, this Peter is
+voracious, balky, amiable enough if thou yieldest him provender--not
+bad, but, like any donkey, could be better."
+
+Marsyas' eyes fell again; it seemed that he hesitated at his next
+question, as though upon its answer turned a matter of great moment.
+
+"Art thou in all truth assured that this Alexandrian will lend thee
+money?" he asked presently, beset by the possibility of doubt.
+
+Agrippa laughed outright.  "Jove, but this questioning hath a familiar
+ring!  Surely thou wast sired of a money-lender, Marsyas, else his
+inquiries would not arise so naturally to thy lips!  Will the
+Alexandrian lend?  Of a surety!  And even if not, then will my mother's
+friend, the noble Antonia, Cæsar's sister-in-law.  If Cæsar had not
+been so precipitate and hastened me out of Rome, I should have borrowed
+the sum of her ten years ago.  I have not borrowed of the Alexandrian
+ere this because I had not the money to carry me thither."
+
+After a pause, Agrippa anticipated a further question and continued.
+
+"The Alexandrian is Alexander Lysimachus, the noblest Jew a generation
+hath produced.  Even Rome, that hath such little use for our blood,
+waives its ancient judgment against Lysimachus.  He is alabarch of the
+Jews in Alexandria, able as a Roman, just as a Jew, refined as a Greek,
+versatile as an Alexandrian.  I saw him four years ago, here, in
+Jerusalem, when he brought his wife's remains to bury them on sacred
+soil.  He had with him two sons, one a man, grown, with his father's
+genius, but without his father's soul; the other a handsome lad of
+undeveloped character, and a daughter, a veritable sprite for beauty,
+and a sibyl for wits.  I was afraid of her; I, a Herod and a married
+man, turning forty, was afraid of her!  But get me the twenty thousand
+drachmæ, Marsyas, and thou shall see her--_Hercle_--a thousand pardons!
+I forgot that thou art an Essene!"
+
+Marsyas stood silent once more, and Agrippa waited.
+
+"And yet one other thing, my lord," the Essene said finally.  "I serve
+thee no less for love, because I serve thee also for a purpose.  Thou
+wilt not forget to serve me, when thou comest to thine own?"
+
+"I give thee again my much misused word, Marsyas.  Believe me, thou
+hast forced more truths out of me than any ever achieved before.
+Cypros will make thee her inquisitor when next she suspects me of
+warmth toward a maiden!"
+
+Marsyas lifted the prince's hand and pressed it to his lips.  Without
+further word, he went out of the chamber and returned to the city.
+
+He sought out the counting-room of Peter the usurer, and found within a
+commotion and a gathered crowd.  The old man himself stood in a
+steward's place behind a grating of bronze, with lists and coffers
+about him.  Without stood a brown woman, in a strange dress
+sufficiently rough to establish her state of servitude, and she bore in
+her hands a sheep-skin bag that seemed to be filled with coins.
+
+About her was a group of men of nationalities so diverse and so
+evidently perplexed that Marsyas immediately surmised that they had
+been summoned as interpreters for a stranger whom they could not
+understand.
+
+The brown woman was passive: the usurer behind his grating in such a
+state of great excitement and anxiety that moisture stood out on his
+wrinkled forehead.  His eyes were on the sheep-skin bag; evidently the
+brown woman was bringing him money, and his fear that the treasure
+would escape made the old man desperate.
+
+"Have ye forgotten your mother-tongues?" he fumed at the polyglot
+assembly, "or are ye base-born Syrians boasting a nationality that ye
+can not prove?  Hold!  Let her not go forth, good citizens; doubtless
+she hath come from a foreign debtor to repay me!  Close the doors
+without!"
+
+Marsyas pressed through the crowd to the grating, and the old man
+discovered him.
+
+"Hither, hither, my friend," he exclaimed.  "See if thou canst tell
+what manner of stranger we have here."
+
+The young Essene had been examining the woman; with a quick glance,
+now, he inspected her face.  Dark the complexion, the eyes olive-green
+as chrysolite, mysterious and hypnotic; the features regular as an
+Egyptian's, but stronger and more beautiful; the physique refined, yet
+hardy.  The mystic air of the Ganges breathed from her scented shawl.
+The young man's training in languages was not overtaxed.
+
+"What is thy will?" he asked in the tongue of the Brahmins.
+
+"To exchange Hindu money for Roman coin," was the instant reply.
+
+Marsyas turned to Peter.
+
+"This is an Indian woman," he explained.  "She wishes to exchange coin
+of her country for Roman money."
+
+"Good!" the old man cried, rubbing his hands.  "We shall oblige her.
+Foreign coins are so much bullion; yet, we pay only its face value, in
+Roman moneys!  Good!  I shall melt it, and deliver it to the Roman
+mint!  Good!  But--but how shall I know one of these outlandish coins
+from another?"
+
+"I can tell you," Marsyas answered.
+
+The assembled group drifted out of the counting-room and the usurer,
+sighing his delight, opened a gate and bade Marsyas and the Hindu woman
+come into the apartment behind the screen.  There the exchange was
+made, and the old usurer, trusting to the Hindu's ignorance of the
+language, permitted no moment to pass without comment on his profit.
+
+Presently, Marsyas turned to the woman.
+
+"You lose money by this traffic," he said deliberately.
+
+"Rest thee, brother," was the calm reply, "I know it.  Yet I must have
+Roman coin to carry me to Egypt."
+
+Marsyas glanced at her apparel.  In spite of its humble appearance, it
+was the owner of this treasure, that dwelt within it.
+
+The exchange was made, amounting to something over twenty thousand
+drachmæ.  Marsyas, with wistful eyes, saw her put the treasure away in
+the sheepskin bag.  He arose as she arose, and the two were conducted
+out by Peter.
+
+Without, it had grown dark.  The woman had made no effort to hide the
+nature of her burden.  She made an almost haughty gesture of farewell
+to Marsyas.
+
+"I shall serve thee, perchance, one day," she said and passed out.
+
+Marsyas followed her.  At the threshold, he wavered and stepping into
+the street stopped.
+
+She made a small, frail, dusky apparition, under the black shadows of
+the bulky buildings of Ptolemais--a profitable victim for some
+light-footed highwayman, less sorely in need of money than he.  But she
+evidently felt no fear.
+
+Then, he turned and went back into the counting-room.
+
+Peter was behind his grating.
+
+"Who and what art thou?" the usurer demanded, with no little admiration
+in his tone.
+
+"I am," Marsyas answered, "a doctor of Laws, a master of languages, a
+doctor of medicines, a scholar of the College at Jerusalem, a postulant
+Essene."
+
+The reply was intentionally full.
+
+"And a steward for love, only!"
+
+"Only for a time.  When I can repay thee a debt long standing, I shall
+cease to serve at all."
+
+The usurer's eyes brightened.  "A debt," he repeated softly.  "Is this
+my fortunate day?  Which of the bankrupts who owe me has been
+replenished?"
+
+"Not yet, the one of whom I speak," Marsyas replied.  "Hast thou heard
+of Herod Agrippa?"
+
+"Herod Agrippa!  Evil day that he borrowed a talent of me, never to
+return it!"
+
+"Perchance, some day--"
+
+"Never!  Whosoever lends him money pitches it into the sea!"
+
+"Yet the sea hath given up its treasure, at times.  But let me trouble
+thee with a question.  What price did the costliest slave in thy
+knowledge command?"
+
+"What price?  A slave?  In Rome?  Nay, then, let me think.  A Georgian
+female captive of much beauty was sold to Sejanus once for six hundred
+thousand drachmæ--"
+
+"I speak of serving-men," Marsyas interrupted.
+
+"Nay, then: Cæsar owns a physician worth eighty thousand drachmæ."
+
+"Hath he cured any in Cæsar's house of poisoning; can he speak many
+languages; is he also a doctor of Laws and a good Jew?"
+
+The usurer shook his head.
+
+"What price, then, should I he worth to Cæsar?" Marsyas demanded.
+
+"Sell not thyself to Cæsar," Peter cried, flinging up his hands.  "It
+is forbidden!"
+
+"I shall not sell myself," Marsyas said.  "I have come only to find how
+to value my services."
+
+"Whom dost thou serve?" the old man demanded.  Marsyas was not ready to
+disclose his identity.
+
+"A Roman.  Peace and the continuance of good fortune be thine."
+
+He bowed and passed out of the counting-room.
+
+The usurer stood a moment, then summoned his servants, and, getting
+himself into street dress, hastened to follow the young man.  Marsyas
+turned his steps toward the house in the suburbs.
+
+There were several torches about the painted gate in the wall and the
+light shone on a group alighting from a curricle.  Cypros and her
+children had returned from the city, and Agrippa had come forth to
+receive them.  Marsyas joined the group and Peter's lectica was borne
+up to the circle of radiance under the torches.  The old man's eyes
+filled with wrath when he recognized Agrippa.  He stood up and surveyed
+him with scorn.
+
+"A Roman!" he scoffed.  "A Roman, only to add the vices of the race to
+the meanness of a Herod!  Back to my house, slaves!  We have taken
+profitless pains!"
+
+Agrippa's anger leaped into his face and Marsyas pursued and overtook
+the litter.
+
+"Thy pardon, sir," he began.
+
+"I have a right to attach thee for the talent thy master owes me,"
+Peter stormed.
+
+"Peace, good sir!  I am not a slave."
+
+Peter chewed his mustache impotently, but the young Essene dropped his
+Greek and spoke in Hebrew, the language of the synagogue, the true
+badge of Judaism.
+
+"Perchance we may bargain together.  Wouldst have me for hire?"
+
+Peter smoldered in sulky silence.
+
+"I can not serve longer without compensation," Marsyas pursued.
+
+"What sum in hire?" Peter demanded.
+
+"Twenty thousand drachmæ--"
+
+Peter blazed, but Marsyas stopped his invective with a motion.
+
+"Nay, peace!  I have not finished.  Twenty thousand drachmæ in loan to
+Agrippa, and I will serve thee gratis till he redeems me by paying the
+principal and the talent he owes."
+
+The usurer, with a snort, abruptly ordered the slaves to proceed.
+
+The next day, Marsyas, loitering on purpose near the usurer's, was
+approached by a servant and sent into the presence of Peter.
+
+"Hath the bankrupt any hopes?" the money-lender demanded without
+preliminary.
+
+"He goes to Alexandria, for money, and thence to imperial favor in
+Rome.  There is Antonia who will aid him, as thou knowest.  Unless thou
+helpest him to reach either of these two places, he is of a surety
+bankrupt; wherefore he can never pay thee the talent or even the
+interest."
+
+Peter dismissed him moodily and Marsyas returned to the prince.  But
+the next day Peter appeared at Agrippa's door and was conducted to the
+prince's presence, where Cypros sat with him and Marsyas waited.  The
+old man made no greeting.
+
+"Thou knowest me, Agrippa," he began at once.  "For thy mother's sake,
+whose happy slave I was, I will take thine Essene at his terms, less
+the interest on the twenty thousand drachmæ."
+
+"My Essene at his terms," Agrippa repeated in perplexity.  But Marsyas,
+with a movement of command, broke in.
+
+"The bargain is at first hand between thee and me, good sir," he said
+to Peter.  "The second contract shall be between the prince and myself.
+Bring the money here at sunset and the writings shall be ready for
+thee."
+
+"Twenty thousand drachmæ, less mine interest on the sum," Peter
+insisted.
+
+"Less thine interest," Marsyas assented, and Peter went out.
+
+Agrippa got upon his feet and gazed gravely at Marsyas.
+
+"What is this?" he asked.
+
+"I have bound thee to my cause," the young man answered.
+
+"How?  Nay, answer me, Marsyas.  What hast thou done?" the prince
+urged, impelled by affection as well as wonder.
+
+"I have bought my revenge, and have paid for it with a season of
+bondage."
+
+"Hast thou given thyself in hostage for us?" Cypros cried, springing up.
+
+Marsyas, without reply, moved to leave the room.  But Agrippa planted
+himself in the young man's way, and Cypros in tears slipped down on her
+knees at his side, and, raising his hand, kissed it.
+
+"We shall not forget," she whispered to him.
+
+"I shall not know peace till I have redeemed thee," Agrippa declared
+with misted eyes.
+
+Great haste to get away from the overwhelmed pair seized the Essene.
+Trembling he shook off their hold and hurried out into the air.
+
+He had to quiet a great amazement in him at the thing he had planned
+for so many days to do.  After a long agitated tramp in search of
+composure, he began to see more clearly the results of his extreme act.
+He had fixed himself within reach of Vitellius and the Sanhedrim:
+unless the ill fortune of the luckless prince improved, he had bound
+himself to servitude for a lifetime.
+
+But he drew his hand across his troubled forehead and smiled grimly.
+He had made his first decisive step against Saul!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+AN ALEXANDRIAN CHARACTERISTIC
+
+Nothing but prescience could have inspired Alexander, the young
+Macedonian conqueror, to decide to plant a city on the sandy peninsula
+which lay hot, flat, low and unproductive between the glassy waters of
+Lake Mareotis and the tumble of the Mediterranean.
+
+For a century previous, a straggling Egyptian village, called Rhacotis,
+eked out a precarious existence by fisheries; the port was filled with
+shoals or clogged with water-growth, and the voluptuous fertility of
+the Nile margin followed the slow sweep of the great river into the sea
+twelve miles farther to the east.  No other port along the coast
+presented a more unattractive appearance.  But Alexander, having no
+more worlds to conquer, turned his opposition upon adverse conditions.
+
+So he struck his spear into the sand, and there arose at the blow a
+city having the spirit of its founder--great, splendid, contentious,
+contradictory, impetuous and finally self-destructive through its
+excesses.
+
+He enlarged and embellished Rhacotis, which lay to the west of the new
+city and left it to the tenantry of the Egyptians, poor remnants of
+that haughty race which had been aristocrats of the world before Troy.
+In its center arose that solemn triumph of Pharaonic architecture, the
+Serapeum.
+
+But it was they who approached from the south, with the sand of the
+Libyan desert in their locks, who saw noble Alexandria.  Between them
+and the city was first the strength of its fortifications, prodigious
+lengths of wall, beautiful with citadels and towers.  Within was the
+Brucheum, with the splendor of the Library, for the Alexandrian spirit
+of contentiousness sharpened and forced the intellect of her
+disputants, till her learning was the most faultless of the time and
+its house a fit shape for its contents.  After the Library the pillared
+façade of the Court of Justice; next the unparalleled Museum, and,
+interspersed between, were the glories of four hundred theaters, four
+thousand palaces, four thousand baths.  Against the intense blue of the
+rainless Egyptian sky were imprinted the sun-white towers, pillars,
+arches and statues of the most comely city ever builded in Africa.
+Memphis, lost and buried in the sand, and Thebes, an echoing nave of
+roofless columns, were never so instinct with glory as Egypt's splendid
+recrudescence on the coast of the Middle Sea.
+
+To the northeast, there was abatement of pagan grandeur.  Here were
+quaint solid masses of Syriac architecture, with gowned and bearded
+dwellers and a general air of oriental decorum and religious rigor
+which did not mark the other quarters of the city.  In this spot the
+Jews of the Diaspora had been planted, had multiplied and strengthened
+until there were forty thousand in the district.
+
+Those turning the beaks of their galleys into the Alexandrian roadstead
+saw first the Pharos, a mist-embraced and phantom tower, rising out of
+the waves; after it, the Lochias, wading out into the sea that the
+palaces of the Ptolemies might hold in mortmain their double empire of
+land and water; on the other hand the trisected Heptistadium; between,
+the acreage of docking and out of the amphitheatrical sweep of the
+great city behind, standing huge, white and majestic, the grandest
+Jewish structure, next to Herod's Temple, that the world has ever
+known--the Synagogue.
+
+The Jews of Alexandria; as a class of peculiar and emphatic
+characteristics, a class toward which consideration was due in
+deference to its numbers, its wealth and its sensitiveness, were
+necessarily the object of particular provision.  Therefore, that they
+might be intelligently handled as to their prejudices, they were
+provided with a special governor from among their own--an alabarch;
+permitted to erect their own sanctuaries and to practise the customs of
+race and the rites of religion in so far as they did not interfere with
+the government's interests.
+
+Thus much their privileges; their oppressions were another story.
+
+Peopled by three of the most aggressive nations on the globe, the
+Greek, the Roman and the Jew, Alexandria seemed likewise to attract
+representatives of every country that had a son to fare beyond its
+borders.  Drift from the dry lands of all the world was brought down
+and beached at the great seaport.  It ranged in type from the
+fair-haired Norseman to the sinewy Mede on the east, from the Gaul on
+the west to the huge Ethiopian with sooty shining face who came from
+the mysterious and ancient land south of the First Cataract.
+
+It followed that such a heterogeneous mass did not effect union and
+amity.  That was a spiritual fusion which had to await a perfect
+conception of liberty and the brotherhood of man.  The racial mixture
+in Alexandria was, therefore, a prematurity, subject to disorder.
+
+So long as a Jew may have his life, his faith and his chance at
+bread-winning, he does not call himself abused.  These things the Roman
+state yielded the Jew in Alexandria.  But he was haughty, refined,
+rich, religious, exclusive, intelligent and otherwise obnoxious to the
+Alexandrians, and, being also a non-combatant, the Jew was the common
+victim of each and all of the mongrel races which peopled the city.
+
+The common port of entry was an interesting spot.  The prodigious
+stretches of wharf were fronted by packs of fleets, ranging in class
+from the visiting warrior trireme from Ravenna or Misenum, to the squat
+and blackened dhow from up the Nile or the lateen-sailed fishing-smack
+from Algeria to the papyrus punt of home waters.  Its population was
+the waste of society, fishers, porters, vagabonds, criminals, ruffian
+sea-faring men, dockmen, laborers of all sorts, men, women and
+children--the pariahs even of the rabble and typically the Voice of
+Revilement.
+
+Agrippa, landing with his party, attracted no more attention than any
+other new-comer would have done, until Silas gravely inquired the way
+into the Regio Judæorum.
+
+"Jupiter strike you!" roared the man whom the sober Silas had
+addressed.  "Do I look like a barbarian Jew that I should know anything
+about the Regio Judæorum!"
+
+His words, purposely loud, did not fail to excite the interest he meant
+they should.
+
+"Regio Judæorum!" cried a woman under foot, filling her basket with
+fish entrails.  "What say you, Gesius?  Who, these?  Look,
+Alexandrians, what tinsel and airs are hunting the Regio Judæorum!"
+
+"Purple, by my head!" the man exclaimed.  "Roman citizens with the bent
+nose of Jerusalem!"
+
+"Agrippa, or I am a landsman!" a sailor shouted.  "Fugitive from
+debtors, or I am a pirate!"
+
+"Jews!" another woman screamed; "coming to collect usury!"
+
+A howl of rage, threatening and lawless, greeted this cry, out of which
+rose the sailor's voice with a shout of laughter.
+
+"Usury!  Ha, ha!  He has not a denarius on him that is not borrowed!"
+
+The Jewish prince had lived a life of diverse fortune, but never until
+then had he been the object of popular scorn.  A surprise was aroused
+in him as great as his indignation; he stood transfixed with emotion.
+Cypros, thoroughly terrified, came out from among her servants and
+clung to his arm.  On her the eyes of the fishwives alighted.
+
+[Illustration: Cypros, thoroughly terrified, clung to his arm (missing
+from book)]
+
+"Look!  Look!" they cried.  "Sparing us our husbands by hiding her
+beauty!  The rag over her face!  Bah! for a plaster of mud!"
+
+"Fish-scales will serve as well," another cried, snatching up a handful
+and throwing it at the princess.
+
+"Have mine, too, Bassia!  Thou art a better thrower than I!" a third
+shouted, handing up her basket.
+
+"Be sure of your aim, Bassia!"
+
+The uproar became general.
+
+"A handful for the simpering hand-maid, too!"
+
+"Don't miss the she-Herod!"
+
+"Fall to, wives; don't leave it all to Bassia!"
+
+"'Way for the proconsul!"--a distant roar came up from the water's edge.
+
+"Bilge-water in my jar, there, mate; it will mix their perfumes!"
+
+"'Way for the proconsul!" the distant roar insisted.
+
+"Don't soil the proconsul, women!"
+
+"'Ware, Bassia!  The proconsul is coming!"
+
+"Perpol! he will not see!  He is the best Jew-baiter in all Alexandria!
+Sure aim, O Phoebus of the bow!"
+
+"'Way for the proconsul!"
+
+"Pluto take the legionaries; here they come!"
+
+"One more pitch at them, though Cæsar were coming!"
+
+"No privileges exclusive for thyself, Bassia!  _Habet_!  More scales!"
+
+"Scales; shells; water!  Scales; sh--"
+
+"Fish-heads!  _Habet_!"
+
+"Entrails--"
+
+"'Way for the proconsul!"
+
+"Directly, comrades!  Shells, water!"
+
+"Ow!  You hit a soldier!"
+
+"Bad aim, Bassia!"
+
+"The legionaries!  Scatter!"
+
+The centurion at the head of a column now appeared, with his brasses
+dripping with dirty water, threw up his sword and shouted.  The column
+flung itself out of line and went into the mob with pilum butt or point
+as the spirit urged.
+
+Pell-mell, tumbling, screaming, scrambling, the wharf-litter fled,
+parting in two bodies as it passed Agrippa's demoralized group, one
+half plunging off the masonry on the sands or into the water, the other
+scattering out over the great expanse of dock.  The soldiers pressed
+after, and, following in the space they had cleared, came a chariot, a
+legate in full armor driving, his charioteer crouching on his haunches
+in the rear of the car.
+
+His apparitors brought up against Agrippa's party.  They did not
+hesitate at the rank of the strangers; it was part of the blockade.
+Eutychus took to his heels and Silas went down under a blow from a
+reversed javelin.  Agrippa, besmirched with the missiles of his late
+assailants and blazing with fury, breasted the soldiers and cursed them
+fervently.  Two of them sprang upon him, and Cypros, screaming wildly,
+threw off her veil and seized the foremost legionary.
+
+The legate pulled up his horses and looked at the struggle.  Cypros'
+bared face was presented to him.  With a cry of astonishment, he threw
+down the lines and leaped from the chariot.
+
+"Back, comrades!" he shouted, running toward them.  "Touch her not!
+Unhand the man!  Ho!  Domitius, call off your tigers!"
+
+"How now, Flaccus!" Agrippa raged.  "Is this how you receive Roman
+citizens in Alexandria?"
+
+The legate stopped short and his face blackened.
+
+"Agrippa, by the furies!  I knew the lady, but--" with a motion of his
+hand he seemed to put off his temper and to recover himself.  "Tut,
+tut!  Herod, you will not waste good serviceable wrath on an
+Alexandrian uproar when you have lived among them a space.  They are no
+more to be curbed than the Nile overflow, and are as natural to the
+place.  But curse them, they shall answer for this!  Welcome to
+Alexandria!  Beshrew me, but the sight of your lady's face makes me
+young again!  Come, come; bear me no ill will.  Be our guest, Herod,
+and we shall make back to you for all this mob's inhospitality.  Ah, my
+lady, what say you?  Urge my pardon for old time's sake!"
+
+He turned his face, which filled with more sincerity toward Cypros than
+was visible in his voluble cordiality to Agrippa.  Cypros, supported by
+the trembling Drumah, put her hand to her forehead and tried to smile
+bravely.
+
+"But thou hast saved us, noble Flaccus; why should we bear thee ill
+will?  Blessed be thou for thy timely coming, else we had been killed!"
+
+Agrippa, still smoldering, with Silas at his feet, alternately brushing
+the prince's dress and rubbing his bruises, took the word from Cypros.
+
+"What do Roman citizens, arriving in Alexandria, and no proconsul to
+meet them?  Perchance Rome's sundry long missing citizens have been
+lost here!" intimated Agrippa.
+
+"Ho, no!  They never kill except under provocation.  Yet I shall have a
+word with the wharf-master and the prætor.  But come, have my chariot,
+lady.  Apparitor," addressing one of his guards, "send hither
+conveyance for my guests!"
+
+"Thy pardon and thanks, Flaccus," Agrippa objected shortly, "we are
+expected by the alabarch."
+
+"Then, by the Horæ, he should have been here to meet you.  Forget him
+for his discourtesy and come with me.  Beseech your husband, sweet
+lady; you were my confederate in the old days."
+
+She smiled, in a pleased way.  "But we did not inform the alabarch when
+we expected to arrive," she answered.  "He hath not failed us."
+
+"And perchance," Agrippa broke in, "it might disturb Alexandria again
+to know that the proconsul had entertained Jews!"
+
+"Still furious!" Flaccus cried jocosely.  "Oh, where is that elastic
+temper which made thee famous in youth, Herod?  But here are our
+curricles; at least thou wilt permit me to conduct thy party to the
+alabarch's."
+
+It was the bluff courtesy of a man who assumes polish for necessity's
+sake, and suddenly envelopes himself with it, momentarily for a
+purpose.  Agrippa, looking up from under his brows, glanced critically
+at the proconsul's face for some light on his unwonted amiability, but,
+failing to discover it, submitted with better grace to the Roman's
+offers.
+
+The proconsul was near Agrippa's age, and on his face and figure was
+the stamp of unalloyed Roman blood.  He was of average height, but so
+solidly built as to appear short.  His head was round and covered with
+close, black curls; his brows were straight thick lines which met over
+his nose, and his beardless face was molded with strong muscles on the
+purple cheek and chin.  He was powerful in neck and arm and leg, and
+prominent in chest and under-jaw.  Yet the brute force that published
+itself in all his atmosphere was dominated by intellect and giant
+capabilities.
+
+He was Flaccus Avillus, Proconsul of Egypt, finishing now his fourth
+year as viceroy over the Nile valley.  One of the few who stood in the
+wintry favor of Tiberius, the imperial misanthrope of Capri, his was
+the weightiest portfolio in all colonial affairs; his state little less
+than Cæsar's.
+
+Wherever he walked, industry, pleasure and humankind, low or lofty,
+stood still to do him honor.  So, when he headed a procession of
+curricles and chariots up from the wharves of Alexandria, he did not go
+unseen.  Many of the late disturbers watched with strained eyes and
+gaping mouths and saw him turn his horses into the street which was the
+first in the Regio Judæorum, and not a few stared at one another and
+babbled, or pointed taut or shaking fingers at the prodigy.  Flaccus,
+the most notorious persecutor of the Jews among the long list of
+Egyptian governors, was visiting the Regio Judæorum escorting Jews!
+
+The sight created no less wonder and astonishment under the eaves of
+the Jewish houses, and throughout their narrow passages, but there was
+no demonstration.  Each retired quietly to his family, or to his
+neighbor, and gravely asked what new trickery was this.
+
+But Agrippa's party, following their conductor, proceeded through the
+less densely settled portion of the quarter into a district where the
+streets opened up into a stately avenue, lined by the palaces of the
+aristocratic Jews of Alexandria.
+
+Before one, not in the least different from half a dozen surrounding
+it, their guide halted.  The residence was square, with an unbroken
+front, except for a porch, the single attribute characteristic of
+Egypt, and the window arches and parapet relieved the somber masonry
+with checkered stone.  The flight of steps leading up to the porch was
+of white marble.
+
+One of the proconsul's apparitors knocked and stiffly announced his
+mission to the Jewish porter that answered.  Immediately the master of
+the house came forth, followed by a number of servants to take charge
+of the prince's effects.
+
+The master of the house, Alexander Lysimachus, alabarch of Alexandria,
+was a Jew by feature and by dress, but sufficiently Romanized in
+disposition to propitiate Rome.  He wore a cloak, richly embroidered,
+over a long white under-robe; and the magisterial tarboosh, with a
+bandeau of gold braid, was set down over his fine white hair.  His
+figure was lean and aged, a little bent, but every motion was as steady
+as that of a young man, and his air had that certain ease and grace
+which mark the courtier.
+
+His first quick glance sought Flaccus, for the visit was without
+precedent and highly significant.  But there was neither hauteur nor
+suspicion in his manner.  The bluff countenance of the proconsul showed
+a little expectancy, but there was even less to be seen on the Jew's
+face that should betray his interpretation of the visit.  The
+magistrates bowed, each after his own manner of salutation--the Jew
+with oriental grace, the Roman with an offhand upward jerk of his head
+and a gesture of his mailed hand.
+
+"Behold your guests, Lysimachus," Flaccus said, "or what is left of
+them after an encounter with the rabble at the wharf.  You should have
+been there to meet them."
+
+"So I should, had I been forewarned," the alabarch explained, the
+peculiar music of the Jewish intonation showing in mellow contrast to
+the Roman's blunt voice.  "What!  Is this how the accursed vermin have
+used you!"
+
+He put out his old waxen hands to the prince and searched his face.
+
+"O thou son of Berenice!" he said softly.  "Welcome to the worshiping
+hearts of Jews, once more."
+
+"Thanks," replied Agrippa, embracing the old man.  "My latest adventure
+with Gentiles has well-nigh persuaded me to remain there!"
+
+"God grant it; God grant it!  And thy princess?"
+
+Cypros had uncovered her face and was reaching him her hands.
+
+"Mariamne!" he exclaimed in a startled way.  "Mariamne, as I live!"
+
+Flaccus, who had fixed his eyes on Cypros the instant her veil was
+lifted, started.
+
+"Mariamne!  The murdered Mariamne!" he repeated.
+
+"Ah, sir!" the alabarch protested, smiling.  "Thou wast not born then.
+But I knew her: as a young man I knew her!  But enter, enter!  Pray
+favor us with thy presence at supper, noble Flaccus.  It shall be an
+evening of festivity."
+
+He led them through a hall so dimly lighted as to appear dark after the
+daylight without, and into one of the noble chambers characteristic of
+the opulent Orient.  The whole interior was lined with yellow marble,
+and the polish of the pavement was mirror-like.  The lattice of the
+windows, the lamps, the coffers of the alabarch's records, the layers
+for the palms and plantain, the clawed feet of the great divan were all
+of hammered brass.  The drapery at arch and casement, the cushions and
+covering of the divan were white and yellow silk, and, besides a
+sprawling tiger skin on the floor, the alabarch's chair of authority,
+and a table of white wood, there was no other furniture.
+
+The alabarch gave Flaccus his magistrate's chair, and, seating his two
+noble guests and their children, clapped his hands in summons.
+
+A brown woman, with eyes like chrysolite and the lithe movements of a
+panther, was instantly at his elbow.
+
+The alabarch spoke to her in a strange tongue, and the servant
+disappeared.
+
+"I send for my daughter," he explained to his guests.  "The
+waiting-woman does not understand our tongue.  My daughter--the only
+one I have, and unmarried!"
+
+"I remember her," Agrippa said with a smile.
+
+At that moment in the archway leading into the interior of the house a
+girl appeared.  She lifted her eyes to her father's face, and between
+them passed the mute evidence of dependence and vital attachment.
+
+She wore the classic Greek chiton of white wool without relief of color
+or ornament, a garb which, by its simplicity, intensified the first
+impression that it was a child that stood in the archway.  She was a
+little below average height, with almost infantile shortening of curves
+in her pretty, stanch outlines.  But the suppleness of waist and the
+exquisite modeling of throat and wrist were signs that proved her to be
+of mature years.
+
+Her hair was of that intermediate tint of yellow-brown which in adult
+years would be dark.  It fell in girlish freedom, rough with curls, a
+little below her shoulders.  There was a boyishness in the noble
+breadth of her forehead, full of front, serene almost to seriousness,
+and marked by delicate black brows too level to be ideally feminine.
+Her eyes were not prominent but finely set under the shading brow,
+large of iris, like a child's, and fair brown in color.  In their
+scrutiny was not only the wisdom of years but the penetration of a
+sage.  Though her tips were not full they were perfectly cut, and
+redder than the heart of any pomegranate that grew in the alabarch's
+garden.
+
+But it was not these certain signs of strength which engaged Agrippa.
+Beyond the single glance to note how much the girl had developed in
+four years he gave his attention to certain physical characteristics
+which called upon his long experience with women to catalogue.
+
+As she stood in the archway, the prince had let his glance slip down to
+her feet, shod in white sandals, and her ankles laced about with white
+ribbon.  One small foot upbore her weight, the other unconsciously, but
+most daintily, poised on a toe.  She swayed once with indescribable
+lightness, but afterward stood balanced with such preparedness of young
+sinew that at a motion she could have moved in any direction.  Foremost
+in summing these things, Agrippa observed that she was wholly
+unconscious of how she stood.
+
+"Terpsichore!" he said to himself, "or else the goddess hath withdrawn
+the gift of dancing from the earth!"
+
+"Enter, Lydia, and know the proconsul, the noble Flaccus," the alabarch
+said.  The girl raised her eyes to the proconsul's face and salaamed
+with enchanting grace.  Flaccus checked a fatherly smile.  He would
+wait before he patronized a girl-child of uncertain age.
+
+"And this," the alabarch went on, "thou wilt remember as our prince,
+Herod Agrippa."
+
+"Alas! sweet Lydia," Agrippa said, fixing soft eyes upon her.  "Must I
+be introduced?  Am I in four years forgotten?"
+
+"No, good my lord," she answered in a voice that was mellow with the
+music of womanhood--a voice that almost startled with its abated
+strength and richness, since the illusion of her youth was hard to
+shake off, "thou art identified by thy sweet lady!"
+
+Agrippa stroked his smooth chin and Flaccus shot an amused glance at
+him.  Meanwhile the girl had opened her arms to Cypros.  The children,
+one by one, greeted her.  The alabarch went on.
+
+"My sons are no longer with us," he said.  "They are abroad in the
+world, preparing themselves to be greater men than their father.  But
+go, be refreshed; it shall be an evening of rejoicing.  Lydia, be my
+right hand and give my guests comfort."
+
+He bowed the Herod and his family out of the chamber and they followed
+the girl to various apartments for rest and change of raiment.
+
+The alabarch turned to the proconsul.
+
+"If thou wilt follow me, sir--"
+
+"No; I thank thee; I shall return to my house and prepare for thy
+hospitality.  But tell me this: what does Agrippa here?"
+
+"He comes to borrow money, I believe."
+
+"Of you?"
+
+"Doubtless."
+
+"Put him off until you have consulted me.  He is not a safe borrower."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"--AS AN ARMY WITH BANNERS!"
+
+Agrippa emerged at sunset from his apartment and descended to the first
+floor of the alabarch's mansion.  The hall was vacant and each of the
+chambers opening off it was silent, so he wandered through the whole
+length of the corridor, composedly as a master in his own house.  No
+one did he see until he reached the end of the hall, when there
+appeared suddenly, as if materialized out of the gloom, the brown
+serving-woman.  The olive-green of her immense eyes glittered in the
+light of a reed taper she bore.  She stepped aside to let him pass and
+proceeded to light the lamps.
+
+Agrippa stopped to look at her, simply because she was lithe and
+unusual, but she continued without heeding him.  On one of the
+lamp-bowls the palm-oil had run over and the reed ignited it; but with
+her bare hand the woman damped it and went her way with a running flame
+flickering out on the back of her hand.
+
+"Perpol!" the prince exclaimed to himself as he rambled on.  "No wonder
+the phenix comes to Egypt to be born."
+
+At the end of a corridor he passed through an open door into a
+colonnade fronting a court-garden of extraordinary beauty.  It was
+carpeted with sod, interlined with walks of white stone which led at
+every divergence to a classic Roman exedra.  The awning which usually
+sheltered the inclosure from the sun had been rolled up and the cooling
+sky bent loftily over it.  The inert summer airs were heavy with the
+scent of lotus, red lilies and spice roses which were massed in an oval
+bed in the center.
+
+At that moment he caught sight of an indolent figure, half sitting,
+half lying in one of the sections of the exedra.
+
+He knew at first glance that it was not the alabarch's daughter, and,
+remembering that his last glance in the mirror after his servant had
+done with him had shown him at his best, he moved without hesitation
+toward the unknown.
+
+As he approached she raised her eyes and coolly scrutinized him.  Her
+face, thus lifted for inspection, showed him a woman in the later
+twenties, and of that type which since the beginning could look men
+between the eyes.  She was a Roman, but never in all the Empire were
+other eyes so black and luminous, or hair so glossy, or cheek so
+radiant.  Her face was an elongated oval, topping a long round neck,
+which broadened at the base into a sudden and exaggerated slope of
+marble-white shoulders.  The low sweep of the bosom, the girdle just
+beneath it, shortening the lithe waist, the slender hips, the long lazy
+limbs completed a perfect type, distinct and unlimited in its powers.
+
+For a fraction of a second the two contemplated each other; perhaps
+only long enough for each to confess to himself that he had met his
+like.  Then Agrippa came and sat down beside her, and she did not stir
+from her careless posture.  So many, many of the kind had each met and
+known that they could not be strangers.
+
+"The alabarch should turn his prospective son-in-law into his garden if
+he would speed the marrying of his daughter," the prince observed.
+
+"He hath the daughter, the garden, and the notion to dispose of her,"
+she answered, "but it is the son-in-law that is wanting."
+
+"But in my long experience with womankind," he replied, "it would not
+seem improbable to believe that it is the lady and not the lover that
+makes the witchery of the garden a wasted thing.  I have heard of
+unwilling maids."
+
+"Unwilling in directions," she replied with a smile, "and under certain
+influences.  For if there were any to withstand my conviction, I am
+ready to wager that there never lived a woman before whom all the world
+of men could pass without making her choice."
+
+"And perchance," he said promptly, "if there were any to withstand my
+conviction, I would wager that there never lived a man before whom the
+world of women could pass without making his choice,--again and again!"
+
+"Which declaration," she responded evenly, "publishes thee a married
+man; the single gallant declares only for one."
+
+"O deft reasoning! it establishes thee a Roman.  What dost thou here,
+in Alexandria where there is no court, no games, no senators, no
+Cæsar--naught but riots and Jews?"
+
+"Jews," she said, scanning a rounded arm to see if its rest on the back
+of the exedra had left a mark on it, "Jews are red-lipped, and eyed
+like heifers.  Sometimes brawn and force weary us in Rome; wherefore we
+go into Egypt or the East to seek silky and subtle devilishness."
+
+Agrippa moved along the exedra and looked into her eyes.  He saw there
+that peculiar expression which he had expected to find.  It was a set
+questioning, one that runs the scale from appeal to demand--the asking
+eye, the sign of continual consciousness of the woman-self and her
+charms.
+
+"Why make the effort?  Only tell us of the East that you want us and
+the East will come to you."
+
+"What?  Oriental love-philters, simitars, poisoning, silks and
+mysticism in the shadow of the Fora and within sound of the
+Senate-chamber?  No, my friend; we must hear the lapping of the Nile or
+the flow of the Abana, behold camels and priests, and the far level
+line of the desert, while we languish on bronze bosoms and breathe
+musks from oriental lips."
+
+"It is not then the Jews," he objected.  "They are a temperate, a
+passionless lot, that carry the Torah like hair-balances in their
+hearts to discover if any deed they do weighs according to the Law.
+No, Jews are a straight people.  Thou speakest of the--Arab!"
+
+She turned her eyes toward him and measured his length, surveyed his
+slender hands, and glanced at the warm brown of his complexion.
+
+"So?" she asked with meaning.  "An Arab?"
+
+He continued to smile at her.
+
+"And every Jew is thus minded?" she asked, observing later the
+unmistakable signs of Jewish blood in his profile.
+
+"Unless he is tinctured with the lawlessness of Arabia."
+
+"Ah!"  She moved her fan idly and looked up at the sky.
+
+"It is then, of a truth, the Arab, we seek," she added presently.  "The
+Arab that knows no manners but his fathers' manners; who eats, drinks,
+loves, hates and conquers after his own fashion."
+
+"Without having seen Jerusalem, or Rome?" he asked.
+
+"Rome!" she repeated, looking at him again.  "Yes, without having seen
+Rome or Jerusalem or Alexandria."
+
+Agrippa tilted his head thoughtfully.
+
+"Then, it is good only for a time--for as long as the surfeit of
+civilization lasts--which lasts no longer the moment one realizes the
+Arab is not devoted to the bath and that he counts his women among his
+cattle!"
+
+She laughed outright.  "I remember thou didst indorse him not a moment
+since!  Wherefore the change?"
+
+"Refinement in all things!  To get it into an Arab, he has to be
+modified by alien blood."
+
+"A truce!  I am in Alexandria; her poetic wickedness has not been
+entirely exhausted.  I--meet new, desirable things--daily!"
+
+Her fan was between them as she spoke and he took the stick of it just
+above where she held it and was putting it aside when the proconsul,
+resplendent in a tunic of white and purple, appeared in the colonnade.
+Beside him was Cypros in her Jewish matron's dress.
+
+Agrippa put the fan out of the way and made his answer.
+
+"Forget not that the East, whether Arab or Alexandrian, is
+intense--once won.  It might harass thee, if thou weariest of it,
+before it wearies of thee--even to the extreme of pursuing thee to
+Rome."
+
+The proconsul and the princess approached.  The deep-set eyes of the
+Roman wore a peculiarly satisfied look.
+
+"Men seek for stray cattle in the fields of sweet grass, look for lost
+jewels in the wallets of thieves, and missing Herods in the company of
+beautiful women," he observed.
+
+"It is good to have an established reputation, whether we be cattle or
+jewels or Herods," Agrippa laughed; "for, thou seest, we are disjointed
+and unsettled, seeing Flaccus now enduring a Jew, again attending a
+lady.
+
+"Again," said the beauty, "we mark the work of circumstances, which led
+us into difference just now, O thou disputatious."
+
+"Well said, Junia," the proconsul declared; "some ladies would make
+gallants out of the fiends!  Know ye all one another?" the proconsul
+continued.
+
+"Except my lovely neighbor," Agrippa replied.
+
+"The Lady Junia, daughter of Euodus, who with her father hath been
+transplanted here from Rome."
+
+In the colonnade Lydia, the daughter, appeared and beside her a man, by
+certain of the more obvious signs, of middle-age.  But when he drew
+closer the more obvious gave way to the indisputable testimony of
+smooth elastic skin, long lashes and strong, white, unworn teeth that
+the man was not yet thirty.  He was a little above medium height,
+spare, yet well-built except for a slight lift in the shoulders,
+beardless, colorless, with straight dark hair, bound with a classic
+fillet.  His general lack of tone brought into noticeable prominence
+the amiability and luster of his fine brown eyes.
+
+That he was a Jew was apparent no less by dress than by feature.  His
+Jewish garments differed only in color and texture from those worn by
+his fathers in Judea.  The outer gown was of light green scantly shot
+with points of gold.
+
+The pair walked slowly as if unconscious of the presence of others, and
+the attitude of the man, bending to look into Lydia's face as she
+walked, was clearly more attentive than ordinary courtesy demanded.
+
+"Approacheth Justin Classicus," said Flaccus.  "In that garment he
+looks much like a chameleon that has strayed across an Attic meadow in
+spring."
+
+"Behold, already the witchery of the garden!" Agrippa said softly to
+Junia.
+
+"This," added the proconsul, introducing the new-comer, "is Justin
+Classicus, the latest fashion in philosophers, the most popular Jew in
+Alexandria."
+
+Classicus bowed, glanced at Junia and again at Agrippa, and made a
+place for Lydia on the exedra, so that he might sit on a taboret at her
+feet.
+
+"What news, good sir," Agrippa asked, "among the schools over the
+world?"
+
+"News?" Classicus repeated.  "Nothing.  Philo is silent; Petronius is
+mersed in affairs in Bithynia; Rome's gone a-frolicking, scholars and
+all, to Capri."
+
+"Alas!" said Flaccus; "nothing happens now but scandal; even the
+ancient miracles of divine visitations, phenixes, comets and monsters
+have ceased."
+
+"But you say nothing of religion," said Classicus.  "Yet possibly it
+follows, now, in order."
+
+"After monsters, phenixes and the rest," put in Agrippa.
+
+"What is it?" Flaccus asked.
+
+"Perchance thou hast heard," Classicus responded.  "It issues out of
+Judea, which adds to its interest, since we are accustomed to nothing
+but sobriety from Palestine."
+
+"What is it?" Flaccus insisted.
+
+"A new Messiah!"
+
+"Oh," Agrippa cried wearily, "a new Messiah!  How many in the past
+generation, Cypros?  Ten, twenty, a hundred?  Alas!  Classicus, that
+thou shouldst serve up as new something which every Jew hath expected
+and discovered and rejected for the last three thousand years."
+
+"O happy race!" Junia exclaimed; "which hath something to which to look
+forward!  But what is a Messiah?"
+
+"A god," said Agrippa.
+
+"The anointed king," Cypros corrected hastily, "of godly origin that
+shall restore the Jews to dominion over the world!"
+
+"_Mirabile dictu!_" Junia cried.
+
+"Olympian Jove!" Flaccus exclaimed, smiting his muscular leg.  "What a
+task, what an ambition, what an achievement!  I behold Cæsar's dudgeon.
+Go on, Classicus; though it be old to thy remarkable race, used to
+aspiring to the scope of Olympus, let us hear, who have never wished to
+be more than Cæsar!"
+
+"It is not so much of the Messiah," Classicus responded, smiling, "as
+his--school, if it may be so called.  One of the followers appeared at
+the Library some time ago, perchance as long as three years ago--an
+Egyptian of the upper classes, much traveled, and told such a
+remarkable tale of the Messiah's birth and death that he instantly lost
+caste for truthfulness."
+
+"Alas!" Lydia exclaimed in a tone of disappointment.  "Why will they
+insist that the Messiah must be a miraculous creature, demeanored like
+the pagan gods and proceeding through the uproar of tumbling satrapies
+to the high place of Supreme Necromancer of the Universe!"
+
+"Sweet Lydia!" Agrippa protested.  "Roman hard-headedness hath turned
+thee against our traditions!"
+
+"But the Egyptian did not picture such a man," Classicus said very
+gently.  "He went to the other extreme, so far that his hearers had to
+contemplate an image of a carpenter's son, elected to a leadership over
+a horde of slaves and outcasts and visionary aristocrats; who taught a
+doctrine of submission, poverty and love, and who finally was crucified
+for blasphemy during a popular uproar."
+
+"It hath the recommendation of being different!" Lydia declared
+frankly.  "Tell me more."
+
+"There is no more."
+
+"What!  Is it dead?" she insisted.  "Dead as all the others?  Then it
+is different only in its inception."
+
+"No," said Agrippa thoughtfully; "it is not dead, but dying hard.  The
+Sanhedrim is punishing its followers in Jerusalem at present.  Thou
+rememberest, Cypros; Marsyas was charged with the apostasy."
+
+"So material as to engage the Sanhedrim?" Lydia pursued.
+
+"We hear," responded Classicus, "that Jerusalem and even Judea are
+unsafe for them, and numbers have appeared in the city of late--"
+
+"Among us?" Lydia asked.
+
+"No; in Rhacotis," replied Classicus; whereupon Flaccus raised an
+inquiring eye.
+
+"Is that the sect that the prefect has been warned to observe?" he
+demanded.
+
+"Doubtless; it seems that their foremost fault is rebellion against
+authority," Classicus made answer.  "So much for their doctrine of
+submission."
+
+"Tell us that," Lydia urged.
+
+"Apostasy," Agrippa answered for Classicus, "flagrant apostasy; for the
+Sanhedrim came out of the hall of judgment to stone an offender, for
+the first time in seven years.  I saw the execution; in fact, in a way
+I was brought close to the circumstances by a friend of the apostate
+who was attached to my household."
+
+"Is he with thee?" Flaccus asked pointedly.
+
+"No, we left him in Ptolemais.  But the note of their presence in
+Alexandria must have been sounded early, directly they arrived, for I
+departed from Jerusalem the day following the first movement against
+the sect, and thence to Ptolemais and Alexandria with ordinary
+despatch."
+
+"They did not announce themselves," Flaccus replied.  "Vitellius
+announced them.  He wants an Essene who is believed to be among them."
+
+Agrippa raised his head and looked straight at Flaccus.  He remembered
+that he had betrayed Marsyas' refuge.  Cypros drew in a breath of alarm.
+
+"That was simply done, Flaccus," Agrippa remarked coolly.
+
+The princess laid her hand on the ruddy flesh of the proconsul's arm.
+
+"We have been frank with thee, my lord," she said, "and thou art a
+noble Roman--therefore a safe guardian of our unguarded words."
+
+The others maintained a wondering silence.  Flaccus smiled.
+
+"Vitellius hath bidden me to look for him, adding with certain fervid
+embellishments that he hath sought everywhere but in Egypt and Hades.
+Vitellius is no diplomat.  Whistling finds the lost hound sooner than
+search."
+
+"But thou wilt not find him, noble Flaccus," Cypros besought in a
+lowered tone.  "Yield us thy promise that thou wilt not betray him!"
+
+"My promise, lady!  Indeed, I gave it in my heart a moment since.  Hear
+it now.  Alexandria is subject to thee.  Let him come and be our ward."
+
+"I shall depend on that," Agrippa said decidedly.  "For I shall
+despatch a servant for the man, the instant I can so do!"
+
+"And yet," Cypros insisted, still distressed, "if Vitellius requires
+him at thy hands, how shalt thou avoid giving him up?"
+
+Flaccus smiled at her with softened eyes.
+
+"O gentle lady, the day the young man should arrive, I shall set the
+prefect on the Nazarenes in Rhacotis.  If he be not found, none without
+this trustworthy circle shall have cause to believe that I am not in
+all conscience striving to help a brother proconsul run down a
+fugitive."
+
+"A shrewd strategy," Lydia said dryly, "but one rather costly for the
+Nazarenes."
+
+"The Nazarenes!  Who wastes tears over them?  Thine own straight people
+condemn them, lady."
+
+"An exhilarating recreation, indeed," she repeated as if to herself,
+"for the prefect, the rabble Alexandrians and the Nazarenes!  O seekers
+of esthetic sport, that will be a rare occasion!  Yield me thy promise,
+my Lord Agrippa, that thou wilt tell us the day the young man arrives!"
+
+Flaccus' face darkened for a moment, but at that moment the alabarch
+appeared in the colonnade.
+
+"Here comes our host," said Agrippa.  "Hast ordered the garlands,
+Lysimachus?"
+
+"The feast is prepared," Lysimachus replied, and, turning to Flaccus,
+continued: "Thou shalt see, now, good sir, how Jews feast.  In all
+thine experiences, thou hast never broken bread with a Jew."
+
+"Not so!" Flaccus retorted, "for I was present at the Lady Cypros'
+wedding-feast!"
+
+"Ho!  Flaccus remembering a wedding-feast!" Agrippa laughed, as he
+arose, taking Junia's hand.  "Mars, cherishing a confection!"
+
+"Perchance," Cypros ventured, pleased and coloring, "if Mars'
+confections were more plentiful and the noble Flaccus' wedding-feasts
+less rare, they both might forget the one!"
+
+"Never!" Flaccus declared, "though I were Hymen himself!"
+
+As they proceeded toward the colonnade, Cypros drew closer to him.
+
+"Thou canst not know what service thou hast done us by that promise,"
+she said.  "It is more than the youth's security; it means my husband's
+success.  For in this young man, we have found Fortune itself!"
+
+The proconsul made no answer, for his gray-brown eyes flickered
+suddenly as if a candle had been moved close by them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+FLACCUS WORKS A COMPLEXITY
+
+Near sunset the following day the alabarch appeared in the porch of the
+proconsul's mansion,--an incident which would speedily have spread
+wildly over the Brucheum had not the shrewd Lysimachus come in Roman
+dress, unostentatiously and hidden by the dusk.  The slave who
+conducted the visitor to the master's presence was suspicious, but he
+did not lapse from courtesy.  If he had prejudices they had to await a
+popular uproar for expression, and popular uproars at present against
+the Jews were manifestly in disfavor with the proconsul.
+
+Flaccus received the alabarch in the great gloom of his atrium.  The
+torches had not been lighted, the cancelli admitted only dusk.  The
+shadowy shape of the proconsul, relaxed in his curule, alone and
+immovable, thus surrounded by meditative atmosphere, suddenly appealed
+to the alabarch as out of harmony with the legate's blunt nature.
+
+As the Jew drew near, he saw rolls and parcels of linen and parchment,
+petitions and memorials, scattered about on the pavement, as if the
+Roman had let them roll off his table or drop from his hand
+unconsciously.  His elbow rested on the ivory arm of his curule, his
+cheek on his clenched hand.  The undimmed gaze of the Jewish magistrate
+detected lines in the hard face that he had never seen before.
+
+But Flaccus stirred and drew himself up to attention.
+
+"Come up, Lysimachus," he said.  "There is a chair here, for thee."
+
+The alabarch advanced and dropped into the seat that Flaccus had
+indicated.
+
+"This," he observed, nodding toward the dark torch at the proconsul's
+side, "would lead me to believe thou art inventing rhymes."
+
+"Or conspiracies.  Plots and poetry demand the same exciting dusk.
+Well, has the Herod sued?"
+
+"Not he, but his lady."
+
+"His lady!  By Hecate, the mystery is solved.  Thus it is that he hath
+been able to borrow every usurer poor from Rome to Damascus!"
+
+"He wins upon her virtue; but withhold thy interpretation of my words
+until I show thee what they mean.  She is beautiful and virtuous; a
+Herod and married--a conjunction of circumstances in these days so rare
+as to be out of nature--therefore, phenomenal.  So we toss our yellow
+gold into her lap in recognition of the entertainment she hath
+afforded--being unusual."
+
+"Virtuous; that means, faithful to the man she married.  No woman is
+faithful except she loves her love.  A just procession in the order of
+the Furies' reign.  The warm of heart, unrewarded; the unworthy,
+anointed and worshiped."
+
+"This melancholy twilight hath made thee morbid, Avillus.  You Romans
+take womankind too seriously."
+
+"When womankind or a kind of woman can drain the world's purse,
+methinks she is a serious matter.  What sum does she want?"
+
+"Three hundred thousand drachmæ."
+
+"O Midas; give her the touch!  Let all her possessions be gold!  Didst
+advance it to her?"
+
+"If thou wilt remember, it was thy command that I consult thee, first."
+
+"Temperate Jew!  To remember a consular suggestion, while a lovely
+woman, and a Herod at that, besought thee for the contents of thy
+purse.  Oh, thou art an old, old man, Lysimachus!"
+
+The alabarch laughed and frowned the next moment.
+
+"Beshrew the jest!  Men who make light of virtue deserve incontinent
+wives.  And there is this one thing apparent, which should make me
+serious.  The Herod is absolutely penniless, and I can not turn that
+tender woman and her babes out of doors to take the roads of Egypt."
+
+"Rest thee in that small matter.  Thou and I can spare her sesterces
+enough to ship her back to Judea."
+
+Lysimachus was silent for a moment.
+
+"She would not be satisfied," he said at last.  "She wants three
+talents, though she never had afterward a crust of bread.  It seems
+that they permitted a free-born man to pawn himself for that sum in
+Ptolemais and accepted the money from him!"
+
+"Shade of Herod!" the proconsul exclaimed.
+
+"It seems also that the man is in peril of the authorities, having
+placed himself in jeopardy to save Agrippa from Herrenius Capito, who
+had run Agrippa to earth for a debt he owes to Cæsar--"
+
+"O, that is the way of it!  I know of that man!  Well, then, perchance
+it is not so much because she loves her husband as because the debt to
+the pawned one chafes.  I hear that he is young and comely."
+
+"Forget the slanderous jest, Flaccus; I am ashamed of it.  What shall I
+do in this matter?"
+
+"Lend her three talents."
+
+"She would buy the man's freedom, but what then?  She would still be
+here in Alexandria as penniless as ever."
+
+"The consular suggestion, it seems, only held thee a moment in
+abeyance," the proconsul said slyly.  "She will get the three hundred
+thousand drachmæ, yet!"
+
+"She will not," the alabarch declared, "First, because I have it not;
+next, because I am not eager to pay a Herod's debts."
+
+"Or, chiefly, because thou shouldst never see it again."
+
+The alabarch tapped the pavement with his foot and looked away.  The
+attitude was confession to a belief in the proconsul's convictions.
+
+"What sum couldst thou lend by pinching thyself?" Flaccus asked
+presently.
+
+"Two hundred thousand drachmæ--but not to a Herod.  I could lose five
+talents without ruin."
+
+"Give her five talents, then; give it--do not slander a gift by calling
+it a loan."
+
+"What!  Toss an alms to a Herod?  They would throw it in my face!"
+
+"Jupiter! but they are haughty!"
+
+The alabarch made no answer and Flaccus looked out at the night
+dropping over his garden.
+
+"Why not hold the lady in hostage, here, for five talents?" he asked
+after a while.
+
+The alabarch looked startled; it was Roman extremes, a trifle too
+brutal for him to dress in diplomacy.  He demurred.
+
+"Not brutal, Lysimachus," Flaccus said earnestly.  "Herod can not use
+her well; it will be a respite from her long wandering and poverty.
+Thou canst say to her that the five talents are all thou canst afford.
+Tell her that it will do no more than beach them penniless in Italy;
+that thou hast a crust for Agrippa--will she starve him by eating half
+of it, herself?"
+
+Flaccus laughed at his own words, but perplexity came into the
+alabarch's face.
+
+"But why?" he asked.
+
+"Why?  Is it not plain to you?  Keep her so that Agrippa will in honor
+have to redeem her if ever he become possessed of five talents!"
+
+Now the alabarch laughed.  "I am not so sure.  Is it native in a Herod
+to love his wife so well?  It would be a bad mortgage for me to
+foreclose--one cast-off female whose chief uses are for tears!"
+
+"No, by Venus!  She is too comely to play Dido.  But try my plan,
+Alexander.  It is well worth the experiment."
+
+The alabarch arose and stepped down from the rostrum.  "It--it is--" he
+hesitated.  "But then, I should have them on my hands, under any
+circumstances."
+
+He took a few more steps, and paused for thought.
+
+"Well enough," he said finally, "we shall see."
+
+With a motion of farewell to the proconsul, he passed out and
+disappeared.
+
+Flaccus dropped back into his curule, and lapsed again into gloomy
+meditation.  The night fell and obscured him.  He seemed to be waiting,
+but not with marked impatience.
+
+Again the atriensis bowed before him.
+
+"A lady who says she was summoned," he said.
+
+"Let her enter.  And bid the lampadary light the torch, yonder, not
+here--and only one."
+
+The atriensis disappeared, and presently a slave with a burning reed
+set fire to the wick in one of the brass bowls by the arch into the
+vestibule, and Junia appeared.
+
+"Hither, and sit beside me, Junia," Flaccus called to her.
+
+He drew the chair closer, which the alabarch had occupied, and Junia,
+dropping off her mantle and vitta, sat down in it.
+
+"What a despot one's living is!" she exclaimed.  "But for the fact I
+owe my meat and wine to thy favor, thou shouldst have come to me,
+to-night, not I to thee!"
+
+"I came often enough at thy beck, Junia!  It were time I was visited!"
+
+"Thou ill-timed tyrant!  I am expected at a feast to-night, and my
+young gallant doubtless waits and wonders, at my house."
+
+"Let him wait!  I was his predecessor, and his better.  Methinks thou
+hast reduced thy standard of lovers of late."
+
+"No longer the man but the substance," she answered.  "In the old days
+it was muscle and front; now it is purse and position."
+
+"The first was love; the second calculation.  Why wilt thou marry this
+obscure young Alexandrian--whoever he be?"
+
+"To be assured of a living--to cast off the hand thou hast had upon me,
+thus long."
+
+He leaned nearer that he might look into her face.
+
+"So!" he exclaimed.  "Does it chafe, in truth?"
+
+She laughed.  "No," she said.  "Why should I prefer the provision of
+one man above another's?  Young Obscurity's authority over me, his
+wife, would be no less tyrannical than Flaccus'--my one-time dear."
+
+Flaccus took her hand and run his palm over her small knuckles.
+
+"_Eheu!_" he said.  "I shall not be happy to see thee wedded--"
+
+"Nor shall I; like the fabulous maiden who weeps on the eve of her
+marriage, I shall in good earnest heave a sigh over the days of my
+freedom.  Alas! the mind grows old young, that learns the fullness of
+life early.  There are as many ashes on my heart as there are in this
+bulging temple of thine, Avillus."
+
+"Dost thou love this--boy?  Beshrew him, let him have no name!"
+
+"How?  Dost thou love the usurer that lends thee money, Flaccus?"
+
+"What dost thou love, at all?" he asked.
+
+"Sundry old memories; perchance the image of a consul, less portly,
+less purple, less stiff--and less imposing!"
+
+"Pluto! am I like that?" he demanded.
+
+"To one that was thy dear in younger days.  To one who does not
+remember the sprightlier man, thou couldst be less charming."
+
+"Younger?  Now, how much younger?  Six years at most!  Thou hast not
+changed in that time; why should I?"
+
+"O Avillus; between the stage of the sun at noon and the previous hour,
+there is no appreciable change.  But mark the difference an hour makes
+at sunset.  But why this inquisition?  Has Eros pierced thee in a new
+spot?"
+
+"Pierced me twenty years ago and his arrow sticketh yet in the wound it
+made!"
+
+"What!  Spitted on an arrow during all those days thou didst love me?"
+
+"But Eros has arrows and arrows, of many kinds, and two diverse barbs
+may with all consistency find lodgment at once in a heart.  But of
+myself we may speak later; at present, I am moved to labor with thee
+for thine own welfare.  Why wilt thou marry this boy, for his purse,
+when there are men in pain for thy favor?"
+
+She studied him a moment.  "I can not take thee back, Flaccus; love's
+ashes can not be refired though the breath of Eros himself blew upon
+them."
+
+"Impetuous conclusion; hast thou forgotten the twenty-year-old wound
+which I confessed just now?  I am this moment only an arbiter for my
+better--my betters--"
+
+"I shall keep the twenty-year-old barb in mind," she said.  "Methinks
+it is that which pricks thee into activity for me."
+
+"A wiser surmise than the first.  But curb thy frivolous spirit; I am
+weighted with the business of the great.  What dost thou here, O
+divinity, away from Rome and the arms of Cæsar?"
+
+"Dost thou forget that we were invited away, because of my father's
+unfortunate preference of Sejanus, during the days of Sejanus'
+greatness?"
+
+"O Venus, can not the ban be lifted?  Behold,"--stretching out his
+muscular arm, "Flaccus is a strong man."
+
+"Even then, is Tiberius thy better in comeliness?  Perchance he would
+not please me."
+
+"I speak, now, to thy sordid self; but if thy maiden love of grace
+still lives in thee, there shall another serve thee.  Have I not said I
+indorse two?"
+
+"Two!"
+
+"Two.  Of Cæsar first.  His part in the bargain is really the smaller
+thing.  Thou, who couldst dint Flaccus' heart in Flaccus' stonier days,
+who upset Caligula's domestic peace, put gray hairs in Macro's
+forelock--all these in their doughty prime, methinks my poor doting
+ancient in Capri will fall like a city with a thousand breaches in its
+wall."
+
+"Oh, doubtless," she admitted; "but what of myself?  If thine impurpled
+countenance--for all it is as firm as cocoanut flesh--if thine
+impurpled countenance does not suit my Epicurean tastes, how shall I
+content myself with the toothless love-making of a mumbling Boeotian?"
+
+"Thou canst comfort thyself with a comely bankrupt on the gold of the
+toothless one."
+
+"It is complicated; too much duplication and detail," she objected.
+
+"Thou hast done it before," he declared.  "Thou art right expert."
+
+She laughed and leaned back in her chair.
+
+"Name me the comely one," she commanded.
+
+"Agrippa."  There was silence, in which she lifted her lowered eyes
+very slowly and faced him.  Amusement made small lines about her eyes,
+and in her face was worldly wisdom mingled with a sort of friendliness.
+
+"And now," she said in a quiet tone, "for the twenty-year-old wound.
+Is it the Lady Herod?"
+
+His gaze dropped; emotion put out the half-humor which had enlivened
+his face.  Presently he scowled.
+
+"I have twitched the barb," she opined; "the wound is sore."
+
+"Sore!" he brought out between clenched teeth.  "Sore!  I tell thee,
+that though it is twenty years since I stood and saw her bound to him
+by the flamens, I have not ceased day or night to suffer!"
+
+Junia looked at him with frank amazement on her face; the proconsul was
+declaring, with passion, a thing which she could not believe possible.
+Such love as she knew, by the carefulest tendance, would have burnt out
+and resolved into cold ashes in half that time.  That it should endure
+years, suffer discouragement, bridge distances and surmount obstacles,
+all uncherished and unrequited, was fiction, pure and simple.  Yet to
+reconcile this conviction with the honest suffering of the bluff man at
+her side was a task she could not attempt.
+
+"Flaccus, I never pained thee so," she murmured.  "Perchance the Jewess
+dropped madness from a philter in thy wine.  And for simple cruelty,
+too, for she is fond of her graceful Arab."
+
+The proconsul raised his head and looked at her with such speechless
+ferocity, that she shrank away from him, remembering former
+experiences.  But he dropped his head into his hands and did nothing.
+
+She watched him for a moment then ventured discreetly:
+
+"Is it thy wish to win him from her, or her from him?"
+
+"Both!" he answered.  "The one accomplished, the other follows!"  With
+a sudden accession of emotion, he laid his short, powerful fingers
+about her smooth wrist and bent over her.
+
+"Help me, Junia!" he besought.  "Weigh what I offer against the portion
+of any Alexandrian.  By the lips of Lysimachus, the richest man in the
+city, I know how little even he may waste--two hundred thousand
+drachmæ--the cost of a single necklace Cæsar might put about thy
+throat.  I never failed Tiberius; his esteem of me is great.  I have
+only to ask and the decree of banishment, or the sentence against thy
+father, shall be lifted.  Thou shalt return in honor to Rome; thy
+father shall be one of Cæsar's ministers, and thou shalt take thy place
+among the first of the patricians.  And Tiberius lays no bond of
+fidelity upon his ladies.  I saw thee, last night!  I saw thee run
+thine eyes along the Herod's sleek length--curse him, it was that which
+undid me!  I saw thy fancy incline toward him.  It will be a new and
+pleasant game for thee, Junia--a game in which thou art skilled--but it
+is my life--my very life to me!"
+
+She frowned at the jewels on her fingers.  There was no reason why she
+should not lend herself to Flaccus' schemes when her enlistment in his
+cause assured to her the realization of the highest ambitions of her
+kind.  But enough of the creature impulse toward perversity, admitting
+that his gain would be as great as hers, restrained her.  She was
+uncomfortable, uncertain, peevish.  Meanwhile, the proconsul's
+gray-brown eyes, large, intense, demanded of her.
+
+"Wait!" she fretted at last.  "Thou art hasty!  And perchance thou dost
+only make place for this mysterious fugitive for whom she was so
+solicitous last night!"
+
+He remembered his own jest with the alabarch, and added thereto the
+impatient surmise of this penetrative woman.  Could such a thing be
+possible?  He sprang to his feet, all the intensity of his emotion
+concentrated in a spasm of fury and menace.
+
+"Let him come!" he said between his teeth.  "Let him come!"
+
+She worked her hand loose from him.
+
+"Wait," she repeated.  "Thou hast built gigantically on no foundation.
+Let something happen.  And if I am pleased to follow thy plans, I may;
+but be assured if I am not, I will not.  My debt to thee is less than
+thy demands, Avillus."
+
+She arose and put on her mantle, while he stood watching her every
+movement.
+
+"I shall wait," he said presently, "only a little time."
+
+She made a motion of impatience and withdrew from the atrium.
+
+He stood motionless for a long time; then he called his atriensis.
+
+"Send hither the chief apparitor," he said.
+
+The captain of the proconsul's personal guard appeared and saluted.
+Flaccus, in the meantime, had searched through the documents on the
+floor and by the dim light identified one.
+
+"Take this," he said, handing the apparitor the parchment, "and make
+search for the man herein described.  Seek him in Ptolemais, wherever a
+Nazarene warren hides, in Jerusalem, in Alexandria--meet every incoming
+ship, spend the half of my fortune, wear out my army--but find him, or
+lose thy life!"
+
+The chief apparitor looked unflinching into the proconsul's gray-brown
+eyes.
+
+"I hear," he said.
+
+The proconsul waved his hand and the soldier withdrew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE HOUSE OF DEFENSE
+
+Meanwhile Marsyas lay on his straw pallet at the house of Peter, the
+usurer, in Ptolemais, night after night and made calculation.
+
+By fair winds, Agrippa should reach Alexandria in so many days.
+Allowing time to begin and complete the negotiations for a loan, so
+many more days should elapse.  Then the same number with a few allowed
+for foul weather would be required to return to Ptolemais.  About such
+a day, so many weeks hence, he told himself he should be ransomed.
+
+Six weeks is a long time for a free man to be enslaved.  He sighed and
+turned again on his pallet and trusted in the God who does not forget
+prayers.
+
+It was a strange, sordid biding of time for Marsyas.  The man he served
+was the first of the kind he had ever known.  The ascetic refinement of
+the white old Essene, the simple purity of Stephen, the polished rigor
+of the Pharisee Saul, the naïve sophistication of the Romanized Herod
+had constituted his social horizon, and he had come to believe that the
+world's manner was either cultured or simple.
+
+But he went into the usurer's counting-room to meet the borrowing
+world, to be amazed and shocked and finally to fortify himself to
+control it.
+
+It was not to change his nature; it was to develop latent powers in him
+that were the fruit of long generations of Judaism.  At night his
+fingers were soiled by contact with the coins, the counting-room had
+become noisome with the day's heat and the unhappy humanity that had
+come and gone through the busy hours.  But he summed up, not what he
+had sacrificed in soul-sweetness and optimism, for that was a loss he
+did not realize, but his triumphs in achieving whatever he had been
+bidden to do, in his mastery of men and things and in the thoroughness
+of his workmanship.  However loudly his mind declared that he was out
+of place, he felt no great repugnance to his duty.
+
+After the newness of his experience wore off, as it did in a very short
+time, the days began to go with wearing deliberation, as all days go
+that are counted impatiently.  His sorrow and his wrongs were his only
+companions; as his anxiety for his liberty and Agrippa's success
+increased, his healthy indifference to his unwholesome atmosphere began
+to decline rapidly, his resentment against his oppression to grow.  The
+six weeks ebbed out and passed.  His anxiety flowed into his bitterness
+and his bitterness into his anxiety until they were one.  Troubled
+about his liberty, he clenched his teeth and thought on Saul; thinking
+of his impotent position against the powerful Pharisee, he watched the
+harbor from the counting-room and trembled whenever a sail crossed it.
+
+Inactivity became eventually unbearable, for an unemployed moment was a
+miserable moment.  He could not devise a way to liberty, nor further
+aid his one ally into power, so he turned to his own resources against
+Saul.
+
+Continuing cautiously to visit the proseuchæ by night, he learned
+something, which he heard casually at the time, but which eventually
+developed into a matter of importance.  He heard that the Nazarenes
+were flying from Jerusalem in great numbers, scattering in bodies from
+Damascus to Alexandria, and from Jerusalem to Rome.  The rabbis of
+Ptolemais were concerned to discover that there was a community hiding
+in the city, because they feared the evils of a persecution,
+established in Ptolemais, as much as the influence of the apostasy upon
+the faithful.
+
+When Marsyas admitted casually to himself, after he had heard the
+tidings, that the apostasy must have numbers of followers, he was
+carried in his thinking to the realization that numbers meant strength
+and strength meant resistance.  Why, then, should not these people turn
+on the Pharisee?  Here, in a twinkling, he believed that he had
+discovered abettors, allies whom he could instantly enlist in his own
+cause.
+
+But before he could deduce resolution from this electrifying admission,
+events began to mark his days.
+
+Late one afternoon, after the time for his ransoming was out, a man
+approached the opening in the grating.  The shadows in the
+badly-lighted chamber made client and steward and all the appointments
+in the dingy counting-room imperfect shapes to the eye.  The new-comer
+leaned down to the opening and peered at Marsyas as he pushed a fibula
+of gold through the opening.
+
+"I am in need," the man said.  "Canst thou not give me the value of
+this in money?"
+
+The voice was resonant and strangely familiar to Marsyas.  In the gloom
+the great lifted shoulders of the man, bending from his height, brought
+back on a sudden the chamber in the college at Jerusalem.  The young
+Essene came closer to the grating and looked at the applicant.
+
+There was a mutual start of recognition; in Marsyas perhaps the chill
+that a fugitive feels who finds himself detected.  The man was the
+Rabbi Eleazar.
+
+"Thou!  Here, with them?" the rabbi exclaimed in a suppressed whisper.
+
+"I am here, Rabbi," Marsyas replied, "but alone."
+
+Eleazar looked at him, but the examination under the difficulty of the
+gloom was not satisfactory; besides, there was the stir of others who
+had come in behind him and were able to listen.  Marsyas swept the
+fibula into one of the coin-baskets and passed a handful of silver to
+the rabbi.
+
+"Meet me without at the end of the first watch to-night," the rabbi
+added, as he thanked Marsyas.  "Do not fear me, for I am also a victim
+of thine enemy."
+
+Marsyas saluted him, and the rabbi disappeared.  A figure in armor
+stepped up to the place where Eleazar had stood.  He was helmeted and
+greaved and had a line of purple about the hem of his short tunic.  He
+applied for a loan and yielded as indorsement the favor of Cæsar and
+the family name of Aulus.  Marsyas withdrew hastily into the
+overhanging shadow of the grating, received the officer's note, counted
+out the gold and drew in a free breath when another stepped into his
+place.  It was Vitellius' legionary.
+
+"Am I run to earth?" Marsyas asked himself.
+
+At the end of the first watch that night he prepared to follow
+Eleazar's suggestion, if only to discover what to expect.  That he was
+not filled with confidence nor resigned to suffer what might befall him
+was evident by his slipping a knife into his belt when he made himself
+ready.
+
+He went out into the unlighted street and looked about him for Eleazar.
+The tall figure of the rabbi emerged from the darkness a moment after
+Marsyas appeared and approached the young man.
+
+"Have no fear," the rabbi said.  "We are common victims of the same
+unjust suspicion; let us not be suspicious of each other."
+
+"Thy words are fair, Rabbi, but I do not know thee.  Whom I most
+trusted hath failed me of late; it must follow then that I am not sure
+of strangers.  Tell me first thy business with me."
+
+"I am Eleazar, the rabbi, who sat with Saul in the college that day
+when Joel, the Levite, came with news of Stephen of Galilee."
+
+"I know that; also that thou knowest that Saul oppresses me.  Thou art
+a rabbi and zealous for the Law.  Art thou sent for me on Saul's
+mission?"
+
+"No, brother."
+
+"Or the proconsul's?"
+
+"I know nothing of the proconsul; I am here, driven from Jerusalem by
+Saul who charged me with apostasy because I would not aid him in his
+oppression."
+
+For a moment Marsyas was dumb with amazement.
+
+"He is mad!" he cried when speech came to him.
+
+"Is it madness when he persecutes others, but villainy when he
+oppresses thee?" Eleazar demanded.
+
+"I pray thy pardon," Marsyas said quickly, "if I seem to miscall his
+work.  It might follow in reason that he should accuse me, but
+thou--thou a rabbi, accepted before the Law and clean-skirted before
+all Judea--that he should accuse thee of apostasy seems to be the work
+of no sane man."
+
+"But it is!  He layeth plans keen as Joshua's who warred under God's
+banner, and he striketh with the strength of an army.  Unless he is
+stayed he will devastate to the end!"
+
+Marsyas came close and laid a hand on the rabbi's shoulder.
+
+"What of Stephen?" he asked with stiffened lips.  "How did it come to
+pass?"
+
+For a moment there was silence, and then the rabbi drew up and shook
+himself.
+
+"It will not help thee, young brother," he said, with an impatience
+which was only fortification against feeling.  "It is ill enough to
+take a blasphemer and deliver him up to punishment; ask no more, for it
+wrenches me to think of it."
+
+Marsyas stood frozen; he did not want to hear more, after the rabbi had
+spoken, but when the reviving current of life stirred in his veins, it
+was turned to a fever for vengeance.  Now!  Not to wait for safety, or
+for circumstances or for men or things.  It seemed that he should not
+eat or sleep till his work was done.
+
+Eleazar, seeking to turn the current of the young man's thoughts, which
+he believed, being unable to see his face, must be sorrowfully
+retrospective, asked presently:
+
+"Art thou here with--them?"
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"The Nazarenes."
+
+Marsyas seized the rabbi's shoulder with a fresh grasp.
+
+"Where are they?" he demanded.
+
+"Dost thou--in truth, dost thou not know?" he demanded.
+
+"Accused though I am, I am a good Jew, Rabbi.  Never until now have I
+wished to know where they house themselves.  But even were it the
+powers of darkness which alone could help me, now, I should not
+hesitate!  Where are these apostates?"
+
+"Here, in Ptolemais.  What wilt thou have of them, Marsyas?"
+
+"Were not heathen and idolaters instruments for the Lord's work?  Have
+not even the beasts of the fields served His ends?"
+
+"What dost thou meditate?"
+
+"Saul's undoing!"  Eleazar heard him thoughtfully and answered after a
+silence.
+
+"So be it, then; if thou choosest that spirit, it must serve.  Thou
+hast a dead friend to avenge and I, the guiltless oppressed to justify.
+So the one end, the prevention of Saul's work, be attained, what matter
+if the spirit be mine or thine!"
+
+"Well enough; the means, then!  Where are these Nazarenes?"
+
+"They--they meet on the water-front, nightly, since the oppression hath
+been instituted against them," Eleazar answered reluctantly, as if he
+doubted the propriety of betraying a knowledge of the apostates' habits.
+
+"Nightly!" Marsyas repeated.  "So then to-night!  Where is the place?
+We will go there!"
+
+Eleazar stood undecided and debated with himself.  But the pressure of
+the young man's impelling firmness assumed material force against him
+and he yielded doubtfully.
+
+"Come, then," he said, and his hesitation melted in the face of the
+other's decision.
+
+Marsyas put himself at the rabbi's side and together they tramped
+through the dark streets toward the poorer districts of Ptolemais,
+along the harbor.  It was poor indeed; the houses were the smallest in
+the city, low, square boxes of sun-dried earth little higher than a
+man's head and mere stalls for space and comfort.  Each, however, had a
+numerous tenantry, and wherever doors were opened the two men saw
+within, now Jews, now Greeks or Romans.  Although uproar and disorder
+common in the lower walks of the city went on in the environments, the
+particular passage Marsyas and the rabbi walked was quiet though not
+deserted.  But it was a veritable black well, that maintained a swift
+slope for many rods and indicated the proximity to the water.
+
+"How found you them, in this hole?" Marsyas asked, astonished, in spite
+of his intent thoughts, at the black labyrinth.
+
+"I, too, was in hiding for my life's sake," Eleazar answered.
+
+The brooding cornices of the houses, visible against the strip of
+starry sky, rounded suddenly and closed in upon the passage.  Marsyas
+saw that they were nearing a blind end, when a door opened in the
+cul-de-sac, disclosing several other men preceding Marsyas and the
+rabbi.
+
+"Haste!" Eleazar whispered, and, seizing Marsyas' hand, ran so that
+they reached the lighted doorway before it closed again.
+
+They entered with the others, and the bolts were shot behind them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+SCATTERING THE FLOCK
+
+They were in a single large chamber, rough, barren and barn-like.  The
+gray drapery of cob-webs was sown with chaff; there was the fresh smell
+of grain with the mustiness of dust contending for prominence; the
+floor was dry packed earth that had not tasted rain for a century.
+High above the few resin torches burning on the walls, huge cedar beams
+traversed the ceiling which was tight, that no moisture nor the
+consuming rays of the sun should enter.  It was an abandoned grain
+house, builded just without the reach of the highest storm-wave on the
+water-front.
+
+There were two or three benches, but not seating capacity for the
+number gathered there.  So the youths, women and children sat on the
+earth along the walls and left the benches to the older men of the
+assembly.
+
+Marsyas glanced at the gathering.  He saw there not one, but many
+races, however Jewish in predominance.  In most of the number he found
+a common expression, which made him think.  It was a certain
+delineation of fortitude, a brave patience that does not forswear
+persistence, however seriously the heart fears.  In others, there were
+curiosity and expectation; in still others, apprehension and suspicion.
+These, he noted, seemed not to wear that look of uplift; intuitively,
+he knew them to be investigators, more or less convinced, at the
+moment.  Others, he saw, came with bundles of belongings as if prepared
+for a journey.
+
+Eleazar selected a place by the door and signing to Marsyas that he
+would sit and await the young Essene's will, dropped down on the packed
+earth, and, drawing up his powerful limbs, clasped his arms around
+them.  The torch above his head threw the shadow of his projecting
+kerchief over his face and hid his features.
+
+There was space between him and the next sitter, a young woman wearing
+the dress of a Jewish matron.  She glanced uneasily at the huge
+stranger and drew closer to a man of her own age, on the other side.
+Marsyas, seized with a new interest, sat down between the rabbi and the
+woman.
+
+At the farther end of the building a man arose.  He had a pilgrim's
+scrip at his side; he put away a staff as he gained his feet, and the
+heightened color of the brown on his cheek-bones and his nose showed
+that he had but recently come from a long journey.
+
+He raised his arms over the assembly, and each of those gathered there
+bowed his head and clasped his hands.
+
+"O patient Bearer of the Cross," he prayed, "let us not faint thus
+soon--we who are driven on!  Let Thy footsteps be illumined that we may
+go Thy way, even though they lead unto Calvary!  Teach us Thy
+submission, quicken us with Thy love, clothe us with Thy charity, that
+they who oppress us may see that submission is stronger than rebellion,
+that love is more enduring than hate, that charity is broad enough for
+our enemies.  And if it be Thy will that we should love the spoiler of
+Thy Church and the destroyer of Thy saints, teach us then to love that
+enemy!"
+
+This of a surety was not what Marsyas had expected to hear.
+Undoubtedly the praying man spoke of Saul.  The prayer continued.
+
+"Lo, Thou hast tarried thus long away from us, and evil already
+gathereth thick about Thy people.  In those days, when we asked and
+were answered, voice unto voice, we did not grope.  Now, O Lord, we ask
+and there answers but the speech of faith left in us, and that in
+grievous hours--doth not bid the cup to pass from us!"
+
+Marsyas' chin sank on his breast; somehow the faltering sentences fell
+on some keenly sensitive spot in his soul, for in spirit he winced, and
+listened intently, in spite of himself.
+
+"Yet, judge us not as wavering, O Lord; we but miss Thee from our side,
+who loved Thee, O Christ!"
+
+The sentence ceased suddenly at the edge of a break in the voice.  It
+seemed that human sorrow had broken in on an inspiration, and the sound
+of a sob arose here and there from the bowed circle of Nazarenes.
+
+Marsyas suddenly saw the dark trampled space without Hanaleel, the
+falling night, the still figure of Stephen stretched on the sand, the
+three humble mourners who of all Jerusalem were not afraid to sorrow
+for him, and the young Essene choked back a cry to the praying man,
+
+"I know thy pain, brother!"
+
+For that instant bond of sorrow it did not matter that, according to
+Marsyas' lights, the praying man blasphemed and besought another than
+the one Lord God as divinity.  The Nazarene had loved a friend and lost
+him from his side; the voice had ceased and, in place of the warm
+content, only agony and emptiness abode in the heart.
+
+"Show us Thy will; let us see and we shall follow; above all things
+quicken our ears that Thy loved voice may still be sweet in them across
+the boundaries of Death and through the darkness which embraceth our
+heads.  Lo, Thou art with us alway even unto the end, we believe, we
+believe!"
+
+There was too much human suffering, self-examination and beseeching in
+the prayer for it to help any who heard it.  It was not like Stephen's
+prayers, which had seized upon Marsyas' spirit because of their
+unshaken confidence and beatification, and had terrified him, as
+assaults upon his steadfastness.  In those moments, he had been afraid
+of the Nazarene heresy; now, he was stirred to pity for the heretics.
+The sensation added to his resolution against Saul.
+
+Another voice roused him, by reason of its difference from that of the
+first speaker.  It was not loud, but it carried and penetrated every
+dusty corner of the great space, with the strength and evenness of a
+sounded horn.  The temper as well as the quality was different; it was
+triumphant, eager, glad.
+
+"It is the hour of fulfilment, beloved; the accomplishment of the
+prophecy, for by persecution shall we who are witnesses to the truth be
+scattered into all the world that the gospel may come unto every
+creature.  The flesh in us which crieth out and feareth death shall be
+the instrument whereby fleeing to save ourselves we shall go quickened
+into distant lands and testify.  Wherefore let not any soul lament this
+day nor denounce the circumstance which sendeth him into strange places
+and unto the Gentile.  Ye were not charged to save your flesh but to
+save your souls.  And whosoever saveth his soul hath Christ in his
+bosom and Christ on his tongue; wherefore the Redeemer is not dead and
+buried, nor even passed from among you, but living and preaching
+numerously, by many tongues.  Doubt not ye shall have your Gethsemane
+and your Calvary, yet likewise ye shall arise from the dead and enter
+into Paradise.  The oppressor shall persecute, the rod hang over you,
+the Cross be set up, but though ye go forth unweaponed ye shall level
+walls and throw down tyrants by the power of love; ye shall conduct
+peace and mercy through the flights ye make from oppression, and Life
+everlasting shall begin where your hour is accomplished and ye die.
+
+"If there be any among you who are timid in flesh that say in their
+souls, 'Let us find a secure place and live secretly and in godliness
+away from the abominations of the wicked,' verily I say unto such, if
+the world were precious enough unto the Son of God that He suffered
+death to save it, it is not too evil for the habitation of them who
+were in sin and ransomed by His sacrifice.
+
+"If there be those among you given to wrath and vengeance who shall
+say, 'Let us fall upon the oppressor and put him to death,' verily I
+say unto such if the Son of God, who was despised and rejected of men,
+who raised the dead and cleansed lepers, directed not His powers to
+punishment and havoc, how shall ye, who are but lately lifted out of
+sin and damnation?
+
+"Ye are ministers of peace and love and humility.  Go forth and testify
+to these things in His name, and I who stand before you, elected of Him
+whom ye follow to speak His word, I say unto you that if ye testify
+faithfully, no persecutor shall triumph over you, no power shall
+overthrow you, no evil shall prevail against your souls!"
+
+This was not the spirit Marsyas would select to aid him in his
+punishment of Saul; it was an alien doctrine opposed to nature; but he
+did not doubt the preacher's sincerity.  His utterances were not
+strange to the ears that had listened with such fear to Stephen.  But
+it seemed that one in the assembly was not satisfied.
+
+"Yet the saints perish by the persecutor," the man spoke.  "Behold
+Stephen is martyred already in Jesus' name."
+
+Marsyas' eyes sought out the speaker; he was one of the unconvinced who
+sat apart and had become perplexed.
+
+"O my brother, when was it said unto thee by the teachers of Christ
+that death is the end?  I saw Christ on the cross; on the third day I
+saw Him living in the council of the apostles.  The powers of evil
+pursued Him only to the tomb; there began the dominion of God, and He
+ascended unto Heaven and to eternal life.  Believest thou this?  Thy
+face sayeth me 'yea'; is it not written that they who believe on Him
+shall share each and all of His blessings?  Wherefore, though Stephen
+died, he liveth triumphant over his enemies; so shall ye, who are
+faithful unto the end."
+
+"But--but," the man objected, troubled, "is the Church to perish, thus,
+one by one?  If we die in this generation, who shall gather the harvest
+of the Lord?"
+
+"'Whoso would save his life shall lose it,' said the Master.  Is it
+part of faith to fear that evil will triumph?  Wilt thou hold off Life
+eternal that thou mayest bide a little longer in such insecurity as
+this life?  And I tell thee that the fear of the adversary is awakened,
+and the strength of his forces is aroused.  We measure by his rage
+against the elect his fear of Christ prevailing.  No man leadeth forth
+an army with banners against that which is weak and which he fears not.
+Jesus, on whom thou believest, said, 'I have overcome the world.'  Know
+then that the Church can not perish; that the persecutor rageth
+futilely; that the oppressor fighteth against the Lord.  Doubt no
+longer, lest thy doubt become a fear that an enemy shall overthrow God!"
+
+The young man who sat by the woman at Marsyas' side spoke next.
+
+"I am submissive, Rabbi; yet, how far shall we fly?  I am the
+bridegroom of Cana at whose marriage the Lamb was.  When He changed
+water into wine He turned my heart into wondering, and from wondering
+into belief.  But the sentence of wandering hath driven me out of Cana,
+out of Galilee, out of Judea into Syria.  How far shall we flee, Rabbi?"
+
+"We, too, are driven," many broke in at once.  "Few here are citizens
+of Ptolemais; we have left our homes and have fled far.  How long must
+we go on?"
+
+"As far as God's creatures fare; as far as the Word hath not
+penetrated," was the answer.
+
+The faces of many fell, tears stood in the eyes of others, and still
+others murmured wearily.  The sun-browned pilgrim who had prayed and
+who had leaned with a shoulder and his head against the wall, while the
+teacher spoke, raised himself.
+
+"My heart goeth out in pity for you," he said sorrowfully.  "Behind you
+the consuming fire, before you the overwhelming sea.  I am newly come
+from Jerusalem; I know what awaits you if ye fly not.  Even the Gentile
+can not be worse than he who breathes out threatenings and slaughter
+against you, in the name of the Law.  Fare forth; the world can not be
+worse; it may be kindlier."
+
+Marsyas observed this man; in him was more promising material for his
+work than in the preacher.  But the preacher looked over the
+congregation, by this time bowed and filled with distress.
+
+"It is your Gethsemane," he said, turning the pilgrim's declaration
+into comfort, "but He sleepeth not while ye pray."
+
+Marsyas looked over the congregation and saw here and there strong
+faces and bold, to whom the ordinance of submission must have been a
+bitter ordinance.  He arose.
+
+"I behold that this is a council, in which men may speak," he said.  "I
+take unto myself the privilege, as one akin to you in suffering if not
+in faith."
+
+His voice commanded by its Essenic calmness.  Every eye turned toward
+him.  They saw the habiliments of a slave covering the stature and
+dignity of a doctor of Laws.  The preacher looked interested, and the
+congregation stirred toward the young man.
+
+"By the words of your teacher," he continued, "I see that ye are
+summoned here to be banished.  I see your reluctance; I know your
+sorrow, for I, too, have been driven on, even by your enemy."
+
+"Who art thou, young friend?" the preacher asked.
+
+"I am an Essene."
+
+"An Essene!" many repeated, stirred into wonder at knowledge of the new
+apostleship.
+
+"As was John the Baptist!" one declared.
+
+"Nay, then;" a voice rose out of the comment, "thou shalt be kin to us
+in faith so thou acceptest Jesus of Nazareth."
+
+"Let us lay aside the discussion of doctrine, in which we can not
+agree," the young man went on, "and unite in our cause against Saul of
+Tarsus."
+
+The kindly eyes of the preacher became paternal as he gazed at the
+hardness growing in the young man's face.
+
+"Our cause," he said gently, "is not Saul of Tarsus, but Jesus Christ."
+
+"Are ye sincere in your boast that ye will not defend yourselves?"
+Marsyas demanded.
+
+"What need, young brother?  God defends us."
+
+"Well enough; but what of the persecutor?"
+
+"God will overtake him."
+
+"When?  When he hath desolated Israel, stained the holy judgment hall
+with tortured perjury, slandered the Jews before the world as slayers
+of the innocent?  Your talk is all of the life hereafter; I, too,
+expect to live again; yet I am here to come and go at God's will, not
+Saul's!  Even ye, in all your infatuation, will not call Saul's work
+God's work!  I will not be driven and desolated by Abaddon!"
+
+He did not wait for the preacher, who seemed prepared to speak.
+
+"I was the friend of Stephen, of whom ye spoke with love to-night.
+Saul consented unto his death in spite of my prayers for him, and
+before I could save him.  When I rebuked Saul for his bloody zeal he
+denounced me as an apostate and set the Shoterim upon me so that I am
+obliged to flee for my life.  For mine own wrongs I do not care, but
+the blood of Stephen cries out to me, the spectacle of his death rises
+to me in my dreams, and the infamy of it fills my hours with anguish.
+Ye say he was one of your saints, a martyr in the name of your Prophet,
+a teacher and a power in your church.  Ye claim that ye loved him.  Yet
+ye make timid preparation to flee before the oppressor who brought him
+low, and lift no hand to avenge his death!  Are ye men?  Have ye loves
+and hearts?  Do ye miss him--"
+
+The pilgrim pressed his palms together and looked at the young man with
+passionate grief in his eyes.  Marsyas turned his words to him.
+
+"Was ever his touch laid upon you, warm with life and tender with good
+will?  Did ever his eyes bless you with their light?  Can ye take it
+idly that his hands grasp the dust and the tomb hath hidden his smile?"
+
+The pilgrim covered his face with his hands.
+
+"These be things that philosophy can not return to me!" Marsyas drove
+on.  "I can not pray Stephen back to my side; I can not hope till his
+voice returns to my ear; I can not flee till I find him!  And by the
+holy and the pure who have gone down into the grave before him, I know
+that ye can not!  Is it no matter to you that his memory is held in
+scorn?  Are ye not stabbed with doubts that he died in vain--even ye
+who believe thus firmly that he was right?  And I, being a Jew and an
+upholder of the Law, can I be content, knowing he was cut off in
+heresy?"
+
+The congregation began to move as he went on; men rose from sitting to
+their knees, as if prepared to spring to their feet.  The preacher
+circled the room with a glance, but the eyes of the people were upon
+the young man.
+
+"Your Prophet and my Stephen!  And ye fly!  There are certain of you
+that are strong men, and Stephen was as delicate as a child.  There is
+blood and temper and strength and numbers of you, but Stephen went
+forth alone--and died!  Where were ye?  What of yourselves, now?  Are
+ye afraid of the weakling Pharisee?"
+
+There was a low murmur and men sprang to their feet, with flashing eyes
+and clenched hands.  The pilgrim flung up his head and drew in his
+breath till it hissed over his bared teeth.  Eleazar stood up by the
+young Essene and gazed straight at the preacher, as if holding himself
+in check until the leader declared himself.  But the preacher put up
+his hands and hurried into the center of the building.
+
+"Peace, children!" he said kindly but firmly.  His hands lifted higher
+as the stature of his authority seemed to tower over the people.  In
+the sudden silence those that had stood up sank down again, the pilgrim
+lowered his head and only Marsyas and the rabbi at his side seemed to
+resist the quieting influence of the pastor.  The extended palms
+dropped and the Nazarene looked at the young Essene.
+
+"Vengeance is mine and I will repay, saith the Lord.  Eye for an eye
+and tooth for a tooth is of the old Law and is passed away!"
+
+"There, O strange pastor of a human flock, our ways part.  I am a Jew,
+thou a Nazarene--our laws differ.  Yet if, as ye preach, the God of
+Moses is also the God of your Prophet, ye are delivered sentences and
+punishments for evil-doing.  Wherefore, if ye evade them, ye evade a
+divine command!"
+
+"We do not punish; we correct.  Punishment is God's portion."
+
+"Are ye not instruments?" the young man persisted.
+
+The preacher did not answer at once; his eyes searched Marsyas' face
+for some expression by which he might select his line of argument.
+
+"Bethink thee, young brother," he said finally.  "How would Stephen
+answer thee in this?"
+
+Marsyas' demanding eyes wavered and fell; his lips parted and closed
+again; he frowned.
+
+"Whom then wouldst thou please in this vengeance?  Not Stephen!  Then
+wilt thou comfort thyself with bloody work, while the tomb stands
+between thee and Stephen's restraining hands?"
+
+Marsyas threw up his head defiantly, shaking off the influence of the
+argument.
+
+"Do ye in all truth follow the doctrine that bids you suffer without
+requital?" he demanded, even while feeling that his logic was impotent.
+
+"God directs all things; if it be His will that we shall suffer or
+escape, God's will be done!"
+
+"It is cowardly!" Marsyas declared with flashing eyes.
+
+The preacher came closer.  "I believe that thou art determined and
+sincere.  Suppose Saul fell into thy hands, as an evil-doer, and the
+Law was ready for his blood, and God bade thee withhold thy hand.
+Would it be easy?"
+
+"No, by my soul!"
+
+"Look then at me and answer.  Is it easy for me, who hath suffered
+exactly thy sorrows, to stand still and wait on God?"
+
+Marsyas looked at the preacher.  He was tall, spare and old, his hair
+and his beard were so white that they shone in the torch-light, and his
+face was so thin and colorless that he seemed already to have put off
+the flesh.  But his eyes glowed with fire and youth.  Here of a surety
+was no weakness to call into account.
+
+"No," he answered again.
+
+"Then, O my son, which of us is truly subject to the Lord?"
+
+"Ye crucify yourselves to an unnatural doctrine!  It is not human to
+bow to it!"
+
+"When thou canst do as we strive to do, my son, thou shall know that it
+is divine."
+
+Marsyas looked at Eleazar, and the rabbi, who had his eyes fastened on
+the preacher, spoke for the first time.
+
+"That is sweet humility, while ye are oppressed," he said, in a voice
+almost prophetic.  "But will ye remember it, when ye come into power?"
+
+Power!  Had any of that congregation a hope for power?  The word
+startled them.  They looked at the rabbi's garments, clothing a huge
+frame, the strength of the Law typified, and wondered at his words.
+Even the preacher had no ready answer.  The intimation of the Nazarenes
+in power on the lips of an expounder of the Law was not conducive to
+instant comment.
+
+"So ye were in the Jews' place, what would ye do?" he asked again.
+Marsyas looked at the rabbi in surprise, but meanwhile the preacher
+answered.
+
+"Christ's doctrine suffereth no change for rank or power."
+
+"Watch; forget it not!"  Eleazar turned to Marsyas.  "I have seen, my
+brother," he said.  "This is not the method.  Let us wait; our time
+will come."
+
+Contented to go, Marsyas turned with the rabbi and together they passed
+through the gathering to the door.  But before they went out, Marsyas
+spoke again to the silent congregation.
+
+"Rest ye," he said, "we are not informers."  They went forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A TRUST FULFILLED
+
+Marsyas came forth moodily convinced by Eleazar's words.  No; it was
+not the method.  Revenge would have to come through another medium than
+the Nazarenes.  Stephen had told him before that the privilege of
+taking vengeance had been removed from the followers of Jesus of
+Nazareth.  At that time Marsyas had not believed it of the whole sect;
+but now he was not too much irritated to be convinced.
+
+"Is there any doctrine too mad to get it followers?" he said.
+
+"O brother," Eleazar said, with his chin on his breast, "it is a period
+of change.  The world wearies of its manner from time to time.  Surfeit
+of good is not less common than surfeit of evil, but it is deadlier.
+Men tire of their gods as they do of their women, and thou, being an
+eremite and unfamiliar, may not know that death is much more desirable
+than enforced toleration of satiety."
+
+Marsyas heard; satiety was only a word to him and the rabbi's
+earnestness carried no conviction for him.
+
+"It is the time for change; rest under old usages is no longer
+possible.  But Israel hath endured a long, long time in one habit."
+
+"Give me thy meaning, Rabbi."
+
+"Thou and I are good Jews, Marsyas, yet I can not say that of a surety
+of any other man in Judea.  I have come from Jerusalem, David's City,
+the rock of Israel, but the hosts of schism possess it from the Ophlas
+to the uttermost limits of Bezetha!"
+
+"Rabbi!"
+
+"I have seen; I have seen.  Saul hath set for himself a task of
+emptying the sea.  In Jerusalem they come singing to torture and death,
+but armies of them go fleeing into the rest of Judea and all the world.
+And, hear me, thou true son of Israel, the pastor of the apostates we
+heard this night declared at least one truth.  The Pharisee hath
+diffused an influence; he hath scattered a pestilence."
+
+Because it was a new charge against Saul, Marsyas accepted it.
+
+"Is there no help against him?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Marsyas, there stirreth a dread fear in me that he is the instrument
+of the time.  If not he, then another would have been called by the
+spirit of change--"
+
+"There is no such extenuation in me!" Marsyas broke in.
+
+"Might promises no allegiance to its ministers," the rabbi replied.
+
+Marsyas recalled his history for evidence to corroborate this hope that
+Saul's calamitous work might recoil upon him.  From Prometheus to
+Augustus, the declaration was sustained.  He lost sight of the rabbi's
+actual concern.  Saul covered his horizon; he could not know that
+Eleazar looked upon the Pharisee as only a detail in an immense stretch
+of grave possibilities.
+
+The young man made no reply.  A hope had been snatched from him that
+night before his sense could grasp its reality, but the disappointment
+had not weakened his intent.  His hope, for the moment centered upon
+the Nazarenes, turned again upon Agrippa.  He did not permit himself to
+speculate on the prince's possible failure.
+
+At an intersecting street they parted, without further plan than that
+they should meet again.
+
+But the next morning when Marsyas came with little spirit into the
+sunless counting-room, his first visitor was Agrippa's lugubrious old
+courier, Silas.
+
+With a cry, Marsyas wrenched open the wicket and seized the old man's
+shoulders.
+
+"Dost thou bring good or evil news?" he cried, unable to wait on the
+slow servant's deliberate speech.
+
+"Perchance either, or both," the courier answered, fumbling in the
+wallet for his written instructions.  "Perchance that which thou
+already knowest, and that which may be news.  At least, I fetch thee a
+ransom."
+
+"God reward thee for thy fidelity," Marsyas replied, "and forget thy
+sloth!  Here, let me help thee to thy message."
+
+He put away the servant's inflexible fingers and wrested the parchment
+from the wallet.  It was wrapped in silk and sealed with wax.  It was
+directed to Marsyas.  He ripped it open hastily and read:
+
+
+"To Marsyas, the Essene, to whom Cypros the Herod would owe a greater
+debt, greeting and these:
+
+"It hath come to us here in Alexandria that Vitellius pursues thee with
+a mind to punish thee for helping my lord away from his difficulty in
+Judea.  The legate hath sent couriers broadcast over the Empire to seek
+thee out, but the noble Flaccus, Proconsul of Egypt, though forewarned
+and required to deliver thee up, hath promised thee asylum in
+Alexandria.  Wherefore, if it please God that thou art preserved until
+my servant Silas reaches thee, do thou return to this city, secretly
+and with all speed.
+
+"That thou care for thyself and that thy despatch be assured, I add
+further that there is much thou canst do for me.  Delay not if the same
+good heart which suffered for us in Ptolemais still beats within thee.
+
+"Thy friend,
+    "CYPROS."
+
+
+Within were three notes of a talent each, signed by Alexander
+Lysimachus, the Alabarch of Alexandria.  Six weeks before, they would
+have been mere strips of parchment to Marsyas; to-day, with the
+commercial knowledge of a steward, Cæsar's gold would not have
+commanded more respect in him.  But he crushed them in his hand and
+turned his face, suddenly grown pale and tense, toward the east and
+Jerusalem.  They meant the beginning of the destruction of Saul!
+
+Presently he signed to Silas to follow and led the way to old Peter,
+who sipped his wine in his sleeping apartment.  On the way, they met a
+slave whom Marsyas despatched to the khan for Eleazar.
+
+"But," objected Peter, with the querulousness of an old man, after the
+first flush of satisfaction over the return of his three talents, "I
+took thee in hostage, young man, because I wanted thy service as
+steward, not because I wished to please Agrippa."
+
+"But I have summoned my better to take my place," Marsyas assured him.
+"Thou shall not be without an able steward, who will serve thee for
+hire."
+
+And thus it was arranged when Eleazar arrived, that the rabbi should
+take Marsyas' place as steward and Peter, grumbling, but no less
+mollified, put on his cloak and repaired to the authorities to make the
+young Essene's manumission a matter of record.
+
+By sunset all the negotiations were completed and Marsyas, with Silas,
+passed out into the twilight and proceeded toward the mole.
+
+As they went, others were going; the freighter which was the first to
+sail for Alexandria bade fair to be crowded with passengers.  Curious
+that so many wished to depart, Marsyas looked critically at the people
+as they moved toward the water-front.  He saw that many of them had
+been with him in the Nazarene meeting the night before.  They were
+obeying the command to move on.
+
+Suddenly one of them, a young man in advance of two, old enough to be
+his parents, stopped and pointed with an outstretched arm.
+
+Marsyas glanced in the direction the youth indicated.
+
+The lower slopes of the immense western sky over the placid sea were
+delicate with the pale shades of a clear, cold, spring sunset.  The
+point where the sun had sunk, alone glowed with a sparkling, golden
+brilliance.  And set against that, far out in the bay, was a frail dark
+mast, crossed by a faint yard--a fragile crucifix sunk in a glory!
+
+The elder man did not speak; the younger looked at the thing he had
+discovered, but as Marsyas hurried in agitation by the woman, he heard
+her speak softly:
+
+"But it is bright--beyond!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+FOB A WOMAN'S SAKE
+
+The sails of the freighter had fallen slack in the breathless shelter
+of the Alexandrian harbor.  It was night, and only by daylight could
+the seamen pull the vessel by oar through the devious, perilous lanes
+between the fleets and navies packed in the greatest port in the world.
+The freighter would lie to until morning.  The passengers would land in
+boats.
+
+Its anchor rumbled down and plunged into a sea of stars.
+
+It had been a ship of silence, manned by barefoot, cowed slaves,
+captained by a surly, weather-beaten Roman and freighted with a
+strange, sorrowful company.  Now that the journey was at an end, there
+were no shouts, no noisy haste, no excited preparation.  When the wash
+of the disturbed bay settled over the anchor and the reflected stars
+grew steady again, there was silence.
+
+Marsyas stood in the bow and looked ashore.  Over the whole arc of the
+southern heavens, he saw long, beaded strands of infinitesimal points
+of fire, tangles, cross-hatchings, eddies and jottings of light--the
+lamps of Alexandria.  Right and left of him and embracing much of the
+bay, the confusion of stars swept, culminating in the towering flame
+surmounting the Pharos to the east, and failing in featureless
+obscurity to the west.  It might have been a congress of fireflies
+tranced in space.  But there came across the waters, not appreciable
+sound, but the mysterious telepathic communication of animate life.
+Marsyas sensed the heart-beat of the great invisible city under the
+_ignes fatui_ swung in the purple night.
+
+He did not contemplate it calmly.  The mystery of impending destiny was
+written over it all.
+
+The silent company of Nazarenes was put ashore an hour later at the
+wharf of the Egyptian suburb, Rhacotis, and together Silas and Marsyas
+passed up through the easternmost limits of the settlement toward the
+Regio Judæorum.
+
+They had not progressed beyond sight of their former traveling
+companions, before the cluster of Nazarenes seemed to huddle and
+recoil, and presently turn back and flee over their tracks.
+
+As they rushed down upon the two Jews, the body seemed to have
+increased greatly in number.  The accessions were men, women and
+children; some were very old, all apparently very poor, so that the one
+small, female figure, in fine white garments showing under a coarse
+mantle, was conspicuous among the rough dark habits.
+
+Marsyas had time to note this one out of the many when the flying
+company rushed about him; after it a body of city constabulary, at the
+heels of which followed a howling mob of rabid Alexandrians.  In an
+instant, Marsyas and Silas were in the thick of the tumult.  The
+fugitives, demoralized by the attack of the constabulary, rushed hither
+and thither; the mob closed in upon them and a moving battle raged in
+the night on the square.
+
+Events followed too swiftly for Marsyas to grasp them as they happened.
+He had a heated sensation that he defended himself, defended others,
+struck gallantly, received blows, snatched up a small figure in white
+from the attack of a vindictive assailant, and then the running fight
+swept by and away in dust.
+
+He came to himself, panting and enraged, under a lamp, with a girl in
+his arms.  Confronting him with a stone in his hand was Eutychus,
+petrified with amazement and apprehension.  At one side, groaning and
+bent double with kicks and blows, was Silas.  At the other, a silent,
+brown woman peered at the insensible girl.  Up the street receded the
+sounds of riot.
+
+Marsyas permitted his angry gaze to fall from Eutychus' face to the
+stone the servitor held.  The fingers unclosed and the missile dropped.
+Then Marsyas looked down at the girl in his arms.  He drew in a full
+breath.  The hill bird in the broken wilds of Judea whistled again; the
+incense from the blooming orchards breathed about him, and the flower
+face that had looked back at him from the howdah rested now, white and
+peaceful against his breast.  Her long lashes lay on her cheeks, the
+pretty disorder of her yellow-brown curls was tossed over his arm.  He
+was strangely untroubled for all that.
+
+The brown woman watched him from the gloom.
+
+Silas meanwhile had straightened himself and was gazing with
+stupefaction at the insensible face on the Essene's breast.
+
+"It--it--" he began, stammering before the rush of recognition and
+astonishment.  "It is the alabarch's daughter--hither, fellow!" to
+Eutychus; "see this face!  See whom thou wast pursuing."
+
+Eutychus looked and fell immediately into a panic.
+
+"I did not know her!" he cried.  "By my soul, I did not know her!  I
+was only visiting vengeance on the apostates, with the people!  How
+should I expect to find her here!"
+
+Marsyas broke in on his avowal.
+
+"Do we go now to her father's house?" he asked of Silas.
+
+"Even now!"
+
+"Lead on, then.  Eutychus!  Follow!"
+
+Silas looked at the brown woman in the shadows, who beckoned and,
+turning, took roundabout and deserted passages toward the Jewish
+quarter, so that the extraordinary party proceeded unseen to the house
+of the alabarch.  Once or twice, Eutychus attempted to press up beside
+Marsyas and excuse himself, but he was bidden to be silent.  Then, on
+missing the charioteer's footfall, Marsyas turned to see him slipping
+away.  Immediately Silas was despatched to bring him back; and so,
+placed between the two, he was dragged on to the house he had attempted
+to injure.
+
+Remembering Eleazar's statement concerning the breadth of the schism,
+Marsyas was prepared to discover the alabarch a Nazarene.
+
+"O Israel! after triumph over the oppression of the mighty, is this
+your overthrow?" he said bitterly to himself.
+
+Long before he reached the alabarch's house, the figure in his arms
+stirred and made a little questioning sound.  But against her manifest
+wish, the promptings of his Essenic training and the admission that she
+had been overtaken among apostates, something in him locked his arms
+about her and brought a single word to his lips.  The gentleness of his
+voice surprised him.
+
+"Peace," he said, and she lay still.
+
+After he had said it, a sudden rage against Eutychus seized him.  The
+charioteer's part in the pursuit of the fugitive apostates assumed a
+brutality and an enormity many times greater than it had originally
+seemed.  He took savage pleasure in anticipating turning over the
+culprit to Agrippa for justice.
+
+He was led presently into a dark porch and admitted into a hall.  The
+startled porter glanced at him, and, seeing Lydia in the stranger's
+arms, the serving-man cried out.  The brown woman answered with a
+guttural sentence or two, and by the time Marsyas, following the lead
+of the agitated porter, entered a beautiful chamber, people were
+running in from brilliantly-lighted apartments beyond.
+
+The spare and elegant old figure in the embroidered robes and cap of a
+Jewish magistrate hurried toward him with terror written on his face.
+
+"Lydia!  What hath befallen thee?  Is she dead?" he cried.
+
+Back of him came a rush of people.  Foremost was Herod Agrippa; behind
+him, Cypros.  With the growing group, Marsyas ceased to note the
+details of their identity and remarked at random that one was a man who
+wore a fillet and that the other was a woman and beautiful.
+
+The number of servants increasing, the babble of questions and
+exclamations creating a great confusion, none who made answer was
+heard.  But Marsyas looked at the master of the house.  He saw this
+time, not the magistrate's alarm, but his character, his nationality,
+his religion.  In that aristocratic old countenance there was nothing
+of the Nazarene.  Marsyas let his eyes fall on the face against his
+breast.  By the brighter light, he saw now that which he had not seen
+under the smoky street-torch.  In the folds of her white dress,
+beautiful and rich enough for a feast, reposed a small cedar cross,
+depending from a scarlet cord.
+
+The young Jew with the fillet about his forehead sprang forward to take
+Lydia from Marsyas' arms.  But with the instinctive feeling that none
+must see but himself, he disengaged one hand and stopped the Jew with a
+motion.
+
+"I will put her down," he said calmly.
+
+Classicus drew himself up to his full height, but Marsyas had already
+turned toward the divan.  With a quick movement, he slipped the
+crucifix from about the girl's neck and thrust it into his tunic.
+
+Out of the babble about him he learned that the girl had supposedly
+gone to attend a maiden gathering in the Regio Judæorum with the brown
+woman as an attendant.  Catching with relief at this bit of foundation
+for a story, he stood up prepared to tell anything but the truth.
+
+Meantime, attendants and a house physician bent over the girl with wine
+and restoratives, and the company's attention was directed toward her
+recovery.  Presently she put aside her waiting-women and sat up.
+
+Marsyas glanced from her to the brown woman, who hovered on the
+outskirts.  The handmaiden's great, mysterious, olive-green eyes were
+fixed upon him, half in appeal, half in command.  Before he could
+understand the look the Jew in the fillet turned upon him.
+
+"Come, we are learning nothing," he said in a voice that silenced the
+group.  "Thou," indicating Marsyas with an imperious motion, "seemest
+to show the marks of experience.  Tell us what happened."
+
+Marsyas' mind went through prodigious calculation.  If he frankly told
+the truth, he betrayed the girl to much misery and peril.  If he
+evaded, Eutychus, wishing to justify himself and to escape punishment,
+might wreck a fabrication by a word.  But the young man made no
+appreciable hesitation in answering.  He caught the charioteer's eye
+and held it fixedly while he spoke.
+
+"I know little," he said.  "From the ship we came up a certain street,
+where we met tumult between fugitives and pursuers.  So disorderly the
+crowd and so extensive its violence that whosoever met it on the street
+was instantly caught in its center and mistreated as much as the
+guiltiest one.  Thus I and Prince Agrippa's servant were caught; thus,
+the lady.
+
+"We defended ourselves and should have escaped scathless, but that we
+stayed to save the lady from the rioters.  This done we came hither.
+That is all."
+
+"Who were the fugitives?" the Jew in the fillet demanded.
+
+The thick lips of Eutychus parted and he drew in breath, but the lower
+lids of the black eyes fixed upon him lifted a little and he subsided.
+
+"Sir, one does not stop to identify passing strangers when one fights
+for his life," Marsyas explained calmly.
+
+Eutychus lost his air of trepidation, and his taut figure relaxed.
+
+"Where was it?" the beautiful woman asked of the charioteer.
+
+Marsyas answered directly.
+
+"Lady, one does not locate himself in the midst of turbulence."
+
+Lysimachus came closer to Marsyas.
+
+"Who art thou?" he asked.  "I met thee once, it seems."
+
+"That," Agrippa broke in, "by every act he hath done since I knew him,
+is the most generous of Jews, Marsyas, an Essene, by his permission, my
+friend and companion.  Know him, Alexander; it is a profitable
+acquaintance."
+
+Marsyas flushed under the prince's praise, and Cypros, drawing closer,
+took his arm and pressed her cheek against it.
+
+"Thrice welcome to my house," the alabarch said with emotion.  "Blessed
+be thy coming and thy going; may safety be thy shadow!"
+
+Marsyas, coloring more under the comment, thanked the alabarch and cast
+a beseeching look at the prince.  The prince smiled.
+
+"Let us supplement blessings with raiment and thanks with wine," he
+said to the alabarch.  "This is an Essene to whom uncleanliness is as
+great a crime as a love affair."
+
+"Thou recallest me to my duty," the alabarch returned, at once.
+"Stephanos,"--signing to a servitor,--"thou wilt take this young man to
+the room which hath been prepared for him and give him comfort.  If he
+hath any hurts, the physician will wait on him.  Remember, brother, I
+am at thy command."
+
+With these words, he bowed to Marsyas, who inclined his head to the
+company and followed Stephanos.
+
+But at the arch leading into the corridor, there was a low word at his
+hand.  Lydia, with the rough mantle dropped from her, stood there in
+her rich white garments.
+
+"I owe thee my life," she said, in a little more than a whisper.  "Aye,
+even more--a greater debt which I can not make clear to thee now."
+
+He looked down into her lifted eyes, pleading for pity and forgiveness.
+
+"I made thee traffic with the truth," they said.  "Thou who art an
+Essene and a holy man!"
+
+Something happened in Marsyas; a quickening rush of rare emotion swept
+over him.  He took her small hand and held it, until, shyly and
+reluctantly, she drew it away.
+
+He went then through broad halls, flooded with lights from costly
+lamps, past whispering fountains and motionless potted plants, through
+arches relieved by silken draperies which adorned without screening, up
+a broad flight of stairs to his own chamber.
+
+This was all very beautiful and restful with its occasional whiffs of
+incense, or the musical drip of the waterfall or the soft murmur of
+distant voices.  His lot had fallen in splendid places, he told
+himself, and, though opposed, by teaching, to the difference men make
+in each other, he was glad that he was not to live as a manumitted
+slave under the roof of the alabarch's house.
+
+As he stepped into the chamber which Stephanos told him was his own,
+Drumah appeared.  Startled at first sight of a man bearing marks of
+ill-usage, she stopped and cried out as she recognized him.
+
+"I am not hurt, Drumah," he said, to quiet the rush of questions on her
+lips.  "I was caught in a riot.  It is nothing."
+
+"But I see marks on thy face," she persisted, coming near him; "and thy
+garments have bloodstains on them.  Thou dost not know that thou art
+hurt.  O Stephanos," she cried to the servitor, "fetch balsam and
+volatile ointment.  Eutychus, art thou there?  Run to the culina and
+get wine!  Where is the physician?"
+
+The charioteer, who had appeared in the upper story for the express
+purpose of seeking Drumah to tell the details of the day's excitement,
+stopped short and scowled.
+
+"I thank thee," Marsyas said to her.  "I am not in need of assistance.
+The physician is with the master's daughter.  I can care for myself.
+Pray, do not give thyself trouble."
+
+He stepped into the apartment and dropped the curtain upon himself and
+Stephanos.
+
+He had given himself up to the servitor's attentions, when it occurred
+to him that he had let slip a chance to deliver a telling and a
+much-needed warning to Eutychus.  The more he considered his neglect,
+the more serious it seemed.  At last he hurried his attendant, and,
+getting into fresh garments, descended again to the first floor.  He
+despatched Stephanos in search of Eutychus and stopped by the newel to
+await the charioteer's coming.
+
+As he stood, the brown waiting-woman came to him, gliding like a sand
+column across the desert.  Coming quite close to him, she dropped on
+her knees at his side and touched her forehead to the ground.
+
+"I am a Brahmin," she said in Hindu, "and I owe thee a debt.  I shall
+not forget!"
+
+Rising, she flitted away.
+
+Marsyas looked after her in amazement.  It was the same slave-woman
+whom he had helped at Peter the usurer's.
+
+Cypros, with her head drooping, a delicate forefinger on her chin, came
+slowly and sorrowfully into the hall.  As Marsyas looked at her, she
+seemed to him to be half-woman, half-child.  But when she saw him, her
+face lighted, her eyes glowed.  With extended hands she came toward him.
+
+"Nay, nay," she said, seeing that thanks were on his lips.  "Do not
+shame me with thy thanks, Marsyas, for I had a selfish use in releasing
+thee."
+
+"But I know, nevertheless, that I should have had freedom at thy hands
+though I never saw thee again."
+
+"Oh, be not so filled with confidence and sweet believing, else I fear
+for myself," she said earnestly.  "Nay, if I were wholly unselfish, I
+should come to thee, this hour of thy honor, to bring thee praise.  Yet
+I come with mine own interest, to charge thee anew!"
+
+"Command me; thou hast purchased me!"
+
+"Not so; but thou hast purchased my husband, with the extreme of thy
+sacrifice for his sake!"
+
+"Lady, I did that thing for myself--for mine own ends!"
+
+"Nevertheless, it was my husband who profited.  Thou must learn that
+much hath transpired here in Alexandria.  The alabarch had not the
+three hundred thousand drachmæ to lend--"
+
+Marsyas' forehead contracted; was not his work against Saul of Tarsus
+progressing?
+
+"--but he gave my lord in all readiness five talents, with which we
+ransomed thee.  It was all the good alabarch could afford, but it is
+not enough for me and my babes.  Wherefore Agrippa goes to Rome without
+us.  There, infallibly he will obtain money from Antonia, discharge his
+debt to Cæsar and settle Vitellius' vengeful search after thee.  There,
+he shall be restored to favor with Cæsar and come into possession of
+his kingdom!"
+
+"How thou liftest my bitter heart!" Marsyas exclaimed.  "Go yet further
+and say that, thereafter, I shall have my requital, my hunger after
+vengeance satisfied!"
+
+"All that shall be," she said with gravity, "on one condition!"
+
+"What?" he besought earnestly.
+
+"That he who hath Agrippa's welfare deepest in his heart shall ever be
+near my lord to protect him against himself!"
+
+"O lady, even thou canst not wish thy husband successful with greater
+yearning than I!"
+
+"So I do believe!  But hear me.  Thou seest my husband; thou knowest
+that he plans only for the moment, risks too much, is over-confident
+and too little cautious!  In the beginning he believes that he is
+right, and thereafter and on to the end he acts, chooses friends, and
+makes enemies as his conviction directs him.  Thus he ruined himself
+thrice over from Rome to Idumea.  None but one so eager for his success
+as I, but abler than I, can govern him!  And thou must be his keeper,
+Marsyas!"
+
+"Thou yieldest me a welcome charge, lady," he said quickly.  "Thou
+knowest that I would not have him fail; wherefore, I yield thee my
+word!"
+
+"Be thou blessed!  Yet there is more!"
+
+In spite of her preparation, her face flushed, and she hesitated.  Then
+as if forcing herself to speak, she said:
+
+"Thou--thou wilt keep my lord's love for me, Marsyas?"
+
+"I do not understand," he said kindly.
+
+"Thou didst not say such a thing when my lord asked thee for twenty
+thousand drachmæ.  Thou didst get the drachmæ; keep now my husband's
+love for me.  As thou didst offer thyself for his purse, offer thyself
+for his soul--if need be!"
+
+He frowned at the pavement and then at her.  He had evolved enough from
+her words to believe that her call aimed at his spiritual welfare and
+he remembered that he was an Essene.
+
+"Be his companion," she hurried on, "be more; be his comrade, his
+abettor, even; sacrifice much; thy prejudices, even some of thy
+spotlessness, but make thyself desirable to him.  Then thou canst
+control him.  Promise, Marsyas!  Oh, thy hope to overthrow Saul is not
+dearer to thee than this thing is to me!  Promise!"
+
+"Be comforted," he said hurriedly, for there were steps approaching
+from the inner room.  "I shall do all that I can.  More than that, one
+less than an angel can not promise!"
+
+She, too, heard the footsteps and passed up the stairs.
+
+Looking up from his disturbed contemplation of the pavement, Marsyas
+saw Classicus in the arch leading into the hall.  If the young Essene
+had been a cestophorus upholding the ceiling, the philosopher's gaze
+could not have been more indifferent.  He passed on and disappeared
+into the vestibule.
+
+Hardly had he passed, before the dark end of the corridor leading in
+from the garden gave up the stealthy figure of Eutychus, running, bent,
+purposeful and a-tiptoe, to overtake Classicus.  Evidently he had not
+seen Marsyas, for he passed without faltering and disappeared the way
+Classicus had taken.
+
+Instantly and as silently Marsyas followed.
+
+At the porch, the alabarch bade his guests good night, and when Marsyas
+brought up, he found Classicus just departing and Eutychus nowhere to
+be seen.  Surmising that there was a humbler exit for the servants, out
+of which the charioteer had taken himself, Marsyas passed out directly
+after the philosopher.
+
+His surmises were not wrong, for the instant Classicus planted foot on
+the earth without, Eutychus came out of the darkness and bowed.
+
+"Good my lord," he began, "the story truly told is this--" but his
+words babbled off into stammers and inarticulate sound, for Marsyas,
+large in the gloom, stood over him.
+
+"Thy master hath need of thee, Eutychus," he said in a soft voice.  The
+charioteer gulped and slid back into the door that had given him exit.
+
+"Peace to thee, sir," the Essene said to Classicus, and bowing,
+returned into the house.
+
+"The truth of the story is this," said Classicus as he stepped into his
+chair and was borne away, "the Essene is no Essene!"
+
+At the farther end of the corridor within, Marsyas saw Eutychus
+lurking.  Silent and swift the young Essene went after him.  The
+charioteer, fearing for cause, fled and Marsyas followed.
+
+Agrippa, on the point of ascending to his chamber, saw them flit
+noiselessly into the dusk.  His wonder was awakened.  Drumah, with a
+laver under her arm, was emerging from the kitchens when she caught a
+glimpse of them.  The prince stepped down and followed; Drumah slipped
+after.
+
+At the door leading into the colonnade of the garden, Marsyas seized
+Eutychus.
+
+"Thou insufferable coward!" he brought out.  "Thou blight and peril
+under a hospitable roof!  I know what thou wouldst have said to the
+master's guest!"
+
+Eutychus paled and struggled to free himself, but Marsyas forced him
+against the wall and pinned him there.
+
+"If so much as a word escape thee, concerning the alabarch's daughter,
+if by a quiver of thy lashes thou dost betray aught that thou knowest
+to any living being, or dead post, or empty space, I shall kill thee
+and feed the eels of the sea with thy carcass!"
+
+Fixing the charioteer with a menacing eye he held him until he was sure
+his words had conveyed their full meaning.
+
+"I have spoken!" he added.  Then he threw the man aside and turned to
+go back to his room.  But in his path, though happily out of earshot of
+his low-spoken words, stood Agrippa; behind him, Drumah.  Not a little
+disturbed, Marsyas stopped.  Eutychus saw the prince and expected
+partizanship.
+
+"Seest thou how thy servant is used by this vagrant?" he demanded.
+
+But Agrippa laid his hand on Marsyas' arm.
+
+"I do not know thy provocation," he said, "but I know it was just.  Go
+back!  It is not enough.  Teach him to respect thy strength.  Thou hast
+merely made him dangerous!"
+
+But Marsyas begged Agrippa's permission to go on and the prince, still
+declaring that the Essene had made a mistake, turned and went with him.
+
+Drumah, with her head in the air, passed Eutychus without casting a
+look upon him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE FALSE BALANCE
+
+Marsyas did not sleep the sleep of a man worn with exertion and
+excitement.  Instead he lay far into the night with his wide eyes fixed
+on the soft gloom above him.  He had many diverse thoughts, none wholly
+contented, many most unhappy.
+
+The instance of apostasy under the roof troubled him; not as apostasy
+should trouble one of the faithful, but as an impending calamity.  He
+had strange, terrifying, commingling pictures of Stephen's dark locks
+in the dust of the stoning-place, and the pretty disorder of
+yellow-brown curls thrown over his arm.  His purpose against Saul of
+Tarsus seemed to magnify in importance, by each succeeding momentous
+event.  He remembered Cypros' charge and bound himself to keep it,
+again and again through the dark troubled hours.  It was a long way yet
+until he could triumph over the powerful Pharisee, and the stretches of
+misfortune that could ensue, in the time, were things he drove out of
+his thoughts.
+
+When at last he fell asleep, he dreamed that he stood on Olivet and
+watched Saul and Lydia seeking for him in the trampled space without
+Hanaleel, while a crucifix, instead of the moon, arose in the east.
+
+The old Essenic habit was strong in Marsyas.  In spite of his long
+wakefulness, the dark red color in the east which announced the sunrise
+yet an hour to come was as a call in his ear.
+
+He arose while yet the night was heavy in the halls of the alabarch's
+house and the whisper of the sand lifting before the sea-wind was the
+only sound in the Alexandrian streets.
+
+The stairway was intensely quiet and he hesitated to descend.  But at
+the end of the upper corridor a slight dilution in the gloom showed him
+a loft let into the ceiling.  He went that way and came upon another
+stairway leading up and out into the open.  He mounted it and found
+himself on the roof of the house.
+
+At the rear was a double row of columns, roofed, and hung with matting
+which inclosed an airy pavilion where the dwellers of the alabarch's
+house could flee from the heat closer the earth.  It was furnished with
+antique Egyptian furniture, taborets of acacia, seated with pigskin, a
+diphros and divan, built of spongy palm-wood, but seasoned and hardened
+by great age, and grotesquely carved by old hands, dead a century.
+
+The young man entered and, seating himself, awaited the day and the
+arousing of the alabarch's household.
+
+The Jewish housetops toward the east made an angular sea, broken by
+parapets and summer-houses in relief against the red sky, and the
+pavements in gloom.  Strips of darker vapor meandering among them
+showed the course of passages leading with many detours into the great
+open, where was builded the Synagogue of Alexandria.  It was of
+tremendous dimensions, yet so majestically proportioned as to attain
+grace, that most difficult thing to reconcile with great size.  The
+type of architecture was Egypto-Grecian,--repose and refinement,
+antiquity and civilization conjoined to make a sanctuary that was a
+citadel.  Here, the forty thousand Jews of Alexandria could gather, nor
+one rub shoulder against his neighbor.  Marsyas looked with no little
+pride at the triumph of the God of Israel in this stronghold of
+paganism.  What a reproach it must be to them that had departed from
+the rigor of the Law!
+
+He became conscious of the little cross.  He drew it forth from its
+hiding-place and looked at it.  It was made of red cedar, slightly
+elaborated, and the cord passed through a small copper eyelet at the
+head.  To his unfamiliar eye, it was a dread image, at once a
+suggestion of suffering and retributive justice.  He had not seen one
+since his last talk with Stephen.
+
+The acute wrench the reflection gave him now incorporated a fear for
+Lydia.  Saul of Tarsus should not lay her fair head low!  He braced his
+fingers against the head and foot of the emblem to break it, when
+suddenly a bewildering reluctance seized his hand.  At the moment of
+destruction, his hand was stayed.  Stephen had loved it and died for
+its sake, and Lydia--
+
+His resolution dissolved; slowly and unreadily he put the crucifix back
+in his bosom, over his heart.
+
+At that moment, a little figure, on the brink of the housetop, was
+projected against the glowing sky.  It was firmly knit and outlined
+like an infant love.  The apparition brought, besides startlement, a
+prescient significance that made his heart beat.  Synagogue and
+Alexandria dropped out of sight.  He saw only the rosy heavens with a
+beautiful girl marked on them.
+
+He arose, and the new-comer turned toward him and approached.  And
+Marsyas watching her, in a breathless, half-guilty moment, told himself
+that never before had the fall of a woman's foot been a caress to the
+earth.
+
+He saw that she carried over her arm a many-folded length of silk, in
+the half-dusk, like a silvery mist, very sheeny and firm.  Here and
+there he discovered flame-colored streaks in it.  One of the
+morning-touched vapors in the east, pulled down and folded over the
+girl's arm, would have looked like it.  At the threshold of the
+summer-house, she let the arm fall which carried it, dropped the many
+folds and with a sudden uplift and deft circle of her hand, partly
+cocooned herself in the silken vapor.  Her eyes, lifted in the
+movement, fell on Marsyas.  With a little start, she unfurled the
+wrapping and doubled it over her arm.
+
+"I pray thy pardon," he said, with a sincerity beyond the formality of
+his words.  "I am an intruder.  But--the Essenes do not keep their beds
+long."
+
+"Neither do all Alexandrians," she said, recovering herself.  "Thou art
+welcome, for I would speak with thee."
+
+She put up one of the mattings by a pull at a cord, and sat down on a
+taboret.  She laid the silk across her lap and folded her hands upon it.
+
+"I pray thee, be seated.  I have not said all that I would say
+concerning last night.  Art thou well--unhurt?"
+
+The morning lay faintly on her face and he saw that she was paler and
+sadder of eye than was natural for one so young and so round of cheek.
+He was touched, and his answer was a tender surprise to him.
+
+"Thou seest me," he said, making a motion with his hands, "but thou--I
+would there were less of last night in thy face!"
+
+"I am well," she said, as her eyes fell.  "For that I give thee thanks,
+and for the security of my fame among my friends--and--the sacrifice
+thou madest to preserve it!"
+
+She meant his evasions that had kept the true story of her rescue
+secret.  He was glad she touched so readily upon the subject.  It gave
+him opportunity to relieve his soul of part of its burden.
+
+"I was glad," he assured her.  "Now, that thou art still safe, I pray
+thee, lady, preserve thyself.  None in all the world is so able to
+understand thy peril as I!"
+
+She looked at him, remembering that Agrippa had told them that he had
+been accused of apostasy.
+
+"Are--are these--thy people?" she asked in a whisper.
+
+"No; but dost thou remember why I went with such haste to Nazareth?" he
+asked.
+
+"To save a life, thou saidst."
+
+"Even so, I failed."
+
+She caught her breath and her eyes grew large with sympathy.
+
+"I failed," he continued.  "I went to save a friend who had gone astray
+after the Nazarene Prophet.  But they stoned him before mine eyes."
+
+Her lips moved with a compassionate word, more plainly expressed in all
+her atmosphere.
+
+"They cast me out of Judea," he went on, "because I was his friend.
+Wherefore I have tasted the death and have died not; I have suffered
+for their sin, yet sinned not!"
+
+He had never told more of his story than that, but her eyes, filled
+with interest, fixed upon him, urged him to go on.  Believing that he
+might deliver her if he told more, he proceeded, but the sense of
+relief, the lifting of his load that followed upon the course of his
+narrative were results that he had not expected in confiding to this
+understanding woman.  At first he felt a little of the embarrassment
+that attends the unfolding of a personal history, but ere long the
+fair-brown eyes urged him, with their sympathy, and consoled him with
+their comprehension.  He left the outline and plunged into detail, and
+when he had made an end, the glory of the Egyptian sunshine was
+flooding Alexandria.
+
+At the end of the story, Lydia's eyes fell slowly, and the interest
+that had enlivened her face relaxed into pensiveness.  She was
+oppressed and sorrowful, almost ready to be directed by this man of
+many sorrows.
+
+But he leaned toward her.
+
+"Henceforth, therefore," he said, "I am not a man of peace, but one
+burdened with rancor and vengeful intent.  I go not into En-Gadi, but
+into the evil world to use the world's evil to work evil.  I am
+despoiled and blighted and without hope.  Is that the inheritance which
+thou wouldst leave to them who love thee?"
+
+She drew away from him, half alarmed.
+
+"I--I am not a Nazarene," she faltered.
+
+"Do not go to them, then!" he urged eagerly.  "Do not listen to their
+teachings; for whosoever listens must die!"
+
+"I went yesterday for a different cause," she said finally, "but
+before, of interest."
+
+"But thou art a faithful daughter of Abraham; be not led of any cause.
+Remember yesterday!"
+
+"Yesterday?" she repeated quietly.  "Why yesterday?  Only the faith of
+the oppressed was different.  We of Israel's faith in Alexandria know
+many of yesterday's like, and worse!"
+
+"Suffer, then, the sufferings of the righteous!  Be not cut off for a
+folly!"
+
+She fell silent again, and smoothed the silk on her lap.
+
+"Justin Classicus told me of them," she began finally, "and their very
+difference from other philosophies, new or old, the simple history of
+their Prophet attracted me.  I sought them out, and learned that an
+Egyptian merchant who traded in Syria had passed through Jerusalem at
+the time of the Nazarene Prophet's sojourn in the city, and had become
+converted to His teaching.  He returned to Egypt and planted the seed
+of the sect in Rhacotis.  And of power and attraction, he gathered unto
+him men of his like.  Finally he carried his teaching into the
+lecture-rooms of the Library and all Alexandria heard of the Nazarenes.
+Reduced in its frenzy, his faith had a burning and unconsumed heart to
+it.  Many searched and many accepted it.  I went once--with my
+handmaiden--and heard his preaching.  And I saw in it a remedy for the
+sick world."
+
+Marsyas looked away toward the Synagogue, glittering purely against the
+dark blue waters of the bay.  He felt a recurrence of the old chill
+that possessed him, when he had failed to shake Stephen in his
+apostasy.  But she went on.
+
+"Since there is but one God there can be but one religion.  I do not
+expect a new godhead, but a new interpretation of the ancient one.
+Bethink thee; all the world was not Rome, in the days of Abraham or
+Moses or Solomon or David.  This is the hour of the supremacy of one
+will, one race.  Man does not fear God so much when he does not respect
+his neighbor at all.  Therefore, Rome, being autocrat of the earth, is
+an atheist.  She hath set up her mace and called it God.  There is no
+hope against Rome unless we hurl another Rome against it.  That we can
+not do, for there is only one world.  Sheol will not prevail against
+Rome, for Rome is Sheol.  Only Heaven is left and Heaven does not
+proceed against nations with an army and banners.  There is only one
+untried power in the list of forces, and the Nazarene hath it in His
+creed."
+
+Marsyas knew what it was; Stephen was full of it.
+
+"It is a difficult vision to summon," she continued, "but it may fall
+that a dove and not an eagle shall sit on the standards of Rome and
+that the dominion of God and not of Cæsar shall prevail on the
+Capitoline Hill."
+
+She paused, and Marsyas, waiting until he might speak, put out his hand
+to her.
+
+"I heard another building such fair structures of his fancy and his
+hopes," he said, with pain on his face.  "Even though they were
+realized to-morrow, he can not see it; I, being broken of heart, could
+not rejoice.  And Lydia--for they call thee by that name--I can not see
+another in the dust of the stoning-place!"
+
+Her face flushed and paled and he let his hand drop on hers, by way of
+apology.
+
+"Then, thou wilt give over the companionship of these people?" he
+persisted gently.  She hesitated, and finally said in a halting voice:
+
+"I--went--I knew that--by thy leave, sir, thou camest to them as a
+peril.  Thou wast expected of the authorities, being doubly charged
+with apostasy and an offense against Rome, and they were permitted to
+go thither, by the legate, even by this household, in search of thee,
+when I and all under this roof knew that thou wast not among them.
+I--went to give them--warning--"
+
+"Then, the call hath been obeyed," he said kindly.  "Shut thy hearing
+against another.  I thank thee, for the Nazarenes.  Thou art good and
+wise and most generous--too rare a woman for Israel to surrender."
+
+She arose, for sounds were coming up the well of the stair, which told
+of the awakening of the alabarch's household.  She wrapped the silk in
+a closer roll and let the folds of her full habit fall over it.  After
+a little hesitation, she extended her hand to him, and he took it.
+
+Under its touch, he felt that his hour of mastery had passed.  The
+gentle, thankful pressure had put him under her command.
+
+When she disappeared into the well of the stairs, Marsyas, glancing
+about him, saw on the housetop next to him Justin Classicus.  The
+philosopher was choicely clad in a synthesis to cover him completely
+from the chill of the morning air, while yet the warmth of his bath was
+upon him.  His locks were anointed, his fillet in place.  Even in
+undress, he was elegant.  He rested in a cathedra, and contemplated his
+neighbor as distantly as he had the night before.
+
+Not until after he had broken his fast with the alabarch and his
+daughter and returned again to the housetop did he see any other of the
+magistrate's guests.  Junia's litter brought up at the alabarch's
+porch, and presently Agrippa came up on the housetop.
+
+"How now?" he exclaimed, seeing Marsyas.  "Is it the air or the sense
+of superiority over the sluggard that invites thee up at unsunned
+hours?"
+
+"Both," Marsyas replied, giving up the diphros to the prince, "and the
+further urging of an old unsettled grudge.  My lord, when dost thou
+proceed to Rome?"
+
+"Shortly; after the Feast of Flora, which is to be celebrated soon."
+
+"Nay; I pray thee, let it be directly," Marsyas urged; "for my
+bitterness unspent bids fair to rise in my throat and choke me!"
+
+"_Proh pudor_!  Cherishing a pulseless rancor with all fervor, when
+thou art here, in arm's reach and in high favor with that which should
+make back to thee all thou hast ever lost in the world!  Oh, what a
+placid vegetable of an Essene thou art,--in all save hate!"
+
+"I am to go to Rome with thee, my lord."
+
+"Of a surety!  My wife sees in thee a kind of talisman which will
+insure me favor with emperors and usurers, ward off the influence of
+beautiful women and give me success at dice!"
+
+Marsyas glanced away from Agrippa and his face settled into
+uncompromising lines.  Agrippa continued.
+
+"Nay, thou goest to see that I make no misstep toward getting a
+kingdom.  Welcome!  Be thou hawk-eyed vigilance itself.  But my
+pleasure might be more perfect did I know that thine and our lady's
+determination to crown me were less selfish!"
+
+"Thou shalt not complain of more than selfishness in me," Marsyas
+answered calmly.  "But by my dearest hope, thou shalt live a different
+life than that which hath ruined thee of late.  I know that thou canst
+win a kingdom by a word; but thou shalt not lose it by a smile.  For,
+by the Lord God that made us, thou shalt not fail!"
+
+Agrippa turned half angrily upon the young Essene, but the imperfectly
+formulated retort died on his lips.  He met in the resolute eyes fixed
+upon him command and mastery.  Words could not have delivered such a
+certainty of control.  In that moment of silent contemplation the
+contest for future supremacy was decided.  Agrippa frowned, looked away
+and smiled foolishly.
+
+"Perpol!  Did I ever think to lose patience with a man for swearing to
+make me a king?  But mend thy manner, Marsyas.  Thou'lt never please
+the ladies if thou goest wooing with this rattle and clang of
+siege-engines!"
+
+Junia appeared on the housetop.  She came with lagging steps and sank
+upon the divan, gazing with sleepy eyes at Marsyas.
+
+"I emancipated myself," she said, "from the study of new stitches, the
+neighbor's dress and the fashion in perfumes.  A pest on your rustic
+habit of early rising!  Here we are aroused in the unlovely hours of
+the raw dawn to achieve business, ere the sun bakes us into stupidity
+at midday!"
+
+"A needless sacrifice to these Egyptians," Agrippa declared.  "They are
+all salamanders.  I saw a serving-woman in this house pick up a flame
+on her bare palm and carry it off as one would bear a vase."
+
+"Vasti?  Nay, but she comes from India; fled from servitude to the
+Brahmin priesthood to take service with the man who had pitied her
+once."
+
+"The alabarch?"
+
+"Even so.  He bought the gold and onyx plates that he put on the Temple
+gates, in India, where he saw her and pitied her.  So, she fled her
+owner and sought the world over till she found the alabarch to enslave
+herself anew."
+
+"So!  Small wonder, then, she is annealed like an amphora.  Yet I had
+believed she was a bayadere."
+
+"A bayadere?" Junia repeated.
+
+"A Brahmin dancer, having the peculiarities of an Egyptian almah, a
+Greek hetæra, and a Pythian priestess, all fused in one.  But now that
+she hath repented, she is rigidly upright and a relentless pursuer of
+evil-doers."
+
+"Alas!" sighed Junia, still watching Marsyas, "is it not enough to grow
+old without having to become virtuous?"
+
+Agrippa lifted his eyes to her face, and the look was sufficient
+comment.  But Marsyas had been plunged in his own thoughts and did not
+hear.
+
+"What is the Feast of Flora?" he asked.
+
+The Roman woman smiled and answered.
+
+"A popular expression of the world's joy over the summer.  That was its
+original motive, but it has been conventionalized into a feast formally
+celebrating the reign of Flora.  It was pastoral, but the poor cities
+walled away from the wheat and the pastures adopted it, in very hunger
+for the feel of the earth.  It falls in the spring under the
+revivifying influence of awakening life and the loosed spirit of the
+populace grows boisterous.  We become a city of rustics and hoidens.
+Pleasure is the purpose and love the largess of the occasion."
+
+Agrippa smiled absently.  These two remarks of diverse character were
+tentative.  She was sounding Marsyas' nature.
+
+"I shall not sail till it is done," Agrippa declared.
+
+"A rare diversion to tempt a man from his ambitions," the young Essene
+retorted quickly.  Junia had made her sounding.  She persisted in her
+latter rôle.
+
+"It is," she averred.  "Flora is elected among the beautiful girls of
+the theaters; she typifies universal love; she runs, leaving a trail of
+yellow roses behind her, which lead the multitude on to the delight she
+means to take for herself--and that is all.  It is merely a pretty
+feast, but the world is made of many well-meaning though blundering
+natures; and the revel does not always reach the high mark of
+refinement at its highest."
+
+Agrippa's eyes on the Roman woman expressed intensest amusement and
+admiration, though they lost nothing of their cool self-possession.
+
+"My lord," Marsyas observed coldly, "there are as choice evils in Rome."
+
+Junia laughed.
+
+"Evil!  Tut, tut!  How monstrous serious the little world takes itself!
+How great is its problems, how towering its philosophies, how bad its
+badness!  See us wrinkle our little old brows and smile agedly over the
+creature impulses of children and forget that the gods sit on the brink
+of Olympus and smile at us.  How we deplore the Feast of Flora--and out
+upon us!  None--save perchance thyself, good sir, and thy rigid
+order--but goes reveling after pleasure and chooses a love or casts a
+stone at an offender--and soberly calls it a crisis or a principle!
+Philosophy!  Discovering the obvious!  Badness!  Only nature, more or
+less emphatic!  All a matter of meat and drink, shelter and apparel and
+the recreation of ourselves!  Everything else is merely an attribute of
+the simple essentials.  Is it not so, good sir?"
+
+Marsyas shook his head.  For the first time in his life he had heard
+the world forgiven and the sound of it was good.  He could not help
+remembering Lydia's words, in contrast.  But he was not convinced.
+
+"It is not from the place of the gods that we feel, do and believe," he
+said.  "The child's difficulties are heavy to it; it can not imagine
+them to be greater.  So if thy reasoning hold, lady, perhaps the higher
+God smiles at the rage of Jove and the threats of Mars and the loves
+and pains of Venus.  But Jove and Mars and Venus do not smile at them;
+nor does the child at his fallen sand-house or his ruined bauble.  It
+is therefore a serious world for worldlings."
+
+Junia lifted her white arms, and, dropping her head back between them
+against the divan, smiled up at the roof of the pavilion.
+
+"I thought thee to be large and far-seeing," she said.  "But go follow
+Flora, and thou shall either be driven mad with astonishment, or
+persuaded to look upon the world henceforward with mine eyes!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A MATTER HANDLED WISELY
+
+Flaccus Avillus, Proconsul of Egypt, held audience in his atrium.  He
+received a commission of three from the Jews of Alexandria.  One was
+Alexander Lysimachus, who came with a civil petition; the other two
+were despatched from the congregation with a hieratic memorial.
+
+The three were stately and deliberate in manner, handsome even for
+their years, and as courtly as Jews can be when they bring up their
+native grace to the highest standard of culture.  They were bearded,
+gowned in linen, covered with tarbooshes, and as they walked their
+indoor sandals made no sound upon the polished pavement of the atrium.
+
+One wore on his left arm a phylactery, the last clinging to the old
+formality which had separated his fathers' class in Judea from the
+others, as a Pharisee.  The second was an Alexandrian Sadducee.  The
+third had over his shoulders the cloak of a magistrate.
+
+Flaccus did not rise from his curule as they approached, but he
+returned their greetings with better grace than they had formerly
+expected of a Roman governor.
+
+"Be greeted," he said bluntly.  "And sit; ye are elderly men!"
+
+Lysimachus took the nearest chair and the others retired a little way
+to an indoor exedra.
+
+Flaccus thrust away parchments and writings to let his elbow rest on
+his table, ordered the bearers of the fasces to withdraw to a less
+conspicuous position, and looked at Lysimachus.
+
+"Thou lookest grave, Alexander," he said.  "Art thou commissioned with
+a perplexity?"
+
+The alabarch, being a magistrate and therefore recognized by Rome
+before the synagogue, answered readily.
+
+"Not so much perplexed, good sir, as troubled.  I come with a petition,
+not in writing, but nevertheless most urgent."
+
+"Let me hear it," Flaccus said.
+
+"Nay, then; thou knowest that a certain celebration of the Gentiles in
+this city is approaching.  It is a feast of much magnitude and of much
+lawlessness.  Thou knowest the temper of the city toward my people, and
+after three days of drunkenness, Alexandria will love the Jew no more,
+but much less.  Thou rememberest, as I and my people remember with
+mourning, that last year, the excited multitude, that followed Flora's
+trail of yellow roses through the Regio Judæorum, fell upon the Jews by
+the way and slaughtered and sacked as if it had been warfare instead of
+festivity.  It was a new diversion for the multitude, and one like to
+be repeated.  But we, who are led to believe by thy recent good will
+that thou dost not cherish Rome's ancient prejudice against our race,
+come unto thee and hopefully beseech thee to forbid the Flora to lead
+her rioters upon our peaceful community."
+
+"I have already warned the prætor," Flaccus responded, "that Flora is
+not to run through the Regio Judæorum this year."
+
+"The prætor dare not disobey thee," Lysimachus said, with a tone of
+finality in his voice.
+
+Flaccus smiled grimly.
+
+"Nor Flora," he added.
+
+"Thou hast our people's gratitude and allegiance; mine own thankfulness
+and blessings," Lysimachus responded heartily.
+
+Flaccus waved his hand, and glanced at the other two, sitting aside.
+
+"And ye?" he said.  "Are ye but a portion of the alabarch's commission?"
+
+"Nay, good sir," the Sadducee answered, "we come upon a mission for the
+congregation."
+
+Lysimachus arose, but the Sadducee turned to him with a bow.
+
+"Pray thee, sir, it concerns thee as well.  Wilt thou abide longer and
+hear us?"
+
+The alabarch inclined his head and sat down.  Flaccus signified that he
+was ready to hear them.
+
+"Thou didst ask our brother, the alabarch, if he were commissioned with
+a perplexity," the Sadducee continued.  "Not he, but we come perplexed.
+Were we Jews in Judea, the method would be laid down to us by Law.  But
+in Alexandria we have grown away from the method, while yet we have the
+same object to achieve."
+
+"We lose in guidance what we gain in freedom," the Pharisee added.
+
+"In Judea," the Sadducee continued, "they are still bound by the usages
+of the Mosaic Law.  An offender against the Law is stoned.  We do not
+stone in Alexandria; yet we have the offender, and suffer the offense.
+What, then, shall we do to cleanse our skirt and yet offer no violence
+to our advanced thinking?"
+
+"Give me thy meaning," the proconsul said impatiently.
+
+"Perchance it hath come to thee that there is a sect known as the
+Nazarenes, followers of Jesus of Nazareth, which are spreading like a
+pestilence on the wind over the world.  So full of them is Judea, even
+David's City, that the Sanhedrim, in alliance with the Roman legate, is
+proceeding against them with extreme punishment."
+
+"I have heard," Flaccus assented.
+
+"But the numbers have grown so great and so far-reaching that the
+Sanhedrim hath achieved little more than to drive them abroad into the
+world."
+
+"So the legate informs me," Flaccus added.
+
+"Perchance then thou knowest that Alexandria hath its share."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Even the Regio Judæorum."
+
+"Strange," Lysimachus broke in.  "Strange, if they be such
+law-breakers, as they are reputed to be, that they have not been
+brought before me for rebellion and violence, ere this!"
+
+The Pharisee put his plump white hands together.
+
+"Thou touchest upon the perplexity, brother," he said, addressing
+himself to Lysimachus.  "We are warned by the scribe of Saul of Tarsus,
+who leadeth the war against the heretics, that they are invidious
+workers of sedition; whisperers of false doctrines and pretenders of
+love and humility.  They do not persuade the rich man nor the powerful
+man nor the learned man.  They labor among the poor and the despised
+and the ignorant.  Saul, himself, though first to be awakened to the
+peril of the heresy, did not dream how immense an evil he had attacked
+until he found the half of Jerusalem fleeing from him.  Wherefore,
+brother, we may be built upon the sliding sands of an evil doctrine;
+the whole Regio Judæorum may be going astray after this apostasy ere
+the powers know it."
+
+Lysimachus stroked his white beard and looked incredulous.
+
+"The Jews of Alexandria will not tolerate a persecution," he said
+emphatically.
+
+"So thou dost grasp the perplexity wholly," the Sadducee said.  "What
+shall we do?" he turned to the proconsul.
+
+"I am to advise, then?" Flaccus asked indifferently.
+
+"Thou wilt not suffer them to lead our men-servants and our
+maid-servants and our artisans into heresy?" the Pharisee asked.
+
+"We do not persecute in Alexandria, thou saidst," Flaccus observed.
+
+"No," declared Lysimachus.  "If all the Regio Judæorum were as we
+three, the apostates might come and go, strive their best and die of
+their own misdeeds, unincreased in number or in goods.  But the
+clamoring voice of the mass--nay, even Cæsar hath harkened to it!
+Those that have not followed the Nazarenes demand that they be cut off
+from us.  But we can not kill, and not even death daunts a Nazarene.
+Commend thyself, Flaccus, that thou didst call my brothers' mission a
+perplexity."
+
+"So you have come formally to me with your people's plaint and expect
+me to solve a question that you yourselves can not solve," Flaccus
+said.  "_Poena_!  But you are a helpless lot!  I shall pen the heretics
+in Rhacotis forthwith, and command them neither to visit nor to be
+visited!  Is it enough?"
+
+The three Jews arose.
+
+"It is wisdom," said the Sadducee.
+
+"It will serve," the Pharisee observed.
+
+"I shall ferret them out," Lysimachus said.
+
+"Thanks," the three observed at once.  "Peace to all this house."
+
+Flaccus waved his hand and the three passed out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A WORD IN SEASON
+
+The summer waxed over Egypt.  The Delta, back from the yellow plain
+which fronted the sea, was in full flower of the wheat.  The happy
+fellahs lay under the shade of dom-palms and drowsed the morning in and
+the sunset out, for there was nothing to do since Rannu of the Harvests
+had laid her beneficent hand upon the fields.  Across the
+Mediterranean, nearer the snows, the wheat flowered later and the Feast
+of Flora held in celebration of the blossoming fields would arrive with
+the new moon.  Egypt could have given her celebration in honor of Flora
+weeks earlier, but she preferred to wait for Rome.
+
+These were not uneventful days in the alabarch's house, for Cypros,
+with Drumah at her feet, fashioned with her own hands Agrippa's
+wardrobe and prepared for his departure, while the prince idled about
+the alabarch's garden, apparently oblivious to the call of his need to
+go to Rome, in his enjoyment of Junia's fellowship.  And Marsyas, daily
+more grave, gazed at him askance and furthered the plans for the trip,
+tirelessly.
+
+His patience might have continued unworn, but for a single incident.
+
+Late one night, when oppressed by the crowding of his unhappy thoughts,
+he arose from his bed to walk the streets in search of composure, and,
+descending into the darkness of the alabarch's house, he heard the
+doors swing in softly.  Expecting robbers, or at least a servant
+returning by stealth from a night's revel, he stepped down into the
+gloom and waited till the intruder should pass.
+
+Softly the unknown approached and laid hand on the stair-rail to
+ascend.  At the second step the figure was between him and the window
+lighting the stairs.  Against the lesser darkness and the stars
+without, he saw Lydia's outlines etched.  Noiselessly, she passed up
+and out of hearing.
+
+In his soul, he knew that she had been to the Nazarenes!
+
+"To-morrow," he said grimly to himself, "I prepare the prince's ship!
+There passes a stiff-necked sacrifice to Saul of Tarsus, unless I can
+bring him low!"
+
+The next morning, Justin Classicus received a letter, by a merchant
+ship from Syria.  He retired into his chamber and read it:
+
+
+"O Brother," it said, "that dwelleth among the heathen, this from thy
+friend who envieth thy banishment:
+
+"I delayed opening thy letter three days, believing it to come from him
+who lined my threadbare purse while in Alexandria, asking usury, long
+since due, but at the end of that time, I received his letter of a
+surety.  So I made haste to open thy slandered missive, and greater
+haste to answer it by way of propitiation.
+
+"I read much of thy letter with astonishment, some of it with rancor,
+some with congratulation.  By Abraham's beard, it is almost as good to
+be fortunate as it is to be single; wherefore in answer to thine only
+question, I say that I am neither.  Thus, am I led up to comment on the
+facts thou offerest me.
+
+"I remember the little Lysimachus, a bit of Ephesian ivory-work, that I
+augured would go unmarried, seeing that she was so hindered with
+brains.  But naught so good as a dowry to offset the embarrassment of
+sense in a woman.  Prosper, my Classicus!  For if thou art the same
+elegant paganized son of Abraham thou wast in thine old days, thy debts
+are as many as thy usurers are scarce.  Half a million drachmæ; demand
+no less a dowry than that, my Classicus!
+
+"But here, below, thou writest that which hath cut my limbs from under
+me and set me heavily and helpless on the carpet!  A manumitted slave,
+a cumbrous yokel of an Essene, hath given thee troublous nights,
+because the lady's eyes soften in his presence!  Thou scented son of
+Daphne; Athene's darling; Venus' latest joy!  To let a Phidian
+colossus, with a face high-colored like a comic mask, outstrip thee!
+
+"Thou camest upon them once, the lady's hand in his!  Again, she
+stammered under his look!  And yet a third time, he wrapped a cloak
+about her, and lingered getting his arm away!  And all these things
+thou didst suffer and didst take no more revenge than to write thy
+plaint to me, eight hundred miles away!
+
+"By the philippics of Jeremiah, thou deservest a wife with a figure
+like a durra loaf, and dowered with nine sisters for thy support!
+
+"Thou opinest in a lady-like way, that he is a Nazarene!  Thou addest,
+with a flurry of spleen, that the proconsul of Egypt hateth him!  Thou
+offerest a womanish suspicion that he fled from difficulty here in
+Judea!  Now, any blind dolt could see substance in this for the
+overthrow of a rival.  Lackest thou courage, Classicus, or hast thou
+money enough to last thee till thou findest another lady?
+
+"Is it not a sufficient cause against him that he is a Nazarene?  Or
+perchance thou dost not know of them, which astonishes me more, since
+Pharaoh in the plagues was not more cumbered with flies than the earth
+is of Nazarenes.  But read herein hope, then, against thy suspected
+rival.
+
+"These heretics are persistent offenders against law and order,
+rebellious and otherwise unruly.  One Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus,
+proceedeth against them, for the Sanhedrim.  Whether he is an
+instrument of a political party or an immoderate zealot, is not for me
+to say; perchance he is both.  At any rate he rages against the
+iniquity of the apostasy as a continuing whirlwind.  He is not applying
+his methods locally, only.  He reaches into neighboring provinces, and
+it is his oath to pursue the heresy unto the end of the world and bring
+back the last to judgment.  Vitellius is assisting him in Judea, Herod
+Antipas in Galilee and Aretas in Syria.  I expect hourly to hear that
+Cæsar hath lent him a strong arm, because the rebels are particularly
+rabid against Rome.
+
+"Of course, the members of the congregation are divided, but thou
+knowest that even a small number of zealous defenders of the faith can
+set a whole Synagogue by the ears.  Even so tepid a Jew as I should not
+care to rub shoulders with a Nazarene.
+
+"Do I give thee life, O languid lover?
+
+"Of thyself, I would hear more and oftener.  Await not the rising of a
+new rival to write to me.  Fear not; I shall not ask to borrow money of
+thee--until thou hast wedded the Lysimachus.
+
+"All thy friends in Jerusalem greet thee.  Be happy and be fortunate.
+Thy friend,
+
+"PHILIP OF JERUSALEM."
+
+
+At this point Classicus composedly doubled the parchment, broke it
+lengthwise and cross-wise and clapped his hands for a slave.  A Hebrew
+bondman appeared.
+
+"This for the ovens," said Classicus, handing it to him.
+
+When the servant disappeared, the philosopher descended into his house
+and was dressed for a visit.  An hour before the noon rest, he appeared
+in the garden of the alabarch.
+
+There he found Lydia and Junia, Agrippa, Cypros, the alabarch and
+Flaccus, idly discussing the day's opening of the Feast of Flora.  He
+had given and received greetings and merged his interests in the
+subject, when Marsyas appeared in the colonnade.  He had taken off the
+kerchief usually worn about the head, and carried it on his arm.  As he
+passed the spare old alabarch, the heavy purple proconsul and the
+exquisite Herod, not one of the guests there gathered but made
+successive comparisons between him and the others.  Junia gazed at him
+steadily, under half-closed lids, but Lydia followed him with a look,
+half-sorrowful, half-happy, and wholly involuntary.
+
+Cypros glanced at his flushed forehead and damp hair.
+
+"Hast thou been into the city?" she asked with sweet solicitude.
+
+"To the harbor-master," he answered, "I have been making ready thy
+lord's ship."
+
+Agrippa overheard the low answer, and turned upon him irritably.
+
+"I have said that I do not depart until after the Feast of Flora," he
+remarked.
+
+"The men of the sea do not expect fair winds before three days,"
+Marsyas replied, "wherefore we must abide until after the Feast."
+
+"But my raiment is not prepared," Agrippa protested.
+
+"Thou goest hence, my lord, to Rome, to be dressed by the masters of
+the science of raiment," Marsyas assured him.
+
+Classicus raised his head and addressed to the Essene the first remark
+since the memorable night of Marsyas' arrival in Alexandria.
+
+"What a game it is," he opined amiably, "to see thee managing this
+slippery Herod!"
+
+Agrippa flushed angrily, but Marsyas did not await the retort.
+
+"My brother's pardon," he said, "but the Herod has fine discrimination
+between cares becoming his exalted place, and the labors of a steward."
+
+Agrippa's face relaxed, but Classicus broke off the swinging end of a
+vine that reached over his shoulder and slowly pulled it to pieces.
+
+Junia sitting next to Marsyas turned to him.
+
+"So thou wilt follow Flora?" she asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?" she insisted, smiling.  "Thou must go to Rome, where Flora runs
+every day.  Wilt thou turn thy back upon Egypt's joy and see only
+Italy's?"
+
+"Is Rome so much worse than Alexandria?"
+
+"Not worse; only more pronounced.  There is more of Rome; the world
+gets its impulse there.  So much is done; so many are doing.  And, by
+the caprice of the Destinies, thou art to see Rome more than commonly
+employed."
+
+"How?" he asked.  By this time, the others were talking and the two
+spoke unheard together.
+
+"Hist!  I tell it under my breath, because the noble proconsul is
+burdened with the great responsibility of declaring the emperor's
+deathlessness, and I would not contradict him aloud.  But Tiberius is
+old, old--and Rome casts about for his successor.  But chance hath it
+that interest hath uncoupled the two eyes so that the singleness of
+sight is divided.  'Look right,' saith one; 'look left,' saith the
+other, and each looking his own way reviles his fellow and creates
+disturbance in the head.  But it behooves thee, gentle Jew, to bid
+thine eyes contemplate Tiberius, to do oriental obeisance and say as
+the Persians say; 'O King, live for ever!"
+
+"But yesterday, thou didst cast a kindly light over the world's
+hardness.  Tear it not away thus soon and frighten me with the fierce
+power against which I must shortly go and demand tribute," he protested
+lightly.
+
+She took down her arms, clasped back of her head, to look at him.
+
+"Light-hearted eremite!" she chid.  "Never a Jew but believed that all
+the happenings in the world happen in Jerusalem--that there is nothing
+else to come to pass after Jerusalem's full catalogue of possibilities
+is exhausted.  But I tell thee that, compared to Rome, Jerusalem is an
+unwatered spot in the desert where once in a century a loping jackal
+passes by to break its eventlessness."
+
+"Lady," he said with his old gravity, "Judea is a Roman province.  Is
+Rome harsher to her citizens than she is with her subjugated peoples?"
+
+"Thou art nearer the executive seat; under the eye of Power itself.
+Icarus, on his waxen wings, was unsafe enough in the daylight; but he
+was undone by soaring too close to the sun!"
+
+"What shall I do, then?" he asked.
+
+"Attach thyself to a power; get behind the buckler of another's
+strength!"
+
+"Power is not offering its protection for nothing; what have I to give
+in exchange for it?"
+
+Almost inadvertently, she let her eyes run over him, and seemed
+impelled to say the words that leaped to her lips.  But she recovered
+herself in time.
+
+"It is a generous world," she said, "and such as thou shall not go
+friendless; depend upon it!"
+
+When Marsyas glanced up, his eyes rested on Lydia's, and for a moment
+he was held in silence by the faint darkening of distress that he saw
+there.  Something wild and sweet and painful struggled in his breast
+and fell quiet so quickly that he sat with his lips parted and his gaze
+fixed until the alabarch's daughter dropped her eyes.
+
+"I heard thee speak of Rome," she said.  "After thy labor is done, wilt
+thou remain there?"
+
+"No," he answered slowly, "I return to En-Gadi."
+
+"En-Gadi," Junia repeated.  "Where is that and why shouldst thou go
+there?"
+
+"It is the city of the Essenes, a city of retreat.  It is in the Judean
+desert on the margin of the Dead Sea."
+
+"After Rome, that!" Junia cried.
+
+But Lydia said nothing and Marsyas, gazing at her in hope of
+discovering some little deprecation, some little invitation to remain
+in the world, forgot that the Roman woman had spoken.
+
+Classicus, who had been a quiet observer of the few words spoken
+between the Essene and the alabarch's daughter, drew himself up from
+his lounging attitude.
+
+"To En-Gadi?" he repeated, attracting the attention of the others, who
+had not failed to note his sudden interest in Marsyas.  "Why?"
+
+"I am an Essene fallen into misfortune; but once an Essene, an Essene
+always," Marsyas answered.
+
+"An Essene?" the philosopher observed.  Then after a little silence he
+began again.
+
+"In Alexandria, we live less rigorously than in Judea, even too little
+so, we discover at times.  Wherefore it is needful that we watch that
+no further lapse is made, which will carry us into lawlessness."
+
+"Ye are lax, yet wary that ye be not more lax?" Marsyas commented
+perfunctorily.
+
+"Even so.  From Agrippa's lips, we learn that thou hast led a
+precarious life of late; an eventful, even adventurous life: that thou
+hast been accused and hast escaped arrest.  Thou wilt pardon my
+familiarity with thine own affairs."
+
+"Go on," said Marsyas.
+
+"In Alexandria--even in Alexandria, of late, the Jews have resolved not
+to entertain heretics--"
+
+"In Alexandria, the extreme ye will risk in hospitality is one simply
+accused."
+
+"I commend thy discernment.  But we separate ourselves from the
+convicted."
+
+"So it is done in Judea.  But continue."
+
+Classicus waited for an expectant silence.
+
+"Thou carryest about thee," he said, "an emblem which none but a
+Nazarene owns."
+
+Marsyas contemplated Classicus very calmly.  He had been accused of
+apostasy before, but by one whose every impulse had root in irrational
+fanaticism.  He had not expected this Romanized Jew to become zealous
+for the faith; instead, he knew that Classicus would have pursued none
+other for suspicion, but himself.  Why?
+
+He glanced at Lydia.  Alarm and protest were written on every feature.
+Classicus saw that she was prepared to defend Marsyas and his face
+hardened.  Then the Essene understood!
+
+A flush of warm color swept over his face.
+
+Without a word he put his hand into his robes and drew forth and laid
+upon his palm the little cedar crucifix.
+
+Cypros uttered a little sound of fright; Agrippa whirled upon Marsyas
+with frank amazement on his face.  After a moment's intent
+contemplation of the Essene's face, Junia settled back into her easy
+attitude and smiled.
+
+Lydia sprang up; yet before the rush of precipitate speech reached her
+lips, there came, imperative and distinct, Marsyas' telepathic demand
+on her attention.  Tender but commanding, his dark eyes rested upon her.
+
+"Thou shall not betray thyself for me!" they said.  "Thou shalt not
+bring sorrow to thy father's heart and disaster upon thy head!  Thou
+shalt keep silence, and permit me to defend thee!  I command thee; thou
+canst do naught else but obey!"
+
+She wavered, her cheeks suffused, and her eyes fell.  When she lifted
+them again, they were flashing with tears.  A moment, and she slipped
+past her guests into the house.
+
+The alabarch broke the startled silence; he had turned almost
+wrathfully upon Classicus.
+
+"It seems," he exclaimed, "that thou hast needlessly broadened thine
+interests into matters which once did not concern thee!"
+
+"Good my father," Classicus responded, "thou hast lost two sons already
+to idolatry and false doctrines.  And thy lovely daughter, thou seest,
+is no more secure from the seductions of an attractive apostasy than
+were they!"
+
+"Well?" Marsyas asked quietly.
+
+"It is not needful to point the man of discernment to his duty,"
+Classicus returned.
+
+"Methinks," said Marsyas, rising, "that the sharp point of a pretext
+urges me out of Alexandria, as it did in Judea.  Thou hast had no
+scruples," he continued, turning to Agrippa, "thus far in accepting the
+companionship of an accused man, so I do not expect to be cast off now."
+
+"But," Agrippa protested, stammering in his surprise and perplexity,
+"acquit thyself, Marsyas.  Thou art no Nazarene!"
+
+"No charge so light to lift as this, my lord," Marsyas answered.  "Yet
+even for thy favor I will not do it!"
+
+Agrippa looked doubtful, and the alabarch exclaimed with deep regret:
+
+"What difficulty thou settest in the way of my debt to thee!  Thou, to
+whom I owe my daughter's life!"
+
+"Yet have a little faith in me," Marsyas said to him.  "And for more
+than I am given lief to recount, I am thy debtor!"
+
+He put the crucifix into the folds of his garments.
+
+"I am prepared to go to Rome, even now," he added to Agrippa.
+
+"But--I would stay until after the Feast of Flora," the prince objected
+stubbornly.
+
+Cypros was breaking in, affrightedly, when Flaccus interrupted.
+
+"Come! come!" he said, with a bluff assumption of good nature.  "Thou
+art not banished from the city, young man!  I am legate over
+Alexandria, and a conscienceless pagan, wherefore thou hast not
+offended my gods nor done aught to deserve my disfavor.  Get thee down
+to Rhacotis among thy friends--or thine enemies--till the Herod hath
+diverted himself with Flora, and go thy way to Rome!  What a tragedy
+thou makest of nothing tragic!"
+
+"O son of Mars," Marsyas said to himself, "I do not build on finding
+asylum there.  Never a pitfall but is baited with invitation!"
+
+But Cypros turned to the proconsul, her face glowing with thankfulness
+under her tears.
+
+"Is it pleasing to thee, lady?" the proconsul asked jovially.
+
+"Twice, thrice thou hast been my friend!" she cried.
+
+"I shall go," said Marsyas.  "Remember, my lord prince, these many
+things which I and others suffer add to the certainty that thou shalt
+be called to pay my debt against Saul of Tarsus, one day!  Three days
+hence, thou and I shall sail for Rome!"
+
+He saluted the company and passed out of the garden.
+
+"Perchance," said Flaccus dryly, with his peculiar aptitude for
+insinuation, "an officer should conduct him to this nest of apostates."
+
+"He will go, never fear!" Cypros declared, brushing away tears.
+
+"By Ate! the boy is spectacular," Agrippa vowed suddenly.  "He is no
+Nazarene!  I know how he came by that unholy amulet.  It is a relic of
+that young heretic friend of his, whom they stoned in Jerusalem!"
+
+But Junia found immense amusement in that surmise.  Presently, she
+laughed outright.
+
+"O Classicus, what a blunderer thou art!  Right or wrong, thou hast
+brought down the ladies' wrath, not upon the comely Essene, but upon
+thine own head for abusing him!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE RANSOM
+
+Marsyas passed up to his room to put his belongings together.  The
+sound of his movements within reached Lydia in her refuge, and, when he
+came forth, she stood in the gloom of the hall without, awaiting him.
+
+Moved with a little fear of her reproach, he went to her, with extended
+hands.
+
+"What have I done?" she whispered.
+
+"Thou hast done nothing," he said quickly.  "I blame myself for keeping
+the amulet about me, when I should have destroyed it.  But I could
+not--I have not yet; because--it is thine!"
+
+"But I kept silence--I who owned the crucifix--"
+
+"I made thee keep silence!"
+
+"But what have they said to thee; what wilt thou do?" she insisted.
+
+"I go without more obloquy than I brought hither with me; I was
+accused, before; I could stand further accusation, for thy sake!  They
+have said nothing; done nothing--I go to Rhacotis, to await the
+departure of Agrippa, who goes to Rome at the end of three days--nay;
+peace!" he broke off, as a momentous resolution gathered in her pale
+face.  "Thou wilt keep silence, else I do this thing in vain!"
+
+"I will not slander myself!" she cried.  "I am not afraid to confess my
+fault--"
+
+"But thou shall not do it!" he declared.  "The punishment for it would
+not be alone for thyself!  Choose between the quiet of thy conscience
+and the peace and pride of thy father!  Bethink thee, the inestimable
+harm thou canst do by this thing!  Be not deceived that the story of
+thy lapse would be kept under thy father's roof.  That ignoble pagan
+governor below has no care for thy sweet fame!  He would tell it; thy
+maidens would hear of it and fear thee or follow thee!  Thy father's
+government over his people would be weakened; the elders of the
+Synagogue would question him--Lydia, suffer the little hurt of
+conscience for thine own account, rather than afflict many for thy
+pride's sake!"
+
+Her small hands, white in the darkness of the corridor, were twisted
+about each other in distress.  Marsyas' pity was stirred to the deepest.
+
+"How unhappy thou hast been!" he said, touching upon her apostasy.
+"Give over thy wavering and be the true daughter of God, once more!
+Let us destroy this evil amulet!"
+
+He plucked the crucifix from his tunic and caught it between his hands
+to break it, when she sprang toward him and seized his wrists.
+
+"Do not so!" she besought, her eyes large with fright.
+
+He had forced her to defend it, and she had stood to the breach; he had
+proved the gravity of her disaffection for the faith of Abraham.
+
+"Why wilt thou endanger thyself for this social drift?" he demanded
+passionately.  "Lydia!  How canst thou turn from the faith of thy
+fathers?"
+
+"I--I am not worthy to be a Nazarene!" she answered.  "They are
+forbidden to enact a falsehood!"
+
+"Let be; I do not care for their philosophy; it is like the Law of
+Rome.--an empty armor that any knave can wear.  But I urge thee to
+behold what misery thou invitest upon thyself!  What will come of it?
+Immortal as thou art in soul, thou canst not keep alive the single
+spark of wisdom in the ashes of their folly; thou canst not save them
+against the combined vengeance of the whole world!  But thou canst be
+disgraced with them, persecuted with them, and die with them!
+Unhallowed the day that ever Classicus spoke their name to thee!
+Cursed be his words!  May the Lord treasure them up against him--!"
+
+"Hush! hush!" she whispered.
+
+He became calm with an effort.
+
+"Lydia," he began after a pause, "it is a poor intelligence that can
+not foresee as ably as the augurs.  One successful life gives
+opportunity, to all that spring from it, to be successful; a failure
+scatters the seed of misfortune through all its blood.  Choose thou for
+thyself and thou choosest for a nation which comes after thee.  I see
+thee radiant, crowned, worshiped; and if they who come up under thy
+guidance walk as thou dost walk, Lydia shall give queens unto
+principalities and rulers unto satrapies.  These be days when women of
+virtue and women of remark; women of wisdom are remembered women.  And
+thou, virtuous, wise and noble--the empresses of coming Cæsars will
+assume thy name to conceal their tarnishment under a badge of luster!
+This on one hand.  On the other thou shalt flee from the stones of the
+rabble, come unto the humiliation of thy womanhood and the agony of thy
+body in the torture-cell, and die like a criminal!"
+
+She shrank away with a quivering sound and flung her hands over her
+ears.  He caught her and drew her close, until she all but rested on
+his breast.
+
+"Lydia, naught but mine extremity could make me speak thus to thee," he
+said tremulously and in a passion of appeal.  "If the words be hideous,
+let the actualities that they mean warn thee in time!"
+
+"But--thou dost not understand," she faltered, drawing away from him.
+
+"I do understand; through anguish and rancor and suffering, I have
+learned.  Must I give all to the vengeance of God, who visiteth
+apostates for their iniquity?  Lydia, depart not from the righteous
+religion, I implore thee.  Behold its great age," he went on, speaking
+rapidly and with quickened breath, "behold its history, its monuments,
+its achievements, its great exponents, its infallibility!  The rest of
+the world was an unimagined futurity when an able son of thy race was
+minister to Pharaoh and lord over the whole land of Egypt.  The godly
+kings of thy people were poets and musicians when Pindar's and Homer's
+ancestors were still Peloponnesian fauns with horns in their hair.
+Before Isis and Osiris, before Bel and Astarte, thy God was molding
+universes and hanging stars in the sky.  And lo! the sons of the
+Pharaohs are wasted weaklings, fit only for slaves; the Chaldees are
+dust in the dust of their cities; Babylonia is hunting-ground for
+jackals and the perch of bats; Rome--even Rome's greatness hath
+returned into the sinews of her hills, but there is no decadence in
+Israel, no weakness in her God!  Aid not in the perversion of her
+ancient faith--thou who art the incarnation of her queens--"
+
+He halted, but only for an instant, in which he seemed to throw off
+recurring restraint and drove on:
+
+"David did not seek for one more lovely, nor Solomon for one more wise!
+Truth, even Truth demands dear tribute when it takes a life.  For a
+mere scintillation of verity, wilt thou die?"
+
+"I--I fear not," she answered painfully.  "I--who could be affrighted
+out of telling a truth!"
+
+Not his prayer, but the Nazarene's teaching had weight with her, at
+that moment!
+
+"All thy hazard of life and fame for their vague philosophy," he cried,
+"and not one stir of pity for me!"
+
+There was a moment of complete silence; then she lifted her face.
+
+"Thou knowest better," she said, "thou, who labored in vain with
+Stephen, who loved thee!"
+
+His heart contracted; for a moment he entertained as practicable a
+resolve to stay stubbornly under the alabarch's roof until he had
+broken the determination of this sweet erring girl to destroy herself.
+He drew in his breath to speak, but the futileness of his words
+occurred to him.  Again, he had a thought of telling the alabarch
+privately of his daughter's peril, but instantly doubted that the good
+old Jew could move her.  While he debated desperately with himself, she
+drew, nearer to him.
+
+"Be not angry with me!  If thou leavest Alexandria in three days, it
+may be that I--shall not see thee again--"
+
+"So I am dismissed to know no rest until I have brought Saul of Tarsus
+low, for thy sake, as well as for Stephen's!"
+
+He knew at the next breath that he had hurt her, and repented.
+
+"I shall see thee once more," he said hurriedly, feeling that he dared
+not make retraction.  He took up the pilgrim's wallet containing his
+belongings, and put out his hand to her.  She took it, so wistfully, so
+sorrowfully, that a wave of compunction swept over him.  Bending low,
+he pressed his lips to her palm, and hastened, full of agitation, out
+of the alabarch's house.
+
+The preparations for the Feast of Flora had been brought to
+completeness.  The funds for the lavish display had come out of the
+taxes upon provinces, the flamens managed it, the patricians and the
+rich patronized it and all Alexandria, whether rich or poor, free or
+enslaved, plunged into its celebration with recklessness and relish.
+
+The dwellers of the Regio Judæorum took no part in the celebration, but
+Marsyas saw that a spirit of interest invaded the district, even to the
+doors of the great Synagogue.  Mothers in Israel put aside the wimples
+over their faces when they met in the narrow passages or the
+market-places to talk of the recurring abomination in lowered voices
+and with sidelong glances to see if the velvet-eyed children, who clung
+to their garments, heard.  Fathers in Israel, rabbis and constabularies
+were abroad to make preparation against the local characteristic which
+tended to turn every popular gathering into a demonstration against the
+Jews.  The bloody uproar of the preceding year was fresh in the fear of
+the people, and though Lysimachus had spread abroad the promise of the
+proconsul, the Regio Judæorum had cause to be doubtful of the favor of
+a former persecutor.
+
+But as the young man entered the Gentile portion of the city, he saw
+that, from the Lochias to the Gate of the Necropolis, Alexandria was no
+longer a city of normal life and labor but a play-ground for revel and
+lawlessness.  The two main avenues which crossed the city toward the
+four cardinal points were cleared of traffic and the marks of wheel and
+hoof were stamped out by crowds that filled the roadways.  The crowding
+glories of Alexandrian architecture which lined these noble
+highways--temples, palaces, theaters, baths, gymnasia, stadia and fora,
+high marks of both Greek and Roman society--were wreathed, pillar and
+plinth, with laurel and roses, lilies and myrtle, nelumbo and lotus.
+
+Fountains gave up perfumed water; aromatic gums in bowls set upon
+staves fumed and burned and were filling the dead airs of the
+Alexandrian calm with oriental musks; everywhere were the reedy
+shrilling of pipe, the tinkle of castanet, the mellow notes of flutes
+and the muttering of drums.  Wine was flowing like water; immense
+public feasts were in progress, at which droves of sheep and oxen were
+served to gathered multitudes, which were never full-fed except at
+Flora's bounty.  Processions were streaming along the streets, meeting
+at intersections to romp, break up in revel and end in excess.  Tens of
+thousands with one impulse, one law, frolicked, fought, drank, danced,
+sang, piped, wooed, forgot everything, grudges and all, except Flora
+and her license and bounty.  The citizens were no longer the
+descendants of Quirites, remnant of the Pharaohs or the Macedonian
+kings, but satyrs, fauns, bacchantes, nymphs, mimes and harlequins.
+
+Marsyas kept away from the crowds and went by deserted paths toward
+Rhacotis.
+
+He knew without inquiry where to find the Nazarene quarter.  It was
+marked by the strange, strained silence that hovers over houses where
+life is not secure, by poverty, by orderliness, by the patient faces of
+the humble dwellers, by the brotherly greeting that the few citizens
+gave him as he approached.  He saw many of the garrison loitering
+about, but they permitted him to pass without notice.
+
+The roar of the merrymaking without swept into the quiet passages like
+a titanic purr of satisfaction.  The young man had grown away from his
+toleration of solitude.  His Essenic training had suffered change; its
+usages, at variance with his nature, had become difficult as soon as
+the opportunity for more congenial habits had presented itself.  Only a
+few weeks before, he could voyage the giant breadth of the
+Mediterranean, excluding himself from the contaminating Nazarenes,
+without effort.  Now, he asked himself how he was to live among these
+people for three days.
+
+He found the quarter absolutely packed with people, and realized then
+how many followers of Jesus of Nazareth there were in Alexandria, and
+how thoroughly Flaccus had weeded them out of the rest of the city.
+
+He looked about him, grew impatient, and, with the ready invention of a
+man who has lived only by devices for the past many months, made up his
+mind to house himself elsewhere than in the crowded Nazarene quarter.
+
+"I will go to the ship," he said to himself.  "It is victualed and
+ready for the prince's arrival to weigh anchor.  No one but my seamen
+need know that I am there, and they will be too intent on Flora to
+speak of me abroad in the city!"
+
+He turned promptly and made his way down the quarter toward the harbor.
+Within sound of the waters lapping on the wharf piling, a soldier of
+the city garrison stepped into his way.
+
+"Back!" he said harshly.
+
+Marsyas stopped.
+
+"Why may I not pass?" he demanded.
+
+"None passes from this rebel's nest hereafter!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE DELIVERANCE
+
+There followed time for diverse and earnest meditation for Marsyas: He
+criticized himself sarcastically, for permitting himself to be so
+easily entrapped, and cast about him for means of escape.  He found by
+successive trials that the siege was perfect.  Half of Alexandria's
+garrison had been posted about the district.  The more he considered
+his predicament, the more an atmosphere of impending danger weighted
+the air of the Nazarene community.
+
+He did not seek the hospitality of the Nazarenes, because he had not
+come to the point of admitting that he was to remain among them.  At
+nightfall, while the roar of the reveling city without swept over the
+community, he hoped to find some unguarded spot in the Roman lines, but
+his hope was vain.  With his attention thus forced upon the people
+penned in with him, he began to wonder if there might not yet be some
+profit in counsel with his fellows, hemmed in for some purpose by
+Flaccus.
+
+He found the inhabitants gathered in a broad space in one of the
+streets, where at one time a statue or a fountain might have stood, but
+after a few minutes' listening, he heard only prayers and words of
+submission to the unknown peril threatening them.  Angry and
+disappointed he flung himself away from the gathering, to spend the
+night in the streets.
+
+But after the first gust of his anger, it was brought home to him very
+strongly, that these people were gifted with a new courage, the courage
+of submission--to him the most mysterious and impossible of powers.
+Led from this idle conclusion into yet deeper contemplation of the
+Nazarene character, he found himself admitting astonishing evidences in
+their favor.  He had known not a few of them.  Stephen had been
+beatified, the most exalted, yet the sweetest character that he had
+ever known.  Lydia, wavering and hesitating between Judaism and the
+faith of Jesus of Nazareth, struggled with fine points of conscience,
+and persisted, in the face of terror,--the most potent controlling
+agent, Marsyas had believed, over the spirit of womanhood.  The
+Nazarene body at Ptolemais had displayed before him a humanness in
+subjection, that, in spite of his own resolute disposition, seemed
+triumphant, after all.  They had preached peace, and had maintained it
+in the face of the most trying circumstances.  On ship-board, he had
+been shown that they were long-suffering.  About him now, while
+Alexandria rioted and reveled in excess, their order and decorum were
+highly attractive.  These were excellences that he did not willingly
+see; circumstances and environment had forced their recognition upon
+him.
+
+At a late hour, he was sought and found by their pastor, the tall old
+teacher, whom he had come to consider as a man whom, for his own
+spiritual welfare, he should shun.
+
+"Young brother," the pastor said, "thou art without shelter here, and
+imprisoned among us.  I respect thy wish to be left to thyself, yet we
+can not see thee unhoused.  I have a cell in yonder ruined wall; it is
+solitary and secluded.  Do thou take it, and I shall find shelter among
+my people."
+
+Marsyas felt his cheeks grow hot, under the cover of the night.
+
+"I thank thee," he responded, "but I am here only for a little time.  I
+am young and hardy; I will not turn thee out of thy shelter."
+
+"If thy time with us is stated, thou art fortunate.  Alexandria hath
+not set her limit upon our imprisonment.  Yet, I shall find a niche in
+the house of one of my people; be not ashamed to take my place."
+
+Without waiting for the young man to protest, the Nazarene signed him
+to follow, and led on through the dark to the place indicated--the
+remnant of an ancient house--a single standing wall of earth,
+sufficiently thick to be excavated to form a shallow cave.  There was
+room enough for a pallet of straw within, and a reed matting hung
+before the opening.  The pastor bade the young man enter, blessed him
+and disappeared.
+
+Marsyas sat down in the cramped burrow, and, resting his head on his
+hands and his elbows on his knees, said to himself, in discomfiture:
+
+"Beshrew the enemy that permits you to find no fault in him!"
+
+It was not the last time in the memorable three days of imprisonment
+that he frowned and deprecated the excellence of his hosts.
+
+He accepted their simple hospitality in moody helplessness, and spent
+his time either hovering on the outskirts of their nightly meetings, or
+vainly searching for a plan to escape.  He noted finally that they
+stinted themselves food, but gave him his usual share; water appeared
+less often and less plentiful.  The pastor was not less confident, but
+more withdrawn within himself: the elders became more grave, the
+people, oppressed and prayerful.  At times, when the gradual growth of
+distress became more apparent, Marsyas walked apart and chid himself
+for his resourcelessness.
+
+"I am another mouth to feed, among these people," he declared.  "And by
+the testimony of mine own instinct, I am not the least cause of that
+which hath thrown this siege about them!  I will get out!"
+
+He began at sunset the second day to discover the extent of the
+besieged quarter and sound every point for the strength of its
+particular blockade.  He found that the Nazarene portion of Rhacotis
+stretched from the landings of the bay inland to a series of granaries
+where Rhacotis, in its smaller days, had built receptacles for the
+wheat which the rustics brought for shipping.  To the west it ended
+against a stockade for cattle, upon which mounted sentries could
+overlook a great deal of the quarter.  To the east, the limit was a
+compact row of well-built houses, remnants of the Egyptian aristocratic
+portion in Alexander's time.  The streets intersecting the row and
+leading into pagan Rhacotis were each closed by a sentry.  After his
+investigations, Marsyas felt that here was the weakest spot in the
+siege.
+
+Central in the row was a tall structure, with ruined clay pylons, blank
+of wall and, except for supporting beams, roofless.  It had been a
+temple, but was now a dwelling, a veritable warren since the Nazarenes
+were all driven to occupy a portion which could shelter only a fifth of
+the number comfortably.
+
+Upon this structure, Marsyas' eye rested.  Either it would be closely
+watched from without or not at all.  It depended upon the features of
+the wall fronting on the street at the rear, in which the sentries were
+posted.
+
+For once he blessed a Nazarene night-gathering, when he saw family
+after family emerge from the tunnel-like doors of the temple-house and
+proceed silently toward the meeting of their brethren in the street
+below.
+
+A long time after the last emerged and disappeared into the dark,
+Marsyas crossed to the doors and knocked.  For a moment after his first
+trial, he listened lest there be an answer.  He knocked more loudly a
+second time, and, after the third, he opened the unlocked doors, and,
+putting in his head, called.  The heated interior was totally dark and
+silent.
+
+He stepped in and closed the doors behind him.  When at last his eyes
+became accustomed to the darkness, he saw that he was in a single
+immense chamber; the entire interior of the old temple was unbroken by
+partition of any kind.  Above him, he saw the crossing of great
+palm-trunks, bracing the walls, and over them the blue arch of the
+night.  At the rear, the starlight showed him the wall abutting the
+street of the sentries.  It was absolutely blank and fully thirty feet
+in height.
+
+Marsyas sighed and shook his head.  Though he made the leap in safety,
+he could not alight without noise enough to attract the whole garrison
+to the spot.  But, determined to make his investigation thorough before
+he surrendered the scheme as hopeless, he felt about the great chamber
+and stumbled on a rude ladder leaning against a side-wall.  He climbed
+it, to find that it reached to a ledge, where the deeper lower half of
+the wall was surmounted by a clerestory just half its thickness.  He
+found here rows of straw pallets where the overflow of Nazarenes took
+refuge by night.  He pulled up his ladder, set it on the ledge and
+climbed again, finding himself at the uppermost rung within reach of
+one of the palm-trunks.  He seized it, tried it for solidity and drew
+himself up on the top of the wall.
+
+Fearing detection by the sentries more than the return of the
+householders, he crept with caution to the angle at the rear, and
+looked down into the street.
+
+He located two sentries, but no nearer the back of the temple than the
+two streets opening into the other several yards away to the north and
+south.  He lay still to note the direction of their post and found
+that, in truth, they turned just under him.  At a point half-way
+between either end of their walk, they were more than two hundred paces
+apart.  But Marsyas looked down the sheer wall.  He could not possibly
+accomplish it without injury or discovery or both.
+
+With a heavy heart he retraced his steps, descended into the old temple
+and made his way toward the doors.  Before he reached them, he
+frightened himself by stumbling upon a huge light object that rolled
+away toward the entrance.  He followed cautiously, and touched it again
+while fumbling for the latch.  He felt of it, and finally, swinging the
+door open, saw by the starlight that it was a huge hamper of twisted
+palm-fiber, tall enough to contain a man and wide enough for two.  He
+set the thing aside and went out into the night.
+
+To-morrow was the last day of his confinement, but he did not expect
+liberty.  He did not doubt that the city meditated the destruction of
+the Nazarenes, nor that Flaccus would permit him to be overlooked in
+the general slaughter.  Not the least of his fears was that Lydia might
+be thrust among them at any moment, to share the fate he had striven so
+hard to avert from her.
+
+He returned to his cave in the ruined wall, and lay down on his
+matting, not to sleep, nor even to plan intelligently, but to submit to
+his distress.
+
+At high noon the third day, on the summit of the Serapeum in Egyptian
+Rhacotis, there appeared a slender figure in the burnoose of an Arab.
+
+Five hundred feet distant, in the beleaguered Nazarene settlement, a
+woman stood in her doorway to pray, that the earthen roof might not be
+between her supplication and the Master in Heaven.  She saw the
+microscopic figure on the pylon of the Temple, but daily a priest came
+there to worship the sun.  She saw the figure lift and extend its arms,
+presently, but that was part of the idolatrous ritual, she thought.
+She dropped her eyes to the crucifix in her hands and her lips moved
+slowly.
+
+At that instant, at her feet, as a thunderbolt strikes from the clouds,
+an arrow plunged half its length into the hard sand, and leaned,
+quivering strongly toward the tiny shape on the summit of the pylon.
+
+The Nazarene woman dropped her crucifix and shrieked.
+
+The slow fisher-husband appeared beside her, and, seeing the fallen
+cross, picked it up with fumbling fingers, muttering an exclamation of
+remonstrance.
+
+"Look!" the Nazarene woman cried, pointing to the half-buried bolt,
+still quivering.
+
+The fisherman gazed at it.
+
+"Whence came it?" he asked.
+
+The trembling woman shook her head and clasped and unclasped her hands.
+
+"An affront from the heathen," the man said.  "It was despatched to
+murder thee.  The Lord's hand stayed it; blessed be His name!"
+
+He plucked the arrow with an effort from the sand, and looked at it.
+
+"It is a witness of the Master's care; let us take it to the pastor,"
+he suggested.
+
+The trembling woman followed her husband as he stepped into the street
+and raised her eyes to give thanks.  She saw that the figure on the
+summit of the pylon was gone.
+
+The two found the leader of their flock, sitting outside an overcrowded
+house, bending over a half-finished basket of reeds.  Beside him was
+one complete; at the other hand were his working materials.
+
+"Greeting, children, in Christ's name," he said.
+
+"Greeting, lord; praise to God in the highest!"
+
+The Nazarene woman dropped to her knees, and her husband, extending the
+arrow in agitation, stumbled through their story.
+
+"May His name be glorified for ever," the woman murmured at the end.
+
+But the pastor took the arrow and examined it.  It was uncommon; the
+story was uncommon, and he believed that there was more than a wanton
+attempt at murder in its coming.  The bolt was tipped with a pointed
+flint, and feathered with three long, delicate papyrus cases, one dark,
+two white.  The pastor felt of one of the white feathers, and presently
+ripped it off the shaft.  It opened in his hand.  Within was lettering.
+
+After a little puzzled study of it, he shook his head and put it down.
+He loosened the other from the transparent gum and opened it.  Written
+in another hand were the following words in Greek:
+
+
+  "To the Nazarene to whom this cometh:
+  "Deliver the arrow unto the young Jew, Marsyas,
+      who dwells among you, but is not of your number."
+
+
+The pastor took up the arrow and the papyrus and arose at once.
+
+"Verily, a sending, but it is not for us.  Abide here until I deliver
+it to him that expects it."
+
+He turned toward the ruined wall where Marsyas secluded himself.
+
+The pastor knocked on the dried earth wall without the cave, and the
+matting was thrust aside.  The young Jew stood there.
+
+"I bring thee a message from without," the pastor said at once.  "Peace
+and the love of Christ enter thy heart and uphold thee."
+
+He put the arrow into the young man's hand and saluting him with the
+sign of the cross, went his way.
+
+"What blind incaution," Marsyas said, after he had stared in
+astonishment at the things delivered him.  "A message!  How does he
+know that he does not bear to me treachery against his people, and his
+undoing!"
+
+But he sat down and undid the white case.
+
+"That is Agrippa's writing!" he declared after he had read it.
+
+He took up the other.  The writing was in Sanskrit.
+
+
+"O white Brother:" it ran; "this by an arrow from the strong bow of thy
+lord Prince.  Him I compelled.  Come forth from among the Nazarenes!
+Deliver thyself, by nightfall, in the pure name of her whom thou
+lovest!  Come ere that time, if thou canst, but fail not, otherwise, to
+be in the forefront of Flora's followers!  Be prepared to possess her!
+
+"Fail not, by all the gods!
+    "Vasti, by the hand of Khosru, priest to Siva."
+
+
+Marsyas seized the writing with both hands and sprang up; reread it
+with straining eyes; walked the two steps permitted him in his cave
+over and over again; or leaned against the earthen wall to think.
+
+In the pure name of her whom he loved!  Lydia?  He felt his Essenic
+self dissolve in a flood of glad confusion, for the moment; instead of
+self-reproach, he felt more joy than he ever hoped to know in a life
+devoted to vengeance; instead of guilt, an uplift that separated him
+for an instant from even his terror for the rapture of contemplating
+Lydia.
+
+Then the grave alarm that the bayadere's letter aroused possessed him.
+A rereading filled him with consternation.  The unrevealed peril that
+he was to avert, the intimation that Lydia was endangered, the
+practically insurmountable obstacles in the way of his escape, shook
+him strongly in his self-control.  He made no plans, for desperate
+conditions did not admit of formulated action.  To pass outposts of
+half a cohort of brawny guards offered success only by a miracle, and
+the miraculous is not methodical.
+
+Presently, he burst out of his burrow and tramped through the bright
+hours of the afternoon, cursing the sun for its deadly haste to get
+under the rim of the world, and dizzy with the pressure of terror and
+anxiety.
+
+Near the softening hours of the latter part of the day, while the
+awakening revel roared louder in the distance, he stopped before the
+ancient temple.  The great hamper stood without the heavy entrance with
+three little Nazarene children tying ropes to the interstices between
+the fibers to pull it after them like a wagon.  Marsyas looked at the
+hamper, glanced with intent eyes at the front wall,--a duplicate,
+except for the entrance, of the rear one,--and then rushed away in
+search of Ananias, the pastor.
+
+He found the pastor sitting outside the house that had given him
+refuge, cutting soles for sandals from a hide that lay by his side.
+
+The Nazarene raised a face so kindly and interested that the young man
+dropped down beside him and blundered through his story, in his haste
+to lay the plan for escape before the old man.
+
+"At sunset," he hurried on, "or when the night is sufficiently heavy to
+hide us, I can be let down in the hamper by the rear wall of the old
+temple--if thou wilt bid some of thy congregation to help me!  I pray
+thee--let not thy belief deny me this help, for the life of my beloved,
+or mayhap her sweet womanhood, dependeth upon my escape!"
+
+He clasped his hands, and gazed with beseeching eyes into the pastor's
+face.  He did not permit himself to think what he would do if the old
+man denied him.
+
+"It is manifest," Ananias said, after a pause for thought, "that only
+Nazarenes are to be confined herein.  And thou, being a Jew, art here
+under false imprisonment.  We shall not be glad to have thee suffer
+with us."
+
+"Yes, yes!" Marsyas cried.  "I am falsely accused, and thou wilt avert
+an injustice--nay, by the holy death of the prophets!" he broke off,
+"if I could bear you all to refuge after me, I would do it!"
+
+"It is the spirit of Christ in thee, my son; nourish it!  Yet be not
+distressed for our sake; He who holdeth the world in the hollow of His
+hand is with us."
+
+Marsyas awaited anxiously the old man's further speech, when he lapsed
+into silence after his confident claim of divine protection.
+
+"Give us the plan, my son, and we will help thee," he said at last.
+
+Marsyas took the old man's hand and lifted it impulsively to his lips.
+
+While yet the Serapeum was crowned with pale light, but the more
+squalid streets were blackening, Marsyas, led by Ananias, came to the
+old temple-house, and briefly unfolded his plan to three stalwart young
+Gentiles, who had turned their backs upon Jove and assumed the grace of
+Jesus in their hearts.  The hamper with which the children had played
+all day was brought.  Three troll-lines, each forty feet in length and
+borrowed from the fisher Nazarenes who lived along the bay, were
+securely knotted in three slits about the rim of the basket.  Then,
+waiting only for the rapidly rising dusk, Marsyas, the three young
+Gentiles and the pastor climbed cautiously to the top of the side-wall
+of the old structure, and pulled up the hamper after them.
+
+At the angle in the rear, Marsyas, who led the way, stopped.  Below it
+was already night, and he could hear the steps of the sentries in the
+echoing passage.  He had not planned how he should pass them after his
+descent, but the houses opposite were dark and he did not look for
+interference, if he took refuge among them.
+
+He stepped into the hamper, and the three young men laid hold on the
+ropes.  The pastor spread his hands in blessing over Marsyas' head, and
+when the sound of the sentries' footsteps was faintest, the hamper,
+with little sound and at cautious speed, was let down the steep wall.
+
+It touched the sand with a grinding sound.  Marsyas leaped out, jerked
+one of the ropes in signal and the hamper sprang aloft.
+
+With a muttered blessing on the heads of the apostates, Marsyas leaped
+across the narrow street, to the shadows of the other houses.  Creeping
+from porch to porch with the sheltering shade of overhanging roofs upon
+him, he passed guard after guard, until the row finally ended and the
+open space between him and safety on the bay showed up a line of
+soldiers guarding the water-front.
+
+The distance was not great, and success thus far had made Marsyas
+strong.  With a prayer to the God of those who help themselves, he
+burst from the passage into the great open of the docking and sped
+straight for the bay.
+
+Instantly a howl went up, a pilum launched after him, shot over his
+shoulder, the rush of twenty mailed feet came in pursuit, swords,
+spears and axes flew and fell behind him, but panting and unfaltering
+he rushed straight to the edge of the wharf and dropped out of sight
+into the bay.
+
+The guards came after him, and hanging over the wharf looked down for
+him to come up.  They saw the circles of water widen and widen, grow
+stiller and stiller, and finally cease to move, but the head for which
+they looked did not rise.
+
+Meanwhile Marsyas, native of Galilee and lover of her blue sea, arose
+between sleeping boats far out into the bay.  He caught a chain and
+clung while he drew breath and rested.  Not a vessel was manned; every
+seaman, officer and passenger had gone ashore to follow Flora.
+
+Presently, he looked about and took his bearings.  There through a
+darkening lane of water, a hundred feet long, he made out the ornate
+aplustre of Agrippa's ship.
+
+He let himself down into the water again, and, swimming around to port,
+away from land, climbed by her anchor-chains and got upon deck.
+
+The ship was wholly silent and deserted.  None was there to ask why he
+came so unconventionally aboard.
+
+He went to the cabin prepared for the prince's reception, and with
+steward keys still fast to his belt let himself in and prepared to
+return to Alexandria.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE FEAST OF FLORA
+
+Marsyas had assumed pagan dress, bound a scarlet ribbon for a fillet
+about his head, and flung a scarlet cloak over his tunic, and so,
+identified with the revelers, he safely entered the city.
+
+Of the first he met on the brilliantly lighted wharves, he inquired, as
+a stranger, where he should find the night's celebration.  The citizens
+he addressed, intoxicated with revel, smote him with palm-leaves or
+thyrsi and haled him with them, as their fellow, seeking Flora.
+
+They skirted the Regio Judæorum toward the northwest and swept him
+along toward the Serapeum.  Ever the streets opened up, more
+brilliantly lighted, more thickly crowded, more boisterously noisy;
+ever the nucleus of the crowd that had encompassed him increased and
+thickened and spread, until he was in the heart of a hurrying
+multitude.  Ever they shouted their indefinite anticipations, boasts of
+their favor with Flora, hopes that the run would be diverting, threats
+that were half-jocular, half in earnest.  And some of them, drunk with
+anarchy, made hysterical, inarticulate, yelping cries, like dogs on a
+heated trail.  And so, with their silent fellow among them, they went,
+started into an easy trot, and unhindered, like waters turning over a
+fall.
+
+The strange, half-mad revelry did not make for reassurance in Marsyas.
+His unexplained fears swept over him from time to time like a chill,
+and an unspeakable hatred for the unwieldy host about him, as well as
+the protest of his caution against the quick pace they had set, moved
+him to separate himself from them as soon as he might.
+
+Flora was to begin her flight from the Serapeum, but because the grove
+was most beautiful and the Temple most rich, the aristocrats of the
+city had repaired thither to separate themselves from _hoi polloi_, and
+had builded for themselves the City of Love.
+
+Marsyas knew that superior advantages were always for the rich man, and
+he, who had to be in the forefront of Flora's van, had to gather unto
+himself the most propitious opportunities.  So while the riot of
+plebeians into which he had been absorbed streamed contentedly on to
+its own lowly place, Marsyas worked his way out of the crowd and
+approached the City of Love.
+
+The glow of its lights, breaking through low-hanging branches and
+pillared avenues of tree-trunks, reached Marsyas with its music, its
+shouts and its tumult, but its inhabitants were shut away behind
+foliage, that their doings might be screened from the unqualified.
+
+The young man looked here and there for a way to enter, but the
+cunningly extended grove reached from street to street and blocked his
+passage.  Drawing closer he saw that a cordon of soldiers from the city
+garrison had been thrown around the grove for protection during revels.
+
+At that moment, some one whispered in his ear.
+
+"Thou art in time, white brother.  Continue and fail not!"
+
+He looked to catch a glimpse of Vasti, the bayadere, at his side.  She
+was wrapped from head to heel in a murky red silk, like a
+fire-illumined tissue of smoke.  He exclaimed to himself that this was
+no old woman, nor yet one young.  There was too much lissome grace in
+the sinuous figure, and too much unearthly wisdom in the dark
+mysterious face.
+
+An instant and she had disappeared like a spirit.
+
+A little dazed he turned to follow his approved course, but stopped,
+seeing that many humbler folk who had preceded him were halted and
+driven away.  The benefits of the grove were distinctly for those who
+came with a following and in chariots.  The cars of the rich were
+constantly passing through the line of guards; the numbers were greatly
+increasing, and presently became congested.  The shouts of the
+impatient waiting ones, the pawing of the horses and the calls of the
+slaves running hither and thither, added uproar to the lines which
+closed in around him, until finally he could go neither forward nor
+backward.
+
+While he turned this way and that for an avenue of escape, he found
+that he stood beside a shell of a chariot, with Junia and Justin
+Classicus seated within.  Classicus was not given readily to seeing
+people afoot, and Marsyas stepped hastily out of view.  But the Roman
+woman had already discovered him.  He saw her speak to Classicus, and,
+while he waited in resentment to be pointed out, Classicus leaped
+lightly out of the car, and, forcing his way through a crush of slaves,
+got up beside another, whom Marsyas saw to be Agrippa.
+
+Then Junia leaned down to him.
+
+"Come up; thou art safe," she said.  "I will not betray thee.  What was
+it, reason or repentance that freed thee?"  Her eyes sparkled and her
+breath came and went quickly between her parted lips.
+
+"An errand," he answered, "and the soldiers will not let me pass."
+
+"An errand?  Flora's errand?  Nay, but thou art an Essene.  Come up, I
+say.  The soldiers must pass thee if I bid them."
+
+With thanks on his lips he stepped in beside her and was presently
+driven without further interruption through the line of sentries, to
+the circle of abandoned chariots within.  There, alighting, the young
+man found himself deftly thrust into the crowd by Junia to avoid
+meeting the proconsul or Justin Classicus.  She lost herself with him,
+and entirely obscured from any he had ever seen before, they proceeded.
+
+"I have delivered thee an evil charge," she said, and there was a note
+of regret in her voice.  "Yesterday and the day before they would have
+been less objectionable, and seeing them hour by hour thou shouldst
+have become gradually accustomed to their aberration.  But suddenly
+exposed to this night's work, thy soul will be covered with confusion."
+
+Marsyas smiled awkwardly.  The woman could not understand that nothing
+short of the motive that had actuated him could have moved him to
+follow Flora; neither did he wish her to rest under the self-blame that
+she had urged him.
+
+"I do not go of mine own will, nor even thine," he answered.  "I was
+summoned."
+
+"What! has Flora summoned thee?" she cried, gazing at him in unfeigned
+astonishment.  "Fie on her boldness!  Only the Floras of Rome do such a
+thing!"
+
+"A new evil in Rome?" he responded, smiling.  "O lady, I can not go
+thither unless thou promise me protection!"
+
+She laughed and waved him a warning hand.
+
+"Behold how thou acceptest my counsel here in Alexandria!  What
+obedience need I expect in Rome?"
+
+Without waiting for his answer, she turned him out of the open into the
+grove.
+
+No extensive vista greeted him.  No lamps, only their lights were
+visible.  No green-and-gold walled aisle led far in a straight line.
+The woodland screening of leaf and branch prevailed everywhere.  The
+music, the shouts, the tumult seemed to be in another direction than
+the one toward which they were tending.  Marsyas went uncertainly; he
+had been bidden to be in the forefront of Flora's van, and ahead of him
+was falling silence.  The splendid creature at his side held her peace,
+and moved rapidly.  Gradually, the people thinned out, and when Junia
+turned him into another aisle they were alone.  She seemed to be
+conducting him away from the music and noise.
+
+Only for a moment, he hesitated at a loss, and then with an apologetic
+smile, he said to her:
+
+"We will go this way,"--and, turning at right angles, led back toward
+the tumult.
+
+"Marsyas," she said, with more impatience than reproach, "and thou art
+an Essene!  How I reproach myself!"
+
+But he smiled uncomfortably, and kept on.
+
+The wail of instruments, wild and discordant, the blowing of horns, the
+pulsation of drums, seemed suddenly to unite as they approached.  Above
+the clamor and squeal of cymbals and pipes, voices were lifted, loud
+and strained as if striving to be heard above the uproar.  Some of them
+merely shouted, most of them were singing, not one but many songs;
+shrieks and laughter shrilled through it all, and once in a while the
+musical tone of a rich throat triumphant above the noise bespoke the
+presence of gift with frenzy.
+
+The tumult was not now distant, and Marsyas did not wish Junia's
+further aid.  His search after Flora was not a thing to be published
+abroad.  He glanced at the lights, looked about for a less circuitous
+route, and, with a word to her, plunged through the brake toward the
+revel.
+
+Before she had thought to protest, the forefront of a procession
+penetrated from the side of the aisle and, streaming across, broke
+through the green on the other side.
+
+The first were flamens, Greek, Roman and Egyptian, robed in the pallium
+and carrying the lituus--first, if the order of procession had been
+observed, but before them, and about them bounded a harlequinade of
+baboons, centaurs, goats, swine--loose, ill-fashioned disguises that
+only robbed their wearers of human form and did not achieve the animal
+semblance.  Among them were slighter figures of lizards, snails on
+active pretty limbs, toads, beetles--glittering, sinuous things that
+surpassed the heavier figures in agility and boldness.  After them came
+a great cornucopia of gold, banded with spiral garlands of roses,
+studded with jewels and drawn on low ivory wheels by snow-white
+mule-colts.  Out of the shell-tinted mouth of the great horn, and
+luxuriously bedded on a gauze of gold cast over the flowers and fruits,
+was the rosy figure of a little boy, with pearly wings bound to his
+shoulders.
+
+Thus Eros proceeded to Flora.
+
+Only thus far was any semblance of order distinguishable in the
+procession.  The wave of uproar suddenly assumed overwhelming
+proportions; the aisle was inundated with frenzy.
+
+Marsyas moved forward, Junia moving with him, and the tumult drawing
+its bulky length across the aisle swept in now by multitudes.  He was
+caught; Junia clung to him determinedly for a moment, but was torn
+away; he permitted himself to be swallowed up and pitched along by the
+flood.
+
+He attracted no consecutive attention.  Mænads flung themselves upon
+him because his cheeks were crimson and his figure notable, but other
+youths with glowing cheeks drew the mænads away, now and again.
+Satyrs, fauns and bacchantes saluted him, tumbled him, buffeted him:
+one snatched off his scarlet fillet and crowned him with a wreath of
+grape-leaves, while a second thrust a thyrsus into his hand.  Some
+clung about his shoulders and bawled into his ear; others reached him
+flagons of wine and did not notice that others snatched the drink away.
+These things were single events that stood up out of the daze of
+astonishment and shock that confounded him.
+
+The noise roared louder at every step: the thousands about him
+augmented.  The grove opened more; the lights became more scattering
+and presently he found that he had been swept through another circle of
+chariots and outpost of soldiery into the city again.  Hurriedly
+glancing at the buildings on each side of the street into which the
+procession poured, he saw a sufficient number of familiar marks to
+inform him that he had been borne out on the Rhacotis side of the city.
+Then the blood within him chilled.  This half-maddened, half-murderous
+multitude was upon the trail of Flora, and was driving toward the
+settlement of the Nazarenes!
+
+An unshakable conviction possessed him, that Lydia stood between!
+
+Meanwhile the army of rabble joined the procession of aristocrats.
+From every avenue fresh multitudes poured in and added to the
+thousands.  Except for the bounding mimes about them the flamens kept
+the front of the horde, following with downcast eyes the trail of
+yellow roses which, Marsyas now knew, led the procession.
+
+In the midst of the gigantic hurly-burly he saw with strained eyes and
+a laboring heart that the light-footed goddess had made a long,
+deviating flight: that over and over again she doubled on her tracks,
+but that the detours led with deadly sureness toward the Nazarenes.
+Impelled now by desperation, he began to work his way toward the front.
+
+But he had not reckoned on the immense length of the procession, nor
+how far he had been absorbed into the heart of it.  Only when he was
+rushed over a slight rise in the street did he know that ahead of him
+for a great distance was a sea of tossing heads and moving shoulders,
+and on either side a compact wave wholly filled the two hundred feet of
+street and washed up against the walls of the houses.
+
+The street opened up into an immense square, the last stadium which
+marked the limit of the Roman influence in the Egyptian settlement.
+Beyond that, on the water-front, were the streets of the Nazarenes!
+
+Praying and struggling, Marsyas hardly noticed the increase of noise
+beginning at the front and extending back to him and passing until the
+wild clamor resolved itself into a stunning shout that shook Alexandria
+and rippled the face of the bay.
+
+"Flora!  _Dea maxima_!  _Solis filia_!  Give us joy; give us joy!"
+
+The trail of roses had been broken off.  Flora had been found.
+
+But another roar went up, here and there from the great body there were
+cries of protest and disappointment: the voice of looters and brawlers
+that had been deprived of sacrificial blood.  There were hisses, shouts
+of derision and cries to the populace to press on.
+
+But the flamens stopped; the great concourse halted by rank and rank
+until the slackening and final cessation of movement imprisoned the
+dissenters that were resolved to go on.  The main body continued its
+greetings to the goddess, above the cry of the dissatisfied.
+
+At the far side of the open was a tiny squat temple, hardly more than a
+shrine, to Rannu, the Egyptian goddess of the harvests.  On the top of
+the cornice with the blush lights of the City of Love upon her, stood a
+girl.  Thus lifted into the night sky, her features could not be
+distinguished, and Marsyas believed that she was mummied, face and
+figure, in wrappings.
+
+He continued to press forward.  The small figure on the summit of the
+Temple stirred, turned half about and slowly raised her arms with a
+motion that seemed half-command, half-salute to the great expectant
+crowd below.
+
+Then wing-like mists, taking into themselves the sunset flush of the
+fires of the City of Love, rose up and fluttered about her.  Long,
+flaming, melon-colored tongues licked in and out of the illusion:
+distended convolutions of tissue tinged with rose floated and drifted
+above her, beside her, before her; shivering streamers of silver
+reached up and failed and dissolved; jagged streaks and reduplications
+of fiery jets stood out and up and all about her.  When the clouds of
+pearly vapor lifted and eddied about her head, girdled her with circles
+or framed her with rosy wheels, the center of all this motion was
+distinguishable only as a snow-white spindle that whirled with dizzy
+rapidity.  And presently it was noted that the shape was losing the
+mummy form, that more and more the outlines of a beautiful body were
+blossoming out of the impearled mists: that petaline wings opened out,
+fold on fold, as a rose-bud would blow, and each successive disclosure
+gave the entranced vision a clearer image of the dancer at the heart.
+Ever the motion seemed slow and stately as do all great and graceful
+things maintaining splendid speed; ever the crimson light from the City
+of Love lent its illimitable range of shade to the motion of the mists.
+
+Below the great multitude, with its face lifted to the midnight sky,
+passed from uproar into silence and from silence into thunders of
+applause.  The immense voice was the voice of admiration, for the
+cooling hand of wonder pressed back the crowd's passion for a let to
+its reason.  They forgot their disappointment, their bloodthirst, their
+hate of the Nazarenes, and stood to marvel that the goddess burned but
+was not consumed.
+
+But Marsyas, patiently working his way forward, pressed by a tall black
+man who was saying over and over to himself in Hindu:
+
+"It is the bayadere dance, for the glory of Brahma!  A sacrilege!"
+
+The rest of Flora's program meanwhile was proceeding.  Slowly and
+mightily, magnificent young athletes, for only such could drive their
+way through so solid a pack of humanity, were working toward the
+portico of the Temple.  These were candidates for Flora's favor.  Among
+them were black-eyed Roman youths with laurel around their heads;
+golden-haired Greeks, crowned with stephanes; lithe, bronze Egyptians
+with ribboned locks at the temple which were the badge of princehood.
+And after them came one, crowned with grape-leaves, with a thyrsus in
+his hand, but he had shining black curls, the silken beard and the
+crimson cheeks of a Jew.  The eyes of this one glittered, not from
+excitement of fancy, but from desperate resolution and astounded
+recognition.  The pagans were far in advance of him.
+
+Now the crowd understood where they were bound and shouted to them; now
+the youths forced themselves past the cornucopia, the mimes, the
+flamens, and ran into the open space before the Temple.  In poses
+characteristic of their captivation and intent, they looked up at the
+dancing fires and cried aloud to the goddess.
+
+Meanwhile the morning-tinted mists whirled in a circular plane about
+the girl; suddenly they began to tremble and rise,--up, up until the
+ripple and shiver of the shaken silk took on the action and appearance
+of an illuminated cataract.  Through it, the beautiful outlines of the
+dancer were distinguished, veiled as a Nereid beneath waters, leaping,
+running.  Thousands below instinctively raised their arms to catch the
+figure which inevitably must leap through the inspirited cataract and
+over the parapet of the Temple unless the rosy element pent her within
+its bosom.
+
+The flight gradually changed from a simple step into the entanglement
+and intricacy of a dance.  No gossamer adrift on the wind was more a
+creature of the air, no tranced ephemera more the genius of motion.
+The roar of the multitude failed in a vast suspiration of surprise and
+bewildered delight.  Flora had invented, not a new wantonness, but a
+new grace.
+
+But the young men shouted: each sprang to a column which upheld the
+portico upon which Flora danced, and began to climb, helping themselves
+by the incrusted garlands of stone which ran up the pillars from base
+to capital.  It was a contest in climbing, and the best of the
+contestants was not long in proving himself.  He was one of the
+golden-haired Greeks and the multitude, for ever partizan to the
+strongest man, roared and thundered its encouragement to him.
+
+He went up with an ease and swiftness almost superhuman; now, he drew
+himself across the outstanding corner of the architrave, and stood with
+delicate foothold on its molding while he reached up past the frieze
+and caught the cornice with his hands.
+
+The dancer caught the flash of light on his golden stephane and wavered.
+
+"_Habet_!  _Habet_!" roared the multitude.  "Evoe, Ionides!"
+
+And Ionides, lazily lifting himself to the top of the portico, lingered
+a moment on one hand and knee to contemplate his prize.
+
+The cataract sank; the flying feet halted, the glory of fire and motion
+was lost in lengths of silk which the dancer began hastily to wind
+about her head and body.  Sufficiently covered to hide her face, she
+paused and looked to see his further move.
+
+The Greek, with shining eyes and smiling lips, began slowly to raise
+himself.
+
+Then the one with the black curls and silken beard tore himself from
+the foremost of the crowd and rushed toward the portico.
+
+The dancer saw him come.  She moved toward the edge of the cornice.
+The Greek leaped: the other below flung up his arms, but the roar of
+the multitude swept away the cry that came from his lips.
+
+The dancer, eluding the triumphant Greek, rushed over the brink of the
+portico and dropped like a plummet entangled in gossamer into the
+upreached arms of Marsyas below.
+
+Both fell like stones.  But Marsyas sprang up with his prize in his
+arms, and fled up the steps through the black porch and the stone
+valves into the Temple of Rannu.
+
+[Illustration: Marsyas sprang up with his prize in his arms (missing
+from book)]
+
+Outside, the multitude, having seen Flora flout her rightful possessor,
+fell for a moment silent.  Then, a part having but one desire to choose
+for itself, fell to its own choosing; but the rest, already cheated of
+blood and spoil, howled their disapproval, fought their way through
+disinterested masses in order to reach the refuge of the capricious
+Flora, met resistance and precipitated warfare, and in an incredibly
+short time, bedlam reigned in the square before the Temple of Rannu.
+
+
+The public celebration of the Feast of Flora was at an end.  Meanwhile
+there was a trail of yellow roses, beginning abruptly in the Nazarene
+community and leading around every household and out and on toward the
+west.  The roses lay untouched and wilting through the night and were
+shoveled up and carted away by the street-cleaners the next morning.
+And on the summit of the Gate of the Necropolis, a painted beauty sat
+in jewels and flowers and little raiment, and wondered why she was not
+sought and found and why her followers stayed and roared before the
+Temple of Rannu.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE FINING FIRE
+
+As Marsyas leaped into the Temple of Rannu, a figure started up beside
+him.  He sprang away from it in alarm, but a word in Hindu reassured
+him.
+
+"It is I, Vasti."
+
+With the bayadere following he raced through the cloyed musk of the
+temple toward the square of lesser darkness at the rear, which showed
+the exit into the court.  He flung himself across the pavement of the
+inner inclosure and down its aisle of sphinxes, through the gate in the
+rear wall and out into a black passage.
+
+Behind, the roar of the contending host of Flora followed him.  Though,
+for a second time this day he had run with peril on his track, the
+threatened identification of the precious burden he bore was more
+terrifying than death had been at sunset.
+
+It was a long alley, the single outlet for a jam of humble houses
+surrounding the temple, and it opened into a street deep in the
+Egyptian quarter.  Though Marsyas ran splendidly, he carried no little
+burden, and the way was black, unpaved and treacherous.  He had begun
+to fear that he could not reach the end before pursuers, so minded,
+could hem him in, when almost as if the thought had invited the
+actuality, he saw a figure appear at the mouth of the alley.  With a
+furious but repressed exclamation, the unknown plunged at the Essene.
+
+Determined to defend Lydia's identity as long as he might, Marsyas
+swung her behind him, and with a whisper to Vasti to hide Lydia, made
+ready to fight fast.
+
+With the dim illumination of the city behind him, Marsyas was better
+able to see his antagonist.  As the solid body projected itself at him,
+like a springing beast, he met it with a raised left arm and a ready
+right hand.  Instantly the two closed and for a brief, fierce moment,
+fought savagely.  But Marsyas discovered that he was far more agile,
+taller and apparently younger than his assailant, and for a space he
+had only to fight away the knife that glinted and darted hungrily at
+his throat.  Then, seizing upon his antagonist's first imperfect guard,
+he delivered a stunning blow over the heart.  The heavy body staggered,
+quivered and collapsed.
+
+Expecting to find the passage before him filling with ruffians, Marsyas
+was astonished to see the way clear and vacant.  Without waiting to
+catch breath Marsyas sprang back in the alley, and, whispering the
+bayadere's name, found Lydia and the serving-woman only a pace from the
+spot.
+
+Catching Lydia up again, in spite of her protests, he was about to
+spring over the prostrate body that all but blocked the passage, when
+his eye fell upon the upturned face.  The dim light of the city fell on
+it.
+
+It was Flaccus!
+
+For a single moment of surprise and bewilderment, Marsyas stood still.
+Then very surely it penetrated through his brain that the proconsul had
+recognized him at the moment of Flora's drop into his arms, and had
+come to capture him--or to identify the Dancing Flora!
+
+He knew that he had not struck a fatal blow and the proconsul's knife
+lay near.  He picked it up.
+
+It was bloody.
+
+Startled and aghast, he flung the weapon away, and, leaping over the
+unconscious Roman, fled out of the alley.  A torch of pitch, burnt down
+to a charred knot, with a feeble flame playing over it, was set upon a
+staff hardly ten paces from the mouth of the passage.  It was a dark
+street, and deserted.  The roar of the populace still centered about
+the square of the Temple of Rannu.  Marsyas turned toward the torch,
+and, as he ran, he saw under its sickly light the figure of a man
+stretched on the earth.  At another step, he tripped over a second
+fallen body.  It moved and groaned.
+
+Marsyas put Lydia down.  Carrying her through a street cumbered with
+prostrate men might mean bodily injury for both of them.  With a
+reassuring word, he led her between the head of the obscured man and
+the feet of the one under the torch, and stumbled at his second step on
+a contorted shape.
+
+Marsyas stopped, to ask himself if the deadly hand that had brought
+these men low might not await him and his dear charge farther on.
+Vasti leaned over the one under the torch.  Then she sprang up.
+
+"Come!  Look!" she whispered in excitement.
+
+Marsyas hurried to the man, and met at that instant the last conscious
+light in the eyes of Agrippa.
+
+The young Essene dropped to his knees without a word, thrust his hand
+into the embroidered tunic and felt for the prince's heart.  It beat
+but slowly.  Vasti, meanwhile, snatched the torch from the staff and
+beat the charred pitch knot on the ground till the still inflammable
+heart broke open and ignited afresh.
+
+By its light Marsyas examined Agrippa.  Between the prince's shoulders,
+his hand touched chilling blood.
+
+"Ambushed!" he said grimly.  "Stabbed in the back!"
+
+Marsyas looked at the prince's right hand.  It was still clenched, and
+the flesh on the knuckles was abraded, the second joints swelling fast.
+
+Vasti, with suspicion in her olive eyes, carried the torch over to the
+contorted shape.  Then she made a sign to Marsyas.  He looked.  It was
+an Egyptian wearing the livery of Flaccus.  The prince's Arabic dagger
+was neatly buried to the hilt in the servitor's breast.  Vasti examined
+the second prostrate form.  By her torch Marsyas saw that it was
+Eutychus, conscious but benumbed.  His left ear, cheek and eye were
+swollen and black.
+
+"It seems," said Marsyas, stanching Agrippa's wound, "that the prince
+disabled his own support!"
+
+But Vasti, by deft twitches of ear and hair and threats in Hindu,
+significant in tone if not in speech to the charioteer, finally got
+Eutychus upon his feet.
+
+"Take up the prince," she said to Marsyas.  "The slave may follow or
+lie as he chooses.  I shall attend my mistress."
+
+Marsyas lifted the Herod and, following Vasti, hurried on again into
+the darkness.  The bayadere made toward the sea-front, not many yards
+distant, sped across the wharf and over the edge apparently into the
+water.  Marsyas, by this time ready to follow the brown woman into any
+extreme, plunged after her.  He landed abruptly in the bottom of a
+punt.  Lydia followed, and Eutychus, with an alacrity not expected of
+one who groaned so helplessly.
+
+Vasti severed the rope that tied up the boat, and, with a strong thrust
+of her hands against the piling, pushed the boat away from the wharf.
+But she did not take up the oars.  She left them to Marsyas, trained on
+the blue waters of Galilee.
+
+In a moment he had pulled out into the black expanse of the bay, and,
+with the prince's ship in mind, rowed among the sleeping shipping.
+
+"How came the prince in this plight?" Marsyas demanded of Eutychus.
+
+The charioteer, with his head in his hands, groaned and murmured
+unintelligibly.  Lydia dipped an end of the wonderful silk that
+enveloped her into the water and pressed the wet corner to the
+charioteer's temples.
+
+Marsyas frowned blackly.
+
+"Nay, but thou canst answer, Eutychus," he said shortly.
+
+After further murmurings, the charioteer brought out between groans an
+avowal that he was completely mystified.
+
+"How came Agrippa in the street?" Marsyas insisted.
+
+"He was with Justin Classicus; I attended him.  When Flora danced and
+chose her lover, and the two fled into the Temple of Rannu, the
+Alexandrian cried to my lord that there was another passage into the
+Temple, by which they could go in, or the Flora and her lover come out.
+And he proposed for a prank that he and the prince go thither and
+discover Flora and her lover.  We were on the roof of a bath and could
+get down at once, so we ran through private passages, my lord and I,
+outstripping Classicus, whom the crowd swallowed.  And when we got into
+this dark street, two fell upon us without warning and killed us both!"
+
+"But it was Agrippa who struck that blow," Marsyas declared.
+
+The man murmured again.
+
+"Some one struck me," he said finally; "mayhap the prince, not knowing
+friend from foe in the street."
+
+"Of a surety, this stiff old Roman took chances," Marsyas averred after
+thought, "with but one apparitor to aid him against Agrippa,
+palestræ-trained and this young charioteer!  Art sure thou didst not
+play the craven, Eutychus?" he demanded.
+
+"Or should I be blamed," Eutychus groaned, "when it was three against
+me, with the prince striking at his single defender?"
+
+Marsyas fell silent.  It was not like Agrippa to be confused under any
+circumstances.
+
+He pulled up beside Agrippa's vessel, roused the watchman and had the
+prince and Eutychus taken aboard; but Vasti and Lydia he left in the
+borrowed punt, out of sight of the crew that had returned.
+
+He followed the injured men on deck and hurriedly dressed Agrippa's
+wound, restored him to consciousness and left him in the charge of the
+captain of the vessel.  He ordered one of the skilled seamen to attend
+Eutychus and hurried back to the women in the boat under the black
+shadow of the ship.
+
+He pulled straight for the sea, rounded Eunostos point and skirting the
+tiny archipelagoes in the broad light of the Pharos, brought up at a
+small indented coast between two sandy peninsulas.  Here the residence
+portion of Alexandria came down to the ocean.  The locality was dark
+and wrapped in sleep.
+
+As he lifted Lydia from the boat, Marsyas turned to Vasti.
+
+"Why didst thou not prevent her in this thing?" he asked in Hindu.
+
+"The white brother forgets that I am a handmaiden," she replied.
+
+"But what if I had not come?" he persisted, growing more troubled by
+his perplexities.
+
+"I had prepared a path for escape; I was armed, and watching!"
+
+"Did--did she expect me?" he asked after silence.
+
+"No."
+
+Then she had done this thing for him.  Oh, for the safe refuge of the
+alabarch's musky halls that he might harken to the sweet distress in
+his soul and tell her of it!
+
+Without further event, they reached the alabarch's house and the
+bayadere, producing keys, let her charges into the servant's entry
+beneath the porch.  Lydia instantly disappeared, but Vasti in obedience
+to a word from Marsyas conducted him through the well-beloved chambers
+to the corridor lined by the sleeping-rooms of the servants.
+
+Before one, she stopped.
+
+"Herein is the prince's other servant," she said, and quickly
+disappeared.
+
+Marsyas opened the door and entering aroused Silas.  With a bare
+explanation that the prince would sail the instant the courier got
+aboard, he urged the grumbling old man into activity, and went back to
+the alabarch's presiding-room.
+
+He had a moment of waiting--at last a moment to think!
+
+He realized that an extreme of some nature had been reached; all his
+purposes had been brought up to a climax.  There was no lingering in
+Alexandria possible for Agrippa, wounded or well, for Marsyas knew that
+Flaccus had the Herod's undoing in mind.  If Lydia were a Nazarene,
+Marsyas had now, of a surety, though all Heaven and earth intervened,
+to bring Saul of Tarsus to death before the Pharisee's dread hand fell
+upon Lydia for apostasy!  For that purpose, he must go to Rome--and
+leave Alexandria--to return?  For his love's sake?  He, an Essene?
+
+Silas came, bowed, and was dismissed to wait in the street for the
+moment.  And still Marsyas stood.  The house was silent and dark.  The
+slumber that overtakes those relieved from a three days' strain
+enwrapped all under the alabarch's roof.  Presently he thought of
+Cypros, in his search for an excuse for lingering.  A lamp on the
+alabarch's table was ready to be lighted, and, finding the materials
+for fire-making in the drawer, he lighted it.
+
+
+"Sweet lady," he wrote on a parchment at hand, "the winds favorable to
+thy lord's departure blow, and he will not awaken thee to the pain of a
+farewell.  Be comforted, be brave, be hopeful; for when he returneth,
+he bringeth thee a crown.  I remember my pledge to thee.
+
+"Be thou blessed.
+  "MARSYAS."
+
+
+It was the first letter he had ever written to a woman; he did not
+dream that he had written so tenderly.
+
+He rolled the parchment and addressed it to the princess.
+
+There was nothing more to be done.
+
+Was he not to see Lydia again?
+
+Filled with rebellion and fear, he hurried toward the hall; in the
+semi-dark, cast by the lamp within the larger room, he saw a small
+figure slip quickly behind a hanging.
+
+She had been waiting to have a stolen look upon him as he went!
+
+He caught her in his arms and drew her out into the light.  Under its
+revealing ray, he saw her lovely face smitten down with shame, but he
+lifted it, to kiss her eyes, her temples and her lips.
+
+"Lydia!  Lydia!  I fear to leave thee!" he whispered.
+
+She let her eyes light upon him, to catch his meaning, and when she saw
+terror for her apostasy and amazement for the thing she had done for
+the Nazarenes, a sudden misery leaped into her face.  She tried to put
+him back.
+
+"Lydia, Lydia!" he begged, feeling the repulse, "dost thou not love me,
+then?"  His tone urged, his eyes pleaded.
+
+For a moment, she was silent; then she said, with infinite pain:
+
+"Marsyas, I broke off the trail of roses through Rhacotis, and held
+back the multitude from the Nazarenes.  But thou art an Essene, and a
+Jew; wherefore, in thy sight I can not be justified.  Forget not these
+things for my sake!  Go, ere thy teaching hath cause to reproach thee."
+
+"No, no!" he agonized.  "Do not say that to me!  Say rather that thou
+wilt turn away from this heresy and be led no more by it into
+transgression!  Better thy sweet life and thy sweet fame than all the
+truth in the world!"
+
+The word he used caught her.  She waited and seemed not to breathe.  He
+swept on.
+
+"Art thou, beyond saving, a Nazarene?"
+
+Her face fell, and her soft red lips were parted with a heavy sigh.
+
+"From this night henceforward, Marsyas!  I have purchased the blessing
+dearly."
+
+She took the hands about her and undid them.
+
+"Go!" she whispered.  "Farewell, and the one God, that loves us all,
+shield thee from harm all the days of thy life!"
+
+A moment and she was gone.
+
+After a while he turned and walked with stumbling feet into the new
+dawn on Alexandria.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+"IN THE CLOAK OF TWO COLORS"
+
+Marsyas turned on the gilded couch, threw off the light covering and
+sat up.  A Syrian slave thrust aside the heavy drapery over the
+cancelli, which had been drawn in the atrium while the young man slept.
+
+In the brilliant light of the Roman mid-afternoon, Marsyas looked
+sleepily at the slave that bowed beside him, and the courier that stood
+near by.
+
+"A message for thee," the slave said.
+
+Marsyas put out his hand and the courier laid in it a package wrapped
+in silk.  Marsyas broke the seal and read the contents.
+
+
+"O MARSYAS:
+
+"Gossip hath it now that thou art no longer confused when a woman
+addresses thee: wherefore I write with less trepidation and more
+confidence.
+
+"I am in Rome these seven days, under my father's roof, for a little
+space before we are commanded to join Cæsar in Capri.  In this time I
+have not seen thee nor thy lord.
+
+"If not myself, then perchance the news I bring from Alexandria may
+urge thee to accept the invitation I extend.
+
+"There exists no greater claim than thine upon my hospitality.
+
+"Come thou, and make me welcome in mine own city.
+
+"JUNIA."
+
+
+Marsyas sprang up, the last of the languor gone from his face.
+
+"Thou shalt conduct me," he said to the messenger.
+
+He disappeared in the direction of his cubiculum.
+
+In a time longer than he had consumed in his old Essenic days to
+prepare himself for the streets he came again into Agrippa's atrium.
+
+It was hard to recognize in him the picturesque Jewish ascetic that had
+bent over the scroll in the great college of Jerusalem.  He had
+permitted the blade to come at his hair and beard; the kerchief had
+been replaced by the fillet; the cloak and gown by the scarlet tunic
+and mantle, the daylight had been let in on his fine limbs, and there
+was the fugitive glitter of jewels on his fingers and arms.  He had
+assumed perfumes and polishes, had laid aside all his oriental habit
+and had become not only a Roman but an exquisite.  The change was not
+all in his dress; the indefinable something that marks the man of
+experience was upon him and the ascetic blankness was gone from his
+brow.
+
+He signed to the messenger to follow, and passing out of the house and
+down the long banks of marble steps which led up to Agrippa's
+magnificent eyrie on the brink of the Quirinal, entered a lectica that
+awaited him in the streets.
+
+Years are not time enough to weary one of Rome.
+
+Marsyas had come into the capital with a spirit benumbed by a great
+shock, so that the first day he walked the imperial streets he was less
+conscious of their wonders than he was at this hour.
+
+He was borne through narrow lanes that were like clefts between heights
+of marble, under arches, chronicling the solemn consummation of
+triumph, along crowding pillars that arose out of the ravines between
+the seven hills, and, catching the sunlight on their white capitals,
+cast it down in the gloom of the depressions.  Glories clambered up the
+bosom of the Esquiline; templed sanctity crowned the Aventine, and
+might in marble and gold sat on the Palatine.  Between were splendor
+and squalor, confused, for only beauty stood up above the miseries and
+defilement that made Rome hateful in its unsunned ways.
+
+The feebleness of unwieldy and disunited multitudes cumbered the
+Carinæ, along which he passed.  Starvation and the excess of plenty,
+power and abject subjection, unspeakable depravity and innocence met
+and passed.  The slaves preceding the young man's litter made way for
+it with staff and pilum, or again it made way for slaves bearing fasces
+and maces.  He did not proceed unnoticed.  Albucilla, widow of Satrius
+Secundus, in a litter with Cneius Domitius, turned from the languid
+senator at her side to cast a bewitching smile at the young Essene;
+Ennia, wife of Macro, the prætorian prefect, leaned from her litter to
+cry him an invitation.
+
+"To Tusculum!  Come with us!"
+
+"Many thanks: yet I would the invitation came to-morrow!"
+
+"It shall," she said in answer and was borne on.  Running slaves pushed
+by him to overtake her chair, and Marsyas knew without looking that the
+lectica they bore contained Caligula, Cæsar's grand-nephew.  Agrippina,
+a young matron in a chair, with a month-old babe in her arms, cast a
+sidelong glance out of her black eyes at the young man as he
+approached.  Stupid old Claudius, clad in a purple-edged toga and
+stumbling as he walked, acknowledged the precedence Marsyas gave him
+with a smile and a greeting.  As the young Jew was borne on he did not
+realize that he had made room for three coming Cæsars in the Carinæ.
+After them streamed a great number of patricians in chairs, all
+proceeding to the races at Tusculum, but Marsyas' bearers turned off
+the Carinæ and began to mount the Esquiline.  In a few minutes he was
+set down before a small, newly-erected house as classic as a Greek
+temple, as compact as a fortification.
+
+The messenger bowed him into the hands of the atriensis, who led him
+into the vestibule and left him for a moment.  Presently, a
+soft-footed, scantily-clad boy bowed gracefully beside him and begged
+him to follow.  He was led into Junia's atrium.
+
+The Roman woman, who had been lounging in a chair at the cancelli,
+turned languidly, and sprang up in feigned surprise.  But honest
+feeling came into her face as she looked at the changed man that stood
+before her.
+
+"Welcome!" she cried, hastening to meet him.  "Would thou wast a god!
+Perchance there would be despatch about answering prayers!"
+
+"Give the gods as welcome a supplication, and the answer would come
+riding upon Jupiter's thunderbolts!" he responded.
+
+She laughed and shook her finger at him.
+
+"How hopeless a ruin thou art!  A Jew speaking of the gods!"  He led
+her to a chair, and, drawing one up beside her, sat.  With bright eyes
+and a little changing smile she inspected him for a moment.
+
+"It is true!" she cried at last.  "And I do not like to see it!  Thou
+art indeed changed; no longer the sincere Jew that I met in Alexandria."
+
+"A Jew, lady, nevertheless," he answered.  "But tell me of thyself, and
+after that of them that remain in Alexandria."
+
+"No: thou canst not avert the preachment I have ready for thee.  All
+thy misdeeds are known to me.  When I forewarned thee of the various
+attributes of Rome, I did not add that Rome talks!  I have heard how
+thou hast put chaplets on thy head, reclined at feasts and upset half a
+score of merry running courtships in the capital.  I see thee, how thou
+hast put off thy sober habit and got into raiment that makes thee
+thrice and four times more deadly to the hearts of women.  And thou an
+Essene!  Prayerfully hoping to return into the peace and inertia of the
+salty desert of En-Gadi--some time!  Overshadowing the Herod till in
+very despair he hath taken to racing and left the triclinia and the
+atria to thee!  Fie and for shame, Marsyas!"
+
+The young man smiled a little bitterly.  Cypros' charge had not been
+difficult, since his Essenism had been the obstacle which lay between
+him and that love he would have, though it cost him his soul!
+
+"But Rome enlarges," he protested.  "Agrippa chaseth the elusive bubble
+of Fortune: and I--having a purpose to be achieved in his success--I
+speed him--in mine own way.  But enough of ourselves.  Tell me of
+Alexandria!"
+
+"But wait!  I have not done.  The charm of beauty hath lost its potency
+here in Rome, where it is the business of every one to be beautiful.
+The charm of riches is debased because of its great prevalence, since
+every one hath his honor to sell, and honor commands the highest price.
+The charm of rank is dissolved, for there is no rank with a centurion's
+son bearing the ægis, and freedmen dispensing hospitality in the
+mansions of the ancient Quirites!  Wherefore there is only one rare,
+unpurchasable charm--newness--and Roman society speedily dulls the
+luster of that, if one stoops to flourishing socially.  Beware, my
+Marsyas!"
+
+He remembered that she had always been concerned for his uprightness,
+in a strangely unspiritual way.  He had heard of upright atheists;
+somehow she seemed to belong in that category with her moral, but
+irreligious chidings.  Now, she was bearing him welcome testimony that
+he had changed.
+
+"Be neither frequent nor democratic.  Saith Agricola, the pleb,
+'Brutus, the senator, is nobody; he speaks to me!'  By Castor!  I had
+rather endure the contempt of the great than the approval of the small.
+Wherefore, save thyself, as a rare wine, fit for only imperial feasts.
+And lest thou be lonely meantime, let me amuse thee."
+
+"How can I expect it, when thou wilt not tell me now what I wish?" he
+complained.
+
+"But this is trial of thy gallantry: I have as great a curiosity as
+thine.  So thou wilt wait for me.  Thou hast been in Rome four months.
+Tell me what happened in that time."
+
+Marsyas slipped down in his chair and clasped his hands back of his
+head.
+
+"None leads a droning life who associates with Agrippa," he said.  "I
+have not seen a restful hour since I met him in Judea.  Nay, then; hear
+me.  He landed at Capri, on the invitation of the emperor, and repaired
+to the palace where, with the same grace that hath made me and others
+his slaves, he won back in a single audience all the favor that he had
+forfeited in twenty years.  He came away radiant and under promise to
+return the following night, and dine with the emperor.  But the next
+morning, who should drop anchor in the bay but Herrenius Capito, livid
+with wrath because he had been outwitted at every turn by Agrippa.  One
+would think it were he whom Agrippa owed, so indecent his fervor in
+reporting him.  What followed but that the same imperial hand which had
+been stretched in welcome to the prince one day, was, the next,
+extended in banishment over him."
+
+"What misfortune!" Junia exclaimed, half in sympathy, half in irony.
+"Ate, herself, must be the patron genius of the Herod."
+
+"Hot upon Herrenius' heels came Vitellius' contubernalis, with a
+warrant for me, but we, meanwhile, had taken ship and sailed for Ostia.
+And hear me, when I say, that some rabid foe had dropped the
+information of our whereabouts, in Judea!  I repaired to Rome, borrowed
+three hundred thousand drachmæ of Antonia, the _univira_, and
+despatched messengers to Cæsar and Herrenius Capito telling that the
+debt so long overlooked had been paid, before my pursuer reached Rome.
+So we laid the ghost of our debts.  But feeling unhappy owing no man, I
+immediately borrowed a million drachmæ of Thallus, Cæsar's freedman,
+repaid Antonia, and established ourselves magnificently on the
+Quirinal.  Hence, being in debt and in favor again, we have nothing to
+trouble us but the serious pursuit of our respective ambitions.  But--!"
+
+He stopped abruptly.
+
+"O prescient contingent!" she said softly.  "Does the Herod dally with
+his opportunities?"
+
+"Worse: he affronts them!  Worse: those opportunities are not alone for
+him!  Part of them are mine!"
+
+Her lips shaped an exclamation, but he went on.
+
+"Listen; it is a proper sending on thee, for insisting on plunging me
+into narrative.  An oriental story-teller and a circle make no end.
+Even as thou saidst to me in Alexandria so many weeks ago, Rome looketh
+two ways for a new Emperor.  Here is the little Tiberius, Drusus' son,
+and there is Caligula, Cæsar's grandnephew.  Now Cæsar seeth in the
+little Tiberius a successor.  Fatuous dotage!  The prætorians are
+stubbornly attached to Caligula, because forsooth he wore miniature
+boots like theirs when he tumbled about in the peplus of an infant.
+The reason is good enough to be a woman's!  Be it as it may, that lean,
+sallow, gluttonous Caligula is brow-marked for the crown!"
+
+"_Hercle_! but thou art as good an image-maker with words as Phidias
+was with a stone!"
+
+"Patience!  On a certain day, Agrippa and I went without the Porta
+Esquilina to get into our chariots and drive to Tusculum.  Many were
+going, as many go every day.  We had mounted our car, with
+Eutychus--would he were at the bottom of the Tiber!--as charioteer,
+when young Tiberius came and mounted his, and Caligula came and mounted
+his.  After them directly followed a cohort of prætorians.  Their
+bright armor, their noise, their steady undeviating advance, frightened
+little Tiberius' horses, which backed into Caligula's chariot and
+frightened his pair.  The four bolted at once; the chariots upset and
+both princes were spilled on the ground directly in front of the
+advancing cohort.
+
+"The tribune hastily brought up the column and Tiberius and Caligula
+were helped to their feet.  The lad withdrew to the roadside, but
+Caligula turned upon the soldiers and flung camp-jokes at them, so
+broad, so bold, so rough, that, at first chuckling, then roaring, the
+whole cohort burst into a great shout in honor of their favorite.
+
+"Meanwhile, Eutychus had permitted his horses by bad management to
+become unruly.  Agrippa seized the lines away from him and lashed him
+across the shoulders once or twice, to the great rage of the
+charioteer.  I had in the meanwhile to alight and quiet the animals.
+Agrippa then drove toward Tiberius to offer him the hospitality of his
+chariot, while the slaves were pursuing the runaways.  The boy saw him
+coming, understood the prince's intent and handed his cloak to a slave
+preparatory to mounting Agrippa's car, when the cohort began to cheer
+Caligula.
+
+"What did Agrippa, then, but wheel his horses, drive over to the
+soldiers' favorite and take him into the car!"
+
+"What!  Did that thing openly?"
+
+"Deliberately!  The boy paled, flushed, and whirling about, stalked
+back inside of the walls, before I could invent an excuse to cover
+Agrippa's slight.  And after him rushed a crowd of senators and
+ædiles--his umbræ--to feed his hate of the Herod!"
+
+"What did Agrippa, then?" Junia asked after a dismayed silence.
+
+"He was long gone up the road to Tusculum with Caligula by that time."
+
+"It is not hard to guess how he lost Fortune before," Junia declared.
+
+"He plays at legerdemain with Cæsar's favor," Marsyas said, annoyed at
+his own narrative.  "Tiberius, most solemnly commended the boy Tiberius
+to Agrippa's care and companionship.  Cæsar will hear of this!"
+
+"Inevitably!  Tale-bearing is a fine art in Rome and Tiberius is its
+patron.  And thus he conducts himself in the face of Cypros' peril, who
+gave herself in hostage for him that he might succeed!"
+
+"Cypros' peril!" Marsyas repeated, with startled eyes.
+
+"Of Flaccus!"
+
+Marsyas' astonishment was not pleasant.
+
+"Why of Flaccus?" he asked.
+
+"What!  Hath Agrippa kept his counsel, thus long?  Dost thou not know
+that Flaccus hath an eye to the timid Cypros and Agrippa, discovering
+it, all but killed Flaccus in a passage back of the temple, on the
+night of the Dance of Flora?"
+
+Marsyas looked at her steadily.
+
+"How much dost thou know of this thing?" he demanded.
+
+"Can I know too much of it?" she asked plaintively.
+
+"No!" he answered penitently.
+
+"Then I know all of it, cause, process and result," she declared.
+
+"Tell it me, then!"
+
+"Nay, then; Flaccus was in love with Cypros in Rome, when she was sent
+here twenty years ago to marry Agrippa.  So much he loved her, that
+twenty years after, when next he met her, his old passion was
+revived--stronger, less submissive and more dangerous than that of his
+youth.  Whether or not he spoke of it to Agrippa, or simply betrayed
+himself, the night of the Feast, is not patent; nevertheless the
+proconsul was discovered half-killed, in an alley back of the Temple of
+Rannu, and the Herod had sailed suddenly and without farewell to
+Cypros, in the night."
+
+"How didst thou learn of this?"
+
+"O simple youth!  Is it then so common in Judea for powers to be
+discovered with their hearts stunned, that no comment is made upon it?
+Or perchance thou givest Flaccus credit for suffering in silence?  That
+is better.  Know, however, that he was discovered by the constabulary,
+and straightway such an outcry was never heard in Alexandria.  But the
+proconsul aroused and cut it off in full voice.  And there he made an
+error.  He was made to be a straightforward man; he is too cumbrous to
+be a knave.  So speculation ran abroad in whispers, till the true cause
+was unearthed."
+
+"And Cypros?"
+
+"Cypros?  Now canst thou, knowing Cypros, ask of her expecting any
+change?  Beautiful statues do not change.  What they express when they
+are finished they express until they are broken.  When she came from
+under the sculptor's chisel, she was made to love her husband, and her
+babes, to believe whatever is told her, be beautiful, simple and good."
+
+"So much the more Flaccus must have distressed her!"
+
+"She does not suspect him!"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Amazement, at times, gentle sir, is reproach; wherefore since I am the
+author of this device, thou wilt be less astounded and, so, more
+complimentary.  I knew that Cypros, being sweet, simple and guileless,
+would do no more than treat the proconsul with bitter disdain
+thereafter, and precipitate a climax, which in my opinion would entail
+twenty diverse calamities.  I know Flaccus, I have sent the plummet to
+the bottom of his oceanic nature.  I also know that the Lady Herod is
+an anomaly in her family, clean, faithful and loving.  So with Agrippa
+out of reach, the proconsul may conspire all he pleases to alienate the
+princess from her Arab, in vain.  Wherefore I permitted the good
+alabarch in all innocence to go in his magisterial robes to the
+proconsul's mansion and express his indignation, concern and anxious
+hopes, and to say that Agrippa had taken advantage of favorable winds
+to depart for Rome.  I can see the smoldering eyes of the proconsul
+study the white old face of that perfect diplomat and discover no guile
+thereon.  So apparent the alabarch's sincerity, that after due lapse of
+time in which the proconsul plucked up courage and front, Flaccus
+resumed his visits to the alabarch's house.  And for all outward signs,
+it was another and not Agrippa that dinted the Roman's chest!"
+
+Marsyas leaned his elbows on his knees and a line appeared between his
+level brows, marking the growing change from the thought of youth to
+the thought of man.
+
+"Lady," he said gravely, after a pause, "it was Flaccus and not Agrippa
+that did the bloodthirsty deeds back of the Temple of Rannu; and it was
+I--and not Agrippa, that dinted the Roman's chest!"
+
+"What?" she ejaculated, springing up to lay hand on his arm.  "Thou!"
+
+"Flaccus led Agrippa into a trap and stabbed him in the back," he went
+on, "and I struck the blow that laid Flaccus low.  And Agrippa was
+taken aboard his ship that night, with a knife wound between his
+shoulders, wholly ignorant of the identity of his assailant--until I
+told him--three days out at sea!"
+
+After a long silence, she said softly:
+
+"And that was thine errand--for Flora!"
+
+Without a tremor he inclined his head in assent.
+
+"Nay, then," she began again, after another pause, "what more dost thou
+know?  How much of this tale thou heardest so deceitfully is incorrect
+history?"
+
+"Enough of Flaccus," he parried, smiling.  "Tell me of--Classicus."
+
+Junia leaned back in her chair and laughed a little at his evasion.
+
+"Classicus?  Classicus is a knave, one lacking invention, but not
+executive ability--wanting cunning, not courage.  Now he leads us to
+believe that he examines a new religion--that same heresy for which he
+plunged thee into the Rhacotis peril.  Some one put him up to it--mark
+me.  Thus, he hopes to recant his fault against thee, for which the
+little Lysimachus was most unbending to him!"
+
+"And Lydia?" he asked in a low tone.
+
+Her softened eyes, steadily contemplating the yellow light on the
+leaves of a huge plantain growing near her, narrowed.
+
+"Lydia?" she repeated thoughtfully.  "Oh, Lydia dances and studies and
+makes ready for her marriage with Classicus."
+
+One of those utter silences fell, which mark the announcement of
+critical news.  After it, Marsyas arose.
+
+"I have profited by my visit," he said, in that soft and silken voice
+which she had never heard before and did not understand.  "I thank thee
+for thy counsel--and thy news."
+
+He extended her his hand, and she looked at him, feeling that it was
+not steady.
+
+"And thou wilt come again before I go?" she went on.  "We are summoned
+to Capri where my father hath been recently made a minister to
+Tiberius.  Come again, and let me lead thee back to thine old self."
+
+"Perchance," he said evenly, "I have uselessly troubled myself to
+change."
+
+He pressed her hand and passed out.
+
+At the threshold of her portals, he met Agrippa.
+
+"Perpol!" the prince cried.  "Hast thou supplanted me here, too?"
+
+But Marsyas smiled painfully and went on.  Agrippa looked after him.
+
+"Nay, now: the boy is as pale as ivory!" he ruminated.  "That is an
+honest youth, and Junia must let him alone."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+A LETTER AND A LOSS
+
+When Agrippa returned to his house that night, he found old Silas
+sitting in the vestibule, opposite the place of the atriensis, his
+hands on his knees, his dull face uncommonly animated and expressive.
+
+It was long past the hour when the household servants had retired, and
+the porter at the door was drowsy, but the instant Agrippa set foot on
+his threshhold Silas started up and bowed in excitement.
+
+"An evil day," he said.  "Thy wardrobe hath been entered and much fine
+raiment is gone."
+
+"But thou hast made an evil night of it, Silas: thou shouldst have
+withheld thy calamitous recital until the morning.  Hast discovered the
+thief?"
+
+Silas bowed again.  "I have: yet, I have been restrained from taking
+him."
+
+"O pliable Jew!  None but Cæsar can steal my wardrobe unmolested.  Who
+protects the thief?"
+
+"Marsyas."
+
+"What!  Marsyas?  Save thou art too unimaginative to be a fictionist I
+should say thou makest thy story.  Why does Marsyas protect my
+pillager?"
+
+"He says we are well rid of the knave."
+
+"Not if he carried off so much as a sandal-lace.  I am a Jew and
+therefore jealous for my own property.  Marsyas, as an Essene, is given
+to dividing without protest with thieves.  I remember the Greek who
+helped himself to Marsyas' patrimony on Olivet.  But who is the thief?"
+
+"Eutychus."
+
+"Eutychus!  By Hermes, he could not help it with that face!  But go on;
+what is the circumstance?"
+
+"He took," Silas continued, "the umber toga, embroidered with silver,
+much of thy Jewish vestments, the gazelle wallet which contained thy
+amulet, and drachmæ and bracelets of gold.  He is rich!"
+
+"Of a surety: the knave hath only the more attached himself to me.
+What a pity!  Otherwise we were well rid of him.  And Marsyas bade thee
+let him go?"
+
+"The young man was disturbed.  According to instructions, he sent a
+messenger to thy stables, without the walls, to bid Eutychus have thy
+car ready to-morrow for thy visit to Tusculum.  But the messenger
+presently returned with the information that Eutychus had not been seen
+about the stables that day.  At the same moment, I discovered the
+losses among thy apparel.  And Marsyas instantly suspected Eutychus.
+He sent two slaves in search of him.  They returned in an hour saying
+that he had been discovered in Janiculum in a wine-shop, robed like an
+Augustan in thy umber toga, and making merry with wine that could only
+tickle a Samaritan's throat.  When they tried to bring him, he
+objected, saying thou shouldst not miss him, seeing that thou hadst
+learned the pleasure of walking in thy less fortunate days."
+
+Agrippa's forehead darkened.
+
+"Even for that I should hand him over to the lictors!" he exclaimed.
+
+"It is not all.  When the two slaves then tried to fetch him by force,
+they were attacked by him and the wine-shop keeper and others, and
+obliged to flee for their lives.  I besought Marsyas, then, to permit
+me to inform the authorities and have him taken, but he opined that the
+charioteer's insolence was new and sudden, wherefore full of meaning.
+Seeing that it was Eutychus' intent to enrage thee, thou wast better
+not enraged; to wash thy hands of him and bless the day that he
+departed."
+
+Agrippa yawned.
+
+"To-morrow we shall search for him and have him taken.  It is
+improvident to have so much philosophy as Marsyas.  But what had the
+knave of a charioteer against me?  It is Marsyas who hath enchanted
+Drumah, and who took him by the throat in the alabarch's house.  I
+shall speak with Marsyas to-morrow."
+
+He took himself with increasing effort up the stairs along the corridor
+toward his rest.  With the facility which characterized many of
+Agrippa's troubles, the offender had already dropped out of his mind.
+
+He had fenced with Caligula that morning, he had feasted with Macro
+that night.  At midday he had slighted Piso, the enemy of both.
+Caligula had had him draw a sketch of Judea on the wax of the gymnasium
+floor and designate the possessions of the old Herod; Macro, in his
+cups, had asked confidentially if Caligula approved him.  Altogether
+the day had been filled with tokens presaging success.  He smiled
+sleepily, remembering Silas' extravagant concern over the robbery.
+
+"Calamity is all in the mark on the scale of Fortune," he opined.  "A
+year ago to lose a handful of drachmæ would have ruined me."
+
+As he passed Marsyas' door, he stepped back suddenly and stopped.  The
+long curtain dragged on the floor at one side had given him an
+interesting glimpse of the lighted interior.  Within, Marsyas, seated
+at a table, had at that moment flung away his stylus and dropped his
+head on the writing.  Almost immediately he sprang up, and, seizing the
+parchment, thrust it into the blaze of the lamp at his hand.
+
+Astonishment gathered on the Herod's face.
+
+In the blaze the writing curled, the flame eating into the slow-burning
+parchment, burned low, but surely, reaching toward the fingers that
+grasped it.  Presently Marsyas dropped it.  Then the night-wind, rising
+from the sea, swept in through the cancelli with a shriek, put out the
+lamp instantly and swept the long dragging curtain against the Herod
+standing in the dimly-illuminated corridor.  He got out of sight
+hurriedly.
+
+After the first gust, the wind dropped, sending long streams of
+impelling draft through cancelli, doorway and hall.  Before it, along
+the pavement, something came skittering out of Marsyas' cubiculum.
+Agrippa looked at it.  It was a roll of parchment, charred and crushed
+by the tense grip of fingers.
+
+Agrippa waited.  After a slight movement within, silence fell again,
+and was not thereafter broken.  The prince's eyes fell on the charred
+writing.  It was almost at his feet.  His fine head dropped to one
+side, then to the other; he put his fingers into his hair, smiled a
+little and picked up the parchment.  A moment later, in his own
+apartment, he unrolled it by his lamp.
+
+Only a word here and there, at the end held in Marsyas' fingers, was
+legible, but Agrippa gathered from these the tone, the purpose and the
+identity, as he thought, of the one addressed.
+
+
+"-- me for loving thee -- my punishment --.  Yet ---- sin against my
+teachi ---- Willingly for thy sake ------ but to pretend ---- continue
+my ---- against ---- which threatens thee.  Have I lost -- soul for a
+caprice ---- and beseech levity -- to lov -- me?  the pointing finger
+---- of sel -- scorn!  An outcast from Heaven ---- truant from hell,
+haunting earth in search of thee for ever!--SYAS."
+
+
+Agrippa's eyes sobered.
+
+"Junia is a brand of fire," he said to himself.  "I shall make an end
+of this!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE DIGGED PIT
+
+Junia raised herself hastily.
+
+"Call the slaves," she commanded the servant who had announced Marsyas,
+and, in a moment, half a score of house-slaves rushed in from various
+openings leading into the atrium.
+
+"Away with this and that and that," she exclaimed pointing to the
+statue of a bacchante, that had not been visible in the chamber on the
+occasion of Marsyas' expected calls; a tray of wine and a tablet with a
+list of charms and philters sent recently from a haruspex.  "Bring me a
+shawl--close around my neck: curse thee for a blunderer, Iste; thou
+shalt pay for that scratch!  Here, unwind the scarf about my hips and
+fold it less closely; the amulet, take it off!  By Ate!  Here:
+Caligula's note, spread open!  Into the brazier with it.  Do I smell of
+wine?  Fetch hither--that fresco!  The Pursuit of Daphne!  Draw the
+arras over it!  Quick!  The unguentarium, I said, snail!  The one with
+the attar.  Now, look about.  Is there anything in sight to disturb a
+vestal?  If I find it afterward, twenty lashes for you all!"
+
+Mistress and slave looked anxiously over the chamber, but nothing
+unseemly greeted their eyes.  Junia sank back on her couch, not now so
+recumbent, but at ease.
+
+"Go fetch the Jew," she said, the languor of her manner combatted by
+the fire in her eyes.
+
+A moment later Marsyas appeared in the archway.
+
+She arose and came to meet him.  When he took her extended hands, she
+led him to the light of the cancelli and inspected him.
+
+"Sit," she said, drawing him down on the divan under the casement.
+"And speak first.  Only a word, so I may see if the prologue is indeed
+as tragic as the mask."
+
+"Let the mask suffice," he answered, "the prologue might be
+insufferable."
+
+"_Proh pudor_!  Thy friend the Herod hath just been here with pagan
+oaths upon his lips about thy dullness.  I tell thee it is hard enough
+to make him walk as he should, but a groaning comrade is a gravel in
+his shoe.  If thou wouldst manage him, be merry.  Remember we have this
+Herod to crown, though he stood on the Tarpeian Rock and sang sonnets
+in dishonor of Cæsar."
+
+"By the certainty of Death, I have," he said sententiously.
+
+She looked at him and waited for him to go on, but he seemed to forget
+her, in his preoccupation.
+
+"I am a generous woman, Marsyas," she said softly.  "I do not resent
+thy lack of confidence in me!"
+
+"Nay!" he exclaimed.  "My lack of confidence, lady?  What meanest thou?"
+
+"In thy bosom, gentle sir, thou keepest thine own counsel, and wearest
+signals of thy self-containment on thy brow.  Wherefore, I am informed
+thou hast thoughts that I may not know!"
+
+"But I spare thee my sorrows, my cynicism, my hopelessness," he
+protested earnestly, "my disbelief in humankind."
+
+"O Marsyas, wert thou not Jewish, I should call thee unmanly.  Listen!"
+She laid a warm hand, colored like a primrose, upon his.
+
+"Thou wast an anchorite; thou didst attain manhood's stature and mind
+as an anchorite; into the world thou camest with all an anchorite's
+slander of the poor world in thee.  The eye is a spaniel; the tyrant
+Prejudice controls even its images.  I warned thee in Alexandria.  I
+confess that there is evil in the world, but it is more the work of an
+elementary impulse rather than calculation.  Flaccus is bad, but
+because he is in love.  Agrippa does foolhardy things, because he is
+ambitious.  What?  Did the preachment afflict thee which I delivered
+the other day upon thy levity and riotous living?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Nay, but this moment's preachment crosses me," he said.  "Thou
+offerest pardon for all the wickedness in the world, and I, sworn to
+punish one evil deed, am thus constrained, if I harken unto thee, to
+hold off my hand."
+
+"Now, thou approachest the deep-hidden secret which I may not know.
+Whom wilt thou punish?  Flaccus or Classicus?"
+
+He hesitated.  His vital hate of Saul of Tarsus, his fear for Lydia,
+his love and its deep wound, were things too close to the soul for him
+willingly to bring forth and display to this woman who acknowledged
+only a mind, and not a spirit.  Yet it seemed unfair to withhold
+anything, however sacred, from one who had unbosomed so much to him.
+
+"I lead a selfish life and an unhappy one.  I am stricken in my loves;
+one dead, one a murderer, a third faithless; a fourth I use to speed me
+in mine intents concerning the other two.  If I avenge the death of
+one, I displease his spirit!  If I visit punishment on his murderer, I
+make it possible for the destroyer of my love-story to go on.  If I
+withhold my hand, I give another, much beloved, unto death.  And him I
+help, I help for mine own use.  My life is at cross purposes; my right
+hand worketh against the left!"
+
+"Thy love?" she repeated softly, with a question in her tone.  But he
+did not answer it.
+
+"A hopeless tangle," she said at last, "from which our ruling
+philosophers, degenerate imitators of Pyrrho, offer but one escape.
+Turn from it, cease to trouble over it, leave it, cast off all thought
+and memory of it--and begin anew!"
+
+He shook his head, his eyes on the pavement, his hands clasped before
+him.  But the primrose hand found his again.
+
+"Thou canst not, by the choicest revenge, force Thanatos to yield up
+thy dead; thou confessest the evil thou workest in revenge as equal to
+the satisfaction; thou complainest that thy love is faithless--what
+else?  So many thy pains, I can not remember them all; but in them all
+there is not the worth of one of thy sleepless nights.  If thou canst
+not be a Spartan, be a Stoic; if not an avenger, then a forgetter; if
+not a lover, then a gallant!  Above all things, harken unto a pagan
+truth: love's a lusty wight and can suffer forty mortal wounds and love
+again.  None but an ostrich loves but once!  Perchance I was right at
+first; thou shouldst have begun thine education in the first of Flora's
+celebration."
+
+He winced, but presently raised his head.
+
+"What didst thou when the procession carried me away that night?" he
+demanded, searching her face.
+
+"When thou didst go away with the procession?" she laughed.  "I went
+with them--of a necessity."
+
+"And how didst thou escape?"
+
+"When they all departed after Flora danced."
+
+Thus beyond doubt assured that she had witnessed the dance of Flora, he
+was afraid to inquire further, lest he betray Lydia.  But he wanted
+mightily to know if she had recognized the alabarch's daughter.
+
+The disturbing reflection diverted his line of thought.  Many of the
+night's events which the greater one had overshadowed came back to him.
+He saw again the miraculous dance of Brahma on the roof of the Temple
+of Rannu, fled again with Lydia in his arms into the musky shrine and
+thence into the city; strove hard to convince himself that if he,
+sharpened of sight by love, had not recognized Lydia except for the
+bayadere's note and his acquaintance with Lydia's apostasy and her
+former defense of the Nazarenes, others could not have done so.  Again
+he fought with Flaccus and discovered Agrippa in the dark and abandoned
+street in Alexandria.  And now the image of Eutychus became
+particularly distinct.
+
+His brow blackened suddenly and he sprang to his feet.
+
+"It is solved!" he cried, striking the palm of one hand with the other.
+"By the wrath of God, he is Flaccus' emissary.  He turned on Agrippa in
+Alexandria when Flaccus ambushed the prince!  He was part of the
+conspiracy!  It was no blind blow that Agrippa struck.  And the soul in
+me nourishes a lie or he meditates more work for the proconsul in this!"
+
+Throughout his intensely confident accusation, Junia had watched him
+with changing eyes.  She had had to feel her way frequently in this
+last hour.
+
+"What?" she asked finally.
+
+In a few and rapid words, Marsyas told her of Eutychus' theft and
+flight, but his ideas hasted from his narrative to more testimony in
+favor of his conclusion.  He remembered Eutychus' jealousy of Drumah,
+his ruffian mistreatment of Lydia when the prætor moved against the
+Nazarenes, his attempt to expose her to Justin Classicus because, his
+jealousy of Marsyas revived, he had no other way of retaliating; and
+finally of his humiliation at Marsyas' hands before Agrippa and Drumah.
+
+"Bitter fool that I was not to understand him in time!" he cried.  "In
+my soul, I know that we follow him to a pitfall in this matter!"
+
+Junia slipped her fingers along the gilt grooves in the arm of the
+divan.  Flaccus was a clumsy villain, of a surety!  What overt
+conspiracies he evolved!  A wild boar of the German forests would not
+make more clamor at its attacks!  A wonder he had not exposed her, ere
+this.  But for his influence, which made her a place in Cæsar's house,
+she had given up his service long ago.  Her lips curled with disgust
+and perplexity.
+
+"Forewarning," she said gloomily, "is a torture when forearming avails
+naught."
+
+He caught the depression in her tone and turned to her quickly.
+
+"Agrippa hath been here, Marsyas," she continued.  "Yet he was not to
+be stopped, I thought, then, that it was only the knave's playing for
+time!"
+
+"What dost thou mean?" he demanded.  "Tell me!"
+
+"Agrippa was here.  Eutychus hath been caught, but Piso notifies the
+Herod that the prisoner hath appealed to Cæsar, claiming to have
+information against Agrippa which concerns Cæsar's life and welfare!"
+
+Marsyas seized her arm.
+
+"What sayest thou?" he cried.
+
+"And since thou hast uncovered Flaccus' hand supporting the villain,
+Agrippa is in greater peril than I had supposed!"
+
+For a moment the two looked at each other: Junia with uneasiness on her
+face, and Marsyas transfixed.  He saw his plans against Saul of Tarsus
+tumbling; he saw the Pharisee triumphing over Lydia!
+
+"It may still be hoped," she ventured, "that the knave lies!"
+
+"Junia, thou knowest Agrippa!  It is my terror lest the knave be armed
+with a truth!"
+
+"Out with it all," she went on desperately.  "The Herod is convinced
+that he is innocent--this time--of any ill-will against Cæsar, and he
+came here and spent the greater part of an hour, beseeching me to use
+my influence to hasten Cæsar's hearing of Eutychus!"
+
+"In God's name, answer!  Did you refuse him?"
+
+"I did!  I besought him to let Cæsar follow his own way, since the
+emperor is notedly slow in hearing charges in these later years.  I
+assured him that Cæsar might be more displeased, urged against his
+inclination to hear a stupid slave, than the slave's charge could make
+him.  But the Herod is more stubborn than the classic steed of Judea.
+He demanded haughtily of me, if I expected him to treat with a
+slanderer or beg a truce with a lie.  Then I refused him my offices.
+Wherefore he hath posted off to Antonia!"
+
+"She will not harken to him--!" he cried with sudden desperation.
+
+"O Marsyas, this day I should be exorcised as a fury, bringing evil
+happenings.  But better the sorry truth than a fair lie.  Antonia hath
+lived out of the world for the last decade, as hast thou.  But her
+seclusion hath achieved the opposite harm, that is hatched by
+solitariness.  She retired, full of years and honor; the world,
+approaching her door, comes in fair garments, bringing tokens of
+esteem, talks of ancient triumphs, the virtues of Antonia and the great
+respect Cæsar hath for her.  Wherefore, kindly treated by the world,
+remembering nothing but the good of the old days and believing in her
+sweet dotage that she crushed evil when she crushed Sejanus, her
+natural strategic sense hath been lost in a great, all-enveloping
+charity.  Her natural nobility hath outgrown the wariness which aids
+youth, and her dimmed sight sees things of stature, only, or of high
+relief.  She will see in the prince's desire only a desire to clear
+himself of a charge and she will honor him for it!  She will do his
+bidding!"
+
+Marsyas snatched up his cloak and sprang toward the archway.
+
+"Let me to her!" he cried.
+
+"Wait!" Junia cried.  "Be prepared against defeat, though it never
+come!  What wilt thou do, if she be immovable, or already gone--for
+Cæsar is in Tusculum to-day?"
+
+Marsyas stopped and his face grew ashen.  He saw Lydia again, among the
+stones of the rabble, and murder leaped into his heart.
+
+"Kill Eutychus!" he declared desperately.
+
+"It would be fatal for Agrippa," she protested.
+
+His hunted ideas turned then upon Cæsar.  Suddenly he rushed back to
+Junia and seized her hands.
+
+"Thou art close to Cæsar," he said rapidly and with great supplication
+in his voice, "and thou art in Cæsar's favor!  Beseech him and right
+Agrippa's mistakes, I implore thee!  Help me, Junia!  Be my right arm!
+Promise me thine intercession!"
+
+Her face suffused, and she waited a moment before she could trust her
+voice.
+
+"For thy sake, Marsyas," she answered.  "I give thee my word!"
+
+He pressed her hands to his lips and ran out of the house.  She dropped
+back on her couch and put her fingers to her temples.
+
+"Save Agrippa, to kill Saul, to save Lydia, for this Judean vestal's
+sake?" she speculated to herself.  "And where doth Junia profit?  Ah!
+I shall get him in debt, and extort mine own price!  Jew or Gentile, he
+will not think it exorbitant, for under it all, he is a man!  But to
+Tusculum!"
+
+She clapped her hands and ordered her litter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE SPEAKING OF EUTYCHUS
+
+The imperial ruin drooped in the gilded lectica, now comatose, now
+animate.  Under the purple robe the long, old, wasted limbs vibrated
+and the gems, quivering on the gnarled fingers, scintillated
+incessantly.  Now that the rich winds from the gardens of Tusculum
+breathed on him, he cursed and groped for his mantle; again, when the
+inimitable sun of the Alban Hills smiled on him, his face purpled with
+suffusions of heat.  Now that his wrinkled blue lids drooped half-way,
+Euodus, who walked by his side, told himself that he looked on death;
+but when the sunken eyes unclosed, he had to say that the will therein
+was immortal.
+
+It was a great, withered, tall, old frame, diseased and fallen into
+decay.  Life seldom of its own accord clings with tenacity to so
+ancient and utter a ruin.  Mind stood in the way of the soul's egress
+and penned it into its dilapidated shell.  It was a habit Cæsar's mind
+had of blocking people, things and himself.  A creature of
+contradicting impulses, affectionate, sensitive, soldierly,
+immeasurably capable, with harsh standards of uprightness for others,
+stoic, enduring, ruggedly simple for the time, he was on the other hand
+one of the bloodiest and most unnatural monsters that ever disgraced
+the throne of the Cæsars.  Moody, taciturn, perverse, superstitious,
+unspeakably sensual and cruel, yet withal an admirer of honor, the
+inalienable friend of the inalienable servant, he was a Roman emperor
+in every phase of his many-sided nature.  It is not recorded that any
+ever loved Tiberius; neither is it recorded that any ever failed to
+respect him.
+
+He was finishing his twenty-fifth year as Emperor of the World, but of
+late, Macro's capacities as prætorian prefect had been enlarged to
+those of vice-regent, and Cæsar returned from Capri, his retreat from
+the trying climate of Rome, only on occasions.
+
+Beside him walked eight prætorian guards, picked, not for appearance
+but for age and integrity.  There walked Gallus who had followed
+Augustus, thirty years before; Attius Paulus, who had one hundred and
+thirty-nine wounds on his huge hulk; Severus Vespasian, who had been a
+soldier forty years and had twice refused to be retired; Plautius Asper
+who had been surnamed Leonidas, because he and a handful had held a
+German defile in the face of a whole barbarian army--and lived to
+refuse to be knighted.  If Cæsar spoke to one, the answer came in
+monosyllables and with a touch of the helmet.  Flattery never passed
+their lips, but if one lent his arm to the tall old emperor it was done
+with a rude tenderness that even the most polished courtier could not
+have improved.  And Tiberius, being blunt and impatient of pretenses,
+walled himself away from the rest of his following with this bulwark of
+dependable ruggedness.
+
+After his lectica came another, borne by four Georgian youths.  Within
+lounged the latest of Tiberius' favorite ladies, Euodus' daughter, the
+Lady Junia.
+
+They had passed the corner of Cicero's villa when a litter approached
+from an intersecting avenue and was set down.
+
+A woman stepped out.  White her hair, her dress the ancient palla and
+stola of white and purple, her jewels, amethysts.  The rheumy emperor
+saw her imperfectly.
+
+"Stop!" he ordered his bearers.
+
+The woman approached and made obeisance.
+
+"Humph!  Antonia," he muttered in some disappointment.  But he drew his
+old frame together and inclined his head respectfully.
+
+"Greeting, sister," he said.  "The gods attend thee."
+
+"Thou art good, Augustus.  Welcome to Tusculum once more," she replied.
+She took the hand he extended and raised it to her lips.  The old man
+gazed at her with a wavering eye.
+
+"Come closer.  Art so gray?" he asked.
+
+"White, Cæsar."
+
+He took the hand from hers and put back the vitta that covered her
+hair.  There were the sorrows of seventy years, in its absolute
+whiteness, and the Roman duskiness of skin was brought out very
+strongly in contrast.  But her eyes were still full and bright, even
+tender, her thin lips lacking nothing of the color of her youth.  Age
+had not laid its withering touch on her stature or even on the fullness
+of her frame, but the hand, Time's infallible tally, was the worn-out
+hand of seventy years.
+
+She was the noblest woman of her age, _univira_,--the widow of one
+husband, dead in her youth, the mother of statesmen, generals and
+emperors, a scholar and at one time a diplomat,--in all things, the
+ancient spirit of the First Republic, solitary, rugged, irreproachable
+in the vicious age of the Cæsars.
+
+"Eh!  White, wholly white," he assented, running his fingers through
+her locks with a movement that was almost tender.  "And I am thine
+elder.  Yet," he drew himself up and defiance hardened his face, "I am
+not a dead man, Antonia!"
+
+"Nay, who says it, Cæsar?  And it is not age that hath blanched me.  I
+was gray at forty--much more gray than thou art now."
+
+"No, no!  Not age!  Truly a woman's protest.  But then, perchance not.
+Thy husband's death undid thee.  How thou didst love him!  Save for
+thine example I should say that Eros himself is dead!"
+
+After a little he muttered to himself:
+
+"Alas!  What a name to conjure death!  My son Drusus, thy spouse
+Drusus, and thy son Drusus, the Germanicus.  Dead!  All! and in their
+youth.  The very name hath a sinister look."
+
+The old man shook his unsteady head and knuckled his sunken cheek.  The
+widow's saddened face wore also some surprise.
+
+"Canst thou speak of thy son Drusus, now?" she asked.  "Not in these
+many years have I heard thee name him."
+
+"No!" he answered shortly.  "I speak of dreams; new dreams, which I
+mean to have the soothsayers interpret."
+
+"Tell me of them, Augustus," she urged.
+
+"There is one, and it comes nightly.  It is a Shade from Thanatos,
+which approacheth.  I put the ægis into its dead hands, crown its
+death-dewed brow, do obeisance before a pale ghost that melts again
+into the Shades--and after it passes all Rome, and the Empire of the
+Cæsars."
+
+The widow's eyes showed unutterable sadness, which was unrelieved by
+tears.  The unanointed Cæsars that had passed into the Shades had
+gathered unto their number no nobler one than the gallant young
+Germanicus, and the last remnant of the ancient glory of Rome had
+passed with him.  But she put off the encroaching lapse into
+retrospection.
+
+"One of the departed cometh to ask that his offspring be thine heir,"
+she suggested.
+
+The old emperor nodded eagerly.  "It may be, it may be," he assented.
+"I have been pondering long upon the matter."
+
+A silence fell and the two gazed absently across the shimmering vision
+of Rome, below them, three leagues to the west.  About them were spread
+the villas of the rich in retreat, the very essence of repose, the
+birdsong and the murmur of laurels in the breeze; in the distance was
+the apotheosis of power, but their thoughts overreached the things seen
+and questioned after things unknown.  In their philosophy, life was
+all.  After it was Shadow, an inevitable obliteration in which the just
+and the unjust were immersed eternally.  But no youth, looking forward
+to the long, eventful days to come, experienced the grave wonder that
+these expended on the time after things were expected to end.  The awe
+of the unexplored Hereafter--what a waste of universal, earth-old,
+intuitive awe, if there be no Hereafter!
+
+Tiberius muttered, as if to himself:
+
+"There is another--yet another dream.  I cast dice with Three; three
+grisly hags, and I lose, though the tesseræ were cogged.  But let be,
+let be; the soothsayers shall read me that one!"
+
+He sat up.
+
+"Came you of a purpose to speak with me, Antonia?" he asked.
+
+"I did," she said, "but it seems that the time is not propitious."
+
+"Any hour is propitious for thee, Antonia."
+
+"Thou art a kind man, Cæsar.  I came to speak of Agrippa."
+
+"Agrippa!" the emperor exclaimed, a sudden transformation showing in
+his voice and manner.
+
+The woman in the litter behind stepped out, but paused without
+advancing.  She made no attempt to conceal her attention to the talk
+between the widow and the emperor.
+
+Antonia studied the face of the old man; it was significant, when,
+after his lapse into the softened mood of retrospection, he should
+return to his old manner.  She felt her way.
+
+"Agrippa ceases not to be interesting.  Thou and I remember him as the
+faithfulest friend thy son Drusus had; to this day of all who knew
+Drusus it is only Agrippa who still hath tears for his name."
+
+The emperor's wrinkled mouth was set, his face absolutely without
+telling expression.
+
+"He hath had years of want and humiliation," she continued.  "He hath
+walked under clouds and suffered from ill report, until he is soulsick
+of it.  Now, the favor of his emperor and the peace of good repute
+restored to him, are things that he would not willingly let go from him
+again.  The inventions of an enemy have risen against him in Rome; even
+hath the ill-favored sire of the story been discovered, and Agrippa,
+conscious of his integrity toward thee, is restive.  He wants to be
+examined; his innocence proven and thy good will toward him firmly
+established."
+
+"Well, well!" Tiberius said.
+
+"I shall await your happier mood," she said, gathering her robes about
+her.
+
+"Any mood is happy enough for the Jew," was the retort.
+
+Antonia unmistakably eyed the old man.
+
+"Say on, good Antonia," he urged uncomfortably.  "I have not forsworn
+justice."
+
+"Agrippa asks nothing more.  His charioteer robbed him, and when he was
+captured and in danger of punishment, he claimed that he had
+information against Agrippa which concerns thy welfare.  It is simply a
+device to put off punishment.  He hath appealed to thee and thou hast
+not yet heard him.  The Herod is eager that the matter be settled and
+begs that the slave be heard at once."
+
+"Eh! what a fanfare of probity!" the emperor mumbled.  "Leave it to a
+Jew to flourish his righteousness.  If he is innocent, he can wait; if
+he is guilty, we shall overtake him soon enough.  I owe him a sentence
+of uncertainty for his slights to my grandson, the little Tiberius."
+
+"And thou hast but this moment said that thou hadst not forsworn
+justice!" Antonia exclaimed.
+
+"Jupiter, but thou art provoking!" he fumed.  "Hither, Euodus!"
+
+Junia made a slight movement as if she meant to step between her father
+and the emperor, but was suddenly reminded of her part.  She stopped
+again.
+
+"How my sentimental heart cries out against my obligation to Flaccus!"
+she said to herself.  "Here must I stand idly by, while this new
+Penelope to a dead Ulysses works the Herod's ruin!"
+
+Euodus bowed beside Cæsar.
+
+"Bring me the Jew's slave that hath a charge for me to hear.  Bring him
+hither, and haste!"
+
+The old man turned to Antonia.
+
+"Go tell thy valiant Herod that he shall have justice.  Justice!  Say
+that.  It may not please him so much to have that message."
+
+The gilded lectica moved on.  The widow went back to her litter and was
+borne away.  Junia remounted her chair and followed the emperor.
+
+"O lady," she said, looking after Antonia's litter, "it may be very
+superior to live aloof from the world, and ignorant of its intrigues,
+but it is fatal for thy friends, I observe."
+
+At the brink of a precipitous descent into the valley west of Tusculum,
+Euodus returned with Eutychus, whom Piso, at Agrippa's defiant
+instigation, had been forced to send to Tusculum to be available in
+event of Cæsar's summons.
+
+Junia looked at Eutychus, livid with fear in the presence of the
+unspeakable might of the emperor, and held debate with herself.  She
+had not agreed that Agrippa should be other than alienated from his
+wife.  She was human enough not to wish the death of any man to whom
+she was indifferent, and for a moment she seemed about to alight from
+her chair.  Even Flaccus' power over her for the time seemed to lose
+its effect, for a picture of Marsyas' suffering was a more distinct
+image.  But one of the causes of Marsyas' concern, nay, the chief
+cause--the protection of Lydia to be achieved by the Herod's
+success--occurred to her in an evil moment.  She turned her face away
+from the colloquy between Cæsar and the charioteer and studied the
+summer-green Alban Hills that shouldered the sky behind her.
+
+Eutychus collapsed to his knees at sight of the emperor.
+
+"Speak, slave," Euodus ordered.
+
+"O Cæsar," the charioteer panted when his voice would obey him, "once I
+drove the Herod and Caligula, the Roman prince, to the Hippodrome in
+this place and they talked of the succession.  And Herod said that he
+wished that thou wast dead and Caligula emperor in thy stead."
+
+The emperor's eyes glittered.
+
+"What else?" Euodus demanded.
+
+"Somewhat about the young Prince Tiberius which I did not hear,"
+Eutychus trembled.
+
+"And what said Caligula to that?"
+
+"That the Herod had his own making and not Caligula's to achieve!"
+
+"A Roman's answer," Junia said to herself.
+
+"Is there nothing more?" the questioner insisted.
+
+"Nothing, lord!"
+
+Euodus bowed to the emperor and waited.
+
+"Give him ten stripes and turn him loose," Tiberius said.  Two of the
+prætorians led Eutychus away.
+
+"_Eheu_!" Junia sighed.  "I could have stared the knave between the
+eyes and made him discredit himself in a breath!  Ai!  Owl-faced Lydia!
+thou art a destroyed peril, but at what a price!"
+
+The bearers stood patiently under the glow of the morning sun, waiting
+their royal burden's humor to go on.  But Tiberius shrank into the
+relaxation of thought.  He had outlived every plot to assassinate him;
+he held in his hands consummate might; he was surely approaching the
+Shades; but the example of his infallible fortune, the fear of his
+merciless hand and the fact that he would not stand long in the way of
+ambitions, had not quieted the fatal tongue which bespoke him evil!  He
+was sick of blood and torture, tale-bearing and intrigue, because he
+was surfeited with it all.  But here, now, was this precarious Herod,
+barely escaping disaster which had pursued him for twenty years,
+wishing brutally and incautiously that he might die!  Tiberius was at a
+loss to know what to do with the man.  The thought wearied him.  He
+wished now that he had ordered a hundred stripes for Eutychus instead
+of ten.  What an officious creature Antonia had become!
+
+Euodus folded his arms and waited; the patricians, approaching in
+chairs of their own, alighted, bowed, passed out of the path and went
+around, remounted their chairs and disappeared.  The birds in the trees
+about, hushed by the talk below them, twittered and flew again.
+Euodus, casting a sidelong glance at the emperor, nodded at the nearest
+bearer.
+
+"To the palace," he said.
+
+The slaves turned back up the slanting street and the motion of the
+lectica aroused Tiberius.
+
+"Whither?" he demanded irritably.
+
+"To the palace, Cæsar," Euodus answered.
+
+"Did I command thee?  To the Hippodrome, slaves!"
+
+The bearers turned once more and began the ticklish descent of the
+paved roadway to the valley below, where the Circus of Tusculum was
+built.
+
+The huge elliptical structure stood out in the plain, alone and solid
+except for the low, heavy arch of the vomitoria which broke the round
+of masonry.  The trees about it were dwarfed in contrast, the columns
+shrunken, the viæ, approaching it from all directions straight as
+arrows fly, curbed and paved with stone, were as mere taut ribbons.
+But in the great slope of the Campagna, under the immense and sparkling
+blue of the Italian sky, it was only a detail in rock.
+
+Rome had long since outgrown her walls and ceased to contemplate them
+except as landmarks and conventionalities, useless but as significant
+as Cæsar's paludamentum.  Inns and mile-stones along the viæ proved
+them once to have been things distinctly suburban, but the city crying
+for room had passed the walls and built its own
+characteristics--temples, tombs, villas, circuses, fora and arches as
+far as Tusculum along the roads.
+
+Lovelier beyond comparison than Rome's loveliest spots, it was small
+wonder that to fill their Augustan lungs with the freshness of the
+Campagna, the idle were borne out of the contained airs of the city,
+which were of such seasonal peculiarities that temples in propitiation
+of Mephitis and the goddess Febris had been erected.
+
+So daily groups of patricians collected at the Hippodrome of Tusculum,
+with laughter and badinage, the flashing of jewels and the glittering
+of cars, the flutter of lustrous silks and the tossing of feathers, to
+spend the bright hours of the day watching the races that proceeded in
+the arena below.
+
+The races had not begun, the crowds had not assembled.  The gilded
+lectica was borne through the tunnel-like entrance up the stairs, not
+to the amphitheater but to the arena.  Slaves with blanketed horses and
+clusters of betting patricians were here and there over the sanded
+ellipse within.  The bustle of preparation slackened at the approach of
+the august visitor.
+
+The eyes of the emperor opened and closed dully.  Nothing was here to
+interest a man worn out with seventy years of change and excitement.
+Nothing new could have aroused him, for his attention rebelled against
+the call.
+
+Presently, during one of the intervals that his eyes were open, he saw,
+within touch of his hand, Agrippa and Caligula side by side, talking to
+a gladiator.  The emperor scowled and looked away.  The bearers plodded
+on, rounded the upper end of the ellipse and, passing down the side,
+neared the mouth of the cunicula.
+
+Agrippa and Caligula had moved from their position and were there, with
+a notary taking down the terms of a wager.
+
+Apart from them stood a small but important man, frowning over a waxen
+tablet which a slave had cringingly handed him.
+
+Tiberius looked at him, then at Agrippa.  His brows lowered more, this
+time with irritation.  It seemed that action had been formulated by
+circumstance and that the emperor was not to avoid a tiresome
+prosecution.
+
+He put out his hand as the bearers bore him by and it touched the Roman
+on the shoulder.  The man turned on his heel, but seeing who was near
+bowed profoundly.  If he meant to speak to the emperor he was not given
+opportunity.
+
+"Bind that man, Macro," Cæsar said, nodding at Agrippa.
+
+The lectica moved on.  As it passed up the opposite side Macro crossed
+to it and, puzzled and disturbed, bowed again.
+
+"Cæsar's pardon, but whom am I to bind?" he questioned.
+
+"That man," Tiberius replied irritably, pointing to the Herod.
+
+"Agrippa!" the astonished prefect exclaimed.
+
+"I have said."
+
+The lectica went on, up and around the curve of the ellipse, and back
+again to the cunicula.  The few within the walls of the Hippodrome had
+gathered there in an interested and excited group.  In the center stood
+Agrippa with manacles on his wrists and ankles.  The charm and sparkle
+in his atmosphere were gone; even as Tiberius looked, he saw the cold,
+evil, vengeful countenance of the Asmonean Slave, the Terror of the
+Orient, Herod the Great, appear, like a face putting off a mask, behind
+the graceful features of his grandson.  Tiberius was grimly satisfied;
+he felt the first interest in the arrest; he was always by choice a
+preferrer of noble game.
+
+On either side of the prisoner stood a Roman soldier; aloof and passive
+was Macro, but the earth had apparently opened and swallowed Caligula.
+
+As the lectica approached, the crowd gave way and his captors permitted
+Agrippa to come nearer the emperor.
+
+"At Cæsar's command, I am arrested," he said evenly.  "Will Cæsar grant
+me the prisoner's privilege and tell me why?"
+
+"Thy charioteer hath spoken, Agrippa," was the response.  "The slave
+swears that on such and such a day he drove thee and Caligula to this
+place.  Instead of horses you talked of kings, instead of bets, the
+succession.  And thou madest moan that I was not dead so that Caligula
+could reign in my place!"
+
+The jaws of many round about relaxed in horror.  Agrippa's muscles made
+an involuntary start, but his face retained its calm.  But the emperor
+caught the start.
+
+"Forgot that unctuous bit of tittle-tattle when thou didst make Antonia
+bearer of thy boasts, eh?" he piped.
+
+"My words have been distorted," Agrippa spoke, though he seemed to hate
+himself for offering a defense.
+
+"Ah-r-r!  Wilt thou snivel and deny?" Tiberius snarled.
+
+The prince's manacled hands clenched and a glimmer of hate showed in
+his eyes.  Cæsar nodded; that was better.
+
+[Illustration: The prince's manacled hands clenched]
+
+"Agrippa, the king-maker!" he went on, "late mendicant from Judea; heir
+presumptive to the ax!  Eh?  Take him away!  Macro, come thou to the
+palace to-night, and I'll deliver sentence!"
+
+The gilded lectica moved on.
+
+Twenty minutes later, Marsyas, white to the lips, his eyes enlarged and
+dangerous, sprang from a clump of myrtle by the roadside, after the
+litter had passed up toward Tusculum and, thrusting a hand into Junia's
+chair, seized her arm.
+
+"See that Tiberius forgets his audience with Macro to-night," he said
+to her.  "See that he yearns after Capri, and returns to-morrow--or
+thou bringest upon me the pain of killing."
+
+Terrified for the first time in her life, Junia shrank under the
+crushing grip.
+
+"Him or me!" she told herself.  "I promise!" she whispered to Marsyas.
+"But acquit me of blame.  What could I do?"
+
+"I have shown thee, now!" he said intensely, and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE ARM MADE BARE
+
+Lydia went up on the housetop into the shade of the pavilion with the
+writing her father had put into her hand, and drawing the hangings on
+the east side of the pavilion to shut out the morning sun, sat down to
+read how Marsyas had revealed the evil tidings to the alabarch.
+
+It was the first moment of rest she had had since the messenger had
+arrived at daybreak with the letter which had flung Cypros into
+paroxysms of suffering and desperation.  Now that the unhappy princess
+had yielded to the benign influence of a narcotic simple, Lydia had
+time for her own thoughts.
+
+It was not the same Lydia that had danced on the Temple of Rannu.
+Spiritual change as infallibly marks the countenance as physical
+change.  The last of the half-skeptical, half-philosophical tolerant
+equanimity was gone from her face; the self-reliance had been
+transformed into a look of faith and believing, and a certain
+tranquillity, no less sweet and unshaken because it was sorrowful, no
+less patient because its hope was faint, made her forehead placid.
+
+She read:
+
+
+ROME, Kal. Jul. X, 790.
+
+"TO THE MOST EXCELLENT ALABARCH, ALEXANDER LYSIMACHUS, GOVERNOR OF THE
+JEWS OF ALEXANDRIA, GREETING:
+
+"It is my grief to inform thee that at the command of Cæsar, my lord
+and patron, Herod Agrippa, hath been confined in the Prætorian Camp
+awaiting sentence for utterances pronounced treasonous to Cæsar.
+
+"Immediately after the prince's arrest, one of the ladies of Cæsar's
+train was stricken by an illness, resulting from the malarious airs of
+the Campagna, and the emperor ordered the immediate return to Capri.
+
+"Inquiry among the emperor's ministers discloses the fact that he left
+no explicit instructions concerning the execution of a sentence upon
+Agrippa.  It is noted in Rome that, owing to the multiplicity of his
+duties and the weariness of his mind, the emperor forgets readily, and
+is not pleased to be reminded of that which he hath forgotten to
+perform.  Wherefore, if it please God to erase Agrippa from his mind,
+it shall be seen to, here in Rome, that no one recall the unfortunate
+prince to Cæsar's attention.
+
+"Canvass among the fellows of Agrippa conducted by certain powers in
+the state reveals that the movement against the prince did not have its
+inception in Rome; however, many were not unwilling to have it come to
+pass because of the prince's aggressive political preferences.  But now
+that he is at the edge of ruin, the insignificant activity in the
+capital hath fallen inert; those who contributed to it are alarmed, for
+the accomplishment of Agrippa's death will inevitably revert upon the
+heads of them who endangered him, should Caius Caligula be crowned.
+
+"The movement against the prince, consummated by the charioteer
+Eutychus, had its inception, as I have said, not in Rome.  The man
+stole of his master's wardrobe and ran away.  When he was apprehended
+he claimed that he had information against Agrippa which concerned the
+life and welfare of Cæsar.  Piso, city prefect, bound the man and sent
+him to Tusculum, where, by the solicitations of Antonia, who was
+commanded by Agrippa, the emperor heard the charioteer's charge.
+
+"Thou and I know, good my lord, that Eutychus is too clumsy a villain,
+too much of a coward, to invent and push this bold work himself,
+without support.  Wherefore, I and others are convinced that he must
+have been inspired and aided by some secret and shrewd enemy outside of
+Rome.  If the proconsul of Egypt is not yet informed of this disaster,
+do not trouble him with the information!
+
+"It may assist thee to know that Eutychus, given ten stripes as earnest
+of Cæsar's respect for him, and turned loose, eluded mine and
+Caligula's vengeance and immediately took ship for Alexandria.  Expect
+him in the Brucheum.
+
+"Know this, also.  If Cæsar forget and Agrippa live on, this enemy will
+grow restive and bestir himself again, wherefore it is the duty of them
+who love the prince to watch for any coiling which prepares for the
+stroke.
+
+"For thine own comfort and for the comfort of his unhappy princess, I
+add here, though in peril to the prince's benefactor and to myself,
+that Agrippa's prison discomforts are alleviated, and kind usage
+secured him by the generous distribution of gold among them who
+surround him.  It is not a difficult matter to secure him comparative
+comfort.
+
+"Silas and I daily come to him with fresh clothing, and abundant food:
+he hath his own bedding and his daily bath.  Through the influence of
+the prætorian prefect, obtained at great price by Antonia, none is
+permitted to pronounce Agrippa's name outside the camp, on pain of
+extreme punishment--a clever pretense at abhorring a traitor which aims
+only at his defense.
+
+"Thy part is to quiet, within thy powers, any work in Alexandria which
+may lead to Cæsar's remembering Agrippa.
+
+"I have closed the prince's residence, dispersed his slaves among the
+families of his friends, and with Silas I am living under the roof of
+Antonia, in whose care I am permitted to receive letters.  The Lady
+Junia is at Capri at my solicitation, pledged to do a woman's part in
+the protection of Agrippa.
+
+"May the God of our fathers arm thee.
+  "Peace to thee and thine.
+      "MARSYAS."
+
+
+Lydia sighed and let the writing drop into her lap.
+
+"I can not hope, my Marsyas," she said to herself, "if thou art
+schooled in the understanding of women by Junia!"
+
+The Roman tincture was patent in the letter, but the Jewish manner,
+Jewish penetration, and the Essenic coldness were strong and unaltered.
+His well-beloved and unchanged hand had pressed all the surface of the
+parchment, but she did not lift it to her lips.  There had been no word
+beyond the general greeting to her as the family of the alabarch, and
+proud, even in her sorrow and the new-found humility, she saved her
+endearments.
+
+After a moment of further thought, she was aroused by the rattle of
+wheels which came to an end before the porch of her father's house.
+She arose and going to the parapet looked over.  Justin Classicus'
+chariot stood there.  She caught the last flutter of his garments as he
+disappeared under the roof of the porch.
+
+She went back to her place and waited for a servant to announce the
+guest.  But Classicus lingered.  The alabarch was not like to be
+telling him the account of Agrippa's latest misfortune.
+
+She put away Marsyas' letter and gazed at the Synagogue immersed in the
+golden flood of Egyptian sunshine.  She had not ceased to love it, nor
+to attend it with all maiden fidelity since she had followed Jesus of
+Nazareth, but it seemed to love her less, to throw a shadow darker, but
+less benign, over her, as she approached its giant gates.  Saul of
+Tarsus whom she had feared for Marsyas' sake was a hidden menace now in
+its great angles, a threat in its rituals, a brooding danger held up
+only so long as she hid in deceit.  She felt unutterably lonely and
+friendless.
+
+Presently Classicus came up unannounced.  She knew at a glance that he
+had learned from some source of Agrippa's misfortune, and wondered for
+a moment if her father had forgotten Marsyas' charge.
+
+"Alexandria hath heard of Agrippa's disaster," he began, as he seated
+himself beside her, "and I came to offer my consolation and my aid."
+
+Then Flaccus already had the news!
+
+"I would thou couldst aid us, Justin.  Not now is anything more
+precious than help, and nothing less possible."
+
+"And to say lastly," he continued, looking into her face, "that I
+deplore that haunted look in thine eyes, Lydia.  What does it mean?"
+
+"That I grow older, wiser, sadder--and less fortunate."
+
+"Thou shouldst study the philosophy of the Nazarenes," he declared.  "I
+find that much of their teaching, stripped of its frenzy and reduced to
+the dignity of pure language, hath much comfort in it."
+
+"Does it promise that sorrow will not come to them who espouse it?" she
+asked, looking away.
+
+"Nay, but it preaches universal love.  Could I teach thee that, sorrow
+should never approach thee or me henceforth!"
+
+"I fear thou dost not understand them," she said dubiously.
+
+"Not wholly," he admitted.  "I have not yet been able to agree with
+them, that I, Justin Classicus, scholar and Sadducee, should find it in
+my heart to love a crook-back shepherd that speaks Aramaic, rejoices on
+conchs, relishes onions and is washed only when the rains wet him."
+
+He smiled, and Justin Classicus' face was helped by a smile.  Mirth
+possessed him entirely, cast up a transitory flush in his cheeks and
+lighted torches in his eyes.  But Lydia looked across the Alexandrian
+housetops.
+
+"Why dost thou seek this new philosophy, Justin?" she asked.
+
+"To see if it be safe enough heresy to teach thee," he returned.  "If
+it be, thou shall learn it, for in its creed of universal love, I put
+mine only hope that thou shalt come to love me!"
+
+"Learn the universal love for thyself, Justin: learn to love the
+shepherd and thine enemy--learn it in all truth, and thou mayest be
+content with that, and no more!"
+
+"The Lord forbid!" he cried.  "If that should come to pass, learning
+this new philosophy, I pause, even now!"
+
+"Enemy?" he repeated, after a little in a gentler tone.  "Save another
+hath possessed thy heart, I have no enemy--the Nazarenes recommending
+that one leave them out of one's catalogue of fellows!"
+
+"Canst thou not hold off thy hand, even from an enemy?  Hath thy search
+after their philosophy taught thee so much?"
+
+He looked at her face, and saw thereon something to follow.
+
+"I can--be bought," he answered softly.
+
+She remembered his part in the ambuscade the night of the Dance of
+Flora, and her face paled a little.
+
+"It is not the Nazarene way," she replied unreadily.
+
+"Nay, but if the demand be great enough, any method must serve.  Shall
+I name my price?"  His voice was clear and illuminating.
+
+She arose and moved over to one of the columns, and leaning against it
+gazed across toward the blue sparkle of the New Port.  She felt the
+strength of his fortification, the extent of his power over her.  Not
+any of the many things she had hidden from all but Marsyas were unknown
+to him!
+
+She turned to him with appeal in her eyes, but he laughed very softly,
+and wrapped the kerchief skilfully about his head.  His composure
+terrified her.  He held out his hand.
+
+"Think," he said, "and to-morrow or the next to-morrow, but soon, thou
+wilt tell me.  Meanwhile I shall tell thy father that I have spoken
+with thee."
+
+He took her fingers and kissed them.
+
+"Farewell.  And let the Nazarenes persuade thee, if I can not!"
+
+A long time after she heard the wheels of his chariot roll away from
+before the alabarch's porch.  Then with slow, weary steps she went down
+into the house.  She would seek out her father, and discover what to
+expect from Flaccus and if disaster could be averted from the beloved
+head of Marsyas and the unhappy Herod.  Not until then would she
+entertain the suggested sacrifice which Classicus had so deftly
+demanded.
+
+But when she reached the inner chamber, with the arch opening into the
+alabarch's presiding room, she saw within the proconsul.
+
+She hesitated, surprised and alarmed, but presently her father, raising
+his eyes, saw her and signed to her to enter.
+
+The proconsul stopped in the middle of a sentence to greet her, not
+from courtesy, but because she was a consideration.  She took her place
+on an ivory footstool at the foot of the alabarch's chair and seemed to
+efface herself.
+
+Lysimachus trifled with a stick of wax and heard Flaccus to the end of
+the sentence.  The old tone of assumed cordiality was gone.  Flaccus
+had ascended again to the plane of a legate speaking with a Jew.
+
+"So I shall pay thee thy five talents and release the lady, that she
+may be sent to Rome," he concluded.
+
+"The gossip of the lady's arrival in Rome would work havoc, sir.  She
+would be there engaging Antonia's attention, which should be devoted
+without lapse, in other directions."
+
+"The Herod's lady need not arrive with the blare of trumpets," was the
+cool retort, "and since thy talents are returned to thee, Lysimachus,
+thou art not asked to carry thy concern into Rome."
+
+The thin cheeks of the alabarch grew pink and Lydia raised a pair of
+somber eyes to the proconsul's face.
+
+"It is not a matter of my loan," the alabarch answered without a tremor
+in his melodious voice, "but it is that I held her in hostage in the
+beginning."
+
+"At my suggestion.  Then thou canst release her at my suggestion--and
+if the loan sits roughly on thy conscience we shall call it a gift at
+this late day."
+
+"If it please thee, good sir, we have left the discussion of the
+talents.  It is the lady who concerns us now.  I would be plain with
+thee; I should reproach myself did I let her proceed out of my house."
+
+"Call the lady," Flaccus commanded.  "We will lay the matter before
+her."
+
+"She sleeps," Lydia said.
+
+"I bring her more relief than sleep," was the blunt reply.  "Bring her
+hither."
+
+"On one promise," Lydia said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"That I and my servants alone shall accompany her to Rome."
+
+Flaccus gazed straight at the alabarch's daughter.  Lysimachus sat
+without movement.  He knew that his daughter had seen at once that
+which he had instantly divined--that Flaccus had no intention of
+sending Cypros to Rome.
+
+"Bring the lady," Flaccus insisted, "and we shall lay our plans
+thereafter."
+
+Lydia sat still; she knew Cypros' believing nature; that she would see
+nothing but a generous offer in the proconsul's intent; that to prevent
+the simple woman from consenting to destroy herself the whole villainy
+of the proconsul would have to be uncovered to her--doubtless before
+Flaccus, with unimaginable results.  The alabarch looked down on his
+daughter's fair head, away from Flaccus' threatening gaze and waited
+for her answer.
+
+"My lord," she said composedly, "we have complicated our associations
+with thee and this unfortunate family long enough.  Perchance we erred.
+At best it may no longer be maintained.  Though the Lady Cypros is
+uninformed, I and others know why thou hast been tolerant of our people
+of late; what deed thou didst attempt in the passage back of Rannu's
+Temple on the closing night of Flora's feast; what disaster overtook
+thee there; why Agrippa, now, is undone and what thou meanest in truth
+to do with his princess."
+
+There was silence.  Then the alabarch's hand dropped down on Lydia's
+curls.
+
+"Daughter, thou art weaponed with testimony new to thy father; thou
+hast kept thy arms concealed.  Yet I will take them up, now."  He
+raised his eyes to Flaccus.
+
+"Perchance thou wouldst explain to me my daughter's meaning?"
+
+After a dangerous dilation of his gray-brown eyes, Flaccus seemed more
+than ever composed.
+
+"Is my favor worth aught to the Jews?" he asked.
+
+"Jews," the alabarch replied, "do not purchase immunity at sacrifice of
+the honor of their women."
+
+"I am not enraged, Alexander," was the reply.  "I am only diverted.
+But the Herod under sentence of death and the Alexandrians loosed upon
+the Regio Judæorum, it seems that the Lady Herod will soon be without a
+protector or a roof-tree.  She had much better go--to Rome!"
+
+He strode out of the presiding-room and into the street before the
+alabarch could conduct him to the door.
+
+Lysimachus and his daughter looked at each other.  Their thoughts
+reached out and gathered in for contemplation all the details and the
+results of the climax.  Then the alabarch opened his arms to his
+daughter and she slipped down on his breast.
+
+"Tell me what thou knowest against Flaccus, and why I have not learned
+of this?" he urged.
+
+It was a sore trial to Lydia's conscience to leave out her own part in
+the story she told, but the alabarch was less attentive to the source
+of her information than to the information itself.
+
+"I did not tell it sooner, because, in ignorance thou wouldst not be
+constantly hiding from Flaccus a distaste, distrust and watchfulness
+that infallibly would have controlled thee hadst thou known his hands
+were red with the blood of a man of whom he spoke fair and whom he
+pretended to love, before the world!"
+
+"What shall we do?" she asked after a long silence, for the press of
+many evils had stunned her resourcefulness.
+
+"Tell the princess first," the alabarch responded.
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Fight!  He can invent twenty excuses to take Cypros from me by law and
+against her will."
+
+"Then we must hide her and speedily!"
+
+The alabarch thrust his old waxen fingers into his white locks.
+
+"Now who will imperil himself by giving her asylum?" he pondered.
+
+Lydia looked up after a little thought.
+
+"The Nazarenes," she ventured timidly.
+
+"What!  The apostates!  The community is the most perilous spot in
+Egypt!"
+
+"Here in Alexandria, of a truth," Lydia hurried on eagerly, "but thou
+knowest by report that they have spread abroad among rustics and
+shepherds as a running vine.  Many are living about over the Delta.
+One of them will shelter her, I know.  She will go when we have told
+her what threatens, nor fail to flourish on their rough fare, since she
+hath made her bed by the roadways, and had her bread from the hands of
+wayside mendicants!"
+
+The alabarch arose and set her on her feet.
+
+"Haste, then, Lydia; no time is to be lost!"
+
+But before she reached the threshold of the archway she turned back and
+came slowly to him, closer and closer, until she raised her arms and
+put them about his neck.
+
+"Father!" she whispered, "we need have fear of Classicus."
+
+The pallor on the old man's face quivered like the reflection of a
+shaken light.
+
+"He is jealous," he answered, "of Marsyas!  Hath he cause, my daughter?"
+
+Lydia dropped her head on the alabarch's breast.
+
+"Marsyas is an Essene!" she whispered, and the alabarch smoothed her
+curls and was filled with pity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE PROCONSUL'S DELIBERATIONS
+
+Before sunset that day, Flaccus had received two messages.  One was
+brought by a Jewish slave.  It read:
+
+
+"TO FLACCUS AVILLUS, PROCONSUL OF EGYPT, GREETING:
+
+"I have departed.
+
+"CYPROS."
+
+
+The other came by a Roman courier, who had landed an hour before from
+one of the swift-going triremes which had left Ravenna three days later
+than the passenger boat that had brought Marsyas' tidings.
+
+The message also was written in a woman's hand and was no less enraging
+than the other:
+
+
+"ROME, Kal. Jul. X, 790.
+
+"This bulletin to tell thee, O my raging corybant, that thy cause hath
+ceased to prosper for the past three days.  Mine own part was well
+performed as was thine other minion's, the bewitching Eutychus, but
+desperate work hath been done which bids fair to upset thee and me and
+preserve thine enemies.
+
+"First and above all things, thou wilt remember that it was not in the
+pact that I should do more than lead the Herod out of the path of
+domestic uprightness and hold off my hands.  This hath been already
+done, but the Parcæ have grown weary of yielding thee favor, so read,
+here, following, disaster!
+
+"Herod and his friend, the Essene Marsyas, who had become a dangerous
+Roman, filled with a Jew's cunning and the boldness of a wolf-suckled
+Romulus, till misfortune cut him down--this same fallen Herod and his
+friend have dropped out of sight, except as Death may bare its arm and
+reach down to cut off the head of the one and the income of the other.
+This much in three days; but Rome hath taught herself to forget in a
+twinkling.
+
+"But Cæsar hath been for many days troubled of a dream.  He telleth it
+thus, in no more words, no fewer: 'I cast dice with Three; three grisly
+hags, and I lose, though the tesseræ were cogged!'  His collection of
+soothsayers, the completest in the world, offered as many readings as
+there are numbers of them in the court.  But Tiberius drew his lip and
+bared his teeth at them and called them pea-hens and cockchafers.  Even
+Thrasullus, he lampooned--Thrasullus, whom once he feared.
+
+"Whereupon, the store of haruspices and augurs that feed upon
+superstitious Rome were brought in--only to furnish mirth for the court
+and victims for Tiberius.
+
+"Then Macro, rummaging about in musty and alien-peopled corners of the
+Imperial City, brought forth a wonder!
+
+"It--and would I could call the sex of the creature--came hither from
+the Orient.  On that naked fact, Rome is left to build its biography,
+describe its looks and fathom its purpose.  For it came before Cæsar,
+and stood, a column in white--hooded, mummied, shawled, veiled in
+white!  The court hath had spasms, since, fearing that it might have
+been a leper, but I say that there was no sick frame within those
+cerements!  It had the stature and brawn of a man, but it managed its
+garments with the skill of a woman.  It came, heard Cæsar's dream,
+plucked off a husk of its wrappings, produced pigment and stylus and
+wrote thereon.
+
+"Then it vanished quite away.
+
+"A hundred courtiers rushed upon the wrapping that it left, and Cæsar,
+pallid even under his wrinkles, screamed to them to pursue the Thing
+and fetch it back.  But it was gone; vanished into thin air.
+
+"Then Macro plucked up courage and, taking up the cloth, fetched it to
+Cæsar to read.
+
+"And Cæsar, ashamed to show fear in the face of his court, snatched the
+linen away and read--to himself!
+
+"Now, whether the writing assured Tiberius that he was the comeliest
+monarch on the earth, or unfolded this scheme which is to follow, no
+man knows.  But that which was written contained persuasion which
+worked on Cæsar's mirth, for he smiled, as he hath not smiled since
+Sejanus tasted death.
+
+"'Go forth and search out that soothsayer,' he commanded Macro, 'that I
+may give him whatsoever thing he would have!'  But Macro hath not
+discovered the soothsayer unto this day.
+
+"Meantime Cæsar cleared his audience-chamber, but despatched a slave to
+bring me back to him.
+
+"And when I came I was bidden in whispers to take Caligula to the
+deepest hidden villa on Capri, and entertain him until I was bidden to
+return.
+
+"An hour later, I met my father, the simple Euodus, who told me after
+many charges to keep it secret, that he had been bidden to fetch at
+daybreak the coming morning, whichever prince, Caligula or Tiberius,
+who stood without the emperor's door to give him greeting.
+
+"And yet another hour later, the little Tiberius' tutor was summoned to
+the imperial bed-chamber and came forth some minutes later with a face
+as blank as a Tuscan sherd.
+
+"Now, though I saw not the cloth of revelation, nor heard the emperor's
+plans, I knew then, as I know now, that the mysterious soothsayer wrote
+that the dream meant that Cæsar and the Destinies should choose the
+coming emperor, and bade him proceed by these means.
+
+"And I, dutiful lady to an engaging prince, took Caligula, nothing
+loath, and went privately into the interior of the island to that small
+wasp-nest palace clinging to the side of the cruelest precipice in
+these bad hills of Capri.
+
+"But in the night, while yet Caligula lingered at the board, because
+forsooth the slaves had carried me away first, there came the thunder
+of hoofs without, sentries and servants, asleep or drunken or afraid,
+fell right and left, flying feet rang upon the pavement, and before any
+could resist, Caligula was snatched up, rushed out and away into the
+night--and not any one saw the face of his abductor.
+
+"But when my father duly emerged from the emperor's bed-chamber there
+stood without, not little Tiberius, but Caligula, drenched as if he had
+been soused in a horse-trough to sober him, with immense dazed eyes and
+trembling like an aspen.
+
+"When he was led within, Cæsar started up and glared at him with
+baleful eyes.
+
+"'I was sent by a Dream,' Caligula whispered.  'What wilt thou have of
+me?'
+
+"And Tiberius, struggling with an apoplexy, fell back and made no
+instant answer.  But presently he said,
+
+"'Perpol!  I cogged the dice for myself, but it was the Destinies who
+threw them!  Oh, well, it was written, and had to come to pass!'
+
+"Where was the little Tiberius?  Being assured that naught should
+prevent his election, he lingered for his breakfast.  O fatal appetite
+of lusty youth!  He lost an empire by it.  For Cæsar, still afraid of
+the mysterious Thing from the Orient, ratified the choke of the
+Destinies.
+
+"But Caligula hath discovered the identity of the Dream that fetched
+him; which being very substantial and human stands in high favor with
+the prince imperial.  And so, through him as well as through the
+Herod's own claim on Caligula, Agrippa's hopes are brighter.
+
+"Wherefore thy campaign against the obstacle between thee and the maker
+of that twenty-year old wound in thy heart must be cautious, no longer
+overt, and above all things not of such nature as may recoil upon thee.
+Hear for once a woman's reason.  If thou accomplish the Herod's end,
+remember that Caligula succeeds Tiberius and will not fail to visit
+vengeance on those who ruined his friend!
+
+"Be wise, be covert, be wary!  If thou hast made mistakes, correct
+them!  Make no new enemies, and turn old ones into friends.  I will
+help thee, here, in Rome, except to the point of exposing myself.
+
+"If thou wilt work, be rapid, for Cæsar declines.  We go hence as soon
+as he may be removed, to Misenum.  But it is only animal flight from
+death; he seems to turn like a wounded jackal and snap at his heels.
+Matters of state, beyond the satisfying of a multitude of grudges, are
+entirely given up to Macro.  But daily the dullness on his brain shifts
+a little, so that the light of recollection penetrates to it, and he
+remembers forgotten animosities.  Herein lies thy hope.  I will not
+suggest Agrippa to him; Caligula would cut my throat before daybreak,
+for the eaves-dropping Macro would know what I did.
+
+"Calculate for thyself; get others to do thy work and to shoulder the
+peril.
+
+"Meanwhile Venus prosper thee, and may the Parcæ repent.
+
+"JUNIA."
+
+
+"Oh, well I know that mummied mystery, that Dream, that unseen
+abductor!" Flaccus raged, gnawing his nails.  "It is that villain
+Essene to whom I owe torture and death!  He, to direct the imperial
+succession!"
+
+Then he fell to considering his obstacles.  Caligula as prince imperial
+and friend to the Herod would permit no persecution of the Jews.  That
+method of coercing the alabarch had to be abandoned.  Next, he re-read
+the single line from Cypros.  She had not gone to Rome; she had hidden
+herself.  That was what the line meant.  They had told her, so she
+hated him.  But he did not wince so much under her hate, as he raged
+over his bafflement.
+
+Then he thought of Classicus, and with the thought his hope revived.
+Finally he sprang up, and, summoning slaves, scattered them broadcast
+over Alexandria in search of the philosopher.
+
+He would go to Rome!  He would bear to Cæsar an appeal from Flaccus to
+command the alabarch to produce Cypros, Herod Agrippa's wife, who had
+been abducted.
+
+The plan unfolded itself so readily and so helpfully, that the
+proconsul's face grew radiant with anticipated triumph.
+
+In an hour, a slave returned with Justin Classicus.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE STRANGE WOMAN
+
+Cæsar left Capri and roved along the Italian coast in his splendid
+barges, or approached by land close to Rome, even to spend the night
+just without her walls, or in Tusculum, Ostia, Antium or Baiæ.  He
+dragged his court with him, by this time deserted of all upright men,
+and circling, slinking, making sorties and retiring, he brought up at
+last in the villa of Lucullus on Misenum with all his unclean party.
+
+Macro in attendance upon Cæsar had left a tribune in Rome as a post of
+despatch from which necessary information could be communicated to the
+prefect in Misenum.  The tribune, a sour old prætorian, with more
+integrity than graciousness, charged to protect Agrippa's interests for
+Macro's sake, now that Caligula was prince imperial, was empowered with
+not a little of the prefect's authority, which he administered with a
+kind of slavish awe of it.
+
+So, when a young Alexandrian Jew, giving the name of Justin Classicus,
+bearing a letter of introduction from the Proconsul of Egypt, applied
+for a tessera which would give him admission to Misenum, the tribune
+refused, declaring that the visitor must be indorsed by a Roman of rank
+and in good odor with the emperor.  Classicus took his departure,
+assuring the tribune that he would go to Baiæ where young Tiberius
+lived in his father's villa, and get the indorsement of the lad, to
+whom Flaccus was notedly a partizan.
+
+As soon as Classicus had departed, the tribune rushed a messenger to
+Marsyas, with Macro's signet which would command horses at posts
+between Rome and Misenum, and informed the young man what menaced the
+Herod.
+
+Marsyas did not tarry for preparation.  He knew that Classicus would go
+by the common route, by sea from Ostia, and that the overland route was
+only, by the luckiest of circumstances, the speedier.
+
+Before the messenger had returned to the tribune, Marsyas was on the
+road to Misenum.
+
+A day later, he passed the picket thrown out a hundred paces from the
+actual precincts of the villa of Lucullus, but when he offered his
+tessera to the prætorian posted at its inner walls, the soldier did not
+lower his short sword.  Marsyas, who had come to know many of the
+prætorians, looked in surprise at the man.
+
+"Turn back, good sir," the man said.  "None enters the lines to-day."
+
+While he knew that it was useless to ask the sentinel why the arbitrary
+order was in force, the question leaped to his lips before he could
+stop it.  His voice was eager.
+
+"What passeth within?"
+
+The soldier shook his head.  Marsyas drew away a space and thought.  He
+knew that the little Tiberius was an exception to every law laid down
+by Cæsar; Classicus could not have armed himself with a more potent
+name.  Caligula's friends, even Macro's friends, might be barred, not
+the friends of the little beloved Tiberius.
+
+The obstruction was dangerous.
+
+He knew that he had to deal with Classicus.
+
+The bitterness in his heart rose up and smothered his distress: for the
+moment he lost sight of Agrippa's peril, his hope against Saul of
+Tarsus and his fear for Lydia, in the all-overwhelming rancor against
+the man who was setting foot upon all the purposes in the young
+Essene's life.
+
+While he stood wrestling with a mighty impulse to kill Classicus, a
+courier in a well-known livery bowed beside him.
+
+"The Lady Junia sends thee greeting and would see thee in her father's
+house."
+
+Marsyas turned readily and followed the servant.
+
+He had come to look upon the Roman woman as a counselor, of whom he had
+some serviceable ideas out of the many he had not adopted.  He knew
+that if he crossed her threshold to find distressing tidings within, he
+was sure of finding an attempt at alleviation at the same time.  He
+might come forth vexed with all his friends, hating more hotly his
+enemies, but less amazed at sin in general.  He had not learned to
+apologize for the world, nor even to believe in it; he had simply come
+to accept it as a necessary and irremediable evil.  The general
+condemnation of his skepticism had not left her untouched, but he felt,
+nevertheless, that no one was so bad that another much worse could not
+be found.  Junia, therefore, occupied a position of lesser blame.  She
+was charitable and amiable, and whatever she had done that failed to
+measure up to his Jewish standard of virtue had been overshadowed by
+her usefulness.
+
+He was led toward a little inclosure of lattice-work and vines on the
+summit of a knoll, from which the imperial demesnes were visible.
+
+Between the screen and the brink of the eminence was earth enough for
+the foothold of an olive, and its dark crown reached over and shaded
+the space within.  There was a single marble exedra with feet and arms
+of carven claws, and through the interstices of the vinery and the
+farther shade and foliage of the new spring, the insula of Euodus arose
+white and graceful.  The sunshine lay in brilliant mosaics over the
+thick sod, and above, lozenges of blue showed where the light had
+entrance.  The breeze from the warm bay went soft-footed through the
+trees, and for the moment Marsyas felt that all the friendliness which
+the world held for him had been caught and pent in the little garden.
+
+Junia was there, luxuriously bestowed in the cushions of the stone
+seat.  She made room for him beside her, but he took one of the pillows
+and, dropping it on the grass, sat at her feet.
+
+He looked at her with expectancy in his eyes.
+
+"O my Junia," he said, "why dost thou wear that eager, uninformed look,
+as if thou wouldst say, 'Tell me quickly what news thou hast!' when
+thou knowest invariably I bring no cheer!"
+
+"Hear him!" she cried.  "Shall I look thus: 'Here comes Marsyas,
+bearing evil tidings and craving comfort, for he does not care for me
+except when I may do something for him?'"
+
+"Of a truth, dost thou not say that in thy heart?" he insisted.
+
+"No!  I say this: 'Yonder young man is much in debt to me, but my
+requital when I ask it will be equal to his debt.'  Wherefore, I shall
+serve on till the sum is equal."
+
+"Thou speakest truly when thou sayest I am in debt to thee, but if thou
+hast in thy heart something which thou wouldst have me do, command me
+now!"
+
+"Perchance when I see what brought thee to Misenum, to-day," she smiled.
+
+"If thou canst help me, Junia, I shall owe thee a life!"
+
+"Thy life, Marsyas?"
+
+"No; Agrippa's--or the life of Justin Classicus!"
+
+"How now!" she cried, and there was more genuine interest in her soft
+voice than she had previously shown.  "What hath stirred thee against
+Classicus?"
+
+At that moment an indistinct shout of great volume, as of many men
+cheering behind walls, interrupted him.  He turned his head quickly in
+the direction of the palace.
+
+"What passeth within?" he asked; "why will they not admit me?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing," she said hurriedly, "or at least only an important
+ceremony which none but Cæsar can perform; Macro does not wish him to
+be interrupted.  Go on with thy story!"
+
+"Flaccus hath sent a messenger to the emperor--a messenger that
+commands the favor of the little Prince Tiberius."
+
+"Who told thee?" she asked.
+
+"Well?" she inquired.
+
+He studied the look on her face and felt that it was strangely composed
+for the assumed eagerness in her voice.
+
+"The tribune refused him the tessera which he must have to approach the
+emperor's abode, and required that he produce the indorsement of some
+notable Roman before he return again.  The messenger went away boasting
+that he would get it of the little Tiberius."
+
+"He will!" she assented, "for little Tiberius is not on the promontory
+to-day, and the sentries without dare not refuse the lad's signet!"
+
+Marsyas frowned and looked down: he was perplexed that she did not help.
+
+"Is there no way to shut him out of Misenum?" he asked.
+
+"Cæsar's passport is as much a command as Cæsar's denial--when the
+little Tiberius delivers it," she repeated.
+
+"But can I not reach Macro?"
+
+"No," she said decisively.  "Macro's powers pale before the lad's."
+
+Was she at the end of her ingenuity, or her willingness, he asked
+himself.
+
+"He will get to the emperor, then, if he start?"  His desperation grew
+under the lady's easy irony.
+
+"Unless thou or some other of Agrippa's friends disable him permanently
+with a bodkin, or a storm deliver him up to the Nereids."
+
+Marsyas' hands clenched: he moved as if to rise, but she slipped her
+hands through the bend of his elbow and let them retard him, more by
+their presence than by actual strength.
+
+"Is there something thou canst do?" he asked.
+
+She hesitated; something seemed to fill her eyes; her lids quivered and
+dropped; speech trembled on her lips, but the momentary impulse passed.
+After a little silence, she lifted her eyes, composed once more.
+
+"I told thee, once upon a time," she said, "of the world.  I have
+counseled with thee for thine own good, and sometimes thou didst heed
+me, but on the greater number of occasions thou hast chosen for
+thyself.  What hast thou won from thy long battle for the stern
+purposes which have engaged thee?  What hast thou achieved in
+controlling this Herod, or in working against Saul of Tarsus?  What?"
+
+He frowned and looked away.
+
+"Nothing," she answered, "save thou hast gathered perils around thee,
+forced thyself into sterner deeds, and there--"
+
+She laid a pink finger-tip between his eyes.
+
+"--there is a blight on thy comeliness."
+
+"Dost thou urge me to give over mine efforts?  If so, speak, that I may
+tell thee I can not obey!" he declared.
+
+"No?  Not even if thy work maketh another unhappy--whom thou wouldst
+not have to be unhappy?"
+
+He looked at her: did she mean Lydia?  Or was she concerned for
+Classicus?
+
+"Art thou defending Classicus?" he asked.
+
+"Nay," she smiled, "but I defend myself!"
+
+This was puzzling, and at best irrelevant.  He had come, burdened with
+trouble and concern for Agrippa's life, and she was leading away into
+less serious things.  It was not like her to be capricious.  Perhaps
+there was more in her meaning than he had grasped.
+
+"I pray thee," she continued, "mingle a little sweet with thy toil!"
+
+He arose and moved away from her.
+
+"O Junia, how can I?" he demanded impatiently.
+
+"Nay, but I am asking payment of the debt thou confessest to me!"
+
+"Help me yet in this danger of Classicus, and I shall be thy slave!"
+
+She arose and approached very close to him.  Her face was flushing, her
+hands were outstretched.  He took them because they were offered.
+"Marsyas," she whispered, her brilliant eyes searching his face, "I
+shall not cease to be thy confederate, but I would be more!"
+
+With a little wrench she freed her hands from his and drew a packet
+from the folds of silk over her breast.
+
+"See!  I have here thy letter, which Herod brought and bitterly
+reproached me for mine enchantment of thee.  And I kept it, till this
+hour!"
+
+She put into his hands the scorched and broken letter that he had
+written to Lydia and had believed that he had destroyed so long before.
+While he looked at it, stupefied with astonishment, she slipped her
+arms about his neck.
+
+"I do not ask thee to marry me," she whispered, a little laugh rippling
+her breath.  "Eros does not summon the law to make his sway effective.
+For thou art an Essene, by repute, and no man need surrender his
+reputation for his character.  Wherefore, though ten thousand dread
+penalties bound thee to celibacy, they do not dull thine eyes nor make
+thy cheeks less crimson!  Be an Essene, or a Jew, Cæsar or a
+slave--that can not alter thy charm!  And I shall not quibble, so thou
+lovest me!"
+
+Marsyas stood still while he searched her changing face.  It was not a
+new experience for him who had brought picturesque beauty into Rome,
+but the source was different, the result more grave.  On this occasion
+the seductive enumeration of his good looks awakened in him something
+which was affronted; whatever thing it was, it possessed an
+intelligence which comprehended before his brain grew furious, and,
+flinging itself upon his soul, buffeted it into sensitiveness.
+
+With a rush of rage, he understood all that her act had accomplished
+for him.
+
+The world of helplessly-impelled children that she had pictured to him,
+the world of innocence and forgivable inclinations, little warfares and
+artless badness, play or the feeding of primitive hungers, or of
+building of roof-trees--all that with which she had partly enchanted
+him was suddenly stripped of its atmosphere, and the glare of
+realities, fierce passions, deadly hates, shamelessness and blood stood
+before him.  In short, he had been instantly precipitated into his old
+Essenic misanthropy now directly imposed upon the heads of individuals,
+which before in his solitary days had been heaped without understanding
+upon the heads of strangers.
+
+He did care because that the creature had simply betrayed her true
+self; more dreadful than that, she had wrested from him the charity his
+experience in the world had yielded him--for Lydia!
+
+Blind fury maddened him; her offense called for a fiercer response than
+a blush; she had robbed his heart wholly and was burning its empty
+house.
+
+He put forth his strength, undid her arms and flung her from him.  For
+a moment he felt a bloodthirsty desire to follow her up and break her
+over the stone exedra, but remnants of reason prevailed.
+
+Springing through the exit, he was gone without uttering a word in
+answer to her.
+
+Junia heard the last of his footsteps on the flagging leading out of
+her father's grounds, and for a moment wavered between screaming for
+her own slaves to pursue him, or delivering him up to the prætorian
+guards.
+
+"For what?" Discretion asked.  "To have him tell, under torture, thy
+part in sheltering Agrippa?  At thy peril!"
+
+But he had flung her away; he had rejected her; he had escaped after
+all her pains, her pretensions, her plans!  For him, she had left
+Alexandria and endured Cæsar.  For him, she had forgone seasons of
+conquest in Rome!  For him, she had neglected Caligula, and now
+Caligula would be emperor.  For him she had sacrificed everything and
+had lost, at last.  He, a Jew, a manumitted slave, a barbarian!  She, a
+favorite of emperors and consuls, a manipulator of affairs, fortunes
+and families!  And he had rejected her!
+
+There were muffled flying footsteps on the sod without, and Caligula,
+pallid and moist with terrified perspiration, dashed into the inclosure
+as if seeking a place to hide.
+
+When he saw her, he sprang back, but halted, on recognizing her.
+
+"Ate and the Furies!" he said in a strained whisper.  "What hath
+happened but that Cæsar revived while the guards were hailing me as
+Imperator!"
+
+A hater of pork, a wearer of gowns, a mutterer of prayers, a bearded
+clown of a rustic!  And she, it was, whom he had rejected!
+
+"Stand like a frozen pigeon!" Caligula hissed, "while I tell thee of my
+death!  He knew what the shouts meant!  He showed his teeth like a
+panther, transfixed me with his dead eyes and signed for wine!  When he
+hath strength enough to order it, and breath enough to form the words--"
+
+And she had not urged the Herod's death for his sake, and thereby
+imperiled her own living with Flaccus; she had sent him a passport to
+Capri and one to Misenum, and rescued him from the admiring eyes of
+other women, to make sure of him--and he had flung her away, at last!
+
+"He will starve me to death: drown me in the Mamertine!" Caligula raged
+under his breath.  "Starve me, I say!  Speak, corpse!  What shall I do!"
+
+Her rage by this time had so filled her that it meant to have
+expression or have her life.
+
+"Kill him!" she hissed through her teeth.
+
+It was Marsyas' sentence, but it fell upon Tiberius.
+
+Caligula ceased to tremble and stared at her with a strange look in his
+bird-like eyes.
+
+"How?" he asked.
+
+She seized one of the pillows and brought it down over the seat of the
+divan, and held it firmly as if to prevent it from being thrown off.
+
+"Thus!" she said venomously.
+
+"But the nurses and Charicles, the physician," Caligula protested,
+fearing nevertheless that his protest might hold good.
+
+"Put them out!  Will they dare resist the coming emperor?  Have Macro
+aid thee, so he dare not tell upon thee."
+
+She was becoming cool.  It would be good to vent her murderous impulses
+on something.  Caligula gazed at her with fascination in his face.
+
+"Come, then, thou, and see it done!  Neither shalt thou talk," he said
+suddenly.
+
+She stepped to his side, but before she reached the exit of the
+inclosure, she stopped and looked squarely into his eyes.
+
+"Herod hath a slave who hath wronged me," she said.
+
+"Which one?" he demanded.
+
+"The Essene!"
+
+"Nay, take vengeance on some other, then, for He is my friend!  I have
+vowed him favor!"
+
+"Why?" she demanded.
+
+"Nay; do not stop--thou art to see this thing done!  Why do I promise
+the Essene favor?  Because, forsooth, he made an emperor of me!  Come!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+IN EXTREMIS
+
+Marsyas left the promontory at once.  He had hired one of the public
+passenger boats to cross from Baiæ to Misenum and the boatman had
+waited for the return of his fare.
+
+Many went as he was going, but they were patricians singly and in
+groups that passed him, with sober faces and without a word to each
+other.  He recognized senators, ædiles, consuls, duumvirs, prætors,
+legates all hurrying toward the landing.  All noble Misenum seemed
+suddenly to have determined on an exodus.  An anxious and distressed
+company they were, and had Marsyas' own brain been less hot with anger,
+he might have meditated on the meaning of it all.
+
+By the time he reached the bay, the sunset-reddened water was covered
+with light-running coasters, by the signs on aplustre or vexillum, a
+fleet of patrician craft making across the bay to Neapolis, or scudding
+for the open sea and Ostia.  He saw one or two vessels approaching
+Misenum, hailed by departing ones, and, after a colloquy, turned back.
+
+Vaguely wondering whether Cæsar's latest whim was to drive his court
+from him, Marsyas got into his own highly-painted shell and told his
+oarsman to take him across to Baiæ.
+
+As he sat at the tiller and moodily watched the Italian night come up
+over the sea, the capes, the hill-slopes and finally cover the somber
+head of the unsuspected Vesuvius, he was afraid that his long ignored
+Essenic rigor would assert itself.  He was ashamed of himself, and for
+the moment looked upon the life he had led in Rome with revulsion.  But
+he put off his self-examination with a kind of terror.  There was yet
+much that was harsh and unlawful to be done, and he dared not hold off
+his hand.  Lydia's life and good name, the avenging of Stephen,
+Agrippa's life and Cypros' happiness were weighed against Classicus and
+his own soul in the other balance.  He could not hesitate now.
+
+When he set foot in opulent Baiæ the night had fallen and with his
+return to the city, which he knew sheltered Agrippa's most active enemy
+at that hour, all his energies turned toward the purpose that had
+originally brought him to Misenum.  He believed that if Classicus had
+insinuated himself into young Tiberius' favor, doubtless the prince's
+hospitality had been extended to him.  He turned his steps toward the
+range of villas built between Baiæ and Puteoli, overlooking the bay.
+
+He had in mind the method of his last resort, and he went as one goes
+when desperation carries him forward--swiftly and relentlessly.
+
+But, crossing the town by the water-front, he met a handful of slaves
+bearing baggage toward the wharves.  With his old Essenic thoroughness
+he halted to examine them to make sure that Classicus had not
+outstripped him finally.  By their particularly fine physique and
+diverse nationality Marsyas knew them to be costly slaves of the
+familia of no small patrician.
+
+He heard the ramble of chariot-wheels on the lava-paved streets; the
+master was following.  As the vehicle passed under a lamp a few paces
+away, Marsyas distinguished the occupants as Classicus and the young
+Tiberius.
+
+He felt a chill creep over his heart; the hour had come.
+
+He moved after the slaves toward the wharf.
+
+Baiæ's beauties extended out and waded into the waves.  The landings of
+marble had to be fit masonry for the feet of the Cæsars and their train
+when they asked the hospitality of the sea.  Luxury, not commerce, came
+down to the water's edge and gazed Narcissus-like at its lovely image
+in the quiet bay.  Here were no Algerian hulks with their lateen sails,
+no evil-smelling fishing fleets, or docks or warehouses, or city
+cloacas.  Baiæ was a city of dreams and warm baths, of idleness and
+temples and villas, of gardens and fragrance and beauty and repose.
+Now, the velvet winds of the starry Italian night rippled the face of
+the bay; the last faint luster of a set moon showed a bar of white
+light, low down in the southwest, and against that, blackly outlined, a
+splendid galley was driving like the wind into port.
+
+A dozen yards from the end of the pier lay a passage-boat, with a light
+on its mast and a soft glow in its curtained cabin, Marsyas wondered if
+Tiberius meant to accompany his guest to Misenum.
+
+But while he thought, Tiberius set Classicus down, took leave with an
+apology and a reminder that guests awaited him at home, and drove
+rapidly back into Baiæ.
+
+A small rowboat lay under shadow at the side of the landing and the two
+couriers loading the baggage awaited now their passenger.
+
+But Marsyas emerged from the dark and stepped before Classicus.  A
+glance at the tidy countenance of the philosopher sent a rush of heat
+through Marsyas' veins.  Classicus was not feeling the spiritual combat
+within him, for the work he meditated, that racked the young Essene.
+That fact acknowledged helped Marsyas in his intent.
+
+"A word," Marsyas said.
+
+Classicus stopped, a little startled.
+
+"Who art thou?"
+
+"Marsyas, the Essene."
+
+The young man had not helped his cause by the introduction.
+
+"Out of my path," Classicus said coldly.  "I have nothing to say to
+thee!"
+
+"I have somewhat to say to thee, Classicus.  If thou must be hard of
+heart, be not foolish and injurious to thyself."
+
+"Suffer no pangs of concern for my welfare," the philosopher said.
+"Preserve them, lest thine own cause find thee bankrupt in tears!"
+
+"My cause will not need them: thou mayest.  I know why thou art here
+and whither thou art going and for what purpose.  I know who sent thee,
+why and what thou wilt accomplish.  I know how feebly thou art aided
+and how much imperiled.  Above all things I know what will happen to
+thee unless thou hearest me!"
+
+"What a number of door-cracks hath yielded thee information!  Stand
+aside before I call my servants to thee!"
+
+Marsyas folded his arms.  The green blackness of the bay threw his
+solid outlines into relief.  The threat he had made suddenly appealed
+to Classicus as ill-advised.
+
+"Jewish brethren," Marsyas answered, his voice dropping into the
+softness which was premonitory, "do not speak thus with each other.
+This was taught thee in the Synagogue.  If thy lapse into evil hath let
+thee forget it, I care enough for thy manner to recall it to thee.
+
+"First and above all things, know thou that I am not here to satisfy
+the hate of thee because thou hast wrested from me my beloved!  Next,
+that I am here to stop thee in order to save her life, more than any
+other's.  Now, for thyself.  Thou goest to accomplish a deed that would
+recoil upon thine own head.  If thou be tired of living, Classicus,
+choose another way than to perish for the entertainment of him who
+duped thee."
+
+"For thy peace of mind, O sage fool," Classicus observed, "know that I
+come bearing a petition to the emperor to seek for Agrippa's wife, who
+hath been abducted!"
+
+"If thou present a petition which in any way favors Agrippa or his
+wife, Tiberius will test the cord on thee to be sure it is strong
+enough to strangle Agrippa.  And I tell thee, Classicus, the Charon of
+the heathen Shades will not push off with the Herod; he will save
+himself a journey and await thy arrival!"
+
+"Still threatening, still trembling for me!  If I call these slaves to
+remove thee thou mayest tremble for thyself!"
+
+"I am large, Classicus, strong and determined.  I could kill thee
+before thy stupid slaves ran three paces!"
+
+Classicus turned his eyes to the level line to the southwest.  The
+luster on the horizon was gone.  The great galley, broadside now as she
+hunted her channel, loomed large on the outskirts of the sheltered
+water.  Once, the deck-lights flashed on a bank of her oars, rising wet
+and slippery from the sea.
+
+"Listen, brother," Marsyas continued.  "Thou shall proceed with me to
+the maritime harbor at Puteoli, and get aboard the vessel there which
+sails for Alexandria.  Thou shall leave Italy: thou shalt discontinue
+thy work against Agrippa--or have the knife, now!  Decide!"
+
+The hiss and protest of plowing waters came now on the breeze; the
+regular beat of many oars, working as one, broke the hiss into
+rhythmical bars: an invisible pennant, high up in the helpless shrouds
+where night covered canvas and mast, was caught suddenly by a vagrant
+current of wind and fluttered with rapid pulsations of sound.  Long
+lances of light reached out on the water and began to stretch
+broadening fingers toward the pier.  Humming noises like blended voices
+came with the rattle of chains.
+
+Marsyas knew that Classicus was awaiting the arrival of the galley for
+the advantages of the interruption and to secure Marsyas' arrest.
+
+The young Essene stepped close to Classicus.
+
+"I shall wait no longer for thy answer," he said softly.
+
+The philosopher's voice rang out, clear and unafraid.
+
+"Hither, slaves!"
+
+Marsyas was not unprepared.  He seized Classicus and forced him back
+into the black shadows of the clustered columns with which the inner
+edge of the landing was ornamented.
+
+The two couriers came running, but Marsyas spoke authoritatively.
+
+"Good slaves, if ye come at me ye will force me to kill this young
+man!" he said.
+
+"Take him!" Classicus cried.
+
+The two servants sprang forward, but Marsyas, seizing Classicus by the
+hair, thrust his head back and put the point of the knife at his throat.
+
+The two halted, tautly drawn up as if the point of the blade touched
+their own flesh.  Instinctively they knew that the silky quiet in the
+voice was deadly; Marsyas had them.
+
+Meanwhile the galley was delivering up her passengers to the land.  The
+first ship's boat that touched the landing carried four patricians.
+The soft sound of heelless sandals on the pavement drifted down from
+Babe.  Some one of the citizens was coming to meet the arrivals.
+
+The four stepped out, and the ship's boat shot back into the darkness.
+
+"Ho!  Regulus," one of the four cried.
+
+"Coming!" the citizen answered from the street.  "What news?"
+
+"Cæsar is dead!"
+
+Classicus relaxed in Marsyas' grip; the slaves stood transfixed; the
+young Essene, holding fast, stilled his loud heart and listened.
+
+"Old age?" the citizen ventured.
+
+"Perchance; yes, doubtless," one of the four answered in a lower tone,
+for the citizen had come close and was taking their hands.  "Smothered
+in his silken cushions--died of too much comfort!  Dost understand?
+Well enough!"
+
+Marsyas' hands dropped from Classicus.
+
+By the time the Alexandrian aroused to his opportunity, Marsyas had
+disappeared like a spirit into the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE EREMITE IN SCARLET, AND THE BANKRUPT IN PURPLE
+
+Lydia came upon Vasti, the bayadere, returning to the culina with a
+flaring taper in her hand.  The brown woman's eyes were fixed on the
+flame and she whispered under her breath, till the licking red tongue
+of the taper flickered and wavered back at her as if speaking in signs.
+
+"What saith the Red Brother?" Lydia asked, in halting Hindu, for she
+had begun to learn her waiting-woman's tongue.
+
+"He keeps his own counsel, who is fellow to the Fire," was the answer.
+"Thy neighbor, the philosopher, awaits thee within."
+
+Lydia went slowly on.
+
+When she entered the alabarch's presiding-room, Classicus arose from a
+seat beside a cluster of lamps and came toward her.
+
+"Thy servant at the door tells me that thy father is not in," he said.
+"I came to speak with him of thee: but perchance it is better that I
+tell thee that which I have to tell, before any other."
+
+Lydia sat down on the divan, and Classicus sat beside her.
+
+"I come to submit to thy scorn or thy pity," he said, "either of which
+I deserve!"
+
+"What hast thou done?" she asked, feeling a vague sense of fear.
+
+"I have been Flaccus' fool!" he vowed.
+
+Lydia's eyes grew troubled.
+
+"What didst thou for him?" she asked in a lowered tone.
+
+"I permitted him to catch me up in the city and rush me to Rome with a
+memorial to Cæsar, beseeching the emperor's aid in seeking the Lady
+Cypros, who had been abducted."
+
+Lydia's level brows dropped.
+
+"Charging us with abduction?" she remarked.
+
+"Charging no man with abduction, but declaring that she was missing
+from thy father's roof!"
+
+Classicus' face filled with contrite humiliation under her gaze.
+
+"Why so late with the story?" she asked.  "Why didst thou not come to
+us before thou wast persuaded to go!"
+
+"Charge me not with more folly than I did commit!" he besought.  "I was
+caught by his servants in the Brucheum and haled before him, where, in
+all excitement, he told that the Lady Cypros was missing, and that I,
+as the safe friend of the alabarch and the proconsul, had been
+commissioned to enlist Cæsar's interest in her cause!  The vessel ready
+for Puteoli waited only on the night-winds to sail!  I was not given
+time to change my raiment, or to fill my purse from mine own treasure,
+much less to take counsel with thy father and learn the truth!"
+
+"And besides Flaccus, we must now take Cæsar into consideration in
+protecting this unhappy woman!" she exclaimed.
+
+"No!" he cried.  "A friend of Agrippa's, whom I met in Rome, stopped me
+in time!"
+
+She looked away from him and he took her hand.
+
+"Am I pardoned?" he asked plaintively.
+
+"Thou didst no harm; but it should serve to awaken thee to the evil in
+this dangerous Roman!  If only Agrippa would return, how readily the
+skies would brighten for us all!"
+
+"What wilt thou do if the Herod returns not?" he asked after a little
+silence.
+
+"Do not speak of it, Classicus," she said hurriedly.  "Flaccus is
+desperate."
+
+"If Agrippa abandon Cypros," he offered, "she can divorce him, and
+simplify the tangle."
+
+"Oh, no, Justin!  Cypros is bound heart and soul to Agrippa.  Even if
+he died, she would not turn to Flaccus!  The dear Lord be thanked that
+we have a virtuous woman to defend!"
+
+"Nay, then, thou strict little rabbin, what shall we do?"
+
+"How slow these ships!  The last letter we sent to him can hardly have
+reached Sicily!"
+
+"He hath had a sufficiency of letters by this time!  What was it he
+wrote thy father, last: 'I come with all speed; but reflect that Cæsar
+is master over me: his consent is needful!'  Ha! ha!  Caligula would
+give Agrippa half his Empire did he ask for it!"
+
+She leaned her cheek in her hand, turning her face away from Classicus.
+
+"Alas!  I know why he lingers," she said to herself.  "Marsyas hath
+departed unto Judea, and Agrippa lacks his controlling hand!"
+
+"I appreciate the peril threatening thy father's house," the
+philosopher added after her continued silence, "and thou knowest thou
+shall have my help--blundering as it may be!"
+
+There were footsteps in the vestibule, and the alabarch stood in the
+archway.  Lydia sprang up.
+
+"What," she cried, unable to wait for his report, "what said the
+proconsul?"
+
+The alabarch came into his presiding-room with a slow step; he let his
+cloak fall on his chair, and stood in the lamplight worn and troubled.
+Seeing Classicus, he greeted the visitor before he answered Lydia.
+
+"Evil, evil; naught but evil," he sighed, "and threats.  And the
+proconsul's threats are never empty!"
+
+"What does he threaten?" Classicus asked.
+
+"Me--and mine."
+
+"Alas! our people!" Lydia sighed.
+
+"No, daughter!  Thee!"
+
+"Lydia!" Classicus exclaimed.
+
+"Why does he threaten me?" Lydia cried.
+
+The alabarch shook his head.  "Flaccus betrayed only enough to show
+that he will concentrate his vengeance against me and thee, or me
+through thee, but thee of a surety, my Lydia!  Yet, he was as dark and
+ominous as the wrath of God!"
+
+Lydia came close to her father and he laid his arm about her shoulders.
+
+"Lydia, that bat escaped from Sheol, Eutychus, is openly attached to
+Flaccus' train; once, he abode under my roof, where he could learn many
+things.  Has he any information against thee which Flaccus could use?"
+
+Lydia's answer was not ready.  It meant too much to tell that which the
+alabarch groped after.  Already she had surrendered until she was
+stripped of all but her father's confidence, and her people's respect.
+She could not cast off these ties to all that was desirable on earth.
+And Classicus, silent and smug behind her, seemed to be a prepared
+witness awaiting a confession.  Conscience and human nature had the
+usual struggle, and when she replied she did not raise her head.
+
+"My father, Eutychus will never be at a loss for information.  What
+actualities he can not furnish, he may have from his imagination."
+
+"Alexandria does not wait for charges against the Jews," the alabarch
+said.
+
+"But what says Flaccus?" Classicus urged after a silence.
+
+"That I have abducted Agrippa's wife; that I have been guilty of
+insubordination to him, my superior; that thou, my Lydia, art amenable
+to him and all the people of Alexandria, and that he will proceed as
+his information warrants, unless I produce Cypros--between sunrise and
+sunset, to-morrow!"
+
+There was silence.
+
+"What wilt thou do?" Lydia asked in a suppressed voice.
+
+"I can produce Cypros," he answered, torn by the inevitable.
+
+"No!" Lydia cried.
+
+"If Agrippa cares so little for her--" the alabarch began, but Lydia
+put off his arm and stood away from him.
+
+"This matter is neither thine nor Agrippa's to decide!  Cypros is a
+good woman and she shall be kept secure--even against herself, if need
+be!  Thou shalt not bring her before Flaccus!"
+
+"Lydia, I am brought to decide between her and thee!"
+
+"Thou canst suffer dishonor and peril, even as Cypros," Classicus put
+in, to Lydia.  "We are no less unwilling to surrender thee to the
+unknown charges Flaccus brings against thee, than thou art to give up
+Cypros!"
+
+"Flaccus is no arbiter of the virtue of women!  He is not Cæsar, beyond
+whom there is no human appeal!  Let him remember that it is no longer
+the old man Tiberius who is emperor of the world, but the young man
+Caligula, whose warmest friend is a Jew!  Let him touch Cypros at his
+peril!"
+
+"Daughter, why should Cæsar defend a woman for whom not even her
+husband cares?"
+
+There was no ready reply to this, and Lydia's face grew white.
+
+"Is it like thee, my father, to abandon the wholly undefended?" she
+asked.
+
+The alabarch bit his lip and turned his head away.
+
+"Granted, then," put in Classicus in his even voice, "that we shall
+keep the lady in hiding and treat her to no ungentle usage!  Now, what
+will become of Lydia?"
+
+The alabarch raised his eyes, filled with fire and desperation.  Lydia
+drooped more and more, and presently she put her hand to her forehead.
+
+"Is there nothing to be done?" Classicus persisted calmly.
+
+The silence became strained and lengthened to the space of many
+heart-beats before he spoke again.
+
+"Lydia can be hidden, with the princess," he offered finally.
+
+Lydia raised her head, and looked at Classicus.  Not for her the refuge
+that was Cypros', for if Flaccus held in truth the secret of her
+conversion to the Nazarene faith, she would only lead his officers
+straight upon the Nazarenes all over Egypt.  Whatever people sheltered
+her, she would bring disaster and death on their heads.  As Marsyas had
+been under the oppression of Saul of Tarsus, she had become as a
+pestilence!  She wondered if Classicus realized how thoroughly she
+understood him.  His face did not wear an air of respect for his plan.
+
+"It can not be," she said quietly, and the alabarch looked startled at
+her words.  Classicus submitted to her objection at once.
+
+"Then," he said, "there is but one other way that I can invent--and
+this I offer last, because it is dearest to me.  I have lands in Greece
+and favor with the legate there.  Flaccus' power can not extend beyond
+his own dominions.  Wilt thou not come to Greece--with me, my Lydia?"
+
+Lydia's gaze did not falter throughout this speech; she had expected,
+long ago, that when Classicus had hedged her about, he would offer his
+hand as her one escape.  Drop by drop the color left her face; her lips
+grew pale, and took on a curve of mute appeal; her eyes were the eyes
+of suffering, but not the eyes of a vanquished woman.
+
+The alabarch had turned hurriedly away.  But Classicus gazed, as if
+awaiting her reply, at his smooth, thin hands, now stripped of their
+jewels, incident to the shrinkage in his purse.
+
+The drip of the waterfall in the garden within came very distinctly
+upon the silence in the room.
+
+A cry from the porter, speaking in the vestibule, brought the alabarch
+up quickly.
+
+"Master! master!  The prince!  The prince!"
+
+"The king, thou untaught rustic!"  Agrippa's tones, subdued but
+mirthful, followed upon the porter's cry.
+
+Lysimachus sprang toward the vestibule, but Lydia, transfixed by
+reactionary emotions, did not move.
+
+But before the alabarch reached the arch, two men appeared in the
+opening.  Except for the fillet of gold set so low on his head that it
+passed around his forehead just above the brows, Agrippa might have
+been the same nonchalant bankrupt gambling with loaded tesseræ or
+hunting loans on bad security.
+
+The other was Marsyas.
+
+Classicus lifted his brows and arose to the proper spirit in which to
+greet a king.
+
+"Count it not flattery, lord," the alabarch cried, extending his hands
+toward the new-comers, "that I say that Abraham's radiant visitors were
+not more welcome than thou!"
+
+"Better the unprepared alabarch," said Marsyas, "than any host who hath
+expected his guests!"
+
+The prince laughed, and discovering Lydia, bowed low to her.
+
+"No change in thee, sweet Lydia," he exclaimed as she bent in obeisance
+to the fillet of gold about his forehead.
+
+Marsyas stood a moment aside, his glance roving quickly from her to
+Classicus.  With an effort he put back the rush of feeling that crowded
+upon his composure and came to her.
+
+"Hast thou not changed, Lydia?" he asked.  The hand closing over his
+did not belie the tremor in her voice.
+
+"A blessing on you both," she said.  "You are the redemption of this
+house of trouble!"
+
+"We have been everything but heroes in our days," Marsyas said.
+"Welcome the opportunity!"
+
+"Ho!  Classicus!" Agrippa cried jovially, "hast thou failed to
+overthrow the tribute-demanding Sphinx or the Dragon?"
+
+Marsyas gazed at the philosopher standing with inclined head, while he
+made felicitous answers to the prince, and said to himself:
+
+"Happy phrase, my lord King!  There standeth the tribute-demanding
+Sphinx, even now!"
+
+Agrippa addressed himself to the alabarch, and between Marsyas and
+Classicus there stood no saving obstruction.  Marsyas' nostrils
+quivered; he had fleeting but perfect summaries of the wrongs the man
+had worked against him.  To find him now a guest entertained under the
+roof he had striven to injure, brought the Essene's temper up to a
+climacteric point.  But he felt Lydia's presence, pacific, temperate
+and persuasive, restraining him.  Of all the many deceits he had used
+throughout his precarious life of late, none seemed so impossible of
+practice as to offer a dispassionate word to Classicus.
+
+He was saved for the moment by an exclamation from the alabarch.
+
+"In all truth, that manifestation of Cæsar's favor?" he cried eagerly.
+
+"A truth!" Agrippa declared.  "Rome made a dandy out of Marsyas.
+Twelve legionaries, before he would stir a step to Egypt!  Twelve!  All
+armed; brasses so polished that one looks into the sun who looks at
+one.  None short of three cubits in stature and visaged like Mars!"
+
+Marsyas cut off the prince's raillery with a direct and serious query.
+
+"How is it with our lady?"
+
+"Still in hiding from Flaccus," the alabarch replied.
+
+Agrippa looked in astonishment from one to another.
+
+"Surely," he said earnestly, "you have not carried this delusion to
+such an extreme!"
+
+"Delusion, lord," Marsyas repeated, facing him.  "Let those first speak
+who are not deluded.  Then thou shall apply the word to him it fits."
+
+"Good friends," the Herod protested, "all wise men cherish a folly.
+Marsyas, being the wisest of my knowing, hath his own.  He hath held
+fast against flawless argument and solid truth to the delusion that my
+honest, timid wife hath awakened passion in the heart of this
+proconsul, who hath all the beauty and wit of Egypt and Rome from which
+to choose."
+
+"Wilt thou continue further, lord," Marsyas said, "and tell them how
+thou hast explained this mystery to thyself?"
+
+"What, Marsyas!  Make confession here, openly, of a thing which I blush
+to confess to myself?" the Herod laughed.
+
+"Never fear; thy audience hath already acquitted thee of blame!"
+
+"Nay, then; so assured of clemency, I tell this behind my palms and
+with the prayer that the walls do not repeat it to my lady's ears!
+Learn, then, for the first time, that Junia is the cause of my
+disaster, because, forsooth, she is as fickle and capricious a woman as
+she is bad.  Until the unhappy Herod was blown of ill winds to
+Alexandria, his single haven, she was Flaccus' mistress.  When I
+appeared, for no other cause than the Mightiness of her fancy, she
+dropped Flaccus and precipitated all manner of disaster upon my head.
+There is the true story!  Cypros, forsooth!  Cypros is an upright Arab,
+twenty years married and mother of three!"
+
+"Junia!" the alabarch repeated irritably.  "Junia constructed more of
+Flaccus' villainies than Flaccus himself!"
+
+"And will nothing dislodge this wild thing from your brain?" Agrippa
+cried.
+
+"Name it what you will, lord," the alabarch answered, "but I have a
+further story to tell than all my fruitless letters told, when I stood
+in fear of their interception!  Thou hast not forgotten the attack on
+thee on the night of Flora's feast; that, thou canst ascribe to
+Flaccus' jealousy, but how wilt thou explain that when the news of thy
+disaster reached Alexandria, Flaccus put off his amiable front and
+commanded me to deliver Cypros to him--"
+
+"Commanded you to deliver Cypros to him!" Agrippa cried, the fires of
+anger igniting in his eyes.  "What had she to do with this?"
+
+The alabarch drew himself up, ready in his dignity and authority to
+justify his deeds.
+
+"If it proceedeth to an accounting, I and mine will bear witness to her
+innocence and loving fidelity to thee!  Yet, remember, lord, she hath
+the first right to ask why she hath been left without thy care thus
+long!"
+
+Agrippa flushed darkly, but Marsyas stopped the retort on his lips.
+
+"Let us not try each other!  Go on, good sir," he pleaded.
+
+"I refused, and he threatened to hurl the Alexandrians on the Regio
+Judæorum.  But in the meantime, fate or fortune, God knows which,
+ordered that Tiberius should choose Caligula to succeed him.  The news
+reached Alexandria and stayed Flaccus' hand, for then he stood in
+wholesome fear of thy friend, the prince imperial.  But thou didst
+tarry and tarry, and the more thou didst tarry, the more his hopes and
+his desires grew.  No longer the Regio Judæorum dared he threaten, but
+me and mine--Lydia, above all!"
+
+"Lydia!" Marsyas exclaimed.
+
+"And I tell thee, my Lord Agrippa," the alabarch continued, by this
+time a picture of refined indignation, "at this very hour I was brought
+face to face with a hard decision between my daughter and thy wife!"
+
+Marsyas turned toward Classicus, but the storm of denunciation that
+leaped to his lips was checked.  What should he win for his exposure of
+Classicus, but scorn from Lydia, and a misconstruction of his motive?
+
+Atavistic ferocity glittered in Agrippa's eyes.
+
+"It is my turn!" he brought out between clenched teeth, "and I have a
+long score, a long score with Flaccus!  Where is my lady?  Let her be
+brought!"
+
+Lydia broke in before the alabarch could answer.
+
+"In hiding!" she answered quickly, and Marsyas fancied that she feared
+a too explicit answer from her father.  Before whom was she afraid to
+disclose the princess' refuge, if not Classicus?
+
+"Take four of my prætorians, then," Agrippa commanded, "and lead me to
+her hiding-place!"
+
+The alabarch bowed and summoned servants.
+
+"Have we, then, delivered this house of peril?" Marsyas asked of
+Agrippa.
+
+"Flaccus," said Classicus, speaking for the first time, "may feed his
+thirst for revenge!"
+
+"Get but my lady, first!" Agrippa insisted.  "Flaccus hath played and
+lost!  He shall pay his forfeit!"
+
+The servants were ready with the alabarch's cloak; the porter announced
+chariots waiting, and in an incredibly short time, Marsyas was alone
+with Lydia and Classicus, in the presiding-room.
+
+"I shall return to the ship and prepare it for voyage," Marsyas said,
+in the silence that instantly fell.  "Since I return to Judea with the
+King, perchance I should say farewell!"
+
+Lydia's lips parted, and her miserable eyes turned away from him.
+
+"Await my father's return," she said in a low voice,
+
+"Hath he far to go?" he asked.
+
+"Yes--far!"
+
+Classicus waited serenely for Marsyas' answer.  In that composure
+Marsyas read unconcern, which the Essene interpreted as hopelessness
+for his own cause.
+
+"So long as we abide in Egypt, we are a peril," he replied.  "Even now
+we have delayed too long!"
+
+He extended his hand to Lydia, and slowly, she put her own into it.
+The touch of the small fingers played too strongly upon his
+self-control.  He released them hurriedly and strode toward the
+vestibule.
+
+But at the threshold, indecision and astonishment and acute realization
+of the meaning of the thing he was doing seized him.  He whirled about.
+Classicus stood beneath the cluster of lamps, his face alight with
+triumphant superciliousness.  Even under Marsyas' eye the expression
+did not alter.  Lydia seemed to have shrunk; her hands clasped before
+her were wrung about each other in an agony of restraint, but the
+pitiful appeal in her eyes was all that Marsyas saw.
+
+In an instant he was again at her side, his heart speaking in his face.
+
+"Thou wearest yet the free locks of maidenhood," he said, in a voice so
+smooth and low that it chilled her, "perchance thou wilt tell me ere I
+depart if thou art to marry--this man?"
+
+For a moment there was silence; Marsyas heard his mad heart beating,
+but if Classicus felt apprehension, there was no display of it on his
+face.  Then Lydia raised her head.
+
+"No," she said, in a voice barely audible.
+
+Marsyas turned upon Classicus, and between the two there passed the
+silent communication of men who wholly understand each other.  Then
+Classicus took up his kerchief, and, with a smile and a wave of his
+hand, walked out of the presiding-room.
+
+But Lydia was out of reach of Marsyas' arms when he turned to her.
+Crying and afraid, she motioned him back as he pressed toward her.
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Am I still unacceptable to thee, Lydia?" he asked.
+
+"O Marsyas, thou returnest in the same spirit as thou didst depart from
+me--unchanged, unchanged!  But striving to change--for my sake!  Do not
+so, for me!  Not for me!"
+
+The grief and pleading in the black eyes that rested upon her changed
+slowly.  Rebuffed and stung he threw up his head.
+
+"Better the old Essenic shape in which I was bound against thee and
+thou against me?" he said bitterly.  "So!  The Essenes seem not to be
+wrong in their teaching of distrust in women!"
+
+If he expected her to retort, the compassion and gentleness in her
+answer surprised him.
+
+"Not that, my Marsyas," she said, coming nearer to him in her
+earnestness.  "But change does not consist in the raiment thou wearest,
+nor in the claim to be altered.  Thou canst not in truth believe that I
+have done right!  Thou forgivest me for thy love's sake, but thy
+intelligence is no less critical!  I can not, will not put away the
+faith of the Master; I can not regret the spirit of the deed I did for
+their sake.  And between us it is as it was the night I sent thee from
+me, so long ago!"
+
+"But I have changed," he protested hastily.  "The world hath taught me
+much: I can understand; I can extenuate greater errors--I have done so;
+believe me, it is only for thy sake--"
+
+"But canst thou wholly acquit me--wholly justify me, Marsyas?"
+
+He looked at her with pleading in his eyes, and made no answer.
+
+"No man should wed or worship with a single doubt," she said.
+
+Fearing more than he dared confess to himself, he caught her hands and
+would not let her leave him.
+
+"Lydia, I have not had the portion which God and women allot to most
+men," he said almost piteously.  "There are delights that should be
+mine by right, but they are denied me!  Other men have their dreams,
+their moments of tender preoccupation.  They can live again through
+hours between only themselves and one other.  They can feel again the
+touches of a woman's hand upon them, the warmth of her cheek and the
+love in her kiss.  No matter the evil, the sorrows that follow, these
+things are theirs, to hold in memory!  No matter the time or the place,
+they can summon it all from a song, drink it from a goblet of wine, or
+breathe it in from a flower!  It is twice living it; once, in the
+actuality; again, in the dream!  But I--I have nothing!  My teaching
+did not permit me to look forward to such a thing--and thou,
+Lydia--Lydia, thou dost not permit me to look back upon it!"
+
+Her eyes filled with tears, and a rush of tender words trembled on her
+lips.  His gaze, quickened by longing for the thing these signs
+typified, caught the softening in her young face.  He seized upon the
+hope that it gave him.
+
+"Dost thou love me, Lydia?" he asked.
+
+"I love thee, Marsyas."
+
+He drew her to him, put his arms about her and pressed her to his
+breast.  She did not resist him, for she was tired of contention with
+herself, tired of distress, afraid of the menace the future showed her,
+and withal fainting in hope.  She dropped her head on his shoulder,
+with her face turned up to him.  Marsyas' soul filled to the full with
+subdued, bewildering emotions.  It was not the first time he had held
+this sweet child-woman in his arms, but fear, tumult, impetuousness and
+protest had claimed preëminence in his thoughts before.  Now in the
+quiet and shelter of the alabarch's deserted presiding-room, he found
+new experience, new feelings.  Under the low light of the clustered
+lamp, he looked down on the face turned to him, smoothed with soft
+touches the long, delicate black brows; passed light fingers over the
+bloom of her cheek and saw the faint rose color come again in the white
+lines the little pressure made; put back the loose curl fallen before
+her perfect ear and marveled at its silkiness; watched the quiet
+palpitation in the milk-white throat--sensed, somehow, the repose in
+herself, the command, even in this momentary surrender, the divinity in
+her womanliness.  He was ashamed of his distrust, startled at his new
+sensations.
+
+Perhaps she saw the passing of feeling over his face, for she stirred
+and would have raised herself, but the movement brought him back to
+reality, and a fiercer rebellion against it.
+
+"Nay, nay, Lydia; I love thee!  It is my one virtue; my sinful soul
+hath been married to thee these many strange months.  Thou art become a
+necessity to my life, as needful as bread and drink, as blood and
+breath!  Thou art the essential salt in my veins--the world to me!
+Nay, more!  Thou art love, for world is a word with boundaries!  I have
+striven for thy sake and I have not failed.  I am able now to obtain
+the quieting of thy chief enemy, the refreshment of the starved heart
+in me, thirsting for revenge, and of our own security henceforward in
+the world.  Yet, I am not going to Judea with Agrippa.  I abide here
+with thee in Alexandria, until I have won the immediate safety of thy
+body and thy soul!"
+
+She strove to stop him in his resolution, but he kissed her, and,
+leading her to the foot of the well-remembered stairs, whispered his
+good night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE DREGS OF THE CUP OF TREMBLING
+
+By noon the following day, all Alexandria roared with the news that
+Agrippa had returned a king!
+
+The Regio Judæorum lost its repose.  Certain irrational of the
+inhabitants displayed carpeting and garlands in honor of the Jewish
+potentate, within their boundaries.  But others, instructed by
+instinct, closed the fronts of the houses and laid their treasure
+within grasp.
+
+By the advice of Marsyas, Agrippa had caused his ship to bring to,
+outside the harbor, and await the dropping of darkness before he came
+ashore.  The few hours he spent in Alexandria had been passed under
+cover, and none without the alabarch's household was aware of his
+presence in the city.  The newly-crowned Judean king found it difficult
+to repress his desire for ostentation, and when Marsyas' plan for
+secrecy miscarried at last, Agrippa was irritated because he had been
+deprived of a longed-for opportunity to astonish the Alexandrians.
+
+"But who could have told it?" he asked, with ill-concealed satisfaction.
+
+Marsyas' lips curled.
+
+"Classicus," he said.
+
+Before the porch of the alabarch's house groups of people came to stand
+and discuss the fortunes of the Herod.  The sounds, never
+congratulatory, began to change in temper.  As the day grew, numbers
+began to accumulate and hang like sullen bees buzzing insurrection.
+Though they themselves were mongrels cast out of twenty subjugated
+kingdoms and bullied into unspeakable servitude by the tyrant Rome,
+Prejudice, unarmed with argument and speaking in dialect, arose and
+rebelled at Alexandria entertaining a Jewish king.
+
+Toward sunset a group of empty curricles and chariots came and stood
+before a certain house, the last in the Jewish district, facing the
+Gentile environs of the water-front.  Had any cared to remark, it might
+have been observed that this house could be reached from the alabarch's
+by abandoned passages and private walks, a series of Jewish courts and
+stable-yards, without exposing any who went that way to the Gentile
+eye.  After a while, a body of Roman guards emerged from nowhere and
+arrayed themselves alongside the vehicles.  Presently, groups of slaves
+bearing burdens, followed by a party of high-class Egyptians, mounted
+the chariots and without hesitation the procession took up movement
+toward the harbor.
+
+But an angle in the streets brought them upon the Gymnasium.  It was
+built in a square of sufficient size to receive the crowds that usually
+attended the contests of the athletæ, and there thousands were
+assembled to do Alexandrian honor to a Jew.
+
+The daylight was still on the streets, and Marsyas, in the guise of a
+charioteer, driving the horses of the foremost car, observed that each
+of the mass was busy with his own noise, and apparently unsuspecting
+the coming of Agrippa.  So he signed to the centurion in charge of the
+prætorian squad to make way with as little ostentation as possible.
+
+At the porch before the Gymnasium, the crowd was most packed, loudest
+and most entertained.  A naked, deformed, apish figure stood on a
+pedestal from which a statue had fallen and had not been replaced.  A
+wreath of rushes had been twisted about the degenerate forehead, a
+strip of matting had been bound with a tow-cord about his middle; in
+his hand was a stalk of papyrus with the head broken and hanging down.
+
+On their knees about the base of the plinth were half a score of youths
+from the Gymnasium, groaning in tragic chorus, the single Syriac word:
+
+"_Maris_!  _Maris_!  Lord!  Lord!"
+
+Loudly the crowd roared its part, with voices raucous and hoarse from
+much abuse:
+
+"Hail, Agrippa!  King of the Jews!"
+
+Agrippa's chariot, following the way the centurion had quietly opened
+through the crowd, attracted little attention and the half-light of the
+twilight did not reveal his features, which he had been led further to
+conceal by an Egyptian cowl.  A long white kamis covered his dress.
+But his eyes fell upon the idiot; he caught the mockery and its meaning
+from the crowd.
+
+A quiver of rage ran through his frame.  Laying hold of the Egyptian
+smock, he tore it off and threw it fairly into the faces of those
+nearest him; the white cowl followed, and he stood forth like a
+new-risen sun in a tissue of silver, mantled with purple, his fillet
+replaced by a tarboosh sewn with immense gems.
+
+Defiance and insult and daring could not have been embodied in a more
+effective act.  The continuous tumult burst into a yell of fury.  In a
+twinkling his chariot was hemmed in and blocked and the raving rabble
+reached out to lay hands on him.
+
+Marsyas, seeing destruction in Agrippa's recklessness, shouted to the
+centurion, who responded by hurling his prætorians, with broadsword and
+spear into the mob.
+
+The protection of Cæsar, thus evidenced, beat back the astonished herd
+as a charge of cavalry might have done, but it fringed the lane opened
+before the royal Jew and raged.
+
+Thereafter every inch of the way was contested.
+
+Not even a show of interference was made by municipal authorities.
+Instead, here and there, soldiers of the city garrison could be seen,
+singly or in groups, as spectators and applauding.  The riot began to
+take on the appearance of a holiday, for groups of upper classes began
+to appear on housetops, stairs and porches of houses, where they made
+themselves comfortable and listened to the demonstration as they were
+accustomed to watch contests in the stadia.  Below in the long way
+toward the harbor-front, the lawless of any class indulged their love
+of disorder and amused the aristocrats.
+
+The fugitives were almost in sight of the forest of masts which marked
+the wharves, when Marsyas detected a change in the tone of the tumult.
+
+Derision and revilement began to lose impetus, flagging in the face of
+a freshened uproar of another temper, beginning far behind and sweeping
+down the street after the fugitives.  It was savage, bloodthirsty and
+menacing.  Out of the inarticulate volume he caught finally shouts
+about the Jews and Flora; next, about the dance of Flora; after that
+the whole declaration, sent thundering, like a sea over winter capes,
+that the dancing Flora was a Nazarene and the daughter of the alabarch!
+
+Marsyas' face, turned toward Agrippa, was ghastly.  The Herod felt the
+first quiver of terror he had experienced in years.  He reached toward
+the lines, meaning to give Marsyas opportunity to return to the Regio
+Judæorum.  But Marsyas was shouting mightily to the centurion to charge
+the crowds before them.  The prætorian heard and his men presented a
+double row of spears and rushed.  The lesser mob ahead broke, and
+Marsyas cried back to Cypros' charioteer.
+
+The next minute with desperate mercilessness he had loosed a long
+plaited whip like a crackling flame upon the necks of his horses.
+
+The terrified beasts leaped; the car lurched and headlong they plunged
+into the mass before them.  Right and left the rawhide played, over
+faces, shoulders and lifted arms, searing and scarring wherever it
+touched.  With grim satisfaction, the two within the chariot felt at
+times that the car mounted and toppled over prostrate rioters, like
+sticks in the roadway.  The jam became panic and flight, and the horses
+took the free passage, mad with desire to get away from the stinging
+torment that harassed them.
+
+The driver of Cypros' car closed in quickly with its following of
+curricles, and kept close behind the flying chariot, but the
+prætorians, out-distanced, contented themselves by following through
+short ways, and the riot was left behind.
+
+At the wharf the maddened animals could not be stopped until they had
+been circled again and again.  But hardly had the wheels ceased to
+move, when Marsyas leaped to the ground, and, flinging the lines to a
+slave, put up his hands to Agrippa.
+
+"As the first debt to thy manhood and to the alabarch forget not this
+opportunity to help him!  Hear them!  They want Jewish blood; Lydia's
+blood!  There is none in Alexandria to stay them!  Help, my lord!
+Beseech Cæsar in thy people's behalf, as I beseech thee now!  Answer,
+answer!"
+
+"I hear, Marsyas," Agrippa responded, "and by all that I hold sacred, I
+promise thee Flaccus' end!  God help thee!  Farewell!"
+
+Pausing only for the word, Marsyas turned and ran with frantic speed
+back into the city.  He saw, at every step, that which made his heart
+chill in his bosom.  The tide of the riot had turned, and that which
+was not already pouring in upon the Nazarenes, was rushing into the
+Regio Judæorum.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+SANCTUARY
+
+The cluster of vagabonds hanging before the alabarch's mansion stayed
+no longer after the breezes brought the first sound of tumult which
+announced a rarer sport elsewhere.  In a twinkling the Regio Judæorum
+was silent and deserted.
+
+Except for the gusts of far-off turmoil, the cooing of pigeons in
+towers, the clashing of palm-leaves, the creak of crazy gates in the
+wind, the casual calling of Numidian cranes or the crowing of poultry
+were the only sounds in the quarter--lonesome, nature sounds, signals
+of a householder's absence.
+
+But it seemed as if the Regio Judæorum listened and waited.
+
+After Agrippa's departure, the alabarch came into his presiding-room,
+without purpose and visibly uneasy.  Lydia followed him, and, at a look
+from her father, came close to his chair and mingled her yellow-brown
+curls with his white locks.
+
+The silence over the quarter had become oppressive and the slightest
+break would have been no less grateful than distinct, when it seemed
+that cautious footsteps pattered by without.
+
+The two stirred and listened.
+
+After a moment, they heard others, very swift and soft, as if many were
+running by a-tiptoe.  There were whispers and rustlings, excited words
+cried under the breath.
+
+The two in the presiding-room looked at each other.  Had the vagabonds
+returned to their place for mischief, outside the alabarch's mansion?
+
+Lysimachus stepped to the windows and listened.  But Lydia stood still,
+dreading without understanding that which he might hear.
+
+East and west, far and near, sounds were drifting in and passing toward
+the New Port, sounds as if a multitude hastened in one direction.
+Above these stealthy, fugitive, whispered noises, there came freshened
+uproar from pagan Alexandria, swift, high, relentless and carrying like
+fire on a wind.
+
+As they stood thus, perplexed and alarmed, Vasti appeared like a shadow
+out of the dusk and caught the alabarch's arm.
+
+"It is come!" she hissed with compelling vehemence.  "To the Synagogue!
+Fly!  For the hosts of Siva are upon you even now!"
+
+Lysimachus grasped the grill of the window, and turned slowly toward
+his daughter.
+
+"Lydia?" he asked helplessly.
+
+The girl came to him, and Vasti began to motion her toward the street.
+
+"What is it?  What passeth?" the alabarch insisted, unable to act
+without perfect conception of the conditions he had to fight.
+
+Lydia's eyes, fixed on her father's face, deepened with misery and
+widened with suffering.  The hour had fallen!  She was to be the
+outcast and the abomination at last.
+
+"They accuse me," she said, "of being a Nazarene; that I committed
+sacrilege, to hold off the mob from Rhacotis--that I was the Dancing
+Flora!"
+
+The alabarch put his thin hands to his forehead, as if to ward off the
+conviction, which all the fragmentary intimation against Lydia, and her
+own words conjoined, threatened to establish in him.
+
+"Is it so, my daughter?" he asked in a benumbed voice.
+
+Cause was submerged in effect; she felt less fear of the confession
+than of her father's suffering.  In the appreciable interval his figure
+shriveled; age and the encroachment of death showed upon him.  The
+atmosphere of the magistrate, the courtier and the aristocrat dissolved
+under the anguish of a father and the horror of a Jew.  He had
+surrendered his two sons, Tiberius and Marcus, to paganism; in Lydia,
+he had reposed the unwatchful faith, that had permitted his other
+children to apostasize under his roof.  He had believed the more in
+her, and the shock was the greater, therefore.
+
+"Let it be the measure of my conviction, my father," she said sadly,
+"that I did this thing in the knowledge that I might forfeit thy love!"
+
+He made no movement; his face did not relax from its stunned agony.
+Lydia awaited its change with flagging heart-beat.
+
+But the thunder of menace from the Gymnasium square rolled in again
+through the streets of the Regio Judæorum.  The alabarch heard it.  Up
+through the mask there struggled not rebuke and condemnation, but the
+terror of love fearing for its own.  He caught Lydia in his arms and
+turned his straining eyes toward the windows.  But the bayadere waited
+no longer for the arousing of his faculties.  She seized his arm and
+thrust him toward the vestibule.
+
+"Awake!  Get you up and be gone!  Will you wait to see her perish?"
+
+She did not stop until she had pushed them through the porch into the
+streets.
+
+"To the Synagogue!" she commanded last, and disappeared as she had come.
+
+All the Regio Judæorum, as far as the Brucheum on the south and the
+tumble and wash of the Mediterranean on the north, was pouring through
+the streets toward the New Port.
+
+The alabarch's own servants went hither and thither, knocking at doors,
+from which other servants presently issued to speed with the alarm over
+the yet unwarned sections nearer the Synagogue.
+
+After a moment's waiting until the light airs cleared the daze that
+enmeshed his brain, the alabarch took Lydia under his cloak and fled
+with his people toward their refuge.
+
+As he went, doorways about them were giving up households, bazaars and
+booths were emptying of their patrons and proprietors; workshops, their
+artisans and apprentices; schools, their readers and pupils; the
+counting-room, the rich men and the borrowers; the squalid angles, the
+outcast and the beggar.  The oppression of terror and the instinct for
+silence weighted the darkening air; the twilight covered them, and
+hostile attention was yet far behind them.
+
+So they came: the slaves with marks of perpetual servitude in their
+ears, and ladies of the Sadducees that had rarely set foot upon the
+harsh earth; figures in Indian silks and figures in sackcloth;
+fugitives to whom fear lent wings and fugitives to whom flight was
+bitterer than death; families and guilds by the hundreds, hurrying
+together; companies of diverse people separated from their own; sons
+carrying parents and neighbors bearing the sick; friends forgetting
+attachments and foes forgetting feuds--until the streets became
+veritable rivers of running people.  And so they went, crowding,
+pressing, contending, but passing as silently as forty thousand may
+pass, toward the Synagogue, which was sanctuary and stronghold for them
+all.
+
+The keepers of the great gates were there, and the huge valves stood
+wide.  The alabarch's old composure reasserted itself, as, amid the
+panic of his people, he realized their want of leadership.  He stepped
+to one side of the nearest gate, and stood while he watched each and
+every Jew rush into the darkness and disappear under the great pylons
+of the Synagogue.  Lydia, whom he would have sent in at once, clung to
+him, and together they stood without.
+
+Meanwhile, out of the distant Brucheum, there came a snarl of monstrous
+and terrifying proportions.  The mob was gaining strength.
+
+The last of the Jews fled praying through the giant gates and pressed
+themselves into the shelter of the Synagogue.  The keeper looked at the
+alabarch.  He lifted his arm, and Lydia and the keeper and he, shutting
+away, as best they might, the noise of the threatening city, listened,
+if any belated fugitive came through the dark.
+
+The sound of footsteps approached; a body of people, strangers to the
+alabarch, appeared; Lydia made a little sound, and moved toward them.
+
+"We also are beset," the foremost said, "can we enter into the
+protection of the Synagogue?"
+
+"Haste ye, and enter!" the alabarch answered.
+
+And after the hindmost, he and Lydia passed into the sanctuary.
+
+The keepers swung the great valves shut, and the last sound they
+admitted was a ravening howl, as Alexandria hurled itself into the
+empty streets of the Regio Judæorum.
+
+Until this time, Lydia had been a part of the unit of terror and
+self-preservation, but the hurry of the flight had ceased and the wait
+for events had begun.  Then ensued moments for individual ideas.  Thus
+far she had heard no murmur against her.  Fear of the Alexandrians had
+outmeasured the Jews' indignation, or else they had believed the
+informer to be the father of lies.
+
+There was the never-failing lamp on the lectern, but its light
+penetrated no farther than the immediate precincts of darkness.  The
+interior was so vast that its great angles melted into shadow.  The
+immense area of marble pavement was cumbered with an army of huddled
+shapes, and when portentous red light began to sift down through the
+open roof it fell upon uplifted faces, ghastly with fear, upon bare
+arms, white and soft or lean and brown, upstretched in supplication.
+But neither moan nor murmur arose among them who waited upon siege.
+
+Meanwhile the roar of violence encompassed and penetrated all portions
+of the quarter.  Great lights began to mount and redden the sky as
+torches were applied to houses looted of their riches.  The invasion
+had met no obstacle and the whole region was a-swarm.
+
+Presently, close at hand, the full bellow of freshly-discovered
+incentive arose, mounting above all other noises until even the Jews,
+imprisoned within walls of granite, heard it.
+
+"The Jews! the Jews!  The Synagogue!"
+
+Involuntarily there arose from the lips of the forty thousand a great
+moan, muffled, unechoing and filled with terror.
+
+The alabarch stood by Lydia, with his thoughts upon the strength of the
+Synagogue and the hardihood of the prisoners.  But the weight of
+culpability was heavy upon Lydia; in her great need and longing for the
+comfort of his confidence, she crept closer to her father and clung to
+his arm.
+
+"Naught but a ram or ballista can force these gates!" he said.  "And we
+are forty thousand.  Alas, that the spirit of Joshua the warrior was
+not mixed with the spirit of Moses, who gave us the Law!"
+
+The mob came on, now in distinct hearing of the imprisoned Jews.
+Tremendous trampling without on the stone flagging and dull, fruitless
+hammering on the valves announced the assault.
+
+The Jews nearer the gates pressed away.
+
+Without, indecision and tumult wrangled among innumerable voices.
+Great bodies began to shout as one, with mighty lungs:
+
+"Bring out the woman!  Give up the Dancing Flora!"
+
+Lydia felt the alabarch tremble and presently the arm to which she
+clung withdrew from her clasp and passed around her, drawing her close.
+
+"_Impius_!  _Insidiis_!  _Succuba_!  _O dea certe_!" roared the mob.
+
+But work was doing at the gates.  There arose blunt pounding, slowly
+and heavily delivered as if a multitude wielded a ram.  But the reports
+were too solid to indicate any weakness in the gates, and the keeper of
+the one attacked watched the sacred stone with a glitter of pride in
+his eyes.
+
+Presently the hammering ceased.
+
+"Yield us the woman!" the mob roared in the interval.  "Give us the
+woman and save yourselves!"
+
+Those about the alabarch, hearing the demand of the mob, turned great
+terror-strained eyes upon Lydia, and she hid her face in her father's
+shoulder.
+
+The smell of burning pitch penetrated the interior; pungent smoke
+assailed the nostrils of the keeper, who smiled grimly, assuming that
+the mob hoped to burn the Synagogue.
+
+But there followed an explosion of steam, split by a sharp report, and
+followed by a howl of exultation.  The keeper with wild eyes sprang at
+the valve.  Immediately the hammering of the ram reverberated through
+the gloom.
+
+The alabarch understood.  They were cracking the stone with fire and
+water and beating in the fractures with a ram.
+
+Then the forty thousand within realized their extremity.  The murmur
+increased to an even groan of terror, and here and there, as some more
+acutely realized the desperate straits, frantic screams would rive
+through the drone of misery.
+
+Above it all the ram beat its sentence of doom upon the gate.
+
+Splintering rock began to fall on the inner side of the assaulted
+portal.  The keeper put his hands over his ears and turned away from
+the sight.  Let but a breach be made wide enough to admit a hand to
+undo the bolts and hideous death would pour in upon the shuddering
+captives within.
+
+Without, above the noise of the ram, the roar of the multitude
+continued:
+
+"Give up the woman ere it is too late!"
+
+Under the light of fires falling from above, hundreds of white faces in
+the mad mass turned toward Lydia.
+
+A lozenge of stone large enough to admit a man's body shaped itself in
+the gate under the ram, and the next instant shot out and fell near the
+keeper.  With it came a hoarse roar of triumph, drowning a scream of
+despair.
+
+A dozen arms came through the opening and fumbled for the bolts.
+
+The keeper seized the fragment of stone and hurled it at the intruding
+arms.  It struck fair and with vicious force.  Howls of pain went up.
+
+The limp arms were dragged out and as others came in the keeper bounded
+to the gate and catching up his missile beat madly upon flesh and bone
+until the besiegers abandoned their search for the bolts.
+
+The thunder of assault began again, for the gate could not hold long.
+The trapped victims shrieked and out of the mass fingers pointed at
+Lydia.
+
+Suddenly, she stood away from her father's arm.  Walking to one of the
+keepers of the unassaulted gates, she said to him:
+
+"I am she whom they want without!  Let me forth!"
+
+A tall spare old man, one of the strangers who had entered last,
+approached her.  But the girl motioned him aside and he made the sign
+of the cross over her.
+
+Her father, watching her, did not realize until the keeper undid the
+bolts which held the wicket, or subsidiary gate in the large one, that
+Lydia meant to pass out into the night.
+
+With a cry, he sprang after her.
+
+A hush fell in the Synagogue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE DREGS OF THE CUP OF FURY
+
+The great stars were further withdrawn into the immeasurable arch of
+blue night; the winds had fled away into the ocean; the bay was angry
+with fire for leagues.  The space before Lydia was open as far as the
+reader's stone of the proseucha, for the attacking party had demanded
+room for their proceedings.  Beyond that was the front of the
+besiegers, a sea of bodies lighted by torches, tunics bloody with
+murder which had been done, mouths open, teeth shining, and eyes filled
+with the fury of bloodthirst.
+
+As yet she was unnoticed, because the attention of the multitude was
+engaged with the assault upon the easternmost gate.
+
+Lydia's mind did not direct her.  It had sunk long ago under the stress
+of womanly terror.  Only an involuntary obedience to an impulse
+conceived during the last conscious suggestions of her Nazarene faith,
+moved her toward the reader's stone, straight in the face of the
+multitude.  She went as all young and tender martyrs have gone, with
+the spirit already lifted out of the body.
+
+She mounted the rock; the alabarch, unable to reach her in time, unable
+to make her hear him, gave up with a groan of despair, and followed her.
+
+Then the multitude saw and understood.
+
+A yell of fury went up; a mass of innumerable heads and shoulders
+lurched toward her.  Even the assailants at the gate dropped their ram
+to come.
+
+Then up and out of it Marsyas leaped!
+
+Lydia saw him, and a great light swept over her face.  He had come to
+die with her, to sweeten the bitter martyrdom with the faithfulness of
+his love.
+
+After Marsyas, the bayadere bounded, as if pitched from the front of
+the wave.  Between the murdering front and the three on the stone she
+interposed herself, a creature of primal fury, terrible and ferocious.
+A torch was in her hand, the badge of eligibility, which had let her to
+the forefront of this mob, that received none but destroyers.  But the
+sibilant utterance of the crimson flame, raking the air, and taller by
+half than the screaming fury that whipped it before her, was turned
+upon them that had kindled it.
+
+She carried by its bail a great copper kettle filled with bitumen, but,
+as she planted feet upon the stone, she dropped her torch and, whirling
+upon the wave of fury, swept the full contents of the giant pot over
+every face and garment for yards about her.  She caught up her torch;
+the looping flame uncoiled itself like a springing snake and shot down
+into the pack.  Instantly there was a running flash, the rip of
+explosive ignition, and the breast of the riot turned, each a great
+towering flame, and drove itself into the heart of the oncoming
+thousands behind!
+
+The rabble in cotton tunics had absolutely no defense against one
+another.  The riot of bloodthirst turned instantly into panic and a
+revel of terrible death.  The sound, the scene were indescribably awful.
+
+In the hideous uproar that ensued, events followed swiftly.  Vasti and
+her tall torch, in fearful fellowship, shrilled and spun on the rock in
+a frenzy of heathen triumph.  Marsyas, for the instant stunned and
+scorched, flung his arm over his face, to shut out the horror.  But the
+Jews, the instant the ram was dropped, realizing that their citadel was
+hopeless with breaches in its gate, and seeing a respite in the riot's
+attention upon Lydia, broke from the sanctuary and poured like a sea in
+flight into the open.  The miraculous intervention of the bayadere gave
+them the opportunity to save themselves.  But when Marsyas came to
+himself and sprang to take up Lydia, the inundation of fleeing Jews had
+swept over the reader's stone behind him, and Lydia was gone!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+CAPTIVES OF THE MIGHTY
+
+The second night after the riot about the Synagogue, one of Flaccus'
+sentries, posted about the small cramped portion of the Regio Judæorum,
+into which the forty thousand Jews had been driven, brought his spear
+at guard and called "Halt!"
+
+But the object approaching spun on toward him noiselessly, passed the
+lines, and disappeared up the dark, sandy roadway, into the night on
+the beleaguered quarter.
+
+"Ha, ha!  Ho, ho!" roared the next post, who had heard his challenge,
+"challenging sand-columns, Sergius?  Flaccus should know of thy
+thoroughness!"
+
+The discomfited sentry muttered and shouldered his weapon.
+
+But the column of sand disintegrated before a hovel, and became a snaky
+woman-shape that disappeared into the dark door of the house.
+
+Within, she stumbled over prostrate bodies, sleeping on the earthen
+floor, and, muttering in Hindu against the darkness, stopped finally.
+
+"Master!" she called softly, in her native tongue.
+
+There was instant reply.
+
+"Thou, Vasti!  The Lord God be praised!  What news?"
+
+The woman felt her way to the voice, and, encountering the alabarch's
+outstretched hands, began at once, in a whisper:
+
+"I have come, but not to abide," she said.  "The Nazarenes took Lydia,
+and fled with her unto Judea!"
+
+"Unto Judea!  Away from me?" the alabarch said piteously.
+
+"Nay, but Egypt hath risen against her.  The Roman hath put forth all
+his soldiery to look for her.  If she remained in Alexandria she would
+surely die!"
+
+The alabarch moaned.  The last of his fortitude had gone with Lydia,
+and helpless, disgraced and old, he was beginning to surrender.  The
+bayadere put her hands on him.
+
+"Be of hope," she insisted, "for the white brother departed at sunset
+to seek for her, and to get protection from the Herod!"
+
+"Judea!" the alabarch repeated miserably.  "There she entereth into
+equal danger, for there it is death to be a Nazarene!"
+
+"But the white brother is sworn to kill the leader of the persecution,"
+she said grimly.  "Speed him with thy prayers, for he is weighted with
+no little mission.  I come unto thee with cheer.  Listen, and be of
+hope!  The city of the Jews, here, is all but destroyed, but I buried
+thy moneys, thy drafts, thy money-papers and thy jewels.  Though they
+burn thy house, thou art still rich!"
+
+"Buried them?" he repeated.
+
+"In the earth of thy court-yard, ere the Herod departed, for the flame
+on the altar of Mahadeva burned crimson and murky!  And I took certain
+of thy moneys and gave them to certain of the Nazarenes and bade them
+be prepared to care for her, who had cared for them!  They went unto
+the Synagogue!  They rescued her from the stone, after the sending of
+Vishnu upon the rabble!  They went unto Judea with her--and I, Vasti, I
+did it, as Khosru, the Mahatma, bade!"
+
+"Be thou blessed, Vasti; blessed be the day that I held up the hand
+that would have fallen on thee, in the markets of Sind!
+But--but--Marsyas--what manner of vessel carryeth him?  How long!
+Alas, how wide the sea!"
+
+"But the vengeance of the Divine hand is loosed!  Sawest thou the
+destruction of the host, before thy people's Temple?  The bay was black
+with them this morning and the vultures come even from Libya.  Knowest
+thou the evil mouth that spread sayings against Lydia?  I was in the
+city and beheld it!  It was the charioteer, Eutychus!  Him I kept in my
+sight, while I ran at the forefront of the riot with the white brother,
+and when we stood upon the rock, I saw him!  This morning, I sought for
+him before the Synagogue, and I found him!"
+
+She brought her teeth together with a click.
+
+"I burned incense for the purification of the fire, straightway," she
+said sententiously.
+
+"Canst thou endure?" she asked after a silence.
+
+"All--so that Lydia be saved!"
+
+"Thy spirit may be tried," she said.  "The Roman hath commanded that ye
+be pent here until Lydia is found, believing that imprisonment and
+hunger and torture may persuade the Jews to give her up if she be hid
+among them.  But I shall come to thee with comforts and such tidings as
+I may learn."
+
+She touched his hands to her forehead and moved away, calling back:
+
+"The time is not long; the Jewish king will not lag in his own
+requital!  Be assured!  I abide without these lines, since I can not
+help thee within!  Farewell!"
+
+At the door she stopped, but, reconsidering her impulse, went out
+without speaking.
+
+"It would not be seemly to tell, now, that I saw Classicus' green and
+gold garment exposed in a usurer's shop."
+
+A sand-column passed before the wind, by the sentry at the upper end of
+the street; but he did not attempt to halt it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE APPROACH OF THE DAY OF VISITATION
+
+Marsyas sought through the Nazarene settlements in Joppa, Anthedon and
+Cæsarea, but the people could not tell him of fugitive Alexandrians,
+who had with them a maid with yellow-brown hair.  He went then to
+Ptolemais, and there, after days of patient search, discovered that
+three strange women, two men and a maiden of gentle blood, who were
+children in Christ, has passed through the city, from Alexandria to
+Jerusalem.
+
+He did not pause to inquire after his former master, Peter the usurer,
+nor Eleazar, his steward.  Instead he took the road, over which he and
+Agrippa had come long before, and hastened toward the City of David.
+
+Within sight of the Tower of Hippicus, and the glittering Glory on the
+summit of Moriah, he came upon a group, in abas and talliths, sitting
+on the soil while they ate.  He would have passed around them, without
+speaking, had he not seen the elder among them lift his hands and
+beseech the blessing of Christ upon the bread and water set before them.
+
+Marsyas stopped, and waited with as much grace as possible until the
+meal was finished and the Nazarene thanks returned, before he
+approached.
+
+"I behold that ye offer supplication to the Nazarene Prophet," he said
+to the elder, "and though I come unto you a faithful follower of the
+God of Abraham, I pray you, remember the charity ye assume, and give me
+aid!"
+
+"We are children of Christ," the elder responded, "and brethren to all;
+wherefore speak, and if we can help thee, we dare not deny thee."
+
+"I perceive that a bond of common acquaintance unites all of your
+belief; perchance certain Alexandrian Nazarenes with a maiden, who fled
+hither from the wrath of the Proconsul of Egypt, have come unto you for
+hospitality in Jerusalem."
+
+"Save for the few apostles of the Church in Christ, who have hidden
+themselves, there are no Nazarenes in Jerusalem," the elder answered.
+
+"No Nazarenes in Jerusalem!" Marsyas exclaimed, remembering Eleazar's
+estimation of the host of schism in the Holy City.  "Yet, two years
+ago, they possessed the city from Ophlas to Bezetha."
+
+"They have been scattered into far cities by the oppressor, or have
+passed through the dust of the stoning-place into the Kingdom of God!"
+he answered in awed tones.
+
+The young man made a gesture as if he drew his hands quickly away from
+blood-stains, and a look of intense horror passed over his face.
+
+"And Saul continueth to rage, unchecked?" he exclaimed, his old
+impatience with the passivity of the Nazarenes making itself felt once
+more.
+
+"In the Lord's time, in the Lord's time, my son," the elder said mildly.
+
+"I can not wait upon the Lord!" Marsyas cried.  "The Lord gave me
+heart, feeling, intelligence and invention, for me to use to mine own
+aid!  I have labored for two years to this end, and Herod, the king,
+will help me!"
+
+"Not so, my son!" the Nazarene said gravely.  "Build no hope for us,
+upon Herod the king, for he hath joined himself with the Pharisees, and
+he will not hinder the oppressor!"
+
+"What?" Marsyas cried, growing black.
+
+"A truth, my son!"
+
+"But I crowned him!" Marsyas cried, clenching his hands.  "I held off
+the hand of death from him, and despoiled my soul for his sake!  I sold
+myself for him!  By the Lord, if he help me not, I shall have back the
+life that I preserved to him!"
+
+The Nazarene crossed himself quickly, and shook his head.
+
+"Peace!  Peace! young brother.  Even the Law, for which thou art
+zealous, forbids thee to kill!  Behold the vanity of laying up
+confidence in man!  If thou hadst so built for the Master's favor, thou
+hadst not been forsaken, to-day!"
+
+"Neither the God of Abraham, nor thy Prophet has shielded thee from the
+oppressor," he declared passionately.  "Remember thy own words.  But I
+will bring him down!"
+
+"Build no hope upon Herod," the Nazarene continued, as if eager to stay
+Marsyas.  "Whatever he promised thee, he knows that Saul standeth high
+among the Pharisees, whom the king would propitiate!  He hath
+difficulty and prejudice to overcome, this grandson of an execrated
+grandsire--so build nothing upon the Herod!"
+
+Was it possible that, after all his months of patient work and
+long-suffering, he had brought up at the point at which he had left off
+two years before?  Was his punishment of Saul to be done, at his own
+risk, at last?  He would see this altered Agrippa and learn for himself!
+
+"I shall see this king and discover!" he declared.
+
+"The king is not in Jerusalem," the Nazarene said.  "He hath continued
+unto Antioch to despatch a petition to Cæsar!"
+
+The young man's rage changed into dismay, but he made a last appeal.
+
+"I seek my beloved," he said finally, in a helpless way.  "She is a
+Nazarene and pursued by the powers of Rome!  Even besides her peril of
+Saul, she is sought after by the mighty who would destroy her.  If thou
+knowest of her--even where she might be in hiding, I pray thee, tell
+me, in the name of thy Prophet!"
+
+"Who is she?" the Nazarene asked at once.
+
+"She is Lydia Lysimachus, daughter to the alabarch in Alexandria."
+
+"I turned such a maiden, and her protectors, away from the gates of
+Jerusalem, seven days ago.  They were bidden to go to Damascus."
+
+Marsyas pressed the Nazarene's hand to his lips, because his gratitude
+would not be expressed otherwise.  Safe, then, for the moment, and out
+of reach of Saul of Tarsus!
+
+"Do ye fare thither? even now?" Marsyas asked, eager to attach himself
+to the body of apostates, if they led him on to Lydia.
+
+"Nay, we are certain of the faith on watch, lest any ignorant of the
+peril besetting the brethren should approach the city."
+
+"Ye are close unto the oppressor," Marsyas said seriously.
+
+"We abide in the will of the Lord."
+
+Marsyas sighed.  He had seen another, believing in the promise of the
+Lamb, go down unto death.  The recurring thought of Stephen, never
+wholly forgotten, awakened in him another impulse.  He would not go
+straightway to Damascus, and continue to retreat from Saul.  The hand
+of the Lord had led him unto the Pharisee, and he would do that which
+lay nearest him.
+
+"And when I come unto Damascus, how shall I find her?" he asked of the
+Nazarene.
+
+"Go unto Ananias, a brother in the Lord, and tell him thy story.  Lo,
+he is keeper of the Lord's flock, and filled with the Spirit.  Thou
+wilt not ask in vain!"
+
+"Thou hast my thanks, and my blessing!" Marsyas said.  "And the
+forgiveness of the Lord cover you all!"
+
+"Peace, young brother, and the love of Christ be with thee ever more!"
+
+Marsyas went through the amber light of the late afternoon, toward the
+might of Hippicus and the majesty of the City of David.
+
+He found, by inquiry among the Jews, that Agrippa had not lingered in
+Judea, having passed through Jerusalem to give commands concerning the
+preparation of his palace, to receive the homage of the people and to
+propitiate the Pharisees, before he went on to Antioch.  It was readily
+told that the king was despatching messages to Caligula craving the
+punishment of Flaccus.
+
+"But could not the king have despatched these messages from Jerusalem?"
+Marsyas asked.
+
+The Jews smiled and laid fingers alongside their noses.
+
+"He is a Herod, and not ashamed of display.  He was ill-treated in
+Antioch, by the proconsul, there, in the days of adversity.  Wherefore,
+in his purple and gold, with the favor of Cæsar behind him, he taketh
+advantage of an excuse to abash his old insulters!"
+
+It was like Agrippa!  But Marsyas was glad, even in the tumult of his
+sensations, that the Herod was pushing his work against Flaccus!  At
+least, Alexandria should be safe for the alabarch.  But to his mission!
+
+It was still night in the City of David and the watcher on the pinnacle
+of the Temple had long to wait before the morning shone and the sky was
+lighted even unto Hebron.  The greater stars sparkled like jewels in
+the cold heavens, and there were already many people in the blue-misted
+streets below.  They were of all classes, but of one nation, one
+direction.
+
+Straggling numbers joined the main body from each narrow passage which
+intersected the marble-paved roadway leading toward the splendid
+Tyropean bridge.  It was a host, an army numbering thousands.  But,
+foot planted on the solid masonry that accomplished the ravine by
+flying arches two hundred feet above the dark abyss, conversation left
+off.  The company passed silent, except for the multitudinous and soft
+rustlings of garments and the chafing of feet upon rock.  Far ahead the
+foremost were rising, an undulating sea of heads and shoulders, as the
+cyclopean stairs, a cold bank of white marble, broad and gentle of
+slope, climbed toward the Royal Porch.
+
+As soon as the Tyropean bridge was passed, the Temple was shut off from
+view by the intervening cornices of the porch; and when the gate was
+reached, the stream of worshipers entered into the demesnes of the Holy
+House.
+
+Tunnel-like and drafty, the open gate revealed an immense length of
+gloom, raftered and roofed with beams and vaults of darkness, upheld by
+double rows of dim columns of enormous girth.  This, the Royal
+Colonnade, cloistered the Court of the Gentiles, through which the
+worshipers fared next.
+
+It was a great quadrangle, paved with sun-colored marbles, open to the
+sky and having about it the characteristic exhilarating airs which
+inhabit the heights.  Herod the Great spent princely sums upon this
+portion allotted to the Gentiles, for the simple purpose of flattering
+the pagan.  Perhaps for no other reason than an expression of their
+displeasure did the Jews commit the sacrilege of commercialism in this
+spot.  Here the money-changer, vender of sacrificial beasts, birds and
+wines made a busy market daily, for the indignation of the Nazarene
+Rabbi had driven them away for only so long as He watched.  They
+returned when He had vanished, like flies to a honey-pot.
+
+Here also awaited the Temple servitors to receive the unblemished
+offerings, the Shoterim to preserve order, the Levites of the gates and
+perchance the priests of the killing-pens and of the wood-chambers.
+Through the throng of attendants or venders, the worshipers continued,
+an uninterrupted stream of pilgrims, souls in distress, Pharisees and
+souls under vows, and all the class and kind that would be diligent for
+the Lord in the restful hours before daybreak.  And the number was not
+large, in comparison to the host of Israel, for the Temple was builded
+to contain the voice of two hundred and ten thousand.
+
+North of the center of the Court of Gentiles, the Temple stood.  A rail
+set it off austerely from contact with the uncircumcised.  Its
+relentless command of exclusion and its threat were set forth on stone,
+forbidding the admission of a Gentile on pain of death.  But beyond, in
+mockery, rose the black bulk of Roman Antonia, the majesty of masonry
+upreared and prostituted to eavesdropping and espionage.  Yet none who
+visited the Temple was instantly to be led away from its glory to
+meditate on its humiliation.
+
+The worshipers passed around the angle of the structure to the east
+where the Gate Beautiful was hung.
+
+There was a momentary slackening in the movement, for the gate was yet
+to be opened.  But, preceding the foremost, twenty Levites passed up
+the flight of steps, and under the direction of a captain, laid
+shoulder to the valves and threw all their strength against them.
+There was a flash as the light of the coming dawn, concentrated and
+intensified, shifted across the Corinthian brass, and the Gate
+Beautiful swung inward.
+
+At the head of the column a young man, in ample robes, with his
+kerchief skirts hanging close about his face, stepped aside from the
+line of advance.  The crowd took up motion and went on.
+
+Marsyas had washed himself in obedience to the Law; he had brought in
+his hand his trespass offering, and in his soul he was a Jew.  But he
+stood now, and watched the fours of people climb the steps abreast,
+with no mood in his heart that a man should carry into a sanctuary.
+
+Series after series passed under his sharp scrutiny--extremes of rank,
+of reputation, of calling and of kind.  Minute after minute the long,
+silent procession tramped by him and was swallowed up in the gigantic
+gloom within.  Ever the alert gaze, bright even under the obscuring
+shadow of the kerchief, slipped from rank to rank, and never once
+lingered in doubt.  No one looked at him; every eye was down, for
+though, since the eighth day after his birth, no man in the long stream
+of worshipers had been ignorant of the Temple, it never failed to be a
+place of awe, half-love, half-terror.
+
+The hindmost appeared at the angle of the Temple, moved in turn after
+their fellows, climbed the steps and disappeared.
+
+Stragglers followed, in groups and singly, and finally Marsyas turned
+up the steps and followed the last within.
+
+Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee, would have been among the earliest to
+arrive.  Perhaps by special dispensation he had entered before the
+multitude and by another gate.
+
+The keeper at the Gate Beautiful glanced at the young man's snow-white
+Essenic garments and at the stamp of Jewish blood on his face, and
+passed him without a word.
+
+The Temple from the city had been a great glittering unit.  But on
+approaching its details, they became bewildering.
+
+Within was a tremendous inclosure, floored with agate, galleried with
+immense chambers which were screened with grills of beaten brass.  The
+army of worshipers was reduced, in comparison to the space they
+entered, to a mere handful of pygmy, indistinct shapes, prostrate,
+kneeling, upright, silent, infinitesimal, moveless.  At the extreme
+inner end of the men's court was a flight of fifteen semicircular steps
+which led up to the Gate Nicanor, now wide.  It was hung in the middle
+of an open arcade--an altar screen no less a grace to the Temple
+because it might have embattled a fortress.  Beyond it as the eye
+pierced the holy gloom, was a second tier of courts, less spacious than
+the first, but no less magnificent; after it, yet a third, and then a
+massive pile of ancient brass, stained and smoked, arose above all else
+before it.  A tongue of clean blue unilluminating flame wavered in the
+center of its summit.
+
+Beyond that, Marsyas' gaze did not travel.
+
+Spiritual subjection surrounded him; from behind the lattice which
+screened the women's court in the lofty galleries, there came no sound.
+The twilight of early morning and the hush of a sanctity were supreme.
+
+He crossed his hands upon his breast and let his head fall as the
+elders had taught him.
+
+Others came to stand beside him, the order of worship proceeded, and
+the singing Levites ranged themselves on the steps before Nicanor, but
+he was plunged in his spiritual difficulty and oppressed by the care
+for himself and his own.
+
+Finally there came a long, rich trumpet note above middle register; the
+voice of a brazen tongue singing through a horn of silver.  It was not
+sudden.  Beginning as the sound of wind on a fine wire, it ripened in
+tone as it grew in volume till it achieved the color, the shape of
+harmony, the very fragrance of music.  As it diminished, those who
+listened caught the sound of a second note--the voice of a twin
+trumpet, save that the tones issued in the molds of enunciation.  It
+was one singing among the Levites, as impossible to discover as to pick
+out the inspirited pipe in an organ.
+
+"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they
+that dwell therein--"
+
+It was the voice of a young enthusiast, with the faith and spiritual
+uplift of patriarchal years, housed in a frame of youth--the voice of a
+creature of trance and frenzy, a martyr-elect from birth.
+
+But as he clung to his final syllable in a vibrato of fervor, a second
+singer, duplicating the note in barytone, took up the second verse, and
+carried it with the ease and repose of one filled with content, health
+and the ripeness of years, of one who is the founder of a house, the
+possessor of goods and a power among his fellow men.  And his voice was
+rich, level as the note of a 'cello, tender because it was strong,
+persuasive because it was believing:
+
+"For he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the
+floods--"
+
+Wresting the word from him, the tenor again on his altitudes of ecstasy
+flung out the inquisition:
+
+"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his
+holy place?--"
+
+He made answer to himself with the barytone, but there was a third now
+singing, and his voice arose out of their attendance as a great, white,
+solemn, night-blooming flower might rise out of leafage.
+
+"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his
+soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully."
+
+The young fanatic might sing with the fervor of his bigotry, the
+contented man from the comfort in his heart, but this one, making
+answer, now, sang as one who was experienced and understood as the
+others could not.  It was deep bass, too deliberate to be flexible, too
+profound to be hurried, and withal a great bell booming in a dome.  And
+like a bell in travail under each stroke of its hammer, each word, in
+the full poignancy of its meaning, fell from the lips of him who had
+been tried by fire.
+
+The voice of the one hundred and fifty on the steps of Nicanor, picked
+for beauty from a singing nation, burst about the trio, an eruption of
+great harmony, overwhelming the echoes of the Temple, flooding the
+purlieus of the Holy Hill, mounting the morning winds to float across
+the hollow, reverberating ravines, to resound on the bosom of Zion, to
+penetrate the dark vale of Kedron, and to fail and be one with the
+reedy rushing of airs through the cedars of Olivet.
+
+"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his
+soul unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully;
+
+"He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from
+the God of his salvation!"
+
+Marsyas found himself coming under the influence of the psalm.  It
+seemed that the modifiers, describing the elect, had become lofty,
+solemn attributes not to be assumed by a simple claim to them, not to
+be had after the commission of deeds not specifically interdicted, not
+to be obtained by the harkening to one's own will; nor yet to be had
+did one fix himself in a chrysalis of form, wrap his soul in clean
+linen, and bury it in a remote spot, and keep hourly watch over it to
+keep it white--white but wizened.  He seemed to understand that he had
+not understood these things in the days of his Essenism, nor in the
+days of his worldliness.  And, remembering the meaning of his presence
+in the Temple, he felt peculiarly accused in his soul.  What right had
+he, who had brought with him the spirit of murder, in the Holy Hill?
+
+He could not shake off the self-accusation, but his resolution was
+unweakened.  He would depart!
+
+The hand of one who stood beside him dropped upon his shoulder and
+lingered.  He looked and saw beside him a great man, in the garments of
+an artisan, that covered him, figure, head and face against
+identification.  But Marsyas had known Eleazar under more effective
+disguise; the rabbi was not concealed from him now.
+
+Perhaps he could learn from Eleazar the whereabouts of Saul of Tarsus,
+so he dropped his head again, and stayed.
+
+The sun blazed on the spear-points, finishing the pinnacle of the
+Temple with glowing embers; the variegated marble of the Court of
+Gentiles was yellow as the gold of Ophir, and the morning radiance
+trembled over the City of David, lying in the valley two hundred feet
+below or rising up the slopes beyond the ravine.  The long winding
+stream of worshipers flowed from the Gate Beautiful, left, through the
+well of the stairs to the level where entered the Gate of Akra, down
+the long flight of steps into the vale of Gihon, and, dispersing, lost
+itself in the crowded passages of the Lower City.
+
+Before they were out of the morning shadow of the giant retaining-wall,
+Marsyas spoke.
+
+"Where is our enemy?"
+
+"He is for a time gone hence, and my soul is escaped as a bird out of a
+snare of the fowlers.  I can come now without much fear unto the Holy
+House."
+
+"Hence?" Marsyas asked uneasily.  "Whither?"
+
+"I shall tell thee.  Know thou, first, that I am here, since several
+weeks, abiding among the weavers of Bezetha, and laboring with them;
+for Peter, the usurer of Ptolemais, is dead and his servants scattered
+abroad.  Since Jerusalem hath been purified of the heresy, there is
+little search after the Nazarenes, so, as the robbed house is more
+secure than the one as yet unentered by thieves, I am unmolested in
+Bezetha.  Yet, until this morning, I have not dared venture into the
+Temple."
+
+"But Saul?" Marsyas urged impatiently.
+
+"I am coming unto Saul.  Jonathan, the High Priest, exhausted the
+patience of Vitellius in ten months.  The Roman's endurance wore
+through and snapped on a sudden like an overstrained cord.  On a
+certain day, in the Feast of Tabernacles, Jonathan was High Priest; ere
+nightfall some respected Jew complained to the legate; the next day,
+Theophilus, brother to Jonathan, was clothed in the robes of Aaron.
+
+"Saul was brought up for the instant, but thou knowest that he is no
+cautious weigher of conditions.  He did that which hath proven him not
+the unforeseeing time-server of a bloodthirsty man, but a follower of
+his own conscience and the servant of his own zeal.  He went to the new
+High Priest while yet the robes retained the shape of Jonathan, and
+spake unto him: 'O ruler of my people, is the purification of the faith
+to be given over, seeing that it was the way of thy brother and
+abhorred of the Roman?  Servest thou Vitellius or Jehovah?'  It is not
+told abroad among the people what answer was given, what further asked,
+except that the chastening of the heretics was continued unabated,
+until all Judea was cleansed.  And yesterday, Saul was given letters to
+Jews in Syria, permitting him to carry his examinations into Damascus
+and--"
+
+"Damascus!" Marsyas cried, seizing the rabbi's arm.
+
+"Yes; and to bring the offenders to Jerusalem for trial."
+
+"Is he gone?" Marsyas demanded in a terrible voice.
+
+"He passed out of the Damascus Gate at sunset last night."
+
+"Come!  Go with me!  Let us overtake him!  He shall not go on!"
+
+"For revenge, Marsyas?" Eleazar asked mildly, but with reproof in his
+eyes.
+
+"To cut him off from desolating me wholly!" Marsyas declared.
+
+Eleazar looked away over the hollows and gentler hills covered with
+houses, toward the summit of Olivet, golden in the sun.
+
+"Then I shall not dissuade thee, Marsyas; but I can not go with thee,"
+he said.
+
+"Why?" Marsyas demanded, with a flush of feeling.
+
+"I have suffered from oppression in the name of the Lord; it is the
+Lord's will.  I have changed in the days of my misfortunes."
+
+Marsyas came close to him.
+
+"Art thou a Nazarene, Eleazar?" he asked in a low tone.
+
+"Nay, I am a good Jew, a better Jew, for I have become a Jew, again,
+through understanding."
+
+But Marsyas was not willing to wait for the rabbi's philosophy; he
+moved restlessly as he stood, and finally put forth his hand to say
+farewell, but Eleazar held it.
+
+"Wait, but a moment," he said, "and let me speak.  Thou sayest thou
+wouldst secure thyself from devastation at the Pharisee's hands; since
+nothing can stop Saul, and nothing stop thee, there is death at the end
+of thy doing.  I do not know what moves thee now; perchance it is more
+than the vow sworn to avenge Stephen.  But thou goest to help thyself;
+and--to assist in convincing the heathen that Israel is an oppressor in
+the name of God!"
+
+"It is!" Marsyas cried passionately.
+
+But the rabbi went on patiently.
+
+"I did not go out after Stephen," he continued.  "I was not seen at the
+crucifixion of his Prophet.  I do not urge bloodshed or urge on the
+work of Saul of Tarsus.  So, who is Israel, O son of a shut house and
+of a hermit brotherhood?  Saul, who knoweth no moderation?  Certain
+feeble and forward speakers in the synagogues, whom even an apostate
+could overthrow in argument?  Or the witnesses whom they suborned in
+revenge?  Say, be these Israel, or Gamaliel who discountenanced the
+persecution?  Or the people among whom the minions of the High Priest
+Jonathan went cautiously to arrest the fathers of the Nazarene faith,
+lest the people stone the Shoterim?  Forget not, brother, that our
+lofty are the friends of Rome; our lowly, tributaries of Rome; our
+chief priests, dependent upon Rome--and the greater Israel is the
+unheard, the unrecorded, the unpampered, the innocent!"
+
+"But is it not just, then, that Saul be overtaken, who hath cast
+obloquy on Israel, having shed innocent blood and made Judea to be fled
+by the righteous?"
+
+"Defendest thou the innocent of Israel, Marsyas?"
+
+"By the Lord, the innocent!"
+
+"Wouldst trouble thyself, had the doom fallen on others, instead of
+thine own, Marsyas?"
+
+The young man frowned and made no answer.
+
+"I shall not answer for thee," Eleazar went on, "but thou and the world
+accuse the innocent of Israel, when contempt is cast upon the race, as
+an entirety.  But the slander of Israel hath been accomplished, even
+before Saul, and ye may not run down a lie.  So thou and I and our kind
+have the hard task of upholding the glory of the people, a labor from
+which there can be no let nor easement!  The multitude which crowns
+to-day and crucifies to-morrow establishes no standard.  But they are
+witnesses to the evil-speaking of the enemy; they are a slander which
+may not be denied.  If thou join thyself with them, Marsyas, for thine
+own ends, in that much thou ungirdest Israel!"
+
+"Brother, Saul of Tarsus consented unto the death of Stephen, and
+despoiled me of my one love, as an Essene; he proceedeth, now, against
+my beloved, as a man of the world!  I can not wait on conscience and
+the welfare of Judea.  She will not defend mine own; wherefore I must
+defend them, at whatever cost!"
+
+Eleazar's face had grown inexpressibly sad during Marsyas' words.  His
+heavily-shaded eyes turned absently away from the speaker.  He seemed
+to see beyond the invincible walls and towers of the Holy City, even
+beyond the olive-orchards and the meeting of the earth and sky, into
+the time which would come out of the east.
+
+Perhaps he saw waste and desolate places, lands of destruction and
+captives of the mighty, dregs of the cup of trembling and dregs of the
+cup of fury and the hostility of all nations.  The sadness in his eyes
+became fixed.
+
+"Verily," he said, as if speaking of his own visions, "thou art a God
+that hidest thyself, O God of Israel!"
+
+Marsyas heard him with a stir of emotion in his soul.  He put out his
+hand to the rabbi.
+
+"If I and my like be wrong, thou shall prevail, when the day of the
+just man comes, in the Lord's time!"
+
+"He called us His chosen people," Eleazar continued, suffering Marsyas
+to take his hand unnoticed, "even the appointed people, the marked
+people!  Marked for His own purposes, how hidden!  But what knows the
+clay of the potter's intent that passes it through fire?  Chastening or
+vengeance, woe, woe unto them, by whom it cometh!"
+
+He turned away, and Marsyas looked after him until the narrow winding
+streets had obscured him.
+
+Quickly then Marsyas continued toward the Gennath Gate; reared to the
+Essenic habit of traveling without preparation, he was ready to journey
+from city to city in the dress he wore on the streets.
+
+He went by the cenotaph of Mariamne, past Phasælus, past the Prætorium,
+out of the gate, past the might of Hippicus, and on to the parting of
+the road, where he took the way to Damascus.
+
+Presently he met a horseman and, stopping the traveler, bought without
+parley the beast, and mounted it.  He knew that Saul would proceed by
+the slow mule, and the forbidden, nobler animal, the horse, would soon
+make up the distance the Pharisee had gained.
+
+So, without relaxing from his fever of determination, Marsyas sped on
+toward Damascus.
+
+He knew that the hour had come!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+ON THE DAMASCUS ROAD
+
+With the solid soil of the ancient Roman road beneath his horse's feet,
+Marsyas rode north, between the hills of Judea, with the head of Mt.
+Ephraim before him.  The early morning of the second day broke over
+him, fresh on the long straight road, leading over the border into
+Samaria, past the Well of Jacob, and through the city of Samaria.  At
+noon the third day he turned at the parting of the ways, and rode east,
+along the southern edge of the Plains of Esdraelon, until, through a
+crevice in the hills, he saw the Jordan sparkling in its valley below.
+It was an old familiar way, thence, north once more, fording a hundred
+mountain brooks that fed the river of the Holy Land.  The narrow
+fertile strip that lay between the hills and waters of the Sea of
+Galilee, unto Tiberias, he accomplished after night.  At dawn he
+entered Magdala, at mid-morning Capernaum, and, leaving the margin of
+the beautiful lake, he passed north into the rocks, ridges and forests
+once more.  Through marshes and sedge, with the waters of the Jordan in
+the heart of it, he forded the south arm of Lake Huleh and entered
+Itrurea.
+
+The country changed but the road did not.  It was still the same
+compact ribbon of stone and soil in the marsh as it was in the hills,
+as it was in the fertile lowlands.  Ahead of him, through the hills it
+stretched, through the oaks of Bashan, under cliffs surmounted by
+castles, or hillsides marked by temples.  And when the oaks left off,
+and the hills fell back and the streams dried into dead, sapless beds
+watered only by infrequent rains, the road continued on.
+
+The fifth dawn, he rode down a pass, through a rocky defile, and the
+Syrian desert was before him.
+
+He had bought provisions for two days' journey at the last village in
+the fertile lands; his horse was freshened after a night's feeding on
+the herbage in the hills, and Marsyas' heart was resolute.
+
+Even the road no longer led him on, but he touched his horse with his
+hand and passed into the wilderness.
+
+At a huddle of huts for goat-tenders, he found that Saul and his party
+had passed at noon the day previous.  The Arabs there besought him to
+remain until the evening, for none traveled under a Syrian noonday and
+escaped evil consequences.  But Marsyas wrapped his head in his mantle,
+watered his horse and pressed on.  He had no time to lose.
+
+The Antilibanus, a glaring ridge of chalk, heightened at intervals into
+peaks that held up their blistering cold winds from the heat-blasted
+day, and swept them down by night to confound the stunned earth with
+ice.  The shale from their easternmost slopes sprawled out on the
+desert and scarred it with rock and gravel until the blowing sands
+buried it.  Far to the east, the lap of the desert dropped down into
+emptiness, marked by a level of intervening atmosphere.  Beyond that
+were bald hills outlined against the horizon.
+
+Between was a cruel waste, tufted here and there by gray-green, scrubby
+growth, half-buried in sand and rooted in gravel.  There was color, but
+it was the dye of chemicals, not refractions; chalks, not rainbows.
+The drop of water has only the true range of the spectrum and its
+merging grades, but sands may be erratic, chaotic.  Thus, the wadies,
+sallow meanderings in the trembling distance, were bordered with dull
+fawn and dull lavender--ashes of scarlet and purple; wherever hummocks
+arose there were ground-swells of lifeless gray and saffron--burned-out
+blue and gold.  Over it all were sown burnished fleckings of myriads of
+mica particles, like white-hot motes from the face of the sun itself.
+The air was flame; the sky a livid arch that no man dared look upon.
+
+At high noon, Marsyas hid from the deadly sun in a crevice in a narrow
+canyon; but pressed on while yet the scorching air burned his nostrils.
+At night, he rode through bitter winds, or broke his fast with the inky
+outlines of jackals squatting about the rim of the immediate landscape.
+He met no man, and had no desire for companionship with the burden of
+his stern thoughts to attend him.
+
+He did not have the murderer's heart in him; he did not go forward in a
+whirl of passion and fury; it did not once occur to him to ambush the
+Tarsian; he did not ponder on a plan of action when the moment should
+arrive; not once did he strike the fatal blow, in his imagination, nor
+speak with Saul, nor follow himself after the deed was done.  His ideas
+were largely in retrospect, or centered upon the necessity of his work.
+His love of Lydia, his love of life, his natural impulses toward
+generous things were put away from him with firmness, as things which
+had no place at such a time.  His composure was almost resignation.  He
+knew then, that which he had never been able to understand,--how men of
+great souls and previous noble lives could in all calmness kill another
+by design.
+
+A glittering white ridge had shaped itself out of the pale blue sky of
+an early morning, while yet he rode in the hills.  It was Hermon, with
+the unmelted snows of the winter covering its crown.  Opposite it, he
+came upon another miserable cluster of hovels, the abode of pestilence,
+want and superstition, and there found that Saul had passed through the
+village at high noon that day.  Marsyas purchased water for his horse
+and rode on.  Saul was now only a half-day's journey ahead of him.
+
+He had come far, without rest.  Even now, with the crisis of his long
+journey at hand, he labored under prostrating weariness and a torturing
+desire to sleep.  He had periods of mental blankness from which he
+aroused with a start.  But as the night's cold deepened, after the day
+of withering heat, the sharp change added to the weakening influences.
+He meditated on the Feast of Junia and the succession of Classicus,
+until his body became a column finishing the front of Agrippa's palace,
+at which a mob at Baiæ threw stones.  He flinched, and the night on the
+desert of Syria passed across his vision once more.  But it was good to
+lie down on the couch at the triclinum of Caligula, restful, indeed, if
+it were sinful.  But not for long, because Lydia was beside him, and he
+spent hours imploring her to give up Jove and pour libations to Jehovah
+instead, for since Saul of Tarsus was Cæsar, she would be chained to a
+soldier under sentence in the Prætorium.  Even now there approached a
+decurion with manacles thrown over his shoulder!
+
+Again, he saw the drooping head of his horse before him in the dark,
+the pallid stretch of sand, and felt the sweep of harsh winds on his
+face.
+
+But Lollia Paulina had laid her sesterces on this worn-out animal, when
+she knew that Cneius Domitius' horses were the best in the Circus!  Why
+did the woman insist on sitting with him, when she wanted so much to be
+with the Roman?  But nobody was good.  Even Stephen had died in heresy,
+and Lydia, for whom he had lost his soul, was an apostate!  The
+multitude had her!  Classicus turned his back upon her!  Flaccus stood
+within twenty paces of her and leveled a pilum at her breast!  And Saul
+bound his arms!  Help!  Mercy--
+
+But a brambly desert shrub had caught at his garments, and its sharp
+dead thorns had pierced him.
+
+The next mid-morning he rode up a chalky ridge and saw the picture that
+had brought praise to the lips of the prophets of despair, when Israel
+was a captive with no hope.
+
+It was a vale so enchanting, so perfect, so golden that he doubted his
+eyes and feared that it was an unreality the desert had fashioned to
+lure him on to destruction--or another but kindlier dream.
+
+Yellow roadways, slender and winding, wandered hither and thither
+through emerald oceans of young grain, past ancient vineyards and
+orchards of olives, and citrons, and groves of walnuts.  Yonder was a
+cluster of palms, pilasters of silver with feathery capitals, and under
+it was builded a little town--a hive of soft-colored houses, half
+smothered in delicate green.
+
+Beyond, the roads spread out again, from their convergence in the
+little settlement, and ran abroad once more between hedges of roses and
+oleanders, across the River Pharbar, curving midway across the vale
+like a simitar dropped in the green, through crowding gardens, among
+low-lying roofs, past spreading villas of the rich, on to a glittering
+vision of towers, walls, cupolas, white as frost on the head of Mount
+Tabor in the morning.
+
+At his feet was Caucabe the Star; in the distance was Damascus.
+
+Marsyas drew up his jaded horse and looked, not at the beauty of the
+scene, for he did not wish to see it now, but down the roads.  Over
+every yellow ribbon his gaze passed until, beyond the limits of the
+white-towered town, he saw a cluster of small moving figures.
+
+"O rememberer of no wrongs," he said to his horse, "only a little way
+and thou shall rest and I shall rest!"
+
+He pressed on, past Caucabe the Star, down the hedges of roses between
+the emerald oceans of young grain and the odorous shade of orchards.
+
+The sun climbed higher, more heated, more merciless; the oleanders gave
+up their fast fragrance until the night fell again; the vineyards
+curled, leaf by leaf, the young grain drooped and wilted, the orchards
+pent in the heat under their boughs, the yellow roads became streaks of
+brass and the tyrant of the desert stood at its meridian.
+
+Another stadium, and Marsyas drew up his horse sharply.
+
+Sixty paces ahead was a wayside pool, overshadowed by tall trees--an
+irresistible invitation to the traveler seeking refuge from the sun.  A
+lean, bowed figure in rabbinical robes stood beside a mule that drank
+of the spring.  Half a dozen men in the garments of Levites stood by
+their own beasts with rein in hand while they drank.
+
+Marsyas felt in his belt for his knife, and curbing his thirsty horse
+lowered down on Saul of Tarsus.  In his association with hardy pagans,
+athletæ and the exquisite Herod, he had in a measure forgotten the
+feebleness of Saul.
+
+"He is weak!" he said to himself.  "But what mercy hath he shown the
+weak?"
+
+He recalled the terrible desert, remembered that Saul had sworn to
+bring back the Nazarenes to Jerusalem for trial--back across that
+empire of death!  And Lydia, gentle and without hardihood, against whom
+he could not bear to think of the wind blowing strongly, was to go that
+way!
+
+The Levites watched the Pharisee narrowly; one of them, whom Marsyas
+recognized as Joel, made tentative movements toward unpacking the
+supplies from one of the burden-bearing beasts.  But the Pharisee drew
+up the bridle of his mule and led it to the roadside toward a stone by
+which he could mount.  The eyes of the Levites followed him in a
+troubled manner, and Joel sat down as if to show that he believed the
+rabbi would not proceed in the noon.
+
+"Up!" said Saul calmly, "we shall continue to Damascus."
+
+The troubled Levites stared at him, and Joel presently objected:
+
+"But--but it is the noon!  And the heat is cruel!"
+
+"We can proceed, nevertheless," was the reply.
+
+The stupefied Levite stumbled to his feet, and the party led their
+beasts out into the sun.  Marsyas with a fierce word dismounted and
+strode toward them.
+
+At his second step he faltered.  Silence dropped upon the blazing plain
+of Damascus--silence so sudden, so absolute that his footfall startled
+him.  He saw that the movement of Saul's party had been arrested.  Arm
+lifted, or foot put forward, stayed in the attitude.  The utter
+stillness seized them as a commanding hand.  Then all the noon grew
+dim, not from the abatement of the sun's light, but by the coming of a
+radiance infinitely brighter.  Descending from above, instantly
+intensifying as if the source that shed it approached as fast as stars
+move, a single ray, purer than the glitter on Mount Hermon, and more
+inscrutable than the face of the Syrian sun, stood among them.
+
+Its presence was not violent but all-compelling.  The group at the pool
+fell down in the dust and lay still.
+
+Silence such as never before and never again lay on the plain of
+Damascus, brooded about them.
+
+Out of it a single voice issued, low, trembling, filled with fear and
+reverence.  It was Saul of Tarsus, speaking:
+
+"Who art Thou, Lord?"
+
+Presently he spoke again, eagerly, humbly, and still afraid:
+
+"Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"
+
+[Illustration: "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" (missing from
+book)]
+
+After a long time, the hot breeze made a whispering sound in the sand
+of the roadway; the leaves in the hedge at hand stirred and fluttered.
+Joel, the boldest of the Levites, cautiously raised his head, and
+presently got upon his feet.  His fellows, taking heart, rose, one by
+one.
+
+A young stranger in the robes of an Essene was kneeling among them with
+large dark eyes fixed in pity upon Saul.
+
+The rabbi had made an attempt to raise himself, but had paused
+transfixed.  Humility made an actual light on his forehead; his pinched
+features were stunned with helplessness.
+
+The terrified Levites crept closer to one another, but Joel finally wet
+his dry lips and spoke in a half-whisper:
+
+"Rabbi?"
+
+There was no answer in words, but slow tears rose, brimmed over the
+lids and crept down the sun-burned hollow cheeks.
+
+The young stranger came quickly and knelt beside the rabbi and laid a
+kindly hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Brother Saul?" he whispered.
+
+The face of the rabbi came round, but the gaze missed its mark and
+wandered over the men about him.  There was no vision in the eyes.
+
+"He is blind!" a Levite whispered.
+
+The young stranger slipped the hand from the shoulder around the bowed
+figure, and, supporting Saul in his arm, looked down with infinite
+sorrow and concern at the darkened eyes.
+
+"We will abide here," he said at last, to the Levites, "until the noon
+passeth."
+
+The Levites looked in a little fear at the spot where they had been so
+mysteriously overwhelmed, but Marsyas lifted Saul and bore him back
+into the shade he had left to continue unto Damascus.
+
+All of his own passion and purpose had been swept away, leaving his
+mind to the tenantry of the sweetest content he had ever known.  Though
+he had seen no man nor heard a voice, he knew that the Lord had visited
+Saul, and that the eye of the Lord beheld Saul's work.
+
+After that reverent translation of the supernatural event, he troubled
+himself no more concerning the vision.
+
+Absolute relief possessed his soul; rest of spirit so all-comprehensive
+that it strengthened his body, peace so whole that it bordered on
+gladness, and confidence, new, delicious and simple, embraced all his
+being.  The old restless ambition was so stilled and soothed that it
+seemed to have been fulfilled; the old Essenic cynicism that had
+slandered all the world, tinctured his friendships with distrust and
+his love with fear, was dissipated like a distorting illusion; his
+hates, his thirst for revenge, his impatience with the deliberation of
+God, and his self-dependence were things unremembered.  He did not
+understand his change and did not seek after its meaning; his feelings
+did not even hark back to the old love for Saul.  Pity and filial
+solicitude, sensations that on a time he could not have believed
+possible as shown to Saul, made the strength of his arm gentle and his
+service reverential.  He thought now of Lydia, with worshipful,
+marvelous homage, as if his soul knelt to her.  He had ceased to be
+afraid for her or to fear that he would not find her.  Everything good
+became possible; the prospering of virtue, the fidelity of Agrippa, the
+prevention of Flaccus and the favor of Cæsar, even the restoration of
+his beloved, seemed to be things absolutely assured.
+
+He did not say these things to himself; they were simple convictions
+that made themselves felt in a tender blending which amounted to
+perfect waiting on the Lord.
+
+He did not know that his face had become beautiful, or that Joel looked
+askance at him or that the other Levites wondered if he had come to
+them in the great light.  So when the sun stood three hours above the
+horizon, he raised Saul from the shade of the walnut grove and passed
+on to Damascus.
+
+The golden haze reddened over the glorious Damascene plain, the
+distance became obscured; the purple triumphed; then the royal color
+over the world began to run out into plum shades, and the sudden night
+came up from the east.
+
+But before this hour at one of the north gates of Damascus, the halting
+group of Levites, the stricken man among them, and the silent, kindly
+young stranger appeared before Aretas' wiry black Arab sentry that held
+that post.
+
+They did not know the ways of the Pearl of the Orient, and they wished
+to find Via Recta--Straight Street.  There Judas, a Pharisee of wealth
+and power, expected to entertain Saul.
+
+Though the Cæsars possessed the city's fealty, exacted tribute,
+installed Jupiter in the temples and the eagle on its standard, it was
+still the dominion of Rimmon, vassal of Nimrud, high place of the sons
+of Uz.  It had submitted to Alexander of Macedon as placidly as it
+suffered the wolfish Roman, who would pass, likewise.  It notched its
+calendar by the rise and fall of nations, and marked its days by the
+sway of kings.  It had propitiated Time, hence there was no death for
+Damascus; it steeped itself in the oils of the Orient and so was spiced
+against decay.  There were Romanized colonnades along the streets, but
+the winged bulls of the dromoes, the stucco-work and the tiles, the
+swaying of carpets from balconies obscured their influence.  Architects
+of Cæsar's extravagances scowled at the giant structures that were old
+in Baalbec's time and looked their defeat; Chaldean philosophers
+contemplated the trenches worn in the rock pavements by the feet of men
+and held their peace; olives, as old as Troy, cast their leaves down on
+the heads of Greeks who shook them off impatiently, but the sons of
+Abraham could point to a mound of clay and say: "This was a temple
+which our father builded unto God, before you all!"
+
+The Jewish tincture had never been abated even, much less worked out.
+
+Therefore, as the agitated travelers from Jerusalem passed through the
+gate they went with their own kind by legions.  The slow mule was
+there, outnumbering the Arab's troops of horses, which were mettled,
+nervous creatures, caparisoned like kings; there were Israel's camels,
+bearing howdahs, rich as thrones; tall stalking dromedaries in tasseled
+housings and tinkling harnesses, passing as ships pass over
+ground-swells, with undulations dizzying in their ease; and these,
+mounted by the sons of Abraham, were more in number than the Hindu
+palanquins, Roman lecticæ, Greek litters, and Gentiles afoot.
+
+Marsyas glanced about for the eye of a citizen whom he might approach
+and ask his way, but the turmoil for the moment confused him.  Into the
+gate or out of it passed wealthy travelers, faring in state; itinerant
+merchants; squads of Aretas' soldiery, and through and among these,
+eddying and swarming, shouting, hurrying and trading were venders,
+beggars, carriers, slaves, citizens, Jews in gowns, Arabs in burnooses,
+Greeks in chitons, Romans in tunics, idlers, actors, scribes, notaries,
+priests and magistrates--of twenty nationalities, of every rank and age.
+
+Marsyas met face to face a Pharisee of erect and imposing figure, with
+flowing beard and aggressive features, who drew his spotless linen
+draperies away from contact with the ceremonially unclean horde at the
+gate.  The man had stopped and was gazing from his commanding height
+over the rush of pilgrims flowing into the walls of Damascus.
+
+Marsyas approached him.
+
+"I seek Judas, a Pharisee, which dwelleth in Straight Street!"
+
+"I am he," the Pharisee interrupted, examining the young man for some
+familiar feature which might justify the Essene's initiatory.
+
+"Thou art well-met, sir; we bring unto thee, thy guest, Saul of Tarsus,
+stricken by a vision on the roads and blind!"
+
+"Even am I here, awaiting him," the Pharisee exclaimed.  "Thou bringest
+me evil tidings!  Lead me to him, I pray thee."
+
+The Levites stood with Saul outside the path of the exit to the
+gateway, and Marsyas led Judas to the stricken rabbi.  Hebrew servants
+followed respectfully after their master.
+
+"Brother Saul," Marsyas said, "I bring thee thy host; he will care for
+thee."
+
+The sightless eyes of the rabbi turned toward the speaker, and Marsyas
+thought that a shadow crossed the forehead.
+
+"Woe is me!" Judas exclaimed, "that thou shouldst come thus afflicted,
+brother!  But perchance the vision was a blessing on thee!"
+
+"He does not speak," Marsyas explained.  "I do not belong to his party.
+I joined them to offer aid."
+
+"Then the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob reward thee," Judas
+said.  He signed to his servants, who brought forward a litter in which
+Judas had meant his guest should proceed to Straight Street.  Saul was
+lifted into it; Judas climbed in beside him; the servants shouldered
+the litter, and, with the Levites following, bore it away into the city.
+
+Marsyas looked after it until the narrow ways between the high
+unsightly mud walls hid it.
+
+Then he put his hands together and smiled.
+
+"The Nazarene bade me ask for Ananias!" he whispered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+IN THE HOUSE OF ANANIAS
+
+But Ananias was a favorite name among the Jews of Damascus.  Weariness
+and the desire for slumber after inquiries which brought him twenty
+diverse directions, sent Marsyas to a khan when the night was old, and
+Lydia still unfound.
+
+The next morning after refreshing and untroubled sleep, he began to
+search for Ananias, carefully withholding the explanation that the
+Ananias he sought was a Nazarene, out of an impulse to protect the
+protector of his beloved.
+
+He found Ananias, the wine-merchant, and Ananias, the tanner, banished
+to the outskirts of the city, because of his unclean trade; and
+Ananias, the priest; and Ananias who was a native of Antioch and of
+mixed blood, but unalterably a Jew; and Ananias, who was a soldier,
+drafted into garrison service by Aretas, who had taken the city from
+Antipas; and Ananias, the steward of Sidon who had robbed his master
+and was now too rich and powerful to be punished; and Ananias, who was
+a reader in the Synagogue.  And for two other days, he sought Ananiases
+patiently and with pathetic hope.
+
+At sunset on the fourth day, he saw a woman meet another woman in the
+street, and between the two there passed a communication with the
+fingers.  To others, not associated with Nazarenes, the sign meant
+nothing, but Marsyas caught the motion and his heart leaped.
+
+It was the sign of the cross!
+
+He overtook the woman who had passed him.
+
+"I pray thee, friend," he said in a low voice, "canst thou tell me
+where Ananias, the Nazarene, dwelleth?"
+
+The woman raised, a pair of calm gray eyes to his face.  She was a
+Greek and fair, and her forehead was as placid as a lake in a calm.
+
+"Art thou his friend?" she asked, with a touch of the caution acquired
+by the unhappy.
+
+"I am a friend to many who have departed into the Nazarene way," he
+said.  "I shall not betray him."
+
+"Seest the house built upon the wall," she said simply, "that hath the
+white gate, at the end of the street?"
+
+Marsyas assented.
+
+"Knock," she said.
+
+He blessed her with a look and hurried down the darkening passage.
+
+With trembling hands, he rapped on the whitewashed gate, set deep in
+the thick clay wall, and presently the door swung open.
+
+A woman in the house-dress of a servant stood there; behind her was a
+walk lined with white stones; cooing pigeons were disappearing into a
+cupola on the house within; an ipomoea, pallid with bloom, shaded the
+step; irises were pushing through the rich mold just inside the gate.
+There was the rainy rustling of leaves from the olive trees at the
+property wall on each side.  And there was a seat of tamarind with
+fallen leaves upon it.
+
+"Does Ananias, the Nazarene, dwell here?" Marsyas asked with a tremor
+in his voice.  Whither had his courage departed?
+
+"Enter," the woman said.
+
+Marsyas stepped over the threshold of the white gate, that was latched
+behind him against opening from the outside, and followed the woman
+toward the bower of ipomoea.
+
+Within a hall, lighted by a single taper, she gave him a seat, and
+disappeared through a door at the end of the room.  A moment later, the
+tall spare figure of the pastor of Ptolemais and of Rhacotis emerged
+from the interior.
+
+Marsyas sprang up, but no sound came to his lips.  He clasped his hands
+and gazed with pitiful eyes upon the Nazarene.
+
+Without pausing for the formality of a greeting, after the first
+movement of surprise, Ananias reopened the door that he had closed
+behind him and signed to the young man to pass in.
+
+Marsyas stood in a large chamber, with a spot of light in its center
+under a hanging lamp.  There, with her head bright under the rays, sat
+Lydia.
+
+Her face was toward him when he entered.  She flung down the skein of
+wool she was winding and sprang up.  But the look on Marsyas' face
+arrested her cry.  One glance of supreme examination and her large eyes
+kindled with sudden triumph.  She came to him as if more than distance
+between them and danger had been overcome.  Marsyas swept her into his
+arms and folded her to his heart.
+
+"No more, no more!" he was saying, "from this time for ever more mine
+own!"
+
+Trembling and smiling, while tears perfect as pearls glittered on her
+lashes, she put her arms about his neck and drew his head down to her.
+
+"O my Marsyas," she cried, "better to die in the light of thy trust
+than to live in thy love without it!  Blessed, thrice blessed the hour
+which gave me both!"
+
+"O my Lydia, thou anointest me with thy forgiveness, and clothest me in
+the holy garment of thy love!  Blessed am I and consecrated!"
+
+"I believed in thy wisdom, love!"
+
+"I had no wisdom but love!"
+
+"The Lord heard me, my Marsyas, for I was near mine extremity, and I
+could not have endured much longer!"
+
+"I had reached my extremity, Lydia, and then the Lord gave me His hand."
+
+She turned him toward the light, and gazed up at his eyes with such
+earnestness, such penetration on her almost infantile face, that he
+pressed her closer to him and laughed a low laugh.  Her eyes flashed on
+him a light of new interest.
+
+"I never heard thee laugh till now!" she exclaimed.
+
+"I never was happy till now!"
+
+"Why now, and not before?" she asked.
+
+There was silence; he could not tell her why he had changed, but he
+could tell what had marked it.
+
+He led her to the chair she had left, and when she had sat, dropped at
+her feet and crossed his arms upon her lap.
+
+"Listen, and when I have done, know that the Lord loved us, and hath
+joined us with His own hands."
+
+Beginning at the time when he turned to find her gone from the reader's
+stone before the Synagogue in Alexandria, he told with simple
+directness of his wanderings, of his disappointments, of his growing
+fear that he would not save her from Saul.  He had her follow him to
+the Temple, where he met Eleazar and received the dire news that Saul
+had departed for Damascus; and thence along the old Roman road through
+the length of the Holy Land, up past his native hills and the waters of
+the Sea of Galilee, and the marshes of Lake Huleh, into the desert, and
+on to the beginning of the beneficence of the Pharbar and the Abana,
+until he brought up within sixty paces of Saul at the wayside pool.
+All these things she heard with the sympathetic interest which had won
+him to her from the talk in the dawn on the housetop in Alexandria.
+But when he came to the supernatural visit of the great light, and the
+prostration of Saul and his own arising a man of subdued and sweetened
+nature, her eyes shone with a repressed excitement that was not usual
+in her.
+
+"Naught but a miracle could have stopped me then; naught but the same
+interference could turn me again into the old way!"
+
+She lifted his face and spoke to him with deep seriousness.
+
+"Didst thou hear what the Spirit said?" she asked.
+
+"We heard nothing, except Saul's words, which I told thee."
+
+"And did Saul make thee a promise that he would persecute no more, or
+beg thy compassion or thy forgiveness for his work against thy Stephen?"
+
+"He did not speak; he did not know me, for he was blind, and as one in
+a trance!"
+
+"And thou hast withdrawn thy hand from him, and forsworn thine oath
+against him?"
+
+"I have done that thing, Lydia."
+
+She held fast to her composure, but her face was transfigured.
+
+"Wherein art thou different, then, from the Nazarenes of Ptolemais who
+showed thee their doctrine of peace, and refused thee when thou wouldst
+have hurled them against Saul?" she asked.
+
+For a moment there was silence.  Then he arose on his knees and raising
+his hands clasped them on his breast, while the splendor of a divine
+enlightenment shone in his eyes.
+
+"I know who came unto us there," he whispered.  "It was the Christ!"
+
+She laid her fluttering palms over his clasped hands and held them
+there, while each in his heart kept the silence, which, in such a
+moment, is prayer.
+
+Then Marsyas withdrew a hand and took from the folds of his garment the
+little red cedar crucifix, and, kissing it, put it into her hands.  The
+red cord was still attached to it, and, with solemnity on her face, she
+laid it about his neck and blessed him.
+
+When the ecstasy of exaltation had passed away, for they were young and
+the spirit of human love was strong between them, Lydia bade him
+listen, while she told him one other surprising thing.
+
+"At the command of a heavenly vision, Ananias went this day unto the
+house of Judas the Pharisee, and into the darkened chamber, where Saul
+lay, blind and dumb.  And by the gift of the Lord Jesus, Ananias laid
+his hands on Saul's head, and the blind man straightway had his sight.
+So he arose and followed Ananias unto this house--"
+
+"Here?" Marsyas cried.
+
+"Unto this house, where, when he had broken fast and taken strength, he
+stood up and glorified Jesus of Nazareth, and received baptism unto the
+Church of the Nazarenes whom he persecuted hitherto unto death!"
+
+Marsyas was silent.  More than wonder filled his heart.  Presently he
+said, as if speaking to himself:
+
+"Is this thine hour, O my martyred Stephen?  Art thou content?
+Sleepest thou the better, knowing that I have followed thy testament
+for Saul, rather than mine own oath against him?"
+
+Lydia left his communings unanswered, but when he put his hands over
+his face and laid his head in her lap, her own tears fell with his.
+Feeling presently her touch on his hair, he raised his head to take the
+hand.
+
+"Give it to me, my love," he said, "for it hath shaped my life anew,
+pointed me to the way that even the sacred dead would have me walk, and
+the joy and the comfort of all time to come lieth in the hollow of it!
+Let me serve it, now!"
+
+"And thou wilt not regret the peace of En-Gadi, in the world that can
+not fail to be troublous, some time?" she asked, but with the smile of
+one who does not fear the answer.
+
+"I owe En-Gadi a debt," he said, "for the brethren were as father and
+mother to me when I had neither.  Its teaching and its practices are
+pure, and its peace is good for them who fear the world.  But with the
+help of Him who made thee strong and Stephen fearless, I shall not want
+pent-in walls to be happy and upright."
+
+"Let Ananias teach thee, my love; let Saul show thee his heart; and
+then--"
+
+"Send us back unto Alexandria, with the faith of Christ on our lips and
+the peace of His love in our hearts.  Tell me that I may go with thee,
+Lydia!"
+
+"I have been waiting for thee since the day we met in the Judean hills."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+THE REQUITAL
+
+On the third day after his arrival in Jerusalem, Herod the king was in
+his privy cabinet arranging, with his own hands, the graven gems and
+articles of virtu, prizes brought from his trip to Antioch.  The door
+was dubiously opened, and Agrippa, without turning his head, knew who
+stood there, for only one in the palace had been commanded to enter the
+king's presence without announcement.
+
+"Well, Silas?" Agrippa said, contemplating the elusive tints of a jade
+goblet.
+
+The old man pulled at the gorgeous uniform of master of horse, that
+hung from the peasant shoulders and answered:
+
+"A friend of thy unfortunate days is without."
+
+Agrippa's brows lifted and drew toward each other in a manner
+half-amused, half-vexed.
+
+"The friends of my unfortunate days are the friends of my fortunate
+days; wherefore, they would liefer be known as friends of Agrippa the
+king, than of Agrippa the bankrupt.  Give them their due and call them
+the king's companions.  And Silas?"
+
+"Yes, lord."
+
+"The king would as lief forget that he ever had a misfortune."
+
+Silas looked perplexed and rubbed his forehead.
+
+"But who is it that stands without?" Agrippa continued.
+
+"The Essene."
+
+"What!  Marsyas?  By the Nymphae--beshrew me!  By the beard of Balaam,
+I shall be glad to see him!  Fetch him hither!"
+
+Silas nodded in lieu of a bow.
+
+"Lord, there is one with him; shall she enter also?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The alabarch's daughter."
+
+"Nay!  The little Athene!  Terpsichore's best!  Not so; though, by
+Bacch--Balaam! she would be a fit jewel for this place.  It shall be an
+audience hour.  Go, summon the queen, and have the Essene and his
+priestess come to us in our hall!"
+
+The master of horse backed away, but, catching Agrippa's smiling eye,
+turned his back, remembering his privilege, and hurried out, as if he
+expected an arrow between his shoulders.
+
+The king shut down the lid of the shittim-wood chest upon the priceless
+trifles still unpacked, locked it, and said the while to himself:
+
+"The Essene hath heard of the Pharisee Saul's apostasy and hath come to
+demand his punishment of me.  Behold me grant it, with kingly gravity.
+It will attach the extremists to me all the more, for I hear the
+Sicarii are wanting the heretic's blood!  And he fetches the little
+Lysimachus with him!  Aha!  En-Gadi hath lost--that which it never had,
+in truth."
+
+He looked at his hands and at his garments.
+
+"Nay, it will be just as well if the lady sees me looking my best!"
+
+He slammed the door of his cabinet behind him, locked it and hurried
+away in the direction of the royal wardrobe.
+
+In an hour he ascended the dais in robes of purple velvet with the
+Pharisee fringes in gold.  Cypros, filled with pleasurable
+anticipations, was beside him in the garments that Mariamne had worn.
+The king cast an eye over the carpeting, the canopy and the gorgeous
+dressing of his throne and said to Cypros:
+
+"Perpol! the place reeks with the smell of newness!  But be not
+conscious of it!  Perchance none will guess that the hands of the
+upholsterers are still warm on the fabric."
+
+The genuflexions of the series of attendants at the archway and beyond
+marked the coming of Marsyas and Lydia.  A Jewish chamberlain within
+the hall bent to the pavement and announced to the king that his
+visitors approached.  Agrippa relaxed even more comfortably in his
+throne and let his scepter fall into his lap.  But Cypros, more
+conscious of her debt to those who visited her now than of her state,
+smiled and moved forward and looked down the long chamber for the first
+glimpse of them.
+
+But it was not the Marsyas and the Lydia she had expected to see.  Even
+to one of her unready perceptions, the change upon the two was
+strangely marked.
+
+They came side by side, both in the simple white garments of the
+ceremonially clean, but Marsyas' head was uncovered and Lydia's locks
+were wholly unbound, after the custom of Jewish brides.  Within a few
+paces of the throne-dais they stopped.  With all her former grace,
+Lydia sank to her knees, but Marsyas, after the oriental salaam, stood
+beside her.
+
+Cypros, with her eyes shining, and after an eager glance at her lord,
+arose and stepped to the edge of the dais.  Then Agrippa got up, with
+his purple trailing effectively, and came down from his high seat, and
+approached his guests.
+
+"It is the one pain of mine exaltation," he said as he extended his
+arms to Marsyas, "that mine old loves believe that they must approach
+me now with humility."
+
+"Yet they no less expect that thou wilt raise them," Marsyas said,
+returning the king's embrace.
+
+Agrippa lifted Lydia to her feet and kissed her.
+
+"There, by my kingdom!" he exclaimed.  "I rejoice at thy wedding for
+the privilege it gives me!  May joy be thy portion, and peace and
+abundance and years be multiplied unto you both!  Evoe! as the heathen
+say!  But for your sanctified atmosphere, I would have the trumpeters
+blow you a fan-fare!"
+
+He handed Lydia to Cypros, who waited almost tearfully.
+
+"Go, let the queen congratulate thee that thou hast wedded an upright
+man in the beginning and saved thyself of the pain of making him
+one--as she had to do!  Come up," he continued to Marsyas, "and sit at
+our feet.  And tell us of yourselves."
+
+With his arm over Marsyas' shoulder, he went back to his dais, and
+sitting, had Marsyas take the guest's chair at his side, while Cypros
+bestowed Lydia on a velvet cushion at her feet.
+
+"So much, so long my story, that I falter at its beginning, as one
+beginning a day's journey at sunset," said Marsyas.
+
+"Thou needest but to essay a beginning; let me lead thee," Agrippa
+observed.  "Let me satisfy the questions in thee, ere I be entertained.
+First, of Flaccus.  I sent messengers to Cæsar from Antioch detailing
+the high offenses of the proconsul, hinting treason against the
+government of the emperor and other charges which excite Caligula most,
+and ere I departed I had from Cæsar's own hand the tidings that a
+centurion had been despatched to Alexandria to arrest Flaccus and bring
+him to Rome for trial.  And the further news, which will raise thee,
+sweet Lydia, to calm content.  The Jews are to be restored their
+rights, the prisoners freed, and better times assured to thy people."
+
+Lydia clasped her hands, and her eyes filled with relief.
+
+"And my father?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+"Especially commended to Cæsar's favor!  The black days for the
+Alexandrian Jews are over, unless Caligula force upon them his pet
+madness that he is a god and amenable to worship."
+
+"Mad, at last!" Marsyas exclaimed.
+
+"Never otherwise," Agrippa answered.  "I hear that he has proclaimed
+Junia to be Athor, and hath set up a white cow in a temple to be
+propitiated in the wanton's name!"
+
+Marsyas looked at the downcast lashes of Lydia and loved her for the
+silence she kept.
+
+"Will she--be--empress?" Cypros faltered, in womanly fear of some
+unknown evil.
+
+Agrippa laughed and dropped his hand meaningly on Marsyas' arm.
+
+"If she should be, here is Marsyas yet to protect me!" he said.  But
+Marsyas did not smile.
+
+"What!" Agrippa cried; "still an Essene?"
+
+"No," said Marsyas, "but the Lord forfend that the woman should ever
+become Augusta!"
+
+"Never fear!  She is too poor.  Caligula, like any other mortal god,
+would prefer a dowry with his consort!  And that, by
+Janus--ah--er--Jacob! brings me up to somewhat relative to our old
+fortune-seeking friend, Classicus."
+
+"But," Marsyas protested with a show of his old-time spirit, "I shall
+not agree that Classicus sought Lydia for her riches alone!"
+
+"The unhappiest remark, the crudest accusation thou didst ever force me
+to defend!" Agrippa exclaimed, glowering at Marsyas.  "Now, how shall I
+convince thy sweet bride that I had not meant that any man could love
+her less than her dowry!"
+
+But Lydia smiled, first at Marsyas and then at the king, and said: "Let
+us hear of Classicus."
+
+The king clapped his hands, and an attendant bowed to the floor in the
+archway.
+
+"Bring hither the letter from Alexandria, which my scribe answereth,"
+Agrippa said.  In a moment a package was put into the king's hands.
+
+He unfolded it carefully.  "It is fragile," he said, "reed
+paper--papyrus, of his own curing, and written with a quill.  Evil days
+for Classicus; but observe, he hath not forgotten the latest fashion in
+folding it.  Listen:
+
+
+"To the Most High and Gracious Prince, Herod Agrippa, King of Judea,
+from his servant and subject, Justin Classicus, the Alexandrian,
+greeting:
+
+"That thou hast come unto thine own, that thou hast triumphed and the
+day of fulfillment hath dawned, that the Jews of the hallowed soil of
+Canaan have again a king from among them, I give thee congratulations
+and God-speed, and offer thanks to the God of our fathers.
+
+"Would to that same God who hath magnified thee, that the sway of thy
+scepter extended unto us, here, in Alexandria.
+
+"Our misfortunes are beyond words.  Particularly am I most unfortunate.
+Because of my friendliness to the alabarch, and subsequent turning upon
+Flaccus in thine own extremity, I am reduced to the utmost poverty,
+having neither food nor raiment beyond that which a faithful freedman
+supplies me out of his own little store.
+
+"Since mine own people are imprisoned within a fourth of their
+territory, nor one permitted to come forth upon pain of dreadful death,
+I can not hope for help from them, much less from the Gentiles, who
+take particular delight in my humiliation.
+
+"In thee I have hope.  I pray thee number me among thy helpless ones
+and give me of thy bounty something to do to clothe and feed me, and
+sufficiently gentle that I may not be proscribed among my kind--"
+
+
+Agrippa broke off and laughed aloud.
+
+"Why read more?  Is it not enough?"
+
+"Enough," Marsyas said slowly.  "But by thy leave, lord, we would know
+what thou wilt say to him."
+
+"A just demand; for thou and not I didst suffer at his hands.  I shall
+tell him that I laid the matter before thee and that thou---"
+
+"Nay, then, lord," Marsyas broke in earnestly, "if thou carest in all
+earnestness for my suggestion, pray let me make it!"
+
+"But I believe that I anticipated it and commanded the answer so to be
+written."
+
+There was a little regretful silence, and Agrippa leaned toward Marsyas.
+
+"What abideth there, Marsyas?" he asked, touching the young man's
+forehead.
+
+After a pause, Marsyas raised his head.
+
+"The full length of mine own story leadeth up to the answer," he said.
+
+"Nay, then, speak!"
+
+Asking permission of Cypros with her eyes, Lydia arose from her place
+on her cushion, and came to Marsyas' side.  He put his arm about her
+and held her hand, and so she stood while he told his story.
+
+Agrippa and Cypros listened with ordinary interest until he began to
+tell of his ride across the desert in pursuit of Saul.  Then Agrippa's
+excitement-loving instincts stirred, and he sat up and contemplated
+Marsyas with arrested attention.
+
+At the sighting of the Pharisee far down the road beyond Caucabe, the
+king's eyes sparkled; when Marsyas rode upon the party at the pool,
+Agrippa's hand on the arm of his throne had clenched.  At Marsyas'
+dismounting and approach, the king muttered under his breath.
+
+"But at that instant," the narrator went on, showing the effects of his
+own story, "a light, such as never before descended upon the earth and
+will not come again until the Prince of Light cometh, stood among us;
+at which we all fell to the ground as though stricken by a thunderbolt!"
+
+Agrippa's brows knitted.
+
+"While we lay, thus unable to move or cry out, Saul spoke and said unto
+the Presence: 'Who art Thou, Lord!' but we heard no answer.  And again
+Saul spoke, as if he had been answered, saying: 'Lord, what is it that
+Thou wouldst have me to do?'  And yet there was silence.  But when we
+took courage and arose, Saul lay on the ground, helpless, blind and
+bereft of speech!"
+
+Agrippa's face showed impatience and astonishment.  This, from the lips
+of so sane a Jew as Marsyas!
+
+"We took him up," Marsyas continued, after a moment's reflection, "and
+led him unto Damascus, and to Judas, the Pharisee, who dwelleth in
+Straight Street.  And there Saul lay for three days.  Throughout that
+time, I sought for Lydia, and at the end of the third day, I found her."
+
+He touched his lips to Lydia's hand.
+
+"Under the same roof with her I found Saul of Tarsus, broken and
+supplicating, changed, heart and soul, as was I.  But he was not in
+ignorance of the fount of our transfiguration as I was.  From Lydia's
+lips, I learned that he had been visited by the Lord; but from Saul, I
+learned its meaning.  If there is change upon my face, lord, I have
+told thee whence came it!"
+
+Agrippa's eyes were no longer on Marsyas; he had turned his head and
+was looking at Cypros, as if curious to see if so impossible a tale
+would find credence in the mind of the simple queen.  She looked
+disturbed and awe-struck, and Agrippa's nostrils fluttered with a
+soundless laugh.
+
+"_Quantum mutatus ab illo!_" he said, turning to Marsyas.  "That I can
+swear under a dread oath.  And perchance, were I an Essene and more
+than an adopted Pharisee, I could have been visited and borne witness
+to miracles, also.  But thou'lt remember, Marsyas, that this Saul
+consented unto the death of thy Stephen?"
+
+"I remember, lord; neither hath he forgotten!" answered Marsyas.
+
+"And that through him, great numbers of innocent people fled Judea,
+among them one Marsyas, that this same Saul might not have their lives;
+that he pursued thee even unto thy refuge, put thy sweet bride in
+jeopardy, stained the whole world with persecution, and made an end by
+bringing up in heresy, after he had begun a journey to Damascus with
+the avowed purpose of extending his persecutions--even unto the death
+of thy Lydia!  Thou hast not forgotten these things?"
+
+"They are not to be forgotten!"
+
+"And on a certain night, while yet Stephen was unburied, thou camest
+upon this Saul of Tarsus in Bezetha, and swore to accomplish vengeance
+upon him; and that same night in the cubiculum in the Prætorium thou
+didst make me swear to help thee to that revenge, if he should stumble
+in the Law!"
+
+Marsyas took his arm from about Lydia and arose.
+
+"I am here, O King," he said, "to crave the fulfilment of that oath."
+
+Agrippa smiled, in spite of the serene gravity on Marsyas' face.
+
+"Ask thy boon, Marsyas," he answered.
+
+Marsyas knelt at the king's footstool, and put up his hands as
+supplicants do before a throne.
+
+"Thou hast remembered thine oath unto me, my King; thou hast published
+thyself as ready to fulfil thy promise, and hast yielded unto me the
+choice of the manner of my requital!  Thus assured and believing I make
+my prayer.  Lift not thy hand against Saul of Tarsus!"
+
+Agrippa's brows dropped suddenly; his face was no less displeased than
+startled.  He had meant to have a jest at Marsyas' expense, to try the
+young man's claim to a change in heart, to bring to the surface human
+nature through its envelope of religion; but he had not looked for this
+thing!  To behold so strange a perversion of the ancient spirit in a
+man like Marsyas, and to submit to its demands against his own
+inclinations weighed heavily on Agrippa's patience.  Saul's lapse into
+apostasy gave him an opportunity to attach to him the loyalty of that
+fierce party in Judea, which were better propitiated than fought--the
+Sicarii, anarchists, who would demand the putting away of the heretic.
+Marsyas had asked him to sacrifice a potent piece of state-craft.
+
+He glanced at Cypros, and saw resentfully that she was urging him with
+her eyes to submit.  Marsyas' face began to show an expression that
+compelled him, while it irritated the more.  The young man wore the
+face of one who does not expect defeat, denies it so confidently that
+it hesitates to exist.  Agrippa shifted in his throne, frowned more,
+wavered, and finally said shortly:
+
+"As Cæsar forgot me to mine own safety, I will forget Saul!"
+
+Marsyas' hands dropped softly on the king's, a token of brotherhood.
+
+"Death intervened," he whispered, "to save thee from Cæsar!"
+
+Agrippa started and drew his hands away with a prescient terror in the
+movement.
+
+"I will not pursue the man," he said; "I will not search for him!"
+
+"Thou hast kept thy word, lord," Marsyas said, "and I go hence carrying
+trust in one more fellow man in my heart.  May my God supply all thy
+need according to His riches in glory, by Jesus Christ!"
+
+Agrippa's eyes which had all this time rested in fascination on
+Marsyas' face, flashed now with understanding.  Marsyas was a Nazarene!
+The admission reassured him; set aside the astonishment at the young
+man's unusual behavior; and lessened the fear he had felt in the
+suggestion that drew a parallel between Cæsar's end and his own, to
+come.  But Lydia was now kneeling before him, with glistening eyes, to
+kiss his hand, and Cypros was speaking.
+
+"But thou gatherest peril yet about thee, Marsyas," she insisted.  "Is
+the hazardous life, then, so inviting that thou hadst liefer be wrong
+than be safe?"
+
+"No, lady; peace is no sweeter to my brethren, the Essenes, than it is
+to me.  So I have put out my hand and possessed it.  Think of us,
+henceforth, as the children of peace, not peril."
+
+Agrippa shook his head.
+
+"It hath consumed two years to establish it," he said conclusively,
+"and not until the last moment is it revealed that thou art a dreamer,
+Marsyas.  Thou hast been an Essene, which is too strait an ambition to
+be practicable; thou didst cherish a love for a man, so deep that its
+bereavement engendered a hate that no man should feel, unless a woman
+were won from him or a fortune destroyed; thou wast urged by it into
+extreme acts--into selling thyself, into following me to the end of the
+world, into putting thyself between me and death--that I might help
+thee satisfy that hate!  And now, the hour fallen, a new fancy hath
+engulfed thee, heart, head and soul--which bids thee forget thy rancor,
+defend thine enemy, and live in perpetual peril of destruction!  Thou
+art a dreamer--though thy front be Jovian and thy steps like Mars!"
+
+Marsyas laid his hand on Lydia's head, as she still knelt beside him.
+
+"In substance, I so accused her once, and Stephen.  Perhaps, if thou
+followest me insomuch, my King, thou wilt walk even as I have
+walked--into the light at last!"
+
+Agrippa made a motion of dissent.
+
+"I doubt, now, that thou couldst safely govern that pretty little city
+I had meant to make thee prefect over, here in Judea," he declared.
+
+"Thou hast said!  For me there is a new earth, and a new Law, and I go
+hence to Alexandria to begin a new life, which will make me a lover of
+all mankind."
+
+"Nay, sweet Lydia!" Herod exclaimed, once more restored to himself.
+"Thou shouldst demand that he be less indiscriminate with his loves!
+But put off thy travel a space, and let us celebrate thy marriage with
+festivity!"
+
+"Thou art most kind to us, King Agrippa," Lydia answered.  "But my
+father is alone and uncomforted in Alexandria; even thou canst not tell
+me of a surety that evil hath not befallen him ere thy punishment of
+Flaccus could intervene.  My heart is consumed with impatience and
+suspense.  We can not tarry, though thy hospitality be most
+grateful--to us--who have found the world of late an untender place!"
+
+So, since they would not be stayed, Agrippa summoned two stalwart
+palace servants to go with them, and calling his treasurer, ordered him
+to give into the hands of the servants six talents, five of which he
+owed to Lysimachus for Cypros, and one as a marriage largess.  And when
+Marsyas and Lydia had kissed the hands of the royal pair, they went out
+and found, at the palace wall, a camel which should bear them in a
+white howdah to Ptolemais.
+
+Marsyas lifted Lydia and set her under the canopy, but, before he went
+up himself, he saw borne past him, in a chair, a rabbi.  He was a great
+man, grave, calm and preoccupied.  Three students of the College
+attended him reverently.  Marsyas caught his eye, and between the two
+passed a flash that was both understanding and congratulatory.  But
+they saluted each other gravely, and Eleazer passed on to his own place.
+
+Before they departed Herod sent out a chamberlain, who bowed low and
+handed a wax tablet to Marsyas, on which was written:
+
+
+"Since Classicus would be in Alexandria to harass thee, and thy wits
+are meshed in love and religion, I have bidden my scribe write him to
+come hither, where I can kill him conveniently, if he need it.  If thou
+have any enemies here in Jerusalem thou hast forgotten to bless, thou
+canst perhaps repair the misfortune by naming thy sons after them.
+
+"My love goes with thee--mine and the queen's,
+
+"HEROD."
+
+
+So, with their faces alight with content and love and hopefulness,
+Marsyas and Lydia took up the long journey unto Alexandria.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Saul of Tarsus, by Elizabeth Miller
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+The Project Gutenberg E-text of Saul of Tarsus, by Elizabeth Miller
+</TITLE>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Saul of Tarsus, by Elizabeth Miller
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Saul of Tarsus
+       A Tale of the Early Christians
+
+Author: Elizabeth Miller
+
+Illustrator: André Castaigne
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2011 [EBook #37862]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAUL OF TARSUS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="&quot;The seed of his teaching has spread abroad&quot; <I>Page 4</I>" BORDER="2">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center">
+&quot;The seed of his teaching has spread abroad&quot; <I>Page 4</I>
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t1">
+SAUL OF TARSUS
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="t2">
+<I>A TALE OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+<I>By</I>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="t2">
+ELIZABETH MILLER
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="t4">
+<I>Author of</I> The Yoke
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+<BR>
+ANDRÉ CASTAIGNE
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+INDIANAPOLIS
+<BR>
+THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+<BR>
+PUBLISHERS
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t4">
+COPYRIGHT 1906
+<BR>
+THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t2">
+CONTENTS
+</P>
+
+<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="80%">
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">Chapter</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">&nbsp;</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap01">Saul of Tarsus</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap02">A Prudent Exception</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap03">The First Martyr</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap04">The Bankrupt</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap05">Agrippa in Repertoire</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap06">Marsyas Assumes a Charge</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap07">The Bondman of Hate</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VIII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap08">An Alexandrian Characteristic</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IX&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap09">"&mdash;As an Army With Banners"</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">X&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap10">Flaccus Works a Complexity</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XI&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap11">The House of Defense</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap12">"Scattering the Flock"</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap13">A Trust Fulfilled</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIV&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap14">For a Woman's Sake</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XV&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap15">The False Balance</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVI&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap16">A Matter Handled Wisely</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap17">A Word in Season</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVIII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap18">The Ransom</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIX&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap19">The Deliverance</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XX&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap20">The Feast of Flora</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXI&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap21">The Fining Fire</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap22">"In the Cloak of Two Colors"</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap23">A Letter and a Loss</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIV&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap24">The Digged Pit</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXV&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap25">The Speaking of Eutychus</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXVI&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap26">The Arm Made Bare</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXVII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap27">The Proconsul's Deliberations</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXVIII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap28">The Strange Woman</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIX&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap29">In Extremis</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXX&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap30">The Eremite in Scarlet, and the Bankrupt in Purple</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXI&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap31">The Dregs of the Cup of Trembling</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap32">Sanctuary</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXIII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap33">The Dregs of the Cup of Fury</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXIV&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap34">Captives of the Mighty</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXV&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap35">The Approach of the Day of Visitation</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXVI&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap36">On the Damascus Road</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXVII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap37">In the House of Ananias</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXVIII&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap38">The Requital</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+</TABLE>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+In Memory of
+<BR>
+My Soldier Brother
+<BR>
+Ralph Miller
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="t4">
+Lieutenant Sixth Cavalry
+<BR>
+U.S.A.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+SAUL OF TARSUS
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER I
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+SAUL OF TARSUS
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+On a certain day in March of the year 36 A.D., a Levite, one of the
+Shoterim or Temple lictors, came down from Moriah, into the vale of
+Gihon, and entered the portal of the great college, builded in
+Jerusalem for the instruction of rabbis and doctors of Law in Judea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With foot as rapid and as noiseless as that of a fox among the tombs,
+the Levite crossed the threshold into the great gloom of the interior.
+This way and that he turned his head, watchful, furtive, catching every
+obscure corner in the range of his glance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw that three men sat within, two together, one a little apart from
+the others.  From this to that one, the alert gaze slipped until it
+lighted upon a small, bowed shape in white garments.  Then the Levite
+smiled, his lips moved and shaped a word of satisfaction, but no sound
+issued.  Silently he flitted into an aisle which would lead him upon
+the two, and suddenly appeared before them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The small bent figure made a nervous start, but the Levite bowed and
+rubbed his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greeting, Rabbi Saul; God's peace attend thee.  Be greeted, Rabbi
+Eleazar; peace to thee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rabbi Eleazar raised a great head and looked with an unfavorable eye at
+the Levite; in it was to be read strong dislike of the Levite's
+stealthy manner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greeting, Joel," he replied in a voice quite in keeping with his
+splendid bulk, "peace to thee.  Yet take it not amiss if I suggest that
+since there is no warning in thy footfall or thy garments, thou
+shouldst be belled!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other had dropped back in his seat, and the Levite bowed again to
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I pray thy pardon, Rabbi Saul, but I came as I was sent&mdash;in haste."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is nothing, Joel," Saul answered.  "Give us news of the High
+Priest's health."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He continues in health, God be thanked, but his spirit was sorely
+tried&mdash;" He stopped abruptly to look, as if in question, at the man
+sitting apart in the shadows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is that?" he asked suspiciously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A pupil," was Eleazar's impatient reply.  The Levite looked again,
+but, the twilight thwarting him, he hitched a slant shoulder and,
+passing to one of the windows, drew aside its heavy hanging.
+Instantly, a great golden beam shot into the cold chamber and
+illuminated it gloriously.  Saul threw his hand over his eyes to shut
+out the blinding radiance.  But the pupil, helped at his reading by the
+admitted light, straightened himself, glanced up a moment, and turned
+to his scroll without a word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A stranger," Joel whispered, coming back to the rabbis.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What burden of mystery dost thou conceal, Joel?" Eleazar exclaimed.
+"Yonder man is an Essene; look about; the stones will take tongue and
+betray thee, sooner than he."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me be sure, let me be sure!" Joel insisted stubbornly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As if obedient to Eleazar, he cast an eye about the chamber.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The light which came in at the west was straight from the spring sun,
+moted and warm with benevolence.  That which entered at the east was
+only a quivering reflection from the marble walls and golden gates of
+the Temple.  The chamber was immense, shadowy and draughty, the floor
+of stone, the walls of Hermon's rock, relieved by massive arcades
+supported on pilasters, and friezes of such images as were hieratically
+approved.  The ceiling was so lost in height and cold dusk that its
+structure could not be defined.  At the end opposite the doors was the
+lectern of ivory and ebony, embellished with symbolical intaglios and
+inlaid with gold.  Beside it stood the reader's chair, across which the
+rug had been dropped as he had put it off his knees.  Before the
+lectern, across and down the great chamber, were ranges of carven
+benches, among which were lamps of bronze, darkened and green about the
+reliefs and corrugations on the bowls, depending from chains or set
+about on tripods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But besides the three already noted, the Levite saw and expected to see
+no others.  Eleazar regarded his ostentatious inspection of the room
+with disgust.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou hast a burden on thy soul, Joel," Saul urged mildly.  "Let us
+bear it with thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Levite came close and bent over the rabbis.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Question your souls, brethren," he said.  "Hath Judea more to lose
+than it hath lost?" he asked in a lowered tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Its identity," Eleazar responded shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the Levite looked expectantly at Saul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Its faith," Saul suggested quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Levite nodded eagerly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Its faith," Saul continued, as if speaking to himself, "and after that
+there is nothing more.  Yea, restore unto it its kings and its
+dominions, yet withhold the faith and there is no Judea.  Desolate it
+until the land is sown in salt and the people bound to the mills of the
+oppressor, so but the faith abide, Judea is Judea, glorified!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What then, O Rabbi," the Levite persisted, "if the land be sown in
+salt and the people bound to the mills of the oppressor, if the faith
+be abandoned&mdash;what then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God can not perish," Eleazar put in.  "Fear not; it can not come to
+pass."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, but evil can enter the souls of men and point them after false
+prophets so that God is forgotten," the Levite retorted.  His lean
+figure bent at the hips and he thrust his face forward with triumph of
+prophecy on it.  Saul looked at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What hast thou to tell, Joel?" he asked with command in his voice.
+The Levite accepted the order as he had worked toward it&mdash;with energy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen, then," he began in a whisper.  "Dost thou remember Him whom
+they crucified at Golgotha, a Passover, four years ago?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eleazar nodded, but Saul made no sign.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Know ye that they killed the plant after it had ripened," the Levite
+hastened on.  "The seed of His teaching hath spread abroad and wherever
+it lodgeth it hath taken root and multiplied.  Wherefore, there is a
+multitude of offspring from the single stem."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saul stood up.  He did not gain much in stature by rising, but the
+temper of the man towered gigantic over the impatience of Eleazar and
+the craft of the Levite.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What accusation is this that thou levelest at Judea?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A truth!" Joel replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That Israel hath a blasphemer among them, which hath been spared,
+concealed and not put away?" questioned Saul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dare ye?" the Levite cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dare ye not!" Saul answered sternly.  "It is the Law!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Levite came toward him.  "Go thou unto the High Priest Jonathan,"
+he whispered evilly; "he hath work for thee to do!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eleazar doubled his huge hand and whirled his head away.  There was
+tense silence for a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there a specific transgression discovered?" Saul demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Levite weighed his answer before he gave it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rumor hath it," he began, "that certain of the sect are in the city
+preaching&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rumor!" Saul exclaimed.  "Hast rested on the testimony of rumor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can ye track pestilence?" he asked craftily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the sick!" was the retort.  "Go on!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the High Priest's vow to attack it," Joel declared.  "He hath no
+other thought.  It is said that one of the disputants, who yesterday
+troubled them in the Cilician synagogue with an alien doctrine,
+preached the Nazarene's heresy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the Cilician&mdash;in mine own synagogue!" Saul repeated, in amazement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In thine, in the Libertine, the Cyrenian and the Alexandrian."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And they suffered him?" Saul persisted with growing earnestness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They did not understand him, then; he is but a new-comer from Galilee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I was not there; I was not there!" Saul exclaimed regretfully.
+"What is he called?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stephen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a sound from the direction of the silent pupil.  They looked
+that way to see that he had dropped his scroll and had sprung to his
+feet.  The Levite dropped his head between his shoulders and
+scrutinized him sharply.  But the young man had fixed his eyes upon
+Saul, as if waiting for his answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stephen of Galilee," the Levite added, watching the young man.  "A
+Hellenist; and he wrapped his blasphemy so subtly in philosophy that
+none detected it until after much thought."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man turned his face toward the speaker and a glimmer of anger
+showed in his black eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is bold blasphemy which ventures into a synagogue," Saul said half
+to himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah! thou pointest to the sign of peril," the Levite resumed.
+"Boldness is the banner of strength; strength is the fruit of numbers;
+and numbers of apostates will be the ruin of Judea and the forgetting
+of God!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saul caught up his scrip which lay beside him, but Eleazar continued to
+gaze at the beam of light penetrating the chamber.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wherefore the High Priest is troubled, and, laying aside all his
+private ambitions, henceforward he will devote himself to the
+preservation of the faith," the Levite continued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which means," Eleazar interrupted, "the persecution of the apostate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Levite spread out his hands and lifted his shoulders.  The Rabbi
+Eleazar forged too far ahead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is our duty, Eleazar," Saul said, "to discover if this Galilean
+preaches heresy.  Let us go to the synagogue."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eleazar arose, a towering man, broad, heavy and slow, but his rising
+was as the rising of opposition.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am enlisted in the teaching of the Law, not in the suppression of
+heresy," he said bluntly.  "Furthermore, my work here is not yet
+complete.  Wilt thou excuse me, my brother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me not keep thee from thy duty," Saul answered courteously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Joel!  Come with me," Eleazar commanded, and together the two
+disappeared into the interior of the college.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the young man who had held his place came out of the shadows into
+the broad beam of the sun, which fell now over Saul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peace to thee, Saul," he said; "peace and greeting."  The voice, in
+contrast to the tones of the men who had lately discussed, was very
+calm and level, restrained by cultivation, yet one which is never
+characteristic of an undecided nature.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou, Marsyas!" Saul exclaimed in sudden recognition.  He extended his
+hands to meet the other's in a greeting that was more affectionate than
+conventional.  The young man with sudden impulsiveness raised the hands
+and pressed them to his breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Saul!  Saul!" he repeated with a quiver of emotion in his voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And none hath supplanted me in thy loves, Marsyas?" Saul smiled.  "Art
+thou come hither for instruction?  Am I to have thee by me now in
+Jerusalem?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The glow of warmth in the rabbi's manner did not contribute its
+confidence to the young man.  He seemed not less troubled than moved.
+With searching eyes, he looked down from his superior height into
+Saul's face.  As the two stood together, physical extremes could not
+have been more perfect.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rabbi was not well-formed, and his frame had a note of feebleness
+in its make-up in spite of its youth and flesh.  The face was pale, the
+eyes so deep-set as to appear sunken, the hair, thin, curling and
+lightly silvered, the beard, short, full and touched with the same
+early frost.  Though no recent alien blood ran in his veins, his
+features were only moderately characteristic of the sons of Jacob.  He
+was not erect, and the stoop in his shoulders was more extreme than the
+mere relaxation from rigidity, yet less pronounced than actual
+curvature.  The veins on the backs of his hands stood up from the
+refined whiteness of the flesh, and when his head turned, the great
+artery in his throat could be seen irregularly beating.  It was the
+physique of a man not only weak but sapped by a subtle infirmity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He wore the head-dress and the voluminous white robes of a rabbi,
+girded with the blue and white cord of his calling.  But his class as a
+Pharisee was marked by the heavy undulating fringes at the hem of his
+garment, and by the little case of calf-skin framing a parchment
+lettered in Hebrew which was bound across his forehead.  Herein, by
+fringe, phylactery and the traditional colors, he published his
+submission to the minutiæ of the Law.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In so much the rabbi could have had twenty counterparts over Judea, but
+his aggressive nature stamped him with an individuality which has had
+no equal in all time.  Over his countenance was a fine assumption of
+humility curiously inconsistent with a consciousness of excellence
+which made an atmosphere about him that could be felt.  Yet, holding
+first place over these conflicting attributes was the stamp of
+tremendous mental power, and a heart-whole sweetness that was
+irresistible.  The union of these four characteristics was to produce a
+man that would hold fast to theory, though all fact arise and shouted
+it down; who would maintain form, though the spirit had in horror long
+since fled the shape.  Thus, inflexibly fixed in his convictions, he
+was unlimited in his capacity for maintaining them.  In short, he was a
+leader of men, a zealot, a formalist and an inquisitor&mdash;one of great
+mentality dogmatized, of great spirit prejudiced, of immense
+capabilities perverted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such was Saul of Tarsus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the other was a Jew of blood so pure, of type so pronounced, that
+the man of mixed races before him appeared wholly foreign.  His line
+had descended from the persistent love of Jacob for Rachel, through the
+tents of them that slew the Midianitish women in the wilderness,
+through the households of Esdras and the camps of Judas Maccabæus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was above average height, and built ruggedly, as were Judah the
+lion, and Jacob who wrestled with the angel.  One of in-door habit, he
+was fair on the forehead, under the soft young beard and the shining
+black curls at his temples.  But his cheeks were crimson, his eyes
+intensely black and sparkling, his teeth, glittering ranges of shaded
+ivory.  And the bold strength of his profile and the brilliance of his
+color seemed finished by the deep cleft distinctly discernible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On his face was written an attribute common among men of a time of
+Messianic hopes and crises.  Asceticism with its blank purity of brow
+set him apart from the sordid souls in his walk.  Yet about him there
+seemed to be an atmosphere surcharged with physical radiations, with
+human electricity that fairly sparkled in its strength.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Even Saul, his long-time friend, on this occasion of sudden meeting,
+remarked this equal power of body and spirit.  The Pharisee glanced at
+the young man's garments,&mdash;simple robes without fringes, without gaud,
+and white as the snows of Hermon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Strange," the Pharisee said after his peculiar manner of talking with
+himself, "strange that thou shouldst elect to be an Essene."  A little
+proud surprise appeared on Marsyas' face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can not be anything else," the young man answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou hast not ventured.  But, nevertheless, thou wilt be noted in the
+college.  The Essenes are very few these days in Jerusalem; En-Gadi
+receives them all.  And thou art a doctor of Laws&mdash;a master Essene.
+How long wilt thou study here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Five years, Rabbi."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yet the young man was at least twenty-five years of age.  What course
+of instruction was it which carried a man into middle life before it
+was finished?  What but the tremendous complexities of the Mosaic and
+the Oral Law.  But these things had been taught the young man in the
+forecourt of the little synagogue in Nazareth where he was born.  So,
+because his learning extended beyond the reach of the provincial
+Essenic philosopher who had taught him in his youth, the young man had
+quitted the little hill town in Galilee to come to the feet of the
+master Essene in the great college of Jerusalem.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To be an Essene was to live a celibate under the regime of community
+laws, under a common roof, at a common board; to be bodily and
+spiritually spotless, to believe in the resurrection of the soul, the
+brotherhood of man, and the frailty and the incontinence of women; to
+accept no hospitality from one not an Essene and to own no possessions
+apart from the common ownership of the order.  But to be an Essenic
+doctor was to be the most ascetic scholar and the most scholarly
+ascetic in the world, at that time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Marsyas had no thought on Saul's contemplation of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I heard the talk of the Levite," he said.  "Because it concerns me
+much, I could not shut mine ears against it.  I, too, have heard the
+creed of the Nazarenes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How, Marsyas?  Harkened unto the heretics?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have heard their creed," he persisted in his calm way.  "It differs
+little from the teachings of mine own order, the Essenes, except that
+they believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and the receptiveness
+of the Gentile."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And thou callest that a little difference?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so great that one going astray after the Nazarenes could not be
+satisfied with the Essenes, if he were obliged to give up his apostasy.
+I seek a remedy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Moses supplied the remedy," Saul averred with meaning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Essenes are not inflicters of punishment," was the even reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Pharisee made a conciliatory gesture.  "It is then only a
+discussion of the practices of my class and of thine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Marsyas was not satisfied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou knowest Stephen?" he asked after a pause.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stephen of Galilee?  Only by report."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance, then, thou knowest Galilee," the Essene resumed after a
+short pause.  "Galilee that sitteth between Phoenicia the menace and
+Samaria the pollution, and is not soiled; that standeth between the
+Middle Sea, the power, and the Jordan, the subject, and is not humbled.
+She is Israel's brawn, not easily governed of the mind which is
+enthroned Jerusalem.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are rustics in Galilee, tillers of the soil, mountaineers and
+fishers, simple rugged folk who live in the present, expecting
+miracles, seeing signs, discovering prophets and wonders.  We are
+patriots, bound and hooped against an alien, but bursting wide with
+whatever chanceth to ferment within us.  Let there but arise a Galilean
+who hath a gift or a grudge or a devil, and  proclaim himself anointed,
+and he can gather unto himself a following that would assail Cæsar's
+stronghold, did he say the word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused and seemed to recall what he had said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yet, we are good Jews," he added hastily, "faithful followers of the
+Law and such as Israel might select to die singly for Israel's sake.
+No Galilean is ashamed of himself except when he permits himself to be
+led so far into folly that he can not turn back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Pharisee foresaw intuitively the young man's climax.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Law does not remit punishment for blasphemy, even if a soul turn
+back from its folly," he observed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' face became grave and he gazed at the place on the wall where
+quivered the reflection from the splendors of the Temple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stephen is my friend," he said earnestly, "a simple soul, generous,
+fervid, and a true lover of God."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he be such, he is safe," Saul replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man fingered the scarf that girded him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The brothers at En-Gadi would receive him," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What need of him to retire from the world if he be a good Jew?" Saul
+persisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again the young man hesitated.  Saul was driving him into a declaration
+that he would have led forth gradually.  Then he came to the Pharisee
+and laid a persuading band on his arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go not to the synagogue," he entreated.  "Wait a little!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait in the Lord's business?" Saul asked mildly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be not hastier than the chastening of the Lord; if He bears with
+Stephen, so canst thou a little longer.  Give love its chance with
+Stephen before vengeance undoes him wholly!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marsyas," Saul protested in a tone of kindly remonstrance, "thou dost
+convict him by thy very concern."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" the young Essene declared, pressing upon the Pharisee in
+passionate earnestness.  "I am only troubled for him.  Let me go first
+and understand him, for it seems that there is doubt in the hearts of
+his accusers, and after that&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thine eye shall not pity him," Saul repeated in warning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Saul!  Saul!  He is my beloved friend!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Moses prepared us for such a sorrow as apostasy among those whom we
+love.  What says the Lawgiver&mdash;'thy friend, which is as thine own soul,
+thy hand shall be the first upon him to put him to death!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lifted hands of the young Essene dropped as if they had been struck
+down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Death!" he repeated, retreating a step.  "Wilt thou kill him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am more thy friend, Marsyas," the Pharisee went on, "because I am
+zealous for the Law.  The heresy is infectious and thou art no more
+safe from it than any other man.  And I would rather sit in judgment
+over Stephen, whom I do not know, than over thee, who art dear to me as
+a brother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man drew near again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear as a brother!" he said.  "Stephen is that to me.  Even now didst
+thou ask if any had supplanted thee in my loves.  No; yet my loves have
+broadened, so that I can take another into my heart.  The Lord God be
+merciful unto me, that I may not be driven to choose one, for defense
+against the other!  Even as ye both love me, love one another!  Saul!
+Thou wast my earlier friend!  I can no more endure Stephen's peril than
+I can uproot thee from my heart!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saul flinched before the concealed intimation in the words.  A wave of
+pallor succeeded by hardness swept over his face, and Marsyas,
+observing the change, seized the Tarsian's hands between his own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait until I have seen him," he besought, "and if there be any taint
+in his fidelity to the faith, I shall stop at no sacrifice to save him.
+He is, if at all, only momentarily drawn aside, and as the Lord God
+daily forgives us our sins, let us forgive a brother&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saul tried to draw away, but the young Essene's imploring hands held
+his in a desperate clasp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will give up mine instruction," he swept on.  "I will retire into
+En-Gadi and take him with me!  I will give over everything and become
+one of their husbandmen; I will have no aim for myself, but for
+Stephen!  And if I fail I will take sentence with him!  Wait!  Wait!
+Let me return to Nazareth and get my patrimony!  I will come then and
+take him at once to En-Gadi!  Saul!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Saul threw off the beseeching hands and stepped back from the young
+man.  The two gazed at each other, the Pharisee to discover a crisis in
+the Essene's look; the Essene to see immovability in the Pharisee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the distress in Marsyas' face changed swiftly, and an ember burned
+in his black eyes.  He straightened himself and stretched out a hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have spoken!" he said.  Turning purposefully away, he went back to
+his place and took up his scroll.  For a moment he held it, his eyes on
+the pavement.  Slowly his fingers unclosed and the scroll
+dropped&mdash;dropped as if he had done with it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Catching up his white mantle, he walked swiftly out of the chamber and
+Saul looked after him, yearning, wistful and sad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Joel came out of the interior of the building.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will go with thee to the synagogue," he offered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Pharisee looked at him with cold dislike in his eyes, and,
+inclining his head, led the way out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the threshold of the porch he halted.  In the street opposite two
+young men were walking slowly.  One was slight, young, graceful and
+simply clad in a Jewish smock.  The other was Marsyas, the Essene, who
+went with an arm over the shoulders of the first, and, bending, seemed
+to speak with passionate earnestness to his companion.  The faces of
+the two young men thus side by side showed the same spiritual mode of
+living, and youthful purity of heart.  But the expression of the
+slighter one was less ascetic than happy, less rigorous than confident.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Marsyas spoke, the other smiled; and his smile was an illumination,
+not entirely earthly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Joel seized Saul's arm, and held it while the two approached,
+unconscious of the watchers in the shadow of the porch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is he," he whispered avidly.  "That is he!  Stephen, the
+apostate!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stephen turned his head casually, and, catching the Pharisee's eye,
+returned the gaze with a little friendly questioning; then he raised
+his face to Marsyas and so they passed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The pallor on Saul's face deepened.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER II
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+A PRUDENT EXCEPTION
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+After he had separated from Stephen, Marsyas went to the house of a
+resident Essene with whom he made his home, to be fed, to be washed, to
+offer supplication and to announce his decision to go on a journey.  At
+the threshold of his host's house he put aside his sandals and let
+himself in with a murmured formula.  In a little time he came forth
+with a wallet flung over his shoulder and took the streets toward
+Gennath Gate.  It was not written in the laws of his order that he
+should make greater preparation for a journey.  He had already
+acquainted himself with the abiding-places of Essenes in villages
+between Jerusalem and Nazareth and, assured of their hospitality and
+the provision of the Essene's God, he knew that he would fare well to
+the hill town of Galilee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So he passed through the city by the walk of the purified, garments
+well in hand lest they touch women or the wayside dust, meeting the eye
+of no man, proud of his humility, punctilious in his simplicity, and
+wearing unrest under his shell of calm.  He had an unobstructed path, a
+path ceremonially clean.  He had but to hesitate on the edge of a
+congestion, and the first gowned and bearded Jew that observed him
+signed his companions and the way was opened.  For the Essenes were the
+best of men, the truly holy men of Israel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went down between the fronts of featureless houses, through the
+golden haze of sun and dust that overhung the narrow, stony mule-ways,
+until the distant dream towers of Mariamne, of Phasælus and of Hippicus
+became imminent, brooding shapes of blackened masonry, and the wall cut
+off the mule-ways and the great shady arch of the gate let in a glimpse
+of the country without.  On one hand was the Prætorium, the Roman
+garrison encamped in the upper palace of Herod the Great; on the other,
+the houses of the Sadducees, the Jewish aristocrats, covered the ridge
+of Akra.  Marsyas came upon an obstruction.  At a gate opening into the
+street, camels knelt, servants of diverse nationality but of one livery
+clustered round them, several unoccupied Jewish traveling chairs in the
+hands of bearers stood near.  In the center of the considerable crowd,
+a number of Sadducees, priests of high order and Pharisees in garments
+characteristic of their several classes were taking ceremonious
+farewell of a man already seated in a howdah.  No one took notice of
+the Essene, who stood waiting with assumed patience until he should be
+given room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently the camel-drivers cried to their beasts which arose with a
+lurch, priests and Sadducees hurried into their chairs, the servants
+fell into rank, the crowd shifted and ordered itself and a procession
+trailed out alongside the swaying camels toward Gennath Gate.  A
+distinguished party was taking leave under escort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas repressed the impatient word that arose to his lips and
+followed after the deliberate, moving blockade.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rank of the departing strangers did not encourage the city rabble
+to follow, and as the escort kept close to the head of the procession
+the hindmost camel was directly before Marsyas and the occupant of the
+howdah in his view.  Over head and shoulders the full skirts of a vitta
+fell, erasing outline, and, contrasting the stature with that of the
+attending servant, he concluded that the small traveler was a child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Under the dripping shade and chill of the ancient Gate they passed and
+out into the road worn into a trench through the rock and dry gray
+earth and on to the oval pool which supplied Hippicus, where a halt for
+a final farewell was made.  Again Marsyas was delayed, and for a much
+longer time.  He might have climbed out of the sunken roadway and
+passed around the obstruction, but the banks above were lined with
+clamoring mendicants, women and lepers, and he could not escape
+ceremonial defilement that might more seriously delay his journey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the courtly leave-taking progressed with dignified sloth.
+Gradually Sadducee, priest and Pharisee moved one by one from the
+departing aristocrat.  At the hindmost camel the Pharisees stopped not
+at all, but saluting without looking at the traveler, the priests
+merely raised their hands in blessing; but the Sadducees to a man
+salaamed profoundly, and passed on if they were old, or lingered
+uncertainly if they were young.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A little flicker of enlightenment showed in the young Essene's
+brilliant eyes, an angry tension in his lips straightened their curve
+and he drew himself up indignantly.  The young aristocrats tarried and
+laughed his precious time away with a woman!  That was the traveler in
+the last howdah!  Twice and thrice the time they had spent speeding the
+rest of the party they consumed bidding the woman farewell, and every
+moment carried danger nearer to Stephen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then an old voice, refined and delicate as the note of an ancient lyre,
+lifted in laughing protest from the front, the young men laughed,
+responding, but moved away to their chairs, the camel swung out into a
+rapid walk, and crying farewells the party separated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With abating irritation Marsyas moved after them.  At the intersection
+of the first road, he would pass these travelers and hasten on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A breeze from the hills cut off the smell of the city with a full
+stream of country freshness.  Marsyas lifted his head and drew in a
+long breath that was almost a sigh.  His first trouble weighed heavily
+upon him and its triple nature of distress, heart-hurt and
+apprehension, sensations so new and so near to nature as to be at wide
+variance with anything Essenic, moved him into a mood essentially
+human.  Then an exhalation from aft the fragrant spring-flowered groves
+stole into the pure air about him, bewildering, sweet, and through it,
+as harmoniously as if the perfume had taken tone, a distant hill bird
+sent a single stave of liquid notes.  The small figure in the howdah at
+that moment turned and looked back, and Marsyas for the first time in
+his life gazed straight into the eyes of a beautiful girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Spring-fragrance, bird-song and flower-face were harmony too perfect
+for Essenism to discountenance.  Without the slightest discomposure,
+and absolutely unconscious of what he was doing, Marsyas gazed and
+listened until the vitta fell hastily over the face, the bird flew away
+and the garden incense died.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He passed just then the intersecting road, but he continued after the
+last camel.  He walked after that through many drifts of fragrance, and
+many hill birds sang, but he knew without looking that the flower face
+was not turned back toward him again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He halted for the night at a little village and sought the hospitality
+of an Essene hermit that lived on the outskirts.  But in the night,
+terror for Stephen, of that unknown kind which is conviction without
+evidence and irrefutable, seized him.  He endured until the early
+watches of the morning and took the road to Nazareth while the stars
+still shone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had forgotten his fellow wayfarers of the previous afternoon until
+their camels, speeding like the wind, overtook him beyond Mt. Ephraim.
+In a vapor of flying scarves he caught again a glimpse of the flower
+face turned his way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then for the first time in his life he reviled his poverty that forced
+him to walk when the life of the much-beloved depended upon despatch.
+Nazareth, clinging like a wasps' nest under the eaves of its chalky
+hills, was many leagues ahead, and the sun must set and rise again
+before he could climb up its sun-white streets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His hope was not strong.  His plan had won such little respect from him
+that he had not ventured to propose it to Stephen.  It was extreme
+sacrifice for him to make, a sacrifice lifelong in effect, and in that
+he based his single faith in its success.  Stephen loved him and would
+not persist in the fatal apostasy, if he knew that his friend, the
+Essene, was to deny himself ambition and fame for Stephen's sake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He would get his patrimony of the old master Essene who held it in
+trust for him, formally give over his instruction, bind himself to the
+perpetual life of husbandry and seclusion, and then tell Stephen what
+he had done and why he had done it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Everything else but the appeal to Stephen's love for him had failed,
+and he had shrunk from forcing that trial.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Saul had meant to go to the Synagogue at once; there were
+innumerable chances that he was already too late.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At noon he came upon the party of travelers again.  A fringed tent had
+been pitched under a cluster of cedars and the slaves were putting away
+the last of the meal.  He saw now as he hurried by that there was a
+spare and elegant old man, in magistrate's robes, reclining with
+singular grace on a pallet of rugs before the lifted side of the tent.
+The girl sat near.  He noted also that the master and the slaves fell
+silent as he approached and looked at him with interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he sped on, forgetting that it was the noon and that he was hungry,
+heated and weary, and remembering only that the time and the distance
+were deadly long.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was the soft pad-pad of a camel-hoof behind him and a servant of
+the aristocrat that he had passed drew up at his side.  With a light
+leap the man dropped from the beast's neck and bowed low.  The ease of
+his salaam and the purity of his speech were strong evidences of
+training among the loftiest classes of the time.  The attitude asked
+permission to address the Essene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas signed him to speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I pray thee accept my master's apologies," the man said, "for
+interrupting thy journey.  He bids me say that he is a stranger and
+unfamiliar with the land.  We have found no water for the meal.  Wilt
+thou direct us to a pool?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas checked his impatience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Save that I am in great haste I would tarry to direct him.  But let
+him send hence into the country to the westward, half a league to the
+hill of the flat summit.  There is a grove by a well of sweet water."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, the country is as obscure to us as the whereabouts of the pool,"
+the servant protested.  "We are Alexandrians and as good as lost in
+these hills.  If thou wilt speak to my master, he will understand
+better than his foolish servant."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Irritation forced its way up through the Essenic calm.  The servant
+salaamed again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Essenes are noted even in Alexandria for their charity," he said
+deftly.  Marsyas turned with him and went back to the fringed tent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old aristocrat still lounged gracefully, as no thirsty man does, on
+his pallet of rugs, but the girl had drawn farther away and her eyes
+were veiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I perceived by thy garments that thou art an Essene," the old man
+said, "and therefore a safe guide in this land of few milestones."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas thanked him and waited restlessly on the inquiry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have not found a well since mid-morning and I crave fresh drink.
+The water we bear is brackish."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bid thy servants go westward without deviation for less than half a
+league, until they come unto a hill with a flat summit, which can be
+seen afar off.  They will find there a grove with a well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And none is nearer?" the old man asked idly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is none nearer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My servants were bred to the desert; they are ill mountaineers.  Thou
+wilt show them the way?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They can not lose the way," Marsyas protested; "it is the flock's well
+and all the hill paths lead to it.  Think not ill of me, that I can not
+go, for I am in haste."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man smiled a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An Essene, and he will not stop to give an old man water?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas frowned resentfully, but turned to the servant at hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get thy fellows and the water-skins and follow!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned off the Roman road and struck into the hills to the west.
+The servitors of the Alexandrian caught up amphoras and hastened after
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In less than an hour he reappeared before the man under the fringed
+tent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy servants are returned.  Peace and farewell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, but it is the noon.  Wilt thou not tarry and rest?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I go," Marsyas said resolutely, "to save a life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, then I did wrong to delay thee!  I remember that Essenes are
+physicians."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We can not cure the wicked of their evil intent, so I haste to save
+one threatened with another's malice.  My friend is in peril.  I must
+go unto Nazareth and return unto Jerusalem, before I can save him.  And
+even now I may be too late!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The magistrate searched the young man's face and then the
+half-incredulous curiosity passed out of his manner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pardon mine idle wasting of thy precious minutes," he said soberly.
+"Go, and the Lord speed thee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas bowed low, and keeping his eyes fixed on the gray earth, lest
+they stray in search of the flower face, he turned again toward
+Nazareth.  He heard a very soft, very hurried and almost imperious
+whisper, as he moved away, but he knew that it was not for him to hear,
+and he did not tarry.  But a word from the magistrate brought him up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stay!  It is not customary for any outside of thine order to offer an
+Essene assistance, since we would spare thee the pain of refusal.
+But&mdash;it hath been suggested that thy haste may permit thee to waive thy
+scruples and accept help from me&mdash;as it hath been suggested&mdash;I filched
+precious time from thee.  Thou canst ride with us, if thou wilt, and
+take my daughter's camel.  She will come with me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The brilliant eyes no longer obeyed the restraint which would keep them
+from the flower face.  He turned to the girl, shyly withdrawn under the
+shade of the fringed tent, and knew by the lowered eyes and the warmer
+flush mantling the cheek that it was she that had made these
+suggestions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Twenty reasons why he should accept the magistrate's offer arose to
+combat the single stern admonition of Custom.  He was not yet under the
+Essenic vow to accept hospitality from none but Essenes, though he had
+lived in its observance all his life; he could not reach Nazareth under
+a day's journey and these swift beasts could carry him into the village
+by midnight.  And Stephen's life depended on it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We depart even now," the magistrate added, "and I promise thee no
+further delay."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ancient usage accused the young man on account of the woman, but by
+this time she had arisen and passed out of his sight, as if in good
+faith that he should not be troubled by her presence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou yieldest me invaluable aid," he said in a lowered tone, "and
+since I am not an elected Essene, but a ward of the brotherhood and a
+postulant, I am free and most glad to have thy help.  Be thou blessed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The magistrate acknowledged the young man's acceptance by a wave of a
+withered white hand and the slaves made the camels ready to proceed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At midnight, the rocking camels sped without apparent weariness up the
+uneven streets of Nazareth, white under the stars.  At the lewen of the
+single khan, the drivers drew up and Marsyas alighted to go forward and
+thank his host, but the magistrate slept, even while his servants
+lifted him down from the howdah.  As he turned away, regretfully, he
+confronted the veiled girl, almost childlike in stature under the
+protection of her tall handmaiden.  She dropped her head modestly and
+moved aside to let him pass, but he hesitated, and stopped.  Few indeed
+had been the words he had addressed to women in his lifetime, and now
+his speech was more than ever unready.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy father sleeps, yet I would not depart with my thanks unsaid.  Be
+thou the messenger and give him my gratitude when he waketh."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It shall be my pleasure," she answered softly, "and may thy hopes come
+to pass.  Farewell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou hast my thanks.  The peace of the Lord God attend thee.
+Farewell."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER III
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE FIRST MARTYR
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Mid-March in Judea was the querulous age of the young year.  It was a
+time of a tempered sun and intervals of long rains and chill winds.
+Under such persuasion, the rounded hills which upbore and encompassed
+Jerusalem took on a coat green as emerald and thick as civet-fur.
+Above it the leaning cedars, newly-tipped with verdure, spread their
+peculiar flat crowns like ancient hands extended in benediction over
+the soil.  Shoals of wild flowers, or rather flowers so long in
+fellowship with the fields of Palestine as to become domesticated, were
+scarlet and gold in shallows of green.  Almond orchards snowed in the
+valleys and every wrinkle and crevice in the hills trickled with clear
+cold water.  The winds whimpered and had the snows of Lebanon yet in
+mind; the days were not long and the sun shone across vales filled with
+undulating vapors, smoky and illusory.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The shade was not comfortable and within doors those apartments which
+denied entrance to the sun had to be made tenantable by braziers.
+Loiterers, wayfarers and outcasts betook themselves to protected angles
+and sat blinking and comatose in the benevolent warmth of the sun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was late afternoon and without the cedar hedge of Gethsemane, where
+the ancient green wall cut off the streaming wind, was a group sitting
+close together on the earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One, much covered in garments barbarously striped, and who bestirred
+long meager limbs now and then, was an Arab.  Next to him a Jewish
+husbandman from Bethesda squatted awkwardly, the length of his coarse
+smock troubling him, while his hide sandals had been put off his hard
+brown feet.  His neighbor was a Damascene, and two or three others sat
+about two who were employed in the center of this racial miscellany.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of these was a Greek, the ruin of a Greek, not yet thirty and
+bearing, in spite of the disfigurement of degradation, solitary
+evidences of blood and grace.  Opposite him sat a Roman, in a scarlet
+tunic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two were playing dice, but the end of the game was in sight, for
+the neat pile of sesterces beside the Roman was growing and the Greek
+had staked his last on the next throw.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently the Greek took the tesseræ and threw them.  The Roman glanced
+at the numbers up and smiled a little.  The Greek scowled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The old defeat," he muttered.  "Fortune perches on the standards of
+Rome even in a game of dice.  Oh, well, we have had our day!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Roman stowed away the sesterces in a wallet and hung it again
+inside his tunic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, you have had your day," he replied.  "Marathon, Thermopylæ and
+Platæa&mdash;in my philosophy you can afford to lose a game of dice to a
+wolf-suckled Roman!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Greek sat still with his chin upon his breast, and the Roman,
+getting upon his feet, scrutinized the sluggish group of on-lookers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His interest was not idle curiosity in the men.  Such as they were to
+be seen cumbering the markets and streets of Jerusalem by day or by
+night throughout the year.  They were types of that which the world
+calls the rabble&mdash;at once a strength and a destruction, a creature or a
+master, as the inclination of its manipulators is or as the call of the
+situation may be.  Individually, it has a mind; collectively, it has
+not; at all times it is a thing of great potentialities overworked, and
+of great needs habitually ignored.  That the man in scarlet should scan
+each one of these, as one appraises another's worth in drachmæ, was a
+natural proceeding, old as the impulse in the shrewd to prey upon the
+unwary.  Out of this or that one, perhaps he could turn an odd denarius
+at another game of dice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But when he looked reflectively at the west, where the broad brow of
+the hills was outlined against a great radiance, he calculated on the
+hour of remaining daylight and the distance from that point to another
+in Bezetha far across Jerusalem, and felt of his wallet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was bulky enough for one day's winnings, and entirely too bulky to
+be lost to some of the criminals or vagrants that would walk the night.
+With a motion of his hand he saluted the defeated Greek and the gaping
+group which sat in its place and watched him, and turned down the Mount
+toward Jerusalem.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To a casual observer it would appear that he was a Roman.  He wore the
+short garments characteristic of the race, was smooth-shaven, and
+displayed idolatrous images on his belt, and, in disregard of Judean
+custom, uncovered his head.  But his features under analysis were
+Arabic, modified, not by the solidity of Rome but by the grace of the
+classic Jew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was built on long, narrow lines, spare as a spear stuck in the sand
+before a dowar, but Judean flesh rounded his angles and reduced the
+Arabian brownness of complexion.  He was strikingly handsome and tall;
+not imposing but elegant, modeled for symmetry of his type, not for
+ideality, for refinement, not for strength.  His hands were delicate
+almost to frailty, his feet slender and daintily shod.  Never a Roman
+walked so lightly, never a Jew so jauntily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His presence was captivating.  Naïveté or impudence, carelessness or
+recklessness, gravity or mockery were ever uncertain in their
+delineation on his face, and one gazed trying to decide and gazing was
+undone.  Never did he reveal the perspective of a single avenue in his
+intricate and indirect disposition.  He forwent the human respect that
+is given to the straight-forward man, for the excited interest which
+the populace pays to the elusive nature.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was hard to name his years.  He was too well-knit to be young, too
+supple to be old.  The only undisputed evidence that he was past
+middle-age was not in his person but behind the affected mood in his
+soft black eyes.  There was another nature, literally in ambush!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had reached the gentler slopes of the Mount, when a young man
+dressed wholly in white approached from the north.  The wayfarer walked
+hesitatingly, his eyes roving over the towered walls of the City of
+David.  There were other wayfarers on Olivet besides the man in white
+and the man in scarlet.  There were rustics and traveling Sadducees, in
+chairs borne by liveried servants, Pharisees with staff and scrip,
+marketers, shepherds, soldiers on leave and slaves on errands, men,
+women and children of every class or calling which might have affairs
+without the walls of Jerusalem.  But each turned his steps in one
+direction, for the night was not distant and Jerusalem would shelter
+them all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hill was busy, but many took time to observe the one in white.  The
+men he met glanced critically at his fine figure and passed; the women
+looked up at him from under their wimples, and down again, quickly;
+some of the children lagged and gazed wistfully at his face as if they
+wanted his notice.  Even the man in scarlet, attracted by the wholesome
+presence of the comely young man, studied him carelessly.  He was a
+little surprised when the youth stopped before him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wilt thou tell me, brother, how I may reach the Gate of Hanaleel from
+this spot?" he asked.  His manner was anxious and hurried, his eyes
+troubled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou, a son of Israel, and a stranger in the city of thy fathers?" the
+other commented mildly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Essenes are rare visitors to Jerusalem," was the reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!" the other said to himself, "the bleached craven of En-Gadi.  Dost
+thou come from the community on the Dead Sea?" he asked aloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I journey thither," the Essene answered patiently.  "I come from
+Galilee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man in scarlet looked a little startled and put his slender hand up
+to his cheek so that a finger lay along the lips.  "Now, may thy haste
+deaden thy powers of recognition, O white brother," he hoped in his
+heart, "else thou seest a familiar face in me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He lifted the other arm and pointed toward the wall of the city.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any of these gates will lead thee within," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doubtless, but once within any but the one I seek, I am more lost than
+I am here.  Wilt thou direct me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man in scarlet motioned toward a splendid mass of masonry rising
+many cubits above the wall toward the north.  "There," he said.  "Go
+hence over the Bridge of the Red Heifer and follow along the roadway on
+the other side of Kedron."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the man in white bowed his thanks, his elbow struck against an
+obstruction which yielded hastily.  The two looked, to see the Greek
+who had been defeated at dice make off up the hill.  The Essene caught
+at his pilgrim wallet which hung at his side and found it open.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ha! a thief!" the man in scarlet cried.  "Did he rob thee?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His quick eyes dropped to the wallet.  There were many small round
+cylinders wrapped in linen within, evidently stacks of coin of various
+sizes from the little denarius to the large drachma; a handful of loose
+gold and several rolls of parchment which might have been bills of
+exchange.  The Essene frowned and closed the mouth of the purse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A trifle is gone," he said.  "He was discovered in time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If thou carryest this to the Temple, friend," the older man urged,
+"get it there to-night, else thou walkest in danger continually."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I give thee thanks; I shall be watchful; peace to thee,"&mdash;and the
+young man walked swiftly away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wary as the eyes of Juno!" the man in scarlet said to himself.
+"Essenes never make offering at the Temple; that treasure goes into the
+common fund of the order.  Now, what a shame that the unsated maw of
+the Essenic treasury should swallow that and hold it uselessly when I
+need gold so much!  Would that I had been born a good thief!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sauntered after the young Essene and idly kept him in sight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He walks like a legionary and talks like a patrician, but doubtless he
+hath the spirit of an ass, or he would not have let that knave of a
+Greek make off with so much as a lepton.  I wonder if I should not seek
+out the thief and win his pilferings from him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Essene in the distance, just before he reached the Bridge of the
+Red Heifer, unslung his wallet and resettled the strap over his
+shoulder, but the purse did not reappear at his side.  He had concealed
+it within his gown.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish he were not in such uncommon haste; I might persuade him to
+loan it me.  Money-lending is second nature to a Jew.  There must be
+several thousand drachmæ in that wallet&mdash;enough to take me to
+Alexandria.  I wonder if he sped so all the way from&mdash;<I>Hercle!</I>  What
+an aristocrat!"&mdash;noting the Essene draw aside his robes from contact
+with the unclean mob at the opposite end of the causeway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What! do they resent it?" he exclaimed, lifting himself on tiptoe to
+watch the young man, who seemed suddenly pressed upon and swallowed up
+by rapidly assembling numbers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Distant shouts arose, the Sheep Gate choked suddenly with a mass,
+Kedron's banks, the tombs of Tophet and the rubbish heaps there yielded
+up clambering, running people.  The hurry was directed along the brook
+outside the wall; stragglers closed up and the whole, numbering
+hundreds, flung itself toward the north.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man in scarlet, moved by amazement and a half-confessed interest in
+the man he had seen disappear, ran down the Mount and after the crowd.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But a glance ahead now showed him that the Essene had not called forth
+this demonstration.  The gate next beyond the heavy shape of Hanaleel
+was discharging a struggling mass that instantly expanded in the open
+into a great party-colored ring, dozens deep.  The flying body the man
+in scarlet believed to encompass the young Essene swept up to the
+circle and melted into it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile, around him came running eagerly the travelers, the
+marketers, shepherds, soldiers and slaves, and behind, the loiterers,
+who had watched him defeat the Greek.  Focalizing at the Bridge of the
+Red Heifer which spanned Kedron at a leap, the mob caught and
+precipitated him into its heart.  Rushed toward the road on the
+opposite side, he seized a corner of the parapet, and, holding fast,
+let the mass stream by him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the rush trailed out, thinned and ceased altogether, he leisurely
+drew near the huge compact circle and stood on its outskirts.  But he
+could hear and see nothing but the crowd about him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?" he asked, touching a man in front of him.  The man shook
+his head and stood fruitlessly on tiptoe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently unseen authority in the hollow ring pressed the crowd back.
+In the ferment and resistance, he caught, through a zigzag path of
+daylight between many kerchiefed heads, a glimpse of a segment of the
+center.  A young man stood there.  About his forehead was bound the
+phylactery of a Pharisee.  At his feet was a tumbled heap of white
+outer garments.  Then the breach closed up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A sacrifice?" the man in scarlet asked himself.  But such a deduction
+would not answer for the behavior of the crowd.  Its temper was
+ferocious.  They howled, they spat, they shook arms and clenched hands
+above their heads and forward over their neighbors' shoulders; they
+cursed in Greek and Aramic; they twisted their faces into furious
+grimaces; they pressed forward and were driven back and the foremost
+rank which knew wherefore it raged was not more violent than the
+rearmost which was perfectly in the dark.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was typically the voice of the Beast in man.  Some circumstance,
+unknown to the greater body, had waived restraint.  Therefore the
+wolves of Perea could have come down from the bone-whited wadies of the
+wilderness and said to them with truth: "We be of one blood, ye and we!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Each felt the support of numbers, the momentum of unanimity, the
+incentive of relaxed order, and the original cause, however heinous,
+was forgotten in the joy of the reversion to primordial savagery.
+Their quiet fellow stood on the outskirts and listened to the yelp of
+the jackal in man.  Before him was a wall of variously clad backs and
+upstretched heads, beside him rows of raving men in profile, with
+strained eyes, open mouths and working beards; and one of them was the
+man who had shown, when asked, that he did not understand this
+demonstration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man in scarlet finally shrugged his shoulders.  He had suddenly
+evolved an explanation&mdash;the blood of a fellow man.  He turned away, not
+because he had revolted&mdash;he had seen too many spectacles in the Circus
+in Rome&mdash;but because he was disinclined to stand till he had learned
+the particulars of the uproar.  A gnarly hummock, white, harsh and dry,
+as if it were a heap of disintegrated ashes, rose several rods away on
+the brink of Kedron.  He mounted it and sat.  Yes; he would wait, also,
+till he saw the Essene again, who, he was sure, had been buried in the
+ring.  It would be unkind to himself to permit a chance for a loan to
+pass untried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tumult continued many minutes before he noticed abatement in the
+forward ranks.  Movement which had been general throughout the interval
+increased at times, but the mob showed no signs of dispersing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The western slope of Olivet was now in its own shadow, its ravines
+already purpling with night.  Only the glory on the summit of Moriah
+blazed with undiminished fire, as the gold of the gates gave back the
+gold of the sunset.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently a number of men, dressed alike in priestly robes, hurried
+back through Hanaleel into the city.  Hardly had they disappeared
+before the gate gave up a number of radiant shapes in a column, which
+broke suddenly and flung itself upon the great raving circle.  The
+flash of armor and the glitter of swords were suddenly interjected into
+a demoralized eddy of stampeded hundreds.  Another sort of clamor
+arose, no less voluminous, no less fervid, but it was a howl of panic
+and protest against the methods of Vitellius' legionaries sent to
+disperse a crowd.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A solid core of fugitives drove through the gate beside Hanaleel and
+the Sheep Gate; fragments, detachments and individuals rolled down the
+banks into Kedron; screaming, tumbling, falling bodies fled north and
+south by the roadway and wherever there was a gate or a niche or a
+crevice it received fugitives who appeared no more.  Dust arose and
+obscured everything but the flash of arms and armor which rived through
+it like lightning in a cloud.  The uproar began to subside, and
+presently the laughter and jests of the soldiers mounted above the
+protest.  Fainter and fainter the cries grew, fewer the sounds of
+flying feet, and at last, strong, harsh and biting as the clang of a
+sledge upon metal, the command of the centurion to fall in settled even
+the shouts of the soldiers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was the even, musical ring of whetting armor as the column filed
+back through Hanaleel, and silence.  The man in scarlet, who had sat on
+his ash-heap and smiled throughout the dispersing of the mob, a royal
+creature enthroned and entertained by the discomfiture of the mass,
+suddenly realized that the obscurity, which he had expected to lift,
+was the shadow of night.  He arose and, dusting off his scarlet skirt,
+moved out into the road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that moment, a figure moving nearer the wall passed him, walking
+swiftly.  It was the Essene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho! a discreet youth! a cautious youth!" the man in scarlet said to
+himself; "profiting by experience, he waited in safety somewhere until
+this light-fingered rabble was dispersed.  That must be a fat purse, a
+fat purse!  And I am looking for such!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He quickened his pace to overtake the young man and in his interest
+forgot the late riot.  Suddenly the young Essene stopped as if he had
+been commanded.  The man in scarlet brought up and looked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before them was an immense trampled dusty ring.  In the falling
+twilight, he saw several huddled shapes, in attitudes of suffering and
+sorrow, kneeling together in its center over something which was
+stretched on the sand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A strangling gasp attracted the older man's attention once more to the
+Essene.  His figure seemed to shrink, his cheeks fell in.  Swiftly
+about his lips crawled the gray pallor of one physically sick from
+shock to the senses.  His eyes flared wide and the next instant he flew
+at the mourning cluster about the prostrate shape in the ring.  One or
+two fell back under his hand, and he leaned over and looked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A cry, heartrending in its agony, broke from his lips.  He dropped to
+his knees and fell forward with his face in the dust.  A murmur of
+compassion arose from the little group around him, and the man in
+scarlet lifted his shoulders and turned his back on the blighting
+spectacle of the young man's anguish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He walked hurriedly out of the falling night on the Mount, through
+Hanaleel, into the lights and noise of the City of David.  Soldiers on
+the point of closing the great gate paused to let him through.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Comrade," he said to one, "what did they out yonder?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They stoned a Nazarene named Stephen," was the reply.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-038"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-038.jpg" ALT="&quot;They stoned a Nazarene named Stephen&quot;" BORDER="2">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center">
+&quot;They stoned a Nazarene named Stephen&quot;
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IV
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE BANKRUPT
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Somewhat subdued, the man in scarlet walked through the night in the
+City of David.  After his first sensations he was discomfited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now this is what comes of the irregular barbarity in Judean
+executions," he ruminated.  "In Rome this Nazarene would have been
+despatched in order and his body borne away to the puticuli and no
+opportunity given for that painful scene outside.  Doubtless I should
+have convinced the young man and borrowed his gold of him, by this
+time.  Certainly, Fortune is a haughty jade when once offended.  But I
+shall be fortunate again; by all the gods, Jewish or Gentile, I will
+compel her smiles!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would be my luck never to see him again; he will probably linger
+only to see this dead man buried, and go on to En-Gadi, as he said he
+would.  It would hardly be seemly to approach him about his gold, in
+his unhappiness, or I would waylay him, yet.  A pest on the zealots!
+Why did they not hold off this stoning for a day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Moodily occupied by his thoughts, he passed unconscious of the careless
+people about him.  The huge tower of Antonia set on the brink of Mount
+Moriah frowned blackly over the street and in its shadow the idle life
+of the night laughed and reveled and sauntered.  The woman of the city
+was there, the Roman soldier in armor, the alien that bowed to Brahm or
+Bel, the son of the slow Nile, of the Orontes and of the yellow Tiber.
+It was not the resort of the lowest classes, but of those that were at
+variance with the spirit of the city, or the times and their
+philosophies.  Light streamed from open doorways, the wail of lyres and
+the jingle of castanets resounded within and without.  Now and then
+belated carters, driving slow donkeys, would plod through the
+revelry&mdash;a note of relentless duty which would not be forgotten.
+Again, humbler folk would retreat into wagon-ways or hug the walls to
+permit the passage of a Sadducee and his retinue, or a decurion and his
+squad&mdash;rank and power asserting their inexorable prerogative.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently there approached the click of hoofs upon flagging.  A
+soldier, passing through a broad shaft of light from a booth, stopped
+short, drew himself up and swung his short sword at present.  Up the
+street, from lip to lip of every arms-bearing man, ran his abrupt call
+to attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A body of legionaries appeared suddenly in the ray of light&mdash;brassy
+shapes in burnished armor, picked for stature and bearing.  Not even
+the plunge into blackness again broke the precision and confidence of
+that tread before which the world had fled as did now the mule-riders
+and the pedestrians of Jerusalem.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After them, the beam of light projected two horsemen into sudden view.
+There was the rattle and ring of saluting soldiers by the way.  The
+radiance showed up a typical Roman in the armor of a general, but in
+deference to Israelitish prejudice against images, the eagle was
+removed from his helmet, the bosses of Titan heads from breastplate and
+harness.  This was Vitellius, Proconsul of Syria and the shrewdest
+general on Cæsar's list.  By his side rode Herrenius Capito, Cæsar's
+debt-collector, a thin-faced Roman in civilian dress, and with the
+ashes of age sprinkled on his hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man in scarlet took one glance at the gray old countenance frowning
+under the sudden light of the lamp and slid into the obscurity of an
+open alley at hand.  He did not emerge till the hoof-beats had died
+away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So thou comest in search of me, sweet Capito," he muttered, "and I am
+penniless.  But it is comforting to know that thou hast no more hope of
+getting the three hundred thousand drachmæ which I owe to Cæsar, than I
+have of paying it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a little silence, he said further to himself, with added regret:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, had I that young Essene's gold, Capito would not find me in
+Jerusalem!  O Alexandria!  I must reach thee, though I turn dolphin and
+swim!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He continued on his way to the north wall, where he found exit
+presently into Bezetha, the unwalled suburb of Jerusalem.  Here the
+houses were comparatively new, less historic, less pretentious than
+those in the old city.  Here were inns in plenty, relaxed order and a
+general absence of the racial characteristics and the influence of
+religion.  The middle classes of Jerusalem dwelt here.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was dark, poorly paved, and the man in scarlet laid his hand on his
+purse under his tunic and walked with circumspection toward a khan.  It
+was no surprise to him to hear the sounds of struggle and outcry.  He
+stopped to catch the direction of the conflict that he might avoid it.
+It came out of a street so narrow, in a district so squalid, that
+happiness seemed to have fled the spot.  If ever the wealthy entered
+the place, it was to seek out human beings hungry enough to sell
+themselves as slaves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The commotion centered before a hovel, a tragedy in sounds, ghastly
+because the night made it unembodied.  The man in scarlet located it as
+out of his path and would have continued but for the insistent screams
+of a woman in the struggle.  Harsh shouts attempted to cry her down,
+but desperation lent her strength and the suburb shuddered with her mad
+cries.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man in scarlet lagged, shook his shoulders as if to throw off the
+influence of the appeal and finally stopped.  At that moment several
+torches of pitch, lighted at once, threw a smoky light over the scene.
+The passage was obstructed by a group of men uniformly dressed, and
+several spectators attracted by the commotion.  Assured that this was
+arrest and not violence, the curiosity of the man in scarlet drew him
+that way.  At a nearer view, he saw that the aggressors were Shoterim
+or Temple lictors, under command of a Pharisee wearing the habiliments
+of a rabbi.  The man in scarlet identified him as the referee in the
+center of the ring about the stoning.  The sudden lighting of the
+torches convinced him that the attack had its inception in secret.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the center of the fight was a middle-aged woman clinging desperately
+about the bodies of a young man and a young woman.  It was the efforts
+of the Shoterim to tear her away and her resistance that had made the
+arrest violent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shouts and revilings told the man in scarlet the meaning of the
+disturbance.  The ferrets of the High Priest, Jonathan, had discovered
+a house of Nazarenes and were taking them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More ill-timed zeal!" he muttered to himself.  "Or let me be exact:
+more bloody politics!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had turned to leave when a figure in white, directed from the city,
+drove past him and through to the center of the crowd, with the
+irresistible force of a hurled stone.  Spectators fell to the right and
+left before it and the man in scarlet drawing in a breath of amazement
+turned to see what the light had to disclose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the young Essene, hardly recognizable for the distortion of
+deadly hate and passion on his face.  There were dark stains on his
+garments and dust on his black hair.  Every drop of blood had left his
+cheeks, but his eyes blazed with a light that was not good to see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went straight at the Pharisee.  His grasp fell upon Saul's shoulder,
+drove in and seized upon its sinews.  The startled Tarsian turned and
+the young Essene with bent head gazed grimly down at him.  An
+interested silence fell over both captor and captive.  The blaze in the
+young man's eyes reddened and flickered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have been seeking thee, Saul of Tarsus," he said in a voice of
+deadly silkiness.  "Thou hast been most zealous for the Law in
+Stephen's case.  Look to it that thou fail not in the Law, for I shall
+profit by thy precept!  And even as Stephen fell, so shalt thou fall;
+even as Stephen came unto death, so shalt thou come!  Mark me, and
+remember!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words were menace made audible; it was more than a threat: it was
+prophecy and doom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A tingle of admiration ran over the man in scarlet.  He who could leave
+the bier of a murdered friend to visit vengeance on the head of the
+murderer was no weakling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Roman, by the gods!" he exclaimed to himself.  "A noble adversary! a
+man, by Bacchus!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A threatening murmur arose from the spectators.  But there was no
+responsive fury kindled in Saul's eyes.  Instead he looked at Marsyas
+with unutterable sorrow on his face.  Presently his shoulders lifted
+with a sigh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The city festereth with Nazarenes as a wound with thorns," he said to
+himself; aloud he called, "Joel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Levite materialized out of obscurity and bowed jerkily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bear witness to this young man's behavior.  Lictors, take him.  We
+shall hold him for examination as a Nazarene and an apostate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas started and his hand dropped.  Plainly, he had not expected to
+be accused of apostasy.  But the old mood asserted itself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This for thy slander of Stephen in the college," he said with
+premonitory calm when the Levite approached him, and struck with
+terrific force.  The Levite's body shot backward and dropped heavily on
+the earth.  The rest of the lictors precipitated themselves upon the
+young man, and, in desperation and in fury, the one man and the numbers
+fought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the man in scarlet thought fast.  His Roman love of defiance
+and war had roused in him a most compelling respect for the young
+Essene, but cupidity put forth swift and convincing argument even
+beyond the indorsement of admiration.  If the Shoterim took the young
+man in ward, he would be executed and the treasure come into the hands
+of the state for disposition.  In view of the fact that Herrenius
+Capito had traced the bankrupt to Jerusalem, Jerusalem was no longer
+tenantable for the bankrupt.  He had to have money to escape to
+Alexandria and the Essene was too profitable a chance to be lost to the
+murdering hands of fanatics.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Excited and bent only on preventing the arrest, the man sprang into the
+crowd and forced his way to the Essene's side.  But the next instant he
+also was sent reeling by a blow delivered by Marsyas in his blind
+resolution not to be taken without difficulty.  Before the bankrupt
+could recover, the united force of spectators and lictors flung itself
+upon Marsyas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Steadying himself, the man in scarlet urged his bruised brain to think.
+Half of his life for a ruse! for nothing but a ruse could save the
+young man, now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, with a half-suppressed cry of eagerness, the bankrupt took to his
+heels and ran toward the city as only an Arab trained in Roman gymnasia
+could run.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sentry at the gate passed him and he entered on the marble
+pavements of the streets for the finest exhibition of speed he had
+shown since he had carried off the laurel in Rome.  He knew the city as
+a hare knows its runways.  He cut through private passages, circled
+watchful constabulary, eluded congestions, and took the quick slopes of
+Jerusalem's hills as though the deep lungs of a youth supplied him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the broad, marble-paved street, which let in some glimpse of the
+starry sky upon the passer, opened between the rich residences of the
+Sadducees, the white luster of many burning torches lighted an area on
+a distant slope at its head.  The running man sped on, taking the rise
+of Mount Zion without slackening, until he rushed upon a sentry
+obscured under the brooding shadow of a heavy wall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Halt!"  The challenge of the sentry brought him up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Without the password, comrade," he panted.  "Call the officer of the
+guard.  And by our common quarrels in Rome do thou haste, for if I see
+not Vitellius and Herrenius Capito this instant I expire!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cry of the sentry passed from post to post until the centurion of
+the guard emerged from a small gate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One cometh without the countersign," the sentry said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A visitor for Vitellius and Herrenius Capito," the bankrupt explained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The general and his guest have retired," was the blunt reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hip! but thou art the same glib liar thou always wast, Aulus," the
+bankrupt laughed.  "Take me into the light, and slap me with thy sword
+if I am frank beyond the privileges of mine acquaintance with thee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gate-keeper, in response to a short word from the dubious Aulus,
+let down the chains with a rattle and a small side portal swung in,
+revealing an interior of semi-dusk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The centurion conducted his visitor within.  Torches stuck in sconces
+high up in the walls lighted a quadrangle of tessellated pavement,
+terminating distantly in banks of marble stairs of such breadth and
+stature that their limits were lost in the unilluminated night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a quick glance, the centurion started and slapped his helmet in
+salute to the bankrupt.  The other responded with a skill and grace
+that could not have been assumed for the moment.  The dexterity of the
+camp was written in the movement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am expected of Capito," the bankrupt said, which was true only in a
+very limited sense.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know, and do thou follow.  Thou shalt see him.  Were he dead and
+inurned he would arise to thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man in scarlet smiled a little grimly and followed his conductor
+out of the light up the marble heights of stairs duly set with
+sentinels, to a porch that even the Royal Colonnade of the Temple could
+not shame.  A huge cresset with a jeweled hood, depending from a
+groining so high that its light was feeble, showed dimly the giant
+compound arch of the portal.  An orderly, a veritable pygmy within the
+outline of the dark entrance, appeared and saluted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A visitor for the proconsul and his guest," the centurion said,
+passing the man in scarlet to the orderly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was led through a valve groaning on its granite hinges into the
+vestibule of Herod the Great's palace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a lofty hall, nobly vaulted, lined with costly Indian onyx and
+florid with pagan friezes, arabesques and frescoes.  Yet, though its
+jeweled lamps were dark and cold, its fountains still, its hangings and
+its carpets gone, its bloody genius held despotic sway from a shadowy
+throne, over the note of brute force which the Roman garrison had
+infused into it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the far end was a small carven table at which two Romans sat, a lamp
+and a crater of wine at their elbows, the tesseræ of a dice-game
+between them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without waiting for the orderly to speak, the man in scarlet stepped
+forward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greeting, Vitellius.  Capito, I salute you," he said.  His voice was
+that of a composed man speaking with equals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Vitellius turned his head toward the speaker; Capito drew up his lids
+and his lower jaw relaxed.  Slowly then both men got upon their feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the bats of Hades&mdash;" Vitellius began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the nymphs of Delphi!" Capito's aged falsetto broke in.  "It is the
+Herod himself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Herod Agrippa!" Vitellius exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From the faces of you," Agrippa declared, "I might have been the shade
+of my grandsire.  But I have been hunting you.  I need help.  And as
+thou hopest to return three hundred thousand drachmæ to Cæsar from my
+purse, do thou aid me in urging Vitellius to yield it, Capito."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Help," Capito repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What manner of help?" Vitellius demanded, fixing Agrippa with a
+suspicious eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Arrest me an Essene from the hands of Jonathan."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jonathan!" the proconsul exclaimed darkly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The High Priest, the Nasi, thy sweet and valued friend!" the Agrippa
+explained with amiable provoke.  "He has arrested an Essene on a
+trifling charge of apostasy and he is my voucher before the Essenic
+brotherhood for a loan to repay Cæsar.  I left him in the hands of the
+Shoterim, in Bezetha.  If he be not speedily rescued, they will stone
+him without the walls to-morrow and my debt to Cæsar&mdash;" he drew up his
+shoulders and spread out his hands in a gesture highly Jewish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Capito frowned and Vitellius glowered under his grizzled brow at
+Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is one to me," Agrippa continued coolly, as he noted signs of
+dissent in the contemplation.  "I am just as happy and as like to
+escape Cæsar's displeasure by failing to pay it, as thou wilt be,
+Capito, if thou failest to collect it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Capito nervously fingered the tesseræ at his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Meanwhile," added the Herod, perching himself on the edge of the
+table, "the youth proceeds to Jonathan's stronghold."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Vitellius looked at Cæsar's debt-collector.  "Dost thou see anything
+more in this than appears on the face of it?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Capito scratched his white head.  He had learned to look for ulterior
+motives in every move of this slippery Herod, but he was too little
+informed in the matter to see more than the surface.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We&mdash;can look into it, first," he opined.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jonathan will not await your pleasure," Agrippa put in.  "He is
+hurried now with the responsibility of executing enough blasphemers to
+save himself popular favor.  The Sanhedrim may sit to-morrow, the
+prisoner come for trial and be executed&mdash;even more expeditiously
+because the Nasi expects thee to interfere, Vitellius."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The proconsul bit through an expletive.  Jonathan was a thorn in his
+side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it you wish me to do?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Arrest me this youth.  The claim of the proconsul's charge will take
+precedence over the hieratic."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he has not offended&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Save the protest; he has; he struck me, a Roman citizen.  But draw up
+the warrant, good Vitellius, and send a centurion after the young man.
+Thou canst make no error by so doing and thou canst save Capito the
+favor of his emperor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Vitellius summoned a clerk and while the warrant for Marsyas' arrest
+was written, despatched an orderly for an officer.  One of the
+contubernalis to Vitellius, or one of the sons of a noble family
+serving his apprenticeship in warfare, appeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take four," Vitellius said grimly, in compliance with Herod's demand,
+when the young centurion approached, "and go with this man.  Arrest by
+superior claim the High Priest's prisoner, who shall be pointed out.
+Fetch him and this man back to me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young centurion saluted and Agrippa assented with a nod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks," he added nonchalantly.  "Come, brother," he said to the young
+officer, "if we be late it may take the whole machinery of Rome to undo
+the work of Jonathan."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa and the Roman legionaries passed out of the Prætorium and
+turned directly up the slanting street toward the palace of Jonathan,
+which stood a little above the camp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Herod had lost little time and the progress of the arresting party
+toward the stronghold would not have been rapid with the resistance of
+Marsyas and the friends of the Nazarenes to retard the movement.  After
+a quick walk of a short distance, the Roman group came upon the
+Temple's emissaries, entering from an intersecting street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saul and Joel walked a little ahead of the broken-spirited prisoners
+who were centered in a group of armed lictors and a hooting escort of
+half a hundred vagrants.  The flaring torch-light shone down on bowed
+heads and disordered garments, and showed fugitive glints of manacles
+and knives.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Among them, unbroken and silent, was Marsyas, heavily shackled.  He was
+marked with blows, but several besides the Levite Joel staggered as
+they walked, and Agrippa, lifting himself on tiptoe to point out his
+prisoner to the centurion, eyed the young man with approval.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The officer nodded abruptly and broke through the crowd.  The light
+dropping on his shining armor instantly displayed his authority to halt
+the group.  His command to stop elicited almost precipitate obedience.
+The hooting vagrants scattered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The centurion laid his hand on Marsyas' shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art a prisoner of the proconsul," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The halt and the dismayed silence caught Saul's attention.  He turned
+back and pushed his way into the center of the circle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unhand him," he said to the centurion.  "He is wanted of the
+Sanhedrim."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young officer smiled derisively and thrust off the hold of the
+apprehensive lictors.  The four made way through the crowd and the
+officer passed Marsyas into their hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Make my excuses to the Sanhedrim," the officer said sarcastically.
+The Pharisee glanced over the Roman's party.  Then he stepped without
+ostentation in the centurion's way&mdash;a weak, small figure in fringes and
+phylactery, living up to his nature as he fronted brassy Rome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Show me thy warrant," he said quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The centurion drew forth the parchment and flourished it.  Saul took it
+with a murmured courtesy, and, holding it near a torch, read it
+carefully.  Then he passed it back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After the proconsul hath done with this young man," he observed, "the
+Sanhedrim will claim him.  Say this much to the proconsul.  We shall
+wait.  Peace!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He motioned his party to proceed and the crowd moved on, leaving
+Marsyas in the hands of new captors.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Back to the Prætorium," the centurion said to Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER V
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+AGRIPPA IN REPERTOIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+On the way two dark figures emerged from the shadows and halted to let
+the soldiers pass.  Agrippa peered at them intently through the gloom,
+and raising his arm made a peculiar gesture.  Both figures approached
+immediately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do thou fetch my civilian's dress, Silas, to the gate of the Prætorium
+to-morrow, early, and my umber toga broidered with silver.  And thou,
+Eutychus, prepare our belongings so thou canst carry them and bring
+them also that we may proceed at once to En-Gadi.  I remain at the
+Prætorium to-night.  Be gone and fail not!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two men bowed and disappeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the party reëntered the gates of the camp, Herod's vestibule was
+dark.  The prisoner and Agrippa were led to the barracks and turned
+into a cubiculum, or sleeping-chamber.  One of the four was manacled to
+Marsyas and the bolts shot upon them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The soldier immediately stretched himself on the straw and, bidding the
+others hold their peace, fell asleep promptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a long time, when the sounds from the pallet assured Agrippa that
+the soldier could not be easily aroused, he arose and came over to the
+side of the young Essene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The torch-light for the officer of the guard, flaring on the wall
+without, shone through the high ventilation niche in the cell and cast
+a faint illumination over the dusky interior.  Under the half-light the
+face of Marsyas looked fallen and lifeless,&mdash;his dark hair in disorder
+on his forehead, his shadowed eyes and slight black beard making for
+the increase of pallor by contrast.  Agrippa looked at him a moment
+before the young man had noticed his approach.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The medicine for thy hurts, young brother," he said to himself, "is
+only one&mdash;the comforting arms of a woman.  I have had experience; I
+know!  But if thou art an Essene that comfort is denied thee.  Now, I
+wonder what demon-ridden Jew it was who first thought of an order of
+celibates!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew closer and the somber eyes of the young man lighted upon him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So thou dost not sleep," Agrippa said in Hebrew.  Marsyas' face showed
+a little surprise at the choice of tongue, but he answered in the same
+language.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why am I here?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better here than there," Agrippa responded under his breath,
+indicating the direction of Jonathan's stronghold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen," he continued, "and may Morpheus plug this soldier's ears if
+he knows our fathers' ancient tongue.  Canst see my face, brother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas signed his assent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou sayest thou art a Galilean," Agrippa pursued.  "Look now and see
+if thou discoverest aught familiar in me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas raised himself on an elbow and gazed into the Herod's face.
+Finally he said slowly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have seen thee in Tiberias&mdash;in power&mdash;as&mdash;as prefect!  Thou art
+Herod Agrippa!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was silence; the Essene's eyes filled with question and the Herod
+gave him time to think.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had thee arrested," Agrippa resumed when he believed that Marsyas'
+ideas had reached the point of asking what the Herod had to do with
+him.  "To-morrow thou wilt be fined for striking me and turned
+loose&mdash;to Jonathan&mdash;unless thou art helped to escape."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I understand," said Marsyas with growing light, but without enthusiasm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou seest I am virtually a prisoner here.  I became so, to save thee
+from Jonathan."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For me!  Thou becamest a prisoner to save me?" Marsyas repeated,
+astounded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because I need thee as much as thou needest me," was the frank
+admission.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What can I do for thee that thou shouldst need me?" Marsyas asked
+softly, but still wondering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hast&mdash;hast thou ever lacked friends so wholly that thou wast willing
+to purchase one?" Agrippa asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am thy grateful servant; yet I am an Essene, poor, persecuted,
+homeless, hungry and heartbroken.  What wilt thou have of me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In that was more earnestness than blandishment, more appeal than
+offering.  The young man published his helplessness and asked after the
+other's use of him.  Agrippa was silent; after a pause Marsyas put out
+his hand and lifting the hem of the pagan tunic pressed it to his lips.
+The act could not fail to reach to the innermost of the Herod's heart.
+His head dropped suddenly into his hands, and the young Essene's touch
+rested lightly on his shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Finally Agrippa raised his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dost thou know my history, brother?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From the lips of others, yes; but let me hear thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art a just youth; nothing so outrages a slandered man as to pen
+his defense within his lips.  Hear me, then.  To be a Herod once meant
+to be beloved by the Cæsars.  In my early childhood, after the death of
+my young father, I was taken to Rome by my mother and reared among
+princes and the sons of consuls.  Best of all my friends was Drusus,
+Cæsar's gallant son, and we studied together, raced and gambled and
+feasted together, loved and hated&mdash;and fought together, and never was
+there a difference between us except in purse!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"While he lived, I lived as he lived, but when he died his sire drove
+me out of Rome because I had been the living Drusus' shadow and it
+stung the father that the shadow should live while the sweet substance
+perished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When Drusus died my living died with him, and when I took ship at
+Puteoli for Palestine I owed three hundred thousand drachmæ to Cæsar
+and forty tradesmen barked about my heels.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had a ruined castle in Idumea.  I forgot that I owned it till I was
+in actual want of shelter.  Thither I went.  But I was a young man,
+hopeless, and young hopelessness is harder than the hopelessness of
+age.  I should have put an end to myself, but Cypros, my princess,
+prevented me by the gentle force of her love and devotion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She could not have balked me more thoroughly had she tied me hand and
+foot.  I railed, but while I railed she wrote and sent a messenger, and
+in a little time an answer came.  It was from my brother-in-law, Herod
+Antipas, who is tetrarch of Galilee.  Cypros had besought him to help
+us.  He wrote courteously, or else his scribe, for it is hard to
+reconcile that letter with the man I met, and begged me come and be his
+prefect over Tiberias.  I went."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prince paused and when he went on thereafter it seemed as if his
+account were expurgated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At Tyre before an hundred nobles assembled at a feast he twitted me
+with my poverty and boasted his charity.  I tore off the prefect's
+badge and flung it in his face.  And that same night I took the road to
+Antioch, my princess with me, a babe on either arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The proconsul of Antioch took us in, but there was treachery against
+me afoot in his household, and I lost his friendship through it.  His
+was my last refuge under roof of mine own rank.  I heard recently that
+Alexander Lysimachus, Alabarch of Alexandria, was in Jerusalem,
+presenting a Gate to the Temple, and sending my wife and children to
+Ptolemais, I hastened hither to get a loan of him.  But he had departed
+some days before I came.  So here am I as a player of dice to win me
+money enough to take me back to Ptolemais.  But Herrenius Capito,
+Cæsar's debt-collector, hath found me out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked down at Marsyas' interested face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me be truthful," he corrected.  "I found him.  I could have flown
+him successfully, but for thy close straits.  All that would save thee
+would be the interference of Rome, and I could command it at sacrifice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Public version of Agrippa's story had enlarged much on certain phases
+of his adventures which he had curtailed, and these minutiæ had not
+been to Herod's credit.  Yet, though Marsyas knew of these things, his
+heart stirred with great pity.  His was that large nature which turns
+to the unfortunate whether or not his misfortune be merited.  It seemed
+to him that the prince's fall had been too hapless for comment.  But
+the word here and there, which suggested the prince's intercession in
+his behalf, stirred him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How shall I make back to thee thy effort in my behalf?" he asked
+earnestly.  "Thou sayest that thou needest me; what can I do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"First let me know of thyself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas relinquished his thought on Agrippa to turn painfully to his
+own story.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am Marsyas, son of Matthew, of Nazareth.  He was a zealot who fought
+beside Judas of Galilee.  I was born after his death, and at my birth
+my mother died, and being the last of their line, I am, and have been
+all my life alone.  I was taken in mine infancy by the Essenic master
+of the school in Nazareth and reared to be an Essene.  But I developed
+a certain aptness for learning and in later youth a certain aptness for
+teaching, and my master by the consent of the order, whose ward I was,
+designed me for the scholar-class of Essenes, which do not reside in
+En-Gadi but without in the world.  The vows of the order were not laid
+upon me; they are reserved for the sober and understanding years when
+my instruction should be completed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa frowned.  "Art thou not a member of the brotherhood, then?" he
+asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I am a neophyte, a postulant."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Herod ran his fingers though his hair, and Marsyas went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had two friends, both older than I.  One was Saul of Tarsus; one,
+Stephen of Galilee.  Neither knew the other.  Stephen was born an
+Hellenist, and until the coming of his Prophet, a good Jew.  But when
+Jesus arose in Nazareth, Stephen followed Him, and, after the Nazarene
+was put away, he remained here in Jerusalem.  When I came hither to
+complete mine instruction in the college, I found the synagogue aroused
+against him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Chief among the zealous in behalf of the Law is Saul of Tarsus.  Him I
+most feared, when the rumors of Stephen's apostasy spread abroad.  An
+evil messenger finally set Saul upon Stephen, and I pleaded with him to
+spare Stephen, until I could win him back to the faith.  But Saul would
+not hear me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I meant to give over mine ambition to become a scholar and take
+Stephen into the refuge of En-Gadi&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stopped for control and continued presently with difficulty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But when I returned from Nazareth, whither I had gone to get my
+patrimony which the Essene master held in ward, his enemies stoned him
+before mine eyes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stephen's death and not his own peril was the climax of his story and
+he ceased because his heart began to shrink under its pain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And this Saul of Tarsus, whom I heard you threaten over in Bezetha,
+mistaking your natural grief and hunger for vengeance as signs of
+apostasy, would stone you also," Agrippa remarked, filling in the rest
+of the narrative from surmise.  Marsyas assented; it hurt him as much
+to think on Saul as it did to remember that Stephen was dead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was doubtless his intent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Implacable enough to be Cæsar!  And thou art not a member of the
+Essenic order&mdash;only a neophyte.  That is disconcerting.  Hast thou any
+influence with the brethren?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None whatever."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perplexity sat dark on the Herod's brow.  Marsyas, with his eyes on the
+prince's face, observed it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can I not help thee?" he asked anxiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought once that thou couldst; but thou sayest that thou hast no
+power with the Essenes.  Now, I do not know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it thou wouldst have had me do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have said that I owe three hundred thousand drachmæ to Cæsar.
+Unless I discharge it, under the Roman law I can be required to become
+the slave of my creditor.  That I might secure intercession in thy
+behalf, I had to promise Capito and Vitellius that thou couldst help me
+to repay this sum."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I!" Marsyas cried, sitting up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The legionary stirred and Agrippa laid a warning finger on his lip.
+The two sat silent until the sleeper fell again into total
+unconsciousness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three hundred thousand drachmæ!" Marsyas repeated.  "I, to get that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knew that the Essenic brotherhood have a common treasury and that
+they are believed to be rich.  I thought that thou couldst persuade
+them to lend me the sum."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas shook his head.  "They are poor, poor!  Their fund is not
+contributed in great bulk, and the little they own must be expended in
+hospitality and in maintaining themselves.  Their treasury would be
+enriched by the little I bring."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Fortune!" Agrippa groaned aloud.  "I am undone and so art thou!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas lapsed into thought, while the Herod looked at the solid door
+that stood between him and liberty.  He had set the subject aside as
+profitless and was a little irritated when Marsyas spoke again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What hopes hast thou in Alexandria?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The alabarch, Alexander Lysimachus, is my friend.  He is rich; I could
+borrow of him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take thou my gold and go thither," Marsyas offered at once.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not so easy as it sounds, for the sound of it is most generous
+and kindly.  How am I to get out of Capito's clutches, here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas gazed straight at Agrippa with the set eyes of one plunged into
+deep speculation.  Then he leaned toward the prince.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will this gold in all truth help thee to borrow more in Alexandria?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And then what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To Rome!  To imperial favor!  To suzerainty over Judea!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas laid hold on the prince's arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art a Herod," he said intensely.  "Ambition natively should be
+the very breath of thy nostrils.  Yet swear to me that thou wilt
+aspire&mdash;aye, even desperately as thy grandsire!  Swear to me that thou
+wilt not be content to be less than a king!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At another time, Agrippa might have found amusement in the young man's
+earnestness, but the cause was now his own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou tongue of my desires!" he exclaimed.  "I have sworn!  Being a
+Herod, mine oaths are not idle.  I have sworn!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, let us bargain together," Marsyas said rapidly.  "I have told
+thee my story: thou heardest my vow to-night!  For my fealty, yield me
+thy word!  As I help thee into power, help me to revenge!  Promise!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Promise!  By the beard of Abraham, I will conquer or kill anything
+thou markest; yield thee my last crust, and carry thee upon my back, so
+thou help me to Alexandria!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Swear it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa raised his right hand and swore.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The legionary roused and growled at the two to be quiet.  Marsyas fell
+back on the straw and lay still.  Agrippa made signs and urged for more
+discussion, but the Essene, masterful in his silence, refused to speak.
+Presently the Herod lay down and slept from sheer inability to engage
+his mind to profit otherwise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A little after dawn the following morning, the Essene and the Herod
+were conducted into the vestibule of Herod the Great, for a hearing
+before Vitellius and Herrenius Capito.  But Marsyas' offense against a
+Roman citizen was held in abeyance; it was Agrippa's debt to Cæsar
+which engaged the attention of the judges.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Vitellius was in a precarious temper and Capito looked as grim as
+querulous old age may.  Agrippa's nonchalance was only a surface air
+overlaying doubts and no little trepidation.  But Marsyas, white and
+sternly intent, was the most resolute of the four.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Capito stirred in his chair and prepared to speak, but Vitellius cut in
+with a point-blank demand on the young Essene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dost thou know this man?" he asked, indicating Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do, lord," Marsyas answered, turning his somber eyes on the legate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He owes three hundred thousand drachmæ to Cæsar; he says that thou
+canst help him pay it; is it so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is, lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's eyes were perfectly steady; it would not do to show amazement
+now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How?" was the next demand flung at the Essene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can place him in the way of certain wealth," was the assured reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The noble Roman's pardon, but there are certain things an Essene may
+not divulge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's well-bred brows lifted.  Was this evader and collected
+schemer the innocent Essene he had met on the slopes of Olivet the
+previous evening?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Answer!  Dost thou promise to provide the Herod with three hundred
+thousand drachmæ which shall be paid unto Cæsar's treasury?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I promise to place the prince where he will provide himself with three
+hundred thousand drachmæ.  If he pay it not unto Cæsar, the fault shall
+be his, not mine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will the Essenes do it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It shall be done," Marsyas replied, his composure unshaken by the
+menace implied in the questioning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Capito, what thinkest thou?" Vitellius demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old collector shuffled his slippered feet, and his antique treble
+took on an argumentative tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cæsar wants his money, not a slave; I want the emperor's commendation,
+not his blame.  But let us bind this young Jew to this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Vitellius motioned to an orderly.  "Send hither a notary; and let us
+take down this Jew's promise.  Now, Herod, speak up.  There are no
+rules of an order to bind you.  Where shall you get this money?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of two sources," Agrippa declared, unblushing.  "From the young man
+himself and from the Essenes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you had so many moneyers, why have you not paid your debt long ago?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had not the indorsement of this young Essenic doctor to validate my
+note, O Vitellius," the Herod responded with equanimity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two Romans frowned; the clerk finished his transcription.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sign!" Vitellius ordered Marsyas threateningly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas calmly wrote his name in Greek under the voucher.  After him
+Agrippa signed the document.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, listen," Vitellius began conclusively.  "I believe neither of
+you.  But for the fact that Cæsar would be burdened with a useless
+chattel I should let Capito foreclose upon you, Agrippa.  But there is
+a chance that this rigid youth may be telling the truth; if he is
+not&mdash;" the legate closed his thin lips and let the menace of his hard
+eyes complete the sentence.  Marsyas contemplated him, unmoved,
+undismayed, no less inflexible and determined.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The punishment for his offense against you, Agrippa, is remitted.  Get
+you gone.  Capito!  Follow them!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Totally undisturbed by this sudden entanglement in a supposedly clear
+skein, Agrippa waved his hand and smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Many thanks, Vitellius," he said.  "Would I could get my debts paid if
+only to deserve thy respect once more.  But thy hospitality must be a
+little longer strained.  The wolves of Jonathan wait without to lay
+hands on this young man.  He must be passed the gates in disguise.  I
+provided for that last night.  Admit my servants, I pray thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have your way, Herod, and fortune go with you, curse you for a winsome
+knave," Vitellius growled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa laughed, but there was no laughter in his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two were led through a second hall instinct with barbaric
+splendors, to a small apartment where they were presently attended by
+two servants.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One was a slow, stolid Jew of middle-age, with stubbornness and honesty
+the chief characteristics of his face.  The other would have won more
+interest from the casual observer.  He was young, well-formed, but of
+uncertain nationality.  His head was like a cocoanut set on its smaller
+end, and covered with thick, stiff, lusterless black hair, cut close
+and growing in a rounded point on his forehead.  One eye was smaller
+than the other and the lid drooped.  The fault might have given him a
+roguish look but for the ill-natured cut of his mouth.  Both wore the
+brown garments of the serving-class.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Agrippa and Marsyas stood up from the ministrations of these two,
+they were fit figures for a procession of patricians on the Palatine
+Hill.  Marsyas' soiled white garments had been put off for a tunic and
+mantle of fine umber wool, embroidered with silver.  A tallith of silk
+of the same color was bound with a silver cord about his forehead.
+Agrippa's garments were only a short white tunic of extraordinary
+fineness belted with woven gold, and a toga of white, edged with
+purple.  But the prince examined Marsyas with an interested eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By Kypris!" he said aloud, "and thou art to entomb thyself in En-Gadi!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Marsyas did not understand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Capito awaited them when they emerged, and announced himself ready to
+proceed.  Procedure was to be an elaborate thing.  A squad of soldiery
+had been detailed as escort, and stood prepared in marching order; the
+collector's personal array of apparitors was assembled; his baggage
+sent forth to his pack-horses,&mdash;himself, duly arrayed after the fashion
+of a conventional old Roman afraid of color.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa placed himself beside the collector with an equanimity that was
+almost disconcerting.  The old man signed his apparitors to proceed and
+followed with his two virtual prisoners.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Through the envelope of grief and rancor, the grave difficulties of his
+predicament reached Marsyas.  Unless he could be rid of the
+surveillance of Capito, both he and the Herod were in sore straits.
+But Agrippa's amiable temper presaged something, and Marsyas merged the
+new distress with the burden of misery which bowed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They passed out of the simpler portions of the royal house into the
+state wing and emerged in the great audience-chamber.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It would have been impossible for a scion of that bloody house to pass
+for the first time in years through that royal chamber without comment
+upon it.  Agrippa after crossing the threshold slackened his step and
+his eyes took on the luster of retrospection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember it," he said in a preoccupied way, "but only as a dream.  I
+went this way when my father and mother fared hence to Rome!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Capito lagged also, and Marsyas and the men following slackened their
+steps, until by the time the center of the vast hall was reached they
+paused as if by one accord.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hall was an octagonal, faced half its height, or to the floor of
+its galleries, in banded agate from the Indies; from that point upward
+the lining was marble panels and frescoes, alternating.  The galleries
+were supported by a series of interlaced oriental arches, rich with
+tracery and filigree.  With these main features as groundwork, the
+barbaric fancy of Herod the Great threw off all restraint and reveled
+in magnitude, richness and display.  He did not permit Greece, the
+<I>arbiter elegantarium</I>, to govern his building or his garnishment.  He
+harkened to the Arab in him and made a bacchanal of color; he
+remembered his one-time poverty and debased the hauteur of gold to the
+humility of wood and clay and stone.  He imaged Life in all its forms
+and crowded it into mosaics on his pavement, subjected it in the
+decoration of his scented wood couches, tables, taborets, weighted it
+with the cornices of his ceilings, the rails of his balustrades, the
+basins of his fountains&mdash;until he seemed to shake his scepter as despot
+over all the beast kind.  He was a hunter, a warrior and a statesman;
+the instincts of all three had their representation in this, his high
+place.  He was a voluptuary, a tyrant, and a shedder of blood; his
+audience-chamber told it of him.  Thus, though he had crumbled to ashes
+forty years before, and the efforts of the world to forget him had
+almost succeeded, he left a portrait behind him that would endure as
+long as his palace stood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The light of the Judean sun came in a harlequinade of twenty colors,
+but, where it fell and was reproduced, Nature had mastered the
+kaleidoscope and made it a glory.  The immense space, peopled with
+graven images, yet animated with ghostly swaying of hangings, had its
+own shifting currents of air, drafts that were streaming winds, cool
+and scented with the aromatic woods of the furniture.  The portals were
+closed, and there was no sound.  Sun, wind and silence ennobled Herod's
+mistakes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The four stood longer than they knew.  Then Agrippa made a little
+sound, a sudden in-taking of the breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See!" he whispered, laying a hand on Capito's shoulder and pointing
+with the other.  "That statue!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Following his indication, their eyes rested on the sculptured figure of
+a woman, cut from Parian marble.  It was a drowsy image, the head
+fallen upon a hand, the lids drooping, the relaxation of all the
+muscles giving softness and pliability to the pose.  So perfect was the
+work that the marble promised to be yielding to the touch.  Some
+imitator of Phidias had achieved his masterpiece in this.  Indeed, at
+first glance there was startlement for the four.  A warm human flush
+had mantled the stone, and Marsyas' brows drew together, but he could
+not obey the old Essenic teaching and drop his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A statue?" Capito asked, uncertainly taking his withered chin between
+thumb and forefinger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A statue," Agrippa assured him.  "The illumination is from the
+batement light above.  Come nearer!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He led them to the angle in which the image stood, not more than three
+paces from the wall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is my grandsire's queen, Mariamne," he continued softly, for
+ordinary tones awakened ghostly echoes in the haunted hall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Murdered Mariamne!" the old man whispered with sudden intensity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He loved her, and killed her in the fury of his love.  They said that
+the king was wont to come in the morning when the sun stood there,
+drive out the attendants so that none might hear, and cling about this
+fair marble's knees in such agony of passion and remorse and grief that
+life would desert him.  They would come in time to find him there,
+stretched on the pavement, cold and inert, to all purposes dead!  And
+it was said that these groins here above held echoes of his awful grief
+after he had been borne away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Capito shivered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What punishment!" he exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Punishment!  They who curse Herod's memory could not, if they had
+their will, visit such torture upon him as he invented for himself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Capito was lost now in contemplation of the statue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was beautiful," he said after a silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Didst ever see her?" Agrippa asked eagerly.  The collector's back was
+turned to the prince, that he might have the advantageous view, and he
+answered with rapt eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Once; through an open gate which led into her own garden.  So I saw
+her in the lightest of vestments, for the day was warm and half of her
+beauty usually hidden was unveiled."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well for thee my grandsire never knew," Agrippa put in, leaning
+against one of the cestophori which guarded a blank panel in the wall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He never knew; but I would have died before I would give over the
+memory of it.  She was slight, willowy, with the eyes of an Attic
+antelope, yet braver and more commanding than any woman-eye that ever
+bewitched me.  Her mouth&mdash;Praxiteles would have turned from Lais' lips
+to hers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's hand slid down the side of the cestophorus and fumbled a
+little within the edge of the molding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her hair was loose," the old man went on, "the sole drapery of her
+bosom&mdash;a very cloud of night loomed into filaments&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An inert, moldy breath reached Marsyas.  He turned his head.  The panel
+between the cestophori was gone and a square of darkness yawned its
+miasma into the hall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prince made a lightning movement; noiselessly the two servants
+dived into the blackness; Marsyas followed; after him, the prince.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An eclipsing wall began to slide between them and the hail they had
+left.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her arms were languidly lifted&mdash;arms that for whiteness shamed this
+marble&mdash;" the old man was saying as the panel glided back into place
+and shut them in darkness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ow!" Agrippa whispered in delight, "he tells that story better every
+year!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VI
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+MARSYAS ASSUMES A CHARGE
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa crowded past the three that had preceded him into the black
+passage and, whispering a command to follow, led on.  They kept track
+of him by the sound of his shoes on the stone, but the absolute
+darkness and the unfamiliar path made their steps uncertain and slow.
+Frequently the sure footfall before them receded and in fear of losing
+their guide they stumbled forward in nervous haste.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently the darkness about them lifted; the sensation was not that
+light had entered in, but that the darkness had simply failed in
+strength.  There was a perceptible increase in temperature and the
+atmosphere, changing from a chill, became muggy and oppressive.
+Marsyas, drawing in a full breath in search of freshness, told himself
+that this was the original air of chaos, penned in at the hour of
+creation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The floor under his feet became irregular, the instinctive realization
+that a roof was imminent overhead, passed, and, when the darkness
+became sufficiently feeble, they discovered that they were following
+through an immense chamber.  Light came in through air-holes in the
+rock above.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa spoke aloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is a quarry-chamber.  It was also my grandsire's secret
+stronghold, trial-chamber and tomb where many of his private grudges
+were satisfied.  But there are no evidences, now.  The place was open
+to the hill-jackals, by another passage which, if my memory has not
+failed me, shall lead us out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of the servitors, whose teeth had been chattering, made a
+shuddering sound.  Agrippa laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou, Eutychus?" he said.  "Comfort thee; the jackals have ceased to
+haunt the place since their hunger was last satisfied, thirty years
+ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An irregular spot of blackness in one of the walls swallowed up the
+prince as he spoke.  Eutychus halted at the edge and drew back with a
+whimper.  But the second servitor, who had not spoken since Marsyas had
+first seen him, muttered contemptuously some inarticulate word and
+pushed Eutychus into the blackness.  Marsyas followed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thereafter it was only time which ensued.  Sound, sight and, except for
+the stone under their feet, feeling were defeated.  They moved
+interminably.  Once or twice Eutychus became hysterical from the
+depression, but the stolid servitor smote him and bundled him on.
+Ahead a light laugh floated back to them in appreciation of the humor
+in Eutychus' predicament.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In time a yellow star with ragged points appeared ahead of them, high
+above the level upon which they had been walking.  Eutychus trembled
+before it, but Agrippa quickened his steps.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a memory I have," he observed cheerfully.  "Any other than myself
+would have been hopelessly entangled in these galleries and perished
+miserably some days hence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The star enlarged, lost substantiality and presently Eutychus with a
+gasp of joy faltered that it was daylight.  Several minutes later they
+emerged through an open tomb into high noon over Judea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before their blinded vision, the green hills swimming in sunlight
+upheaved between them and all points of the horizon.  The City of David
+was nowhere to be seen; the sun stood directly in the zenith.  Marsyas
+was lost; but the prince smiled in immense satisfaction and, seeking a
+grassy spot, sat down and breathed deeply.  Presently he motioned to
+the others to sit.  Marsyas came close to him; the others remained at a
+respectful distance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a long time no one spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last Agrippa fell to inspecting his delicate hands and his garments
+for marks of the long journey under the earth, and the embroidered
+shoes for evidences of contact with jagged rock.  Satisfied that he was
+clean and intact, he laughed a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the hat of Hermes, this was noble apparel to wear through the
+bowels of the earth.  <I>Eheu</I>!  I was at my best, and not so much as a
+she-bat saw me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eutychus, entirely recovered, chuckled, and a grin overspread the face
+of Silas; but Marsyas was plunged in his own reflections.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is the country-side west of Jerusalem," Agrippa resumed
+presently, for the young Essene's information.  "Yonder," pointing
+north, "the road runs which shall lead us hence.  We are an hour's
+journey by daylight above ground, from the Tower of Hippicus.  But we
+are not beyond the zone of danger yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas did not answer.  Reaction had set up within him against the
+foreign interest which had engaged his attention since sunrise.  He had
+thought of himself and had been concerned for Agrippa; he had planned
+and had achieved ends.  Entanglements straightened, immediate danger
+passed, the cloud of his sorrow embraced him wholly.  He did not want
+to see that Canaan was beautiful, indeed a land of milk and honey.  The
+wind laden with spring sweets struck a chill in his soul; the singing
+birds hurt him with a pain greater than he could endure.  His heart was
+bruised, his every sensation sore and weighted with a numb
+consciousness that a dread thing had happened and that it was useless
+to pray and hope now.  The presence of others was an obstacle, vaguely
+realized, that kept him from yielding to his desire to lie down on his
+face and hate everything and give himself up to whatever chose to
+befall him.  Agrippa's hand, presently laid on his shoulder, irritated
+him.  He had to restrain himself to keep from shaking it off.  But the
+prince spoke, and his words were helpful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marsyas, I know thy pain.  I, too, had a beloved friend foully
+murdered, and the agony of helplessness against the power that did him
+to death sowed ashes on my heart.  But the time of the Lord God, slow
+as it approaches, fell at last.  The only bitterness in my cup of
+fierce triumph was that it was another, and not I, who accomplished, at
+the end, the undoing of the murderer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Lord God forfend any such misfortune from me!" was the bitter
+rejoinder.  "Vengeance can not be vengeance, if it fall from any hand
+but mine!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou speakest truly: be thy requital sweeter than mine!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was good to find the reflection of his own hurt in another's
+experience.  It did not lessen his pain; but it gave him expression and
+the assurance of sympathy.  Agrippa continued in his pleasant voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This persecution will cease ere long.  It is only Jonathan's device to
+make him noted as one zealous for the faith.  He is much disliked.  It
+is reproach enough for a High Priest to be popular with the Sadducees:
+it is well-nigh unforgivable to be set up by Rome; it is an
+insurmountable obstacle to be other than eligible, Levitically; but
+this man hath been wholly undone by these and an offensive personality.
+Wherefore the people hate him with a fervor which Vitellius must
+respect.  But Jonathan fancies that if he can make him a name as a
+defender of the faith, the rabble will applaud, and thou and I and
+Vitellius and the discerning Jews will achieve no more against him than
+flies whining about a wall!  What folly!  How oft we believe a thing to
+be so, because we wish it to be so!  Vitellius does not see how the
+stoning of blasphemers indorses a man whom he dislikes.  So Jonathan's
+time is short and the persecution will cease with him.  His minion will
+be discountenanced with the master, and thine opportunity is made.  Be
+of hope; thy day is not distant."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Marsyas' brow blackened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A noble reflection!" he exclaimed passionately, "and one that should
+soothe the Tarsian's dreams!  Binding and stoning and killing in his
+zeal for an usurper of the robes of Aaron!  Shedding sweet blood&mdash;doing
+irreparable deeds to serve a vain end, to further a useless attempt&mdash;a
+thing to be given over to-morrow!  O thou God of wrath!  If it be not
+sin to pray it, let him stumble speedily in the Law!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile Agrippa observed the sun, and after a little silence that his
+return to spirits seem not to grate upon the young Essene's distress,
+arose briskly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Up! up!" he said.  "It is not at variance with Vitellius' extreme
+methods to empty the whole Prætorium into the hills in search of us.
+Up, fellows!  To Ptolemais!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas arose with the others, but he hesitated and glanced down at the
+fine garments that covered him.  He remembered that he had not brought
+his soiled Essenic robes with him.  He unslung his wallet and extended
+it to Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take it, and forget not that I shall ask payment from the strength of
+that high place to which this may help thee!  The vengeful spirit is
+not of choice a patient thing!  I shall wait&mdash;but to achieve mine ends.
+God prosper thee!  If thy servants will lend me each a garment thou
+shalt have back thy dress once more and I will depart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whither?" asked Agrippa without taking the purse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To En-Gadi, for the present."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the brotherhood will then be guilty of befriending thee and thou
+art a living example of that which befalls him who befriends one of
+Saul's marked creatures."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I am become as a pestilence," Marsyas said grimly.  It was another
+count against the Pharisee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art much beset.  Doubt not that Vitellius will seek for thee in
+En-Gadi, and it were better for thee and for the brotherhood that thou
+be not found.  Thou must leave Judea, for the arm of the Sanhedrim is
+long."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To leave Judea meant to be banished among the Gentiles, to step out of
+four whitewashed walls into unknown turmoil; to leave the pleasures of
+solitude, the peoples of parchment, the events of old history, the
+ambitions of the soul and go forth amid arrogant heathen godlessness to
+meet precarious fortunes.  The whole course of his life had been
+entirely reversed in a few hours.  Resolute and strong as the Essene
+was, his face contracted painfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa laid a hand on his arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Remember, it is our faith that this persecution will cease and then
+thou canst return to thy study in safety," he said as gently as if he
+were speaking to a child.  But in that moment, Marsyas told himself
+that there would be no returning to his old peace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come with me," Agrippa continued.  "I will afford thee protection and
+thou shalt provide me with funds."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused and, taking Marsyas' arm, led him down to a little meandering
+vale, sweet with blossoming herbs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look," he said, pointing back toward the east.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hills stood aside in a long, full-breasted series, and revealed
+through a narrow, green-walled aisle a distant view of Jerusalem, white
+and majestic on her heights.  The morning blue that encroaches upon the
+noon in early spring softened the spectacle with a tender atmosphere;
+distance glorified its splendors, and the light upon it was other than
+daylight&mdash;it was a nimbus, the ineffable crown.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus seen it was no longer the city of subjection, filled with wrongs
+and griefs and hopelessness.  It was the Holy City, upright with the
+godliness of David, lawful in the government of Solomon; sacred with
+the presence of the Shekinah in the Holy of Holies.  Here, Sheba might
+have stood first to be shown the glories of Solomon; here, Alexander
+might have drawn up his Macedonian quadriga to behold what excellence
+he was next to conquer.  Marsyas felt emotion seize him, the mighty
+welling of tears in their springs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Behold it!" Agrippa said.  "We go forth beaten and ashamed, but thou
+shalt return to it justified; I shall return to it crowned.  Believe in
+that as thou believest in Jehovah!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew the young Essene away and signed to the servitors.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the days that followed, Agrippa tactfully and little by little won
+Marsyas out of his brooding.  Delicately, he sounded the young man's
+nature and discovered the channel into which his sorrowful thoughts
+could be diverted.  Stirring incidents of the Herod's own astounding
+history, graphic accounts of great pageants, of contests of famous
+athletæ, or of gorgeous cities, vivaciously told, engaged Marsyas'
+attention in spite of himself.  Gradually his sharpened interest began
+to choose for itself.  Expectancy of things to come communicated by
+Agrippa presently possessed Marsyas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All this was a new and inviting experience for the young Essene, as
+well as an alleviation.  He had lived a placid, passionless life with
+the old Essenic master and centered his broad loves on one or two.
+Evil happenings had wrenched these from him and his affections wandered
+and wavered, lost only for an hour.  By the time the journey to
+Ptolemais was ended, Agrippa had stepped into his own place in the
+heart of the bereaved young man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ptolemais was built for solidity and strength.  Its houses were
+defenses, its public buildings were fortifications; its mole, harbor
+front and wall the most unassailable on the Asiatic seaboard.  From the
+plains of Esdraelon in their dip toward the sea, the city was seen, set
+broadside to the waves, stanch, regular, square and bulky&mdash;embodied
+defiance for ever uttered to whatever sea-faring nation turned its
+triremes into her roadsteads.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a narrow street near the southernmost limits of the city, Agrippa
+stopped.  A house of a single story stood before them, its roof barely
+higher than its door; a heavy wall before it, a narrow gate in that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Enter," said the prince to Marsyas, "into the unctuous hospitalities
+of Agrippa's palace."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He unlatched the gate, and, leading his companion across a small court,
+knocked at the door, which after a little wait swung open.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An uncommonly pretty waiting-woman stepped aside to let them enter.
+Marsyas put off his sandals and followed the prince into a small recess
+cut off by curtains from the interior of the house.  A bronze lamp was
+in a niche in the wall and a taboret stood in the corner.  No other
+furniture was visible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prince dismissed the two servitors and they passed behind the
+curtains, Eutychus stumbling as he went, because his eyes were engaged
+in attempting to attract the attention of the pretty waiting-woman, who
+seemed quite oblivious of his glances.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Send hither your mistress, Drumah," Agrippa said to her.  She bowed
+and departed and presently one of the curtains lifted and a woman
+hastened into the apartment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a low cry of joy she ran to the prince and flung herself on his
+breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that thou shouldst come and none to watch for thee!" she
+exclaimed.  "That thou shouldst enter thy house and none but thy
+hireling to meet thee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed lightly and kissed her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have brought also a guest, Cypros," he said.  For the first time her
+eyes lighted on Marsyas and blushing she drew away from her husband.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I pray thy pardon," she murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The light from the day without shone full on her through a lattice, and
+since his journey to Nazareth Marsyas had learned to look on women with
+an interested eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was small, but her figure showed the perfect outlines of the
+matron, and the Jewish dress, bound about the hips with a broad scarf,
+let no single grace lose itself under drapery.  But it was the face
+that held the young Essene's attention.  There, too, was the blood of
+the Herod, for Agrippa had married his cousin, but its attributes were
+refined almost to ethereal extremes.  Flesh could not have been whiter
+nor coloring more delicate.  The effect rendered was an impression of
+exquisite frailty, produced as much by the pathos in the over-large
+black eyes and the serious cut of the tender mouth as by the
+transparency of the exceedingly small hand which lay on her breast as
+if to still a fluttering heart.  Her beauty was not aided by strength
+of character or intellectuality; it was distinctly the simple,
+defenseless, appealing type which is an invincible conqueror of men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is Marsyas of Nazareth, an Essene in distress, yet not so
+unfortunate that he is not willing to help us.  What comfort canst thou
+offer him from thy housekeeping?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Essenes were the holy men of Israel; the large eyes filled with
+deference and she bowed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Welcome in God's name.  My lord has bread and a roof-tree.  I pray
+thee share them freely with us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' formality so serviceable among the women of Nazareth suddenly
+seemed infelicitous here, but it was all he had for response to this
+different personage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The blessing of God be with thee; I give thee thanks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She summoned the pretty waiting-woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let my lord and his guest be given food and drink; set wine and such
+meats as we have, and let the children come and greet their father."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prince thrust the curtains aside and, motioning to Marsyas', waited
+until his princess and the young man had passed within.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The apartment was a second recess larger than the first, shut in by
+hangings of sackcloth and furnished with rough seats and tables of
+unoiled cedar.  It was a cheerless room, fit for the humblest man in
+Ptolemais, but the unconquered Herod and his lovely princess ennobled
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a scarf of damask thrown over one of the tables and two or
+three pieces of magnificent plate sat upon it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," said Agrippa, pointing to the silver, "hath been my moneyer for
+years.  I have lived a month on a flagon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cypros sighed, but three pretty children, a boy and two girls, rushed
+in from the rear of the house and engaged the prince's attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile, the attractive servant entered with plates for the table and
+Eutychus followed with a platter of food.  As she passed the young
+Essene she tripped on an unevenness in the floor and would have fallen,
+but Marsyas, with a quick movement, more instinctive than gallant,
+threw out a hand and stayed her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She thanked him composedly and went about her work, but Marsyas,
+chancing to raise his eyes to Eutychus' face, caught a look from the
+servitor that was livid with hate.  Shocked and astonished, Marsyas
+turned his back and wondered how he had crossed the creature.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa sat at the table, and, with Cypros at his left, bade Marsyas
+sit beside him.  The children were carried protesting away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prince filled a goblet of silver with a pale wine, slightly
+effervescent and exhaling a bouquet peculiarly subtle and penetrating.
+He raised the frosty cup between his fingers&mdash;drink, drinker and cup of
+a type&mdash;and looked at the strip of sky visible through the lattice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This to the gods," he said, "or whatever power hath fortune to give,
+and a heart to be won of libation.  I yield you my soul for a laurel!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The princess leaned her forehead against his arm and whispered:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is wicked&mdash;forbidden!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I poured but one glass: I make the prayer; I have not asked thee or
+our young friend to pray it with me.  But my devices are exhausted.  I
+make appeal now, haphazard, for I grope!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And didst thou fail in Jerusalem?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As I have failed from Rome to Idumea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She drew in a little sobbing breath and hid her eyes against his
+sleeve.  Marsyas sat silent.  This first evidence of despair on the
+prince's part was most unwelcome.  His own fortunes were too much
+entangled with Agrippa's for him to contemplate their fall.  He felt
+the prince's eyes upon him.  The silver cup had been refilled and was
+extended to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas took it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This to success," he said, "not fortune!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cypros stirred.  "Success is so deliberate!" she sighed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas made no answer; would it be long before he should have his
+bitter wish?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou seest Judea," Agrippa began, "thou heardest me aspire to it and
+thou didst abet me in mine ambition.  But learn, for thy own comfort,
+Marsyas, the vagabond to whom thou hast attached thyself doth not grasp
+after another man's portion.  Judea is mine!  And Rome must yield me
+mine inheritance!"  The prince's eyes glowed with youth's ambition.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas listened intently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Herod's word is in disrepute," the prince continued.  "Hence I am
+limited to action to prove myself.  But look thou here, Marsyas.  Judea
+is pillaged: so am I.  Judea is despised: so am I!  Judea weltereth in
+her own blood: am I not sprung from a murdered sire, who was son of a
+murdered mother&mdash;each dead by the same hand of father and husband?
+Dear Lord, I am an offspring of the shambles, mother-marked with
+wounds!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shuddered and drew his hand across his forehead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Having thus suffered the same miseries which are Judea's, is it not
+natural that I should relieve her when I, myself, am relieved?  I
+should rule Judea as Judea would rule herself&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He broke off with a gesture of impatience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How I hate the blatant vower of vows!  Help me to mine opportunity,
+Marsyas."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As between Rome and Herod the Great as sovereign, there was no choice.
+Though the Asmonean Slave, as the Jewish patriots named the capable
+fiend, gave Judea the most brilliant reign since the glories of Solomon
+and the most monstrous since Ahab, the nominal independence offered by
+his administration was absolutely submerged and lost in the terror of
+his absolutism and the devilish genius in him for oppression.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Herod and Abaddon were names synonymous in Judea, and the mildness of
+his sons or their inefficiency had not been able to set the reproach
+aside.  No able Herod had arisen since the founder of the house,
+except, as Marsyas hopefully believed, this man before him.  Herod
+Agrippa was the son of Aristobolus, who was murdered in his youth
+before his capabilities developed.  The Herods, Philip and Antipas, had
+been mild because they were incapable.  The recurrence of mental
+strength in the blood was an untried contingency.  All this came to
+Marsyas, now, suggested by the implied self-defense in the prince's
+words, and for a moment he wavered between concern for his people and
+anxiety for his own cause.  Agrippa and Cypros watched him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art a just youth," the prince went on in the winning voice that
+had already made its conquest over the Essene.  "I can not prove myself
+until I am given trial, and judgment without trial is an abomination
+even unto the tyrant Rome!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have not judged, lord," Marsyas protested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And thou wilt not until I have shown myself unworthy of thy
+confidence.  Thou hast even now bespoken God's favor for me&mdash;be then,
+His instrument!  Thou art the first ray of light in a decade of
+darkness that has enveloped me and mine!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas put out his hand to the prince.  The peril in the Herod blood,
+in his calculations, had dropped out of sight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What dost thou say to me, my prince?" he said.  "How is it that thou
+beseechest me&mdash;me, the suppliant, praying thy help for mine own ends?
+But hear me!  Thou aspirest to that place of which I have no knowledge,
+among peoples whose paths I never cross, into the calling of the great!
+Yet, though most unequipped to yield thee support, I am thy substance.
+Use me!  Thou knowest my price."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Though I die owing even mine embalmer, I shall pay thee that debt.  I
+have said.  And now to the process.  What money hast thou?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa was silent and Marsyas, watching his face, waited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I need," the prince said slowly, "twenty thousand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas got upon his feet, and for a moment there was silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will get it for thee," he said.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE BONDMAN OF HATE
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+In a city like Ptolemais, where many pagans lived extravagantly and
+many Jews lived thriftily, there were, as naturally follows, many
+money-lenders among the sons of Abraham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Seek them all," was Agrippa's charge, "but Peter, the usurer.  Him,
+thou hadst better avoid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young Essene laid aside the prince's dress, with its embroidery of
+precious metal, and, getting into a simpler garment affected by the
+stewards to men of rank, went out into the city to borrow twenty
+thousand drachmæ.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not get the twenty thousand drachmæ, but he found, instead, that
+Herod Agrippa was the most notorious bankrupt in the world.  Being a
+Jew and by heritage thrifty, the discovery shook him in his respect for
+the prince, but at the same time a resolution shaped itself in him
+against the usurers.  But, on a certain day, he returned to the little
+house in the suburbs of the city to report that he had been placidly
+refused by every money-lending Jew or Gentile, except Peter, in the
+seaport.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he delivered his tidings unmoved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be of hope," he said to Cypros, whose head drooped at the news; "there
+are many untried ways."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went again into the city, and visited the khans.  There might be
+new-comers who were money-lenders in other cities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were such as guests in Ptolemais, but from their lips he learned
+that Agrippa was black-listed from the Adriatic to the Euphrates; but
+Marsyas did not return to the house in the suburbs that night.  The
+weight of his obligation was too heavy to endure the added burden which
+the sight of Agrippa's suspense had become.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went to the rabbis of Ptolemais; they told him that they were not
+money-lenders.  He applied to the prefect of the city, who laughed at
+him.  Hoping that the name of Agrippa as a bankrupt had not penetrated
+into the fields he journeyed into the country-side of Syria and tried
+an oil-merchant, a rustic, rich and unlettered.  But the oil-merchant
+came up to Ptolemais and made inquiry, shrugged his shoulders, glowered
+at Marsyas and went back to his groves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An Egyptian seller of purple landed at Ptolemais from Alexandria.  The
+name of the city of hope attracted Marsyas and he met the merchant at
+the wharves.  But the seller of purple had been to Rome and the topmost
+name on his list of debtors was Herod Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the end of three days, Marsyas returned to the house in the suburbs
+to assure the prince that he had not deserted and went again on his
+search.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His invariable failures began to teach him a certain shrewdness.  He
+discovered early that Essenic frankness would not serve his ends.  He
+found that men were approachable through certain channels; that it was
+better to speak advisedly than frankly; to lay plans, rather than to
+wait on events; to use devices rather than persuasion.  These things
+admitted, he discovered that he had unconsciously subordinated them to
+his use.  Though momentarily alarmed, he did not hate himself as he
+should.  On the other hand, it was pleasurable to lay siege to men and
+try them at their own scheming.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At night in a dutiful effort to cleanse himself of the day's
+accumulation of worldliness, he went to the open proseuchæ, where in
+the dark of the great out-of-doors, he was least likely to be noticed,
+to comfort himself with stolen worship, stolen profit from the Law.
+But the Law was not tender to those who lived as Stephen lived, and
+died as Stephen died.  Not in all that great and holy scroll which the
+Reader read was there compassion for the blasphemer.  Also, he heard of
+the great plague of persecution which Saul had loosed upon the
+Nazarenes in Jerusalem and how the Pharisee had become a mighty man
+before the Council, and an awe and a terror to the congregation.  So he
+came away from the proseuchæ, not only unhelped but harmed, embittered,
+enraged, alienated from his faith, and hungering for vengeance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By day, he walked through the commercial districts of Ptolemais and
+pushed his almost hopeless search with an energy that did not flag at
+continued failure.  He knew that if he obtained the twenty thousand
+drachmæ, he bound Agrippa the surer to his oath of allegiance to the
+cause against Saul.  Despair, therefore, was a banished and forbidden
+thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His plans, however, had been tried and proved fruitless.  Typically a
+soldier of fortune, he was relying upon the exigencies of chance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ptolemais was a normal town, with large interest and pleasures, and the
+fair day was too fleeting for one to stop and take heed of another.
+Passers pushed and hurried him when he came upon those more busy than
+he.  Sailors, bronzed as Tatars, were probably the sole loiterers
+besides the inevitable oriental feature, the sidewalk mendicant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So it was that on a certain day when Marsyas overtook a lectica in the
+street, the old man within complained aloud and had no audience, except
+his plodding bearers, or the attention of a glance, or a slackened step
+now and again among the citizens.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They rob me!" he was crying when Marsyas came up with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man turned quickly; the declaration was alarming.  His eyes
+encountered the face of Peter, the usurer, a stout, gray old Jew, in
+the apparel of a Sadducee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Seeing that he had won the young man's notice the old usurer seized the
+opportunity to enlarge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They ruin me!" he cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas bowed gravely.  "Thy pardon, sir," he said.  "May I be of
+service?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They sap my life!" the old man continued more violently, as if the
+young man's question had excited him.  "They take, and demand more;
+they waste, and must be replenished!  I drop into the grave and there
+will be nothing left to buy a tomb to receive me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words were directed to Marsyas, and the young man having halted
+could not go on without awkwardness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I pray thee," he urged, "tell me who plagues thee thus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The tradesmen!  Because I am wealthy, they augment their hire; because
+I must buy, they increase their price; they hold necessities out of my
+reach!  It is a conspiracy between them because I am of lowly birth,
+and I go from one to another and find no relief!  Behold!"  He shook
+out a shawl which had been folded across his knees.  "I must have it to
+protect me against the cold.  It is inferior; it is scant; yet it cost
+me fifteen pieces of silver!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas glanced at the mantle; even with his little knowledge of
+fabrics it appeared not worth its price.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou hast servants, good sir, and camels," he said, drawn into
+suggestion in spite of himself.  "Do I overstep my privilege to suggest
+that thou mayest send to Anthedon or to Cæsarea and buy in other
+cities?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the hire&mdash;the hire!  And how should I know that the knavery does
+not extend to Anthedon and Cæsarea?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," said Marsyas, "establish thine own booths here and undersell
+the robbers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was silence; the small eyes of the old man narrowed and ignited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A just punishment," he muttered.  "A proper punishment!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or this," Marsyas continued, interested in his own conspiracy.  "Thou
+sayest they oppress thee because thou art a lowly man!  They are
+foolish.  Display them thy power and punish them.  Thou art a great
+usurer; powerful families here are in thy debt.  How strong a hand thou
+holdest over them!  What canst thou not compel them to do!  Nay, good
+sir; to me, it seemeth thou hast the whip-hand over these tradesmen!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man rubbed his hands.  "An engaging picture," he said.  "But
+unless I haste, they will ruin me yet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas shook his head.  "Not if the tales of thy famous wealth be
+true."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lectica had moved along beside him and he waited now to be
+dismissed; but, contrary to custom of that rank which is privileged to
+command, the old man waited for Marsyas to take his leave.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Methinks," he began, "I have seen thee&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doubtless," Marsyas interrupted hastily.  "I am a steward here in
+Ptolemais.  But I have an errand here, good sir; by thy leave, I shall
+depart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man made a motion of assent, but he followed the young Essene
+with a thoughtful eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I am to know the world's way," Marsyas said to himself, "I can use
+it, if need be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not visit another usurer, but on the following day went to those
+places likely to be the haunts of Peter.  When, presently, he
+discovered the old man near a fountain, Marsyas did not attempt to
+catch his eye.  But one of Peter's servants touched him on the arm and
+told him that the master beckoned, and he hastened to the old man's
+side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is thy master?" Peter asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas winced, but restrained a declaration of his free-born state.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Roman citizen who is preparing to return to Italy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Roman!" Peter repeated.  "But thou art a Jew, or the blood of the
+race in thee lies."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Jew without taint of other blood in all the line."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Art satisfied with thy service&mdash;serving a Roman?" was the demand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None has a better lord!" replied Marsyas quietly, but with an inward
+delight in leading the old man on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it should be more lawful for thee to serve a Jew," Peter declared.
+"A Roman's slave, a slave for ever; a Jew's slave, a slave but six
+years&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas could rest no longer under the intimation of bondage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good sir, I am not a slave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho! a hireling."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; a free man, unattached and serving for love."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter scratched his head.  "For love only?  Then why not come and be my
+steward for wages?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou canst not pay my price," he said with meaning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man lifted his withered chin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy price!" he repeated haughtily.  "And pray, sirrah, what is thy
+price?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A figurative answer to add to his first sententious remark was on
+Marsyas' lips, but he halted suddenly, and a little pallor came into
+his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On another day, I shall tell thee," he said after a silence, and the
+old man impatiently dismissed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas turned away from the heart of the city and went straight to the
+house in the suburbs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He found Agrippa stretched on a couch where the air entered through the
+west lattice, and the place otherwise solitary.  The princess and the
+children with the servants had gone into the city.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas came uncalled to Agrippa's side, and the prince noted the
+change on the young man's face.  He looked expectant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My lord," Marsyas said, "thou didst say to me several days ago that
+thou didst hate a vower of vows.  Yet no man is chafed by a vow except
+him who finds it hard to keep.  Wherefore, I pray thee, for the
+prospering of the cause and mine, assure me once more of thy good
+intent toward Judea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Herod raised his fine brows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How now, Marsyas?  Has the knowledge that I am a Herod been slandering
+me to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, my lord; thou hast won me; and I shall not stop at sacrifice for
+thy cause, which is mine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What canst thou do, my Marsyas?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get thee money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I give thee my word, Marsyas.  It has been sorely battered dodging
+debts, yet it is still intact enough to contain mine honor.  I give
+thee my word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas lingered with an averted face, which Agrippa tried in vain to
+understand.  He added nothing to emphasize his avowal; perhaps he
+realized at that moment, more keenly than ever afterward, how much a
+man wants to be believed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently the young man spoke in another tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is this Peter, that I may not ask him for a loan?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I owe him a talent already," Agrippa answered with a lazy smile,
+"which he advanced to me while he was yet my mother's slave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then thou knowest him!  How&mdash;how is he favored in disposition?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How is Peter favored?  Are slaves favored?  Nay, they are tempered
+like asses, cattle and apes&mdash;like beasts.  Wherefore, this Peter is
+voracious, balky, amiable enough if thou yieldest him provender&mdash;not
+bad, but, like any donkey, could be better."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' eyes fell again; it seemed that he hesitated at his next
+question, as though upon its answer turned a matter of great moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Art thou in all truth assured that this Alexandrian will lend thee
+money?" he asked presently, beset by the possibility of doubt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa laughed outright.  "Jove, but this questioning hath a familiar
+ring!  Surely thou wast sired of a money-lender, Marsyas, else his
+inquiries would not arise so naturally to thy lips!  Will the
+Alexandrian lend?  Of a surety!  And even if not, then will my mother's
+friend, the noble Antonia, Cæsar's sister-in-law.  If Cæsar had not
+been so precipitate and hastened me out of Rome, I should have borrowed
+the sum of her ten years ago.  I have not borrowed of the Alexandrian
+ere this because I had not the money to carry me thither."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a pause, Agrippa anticipated a further question and continued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Alexandrian is Alexander Lysimachus, the noblest Jew a generation
+hath produced.  Even Rome, that hath such little use for our blood,
+waives its ancient judgment against Lysimachus.  He is alabarch of the
+Jews in Alexandria, able as a Roman, just as a Jew, refined as a Greek,
+versatile as an Alexandrian.  I saw him four years ago, here, in
+Jerusalem, when he brought his wife's remains to bury them on sacred
+soil.  He had with him two sons, one a man, grown, with his father's
+genius, but without his father's soul; the other a handsome lad of
+undeveloped character, and a daughter, a veritable sprite for beauty,
+and a sibyl for wits.  I was afraid of her; I, a Herod and a married
+man, turning forty, was afraid of her!  But get me the twenty thousand
+drachmæ, Marsyas, and thou shall see her&mdash;<I>Hercle</I>&mdash;a thousand pardons!
+I forgot that thou art an Essene!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas stood silent once more, and Agrippa waited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And yet one other thing, my lord," the Essene said finally.  "I serve
+thee no less for love, because I serve thee also for a purpose.  Thou
+wilt not forget to serve me, when thou comest to thine own?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I give thee again my much misused word, Marsyas.  Believe me, thou
+hast forced more truths out of me than any ever achieved before.
+Cypros will make thee her inquisitor when next she suspects me of
+warmth toward a maiden!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas lifted the prince's hand and pressed it to his lips.  Without
+further word, he went out of the chamber and returned to the city.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sought out the counting-room of Peter the usurer, and found within a
+commotion and a gathered crowd.  The old man himself stood in a
+steward's place behind a grating of bronze, with lists and coffers
+about him.  Without stood a brown woman, in a strange dress
+sufficiently rough to establish her state of servitude, and she bore in
+her hands a sheep-skin bag that seemed to be filled with coins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+About her was a group of men of nationalities so diverse and so
+evidently perplexed that Marsyas immediately surmised that they had
+been summoned as interpreters for a stranger whom they could not
+understand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The brown woman was passive: the usurer behind his grating in such a
+state of great excitement and anxiety that moisture stood out on his
+wrinkled forehead.  His eyes were on the sheep-skin bag; evidently the
+brown woman was bringing him money, and his fear that the treasure
+would escape made the old man desperate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have ye forgotten your mother-tongues?" he fumed at the polyglot
+assembly, "or are ye base-born Syrians boasting a nationality that ye
+can not prove?  Hold!  Let her not go forth, good citizens; doubtless
+she hath come from a foreign debtor to repay me!  Close the doors
+without!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas pressed through the crowd to the grating, and the old man
+discovered him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hither, hither, my friend," he exclaimed.  "See if thou canst tell
+what manner of stranger we have here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young Essene had been examining the woman; with a quick glance,
+now, he inspected her face.  Dark the complexion, the eyes olive-green
+as chrysolite, mysterious and hypnotic; the features regular as an
+Egyptian's, but stronger and more beautiful; the physique refined, yet
+hardy.  The mystic air of the Ganges breathed from her scented shawl.
+The young man's training in languages was not overtaxed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is thy will?" he asked in the tongue of the Brahmins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To exchange Hindu money for Roman coin," was the instant reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas turned to Peter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is an Indian woman," he explained.  "She wishes to exchange coin
+of her country for Roman money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good!" the old man cried, rubbing his hands.  "We shall oblige her.
+Foreign coins are so much bullion; yet, we pay only its face value, in
+Roman moneys!  Good!  I shall melt it, and deliver it to the Roman
+mint!  Good!  But&mdash;but how shall I know one of these outlandish coins
+from another?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can tell you," Marsyas answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The assembled group drifted out of the counting-room and the usurer,
+sighing his delight, opened a gate and bade Marsyas and the Hindu woman
+come into the apartment behind the screen.  There the exchange was
+made, and the old usurer, trusting to the Hindu's ignorance of the
+language, permitted no moment to pass without comment on his profit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently, Marsyas turned to the woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You lose money by this traffic," he said deliberately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rest thee, brother," was the calm reply, "I know it.  Yet I must have
+Roman coin to carry me to Egypt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas glanced at her apparel.  In spite of its humble appearance, it
+was the owner of this treasure, that dwelt within it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The exchange was made, amounting to something over twenty thousand
+drachmæ.  Marsyas, with wistful eyes, saw her put the treasure away in
+the sheepskin bag.  He arose as she arose, and the two were conducted
+out by Peter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without, it had grown dark.  The woman had made no effort to hide the
+nature of her burden.  She made an almost haughty gesture of farewell
+to Marsyas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall serve thee, perchance, one day," she said and passed out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas followed her.  At the threshold, he wavered and stepping into
+the street stopped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She made a small, frail, dusky apparition, under the black shadows of
+the bulky buildings of Ptolemais&mdash;a profitable victim for some
+light-footed highwayman, less sorely in need of money than he.  But she
+evidently felt no fear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, he turned and went back into the counting-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter was behind his grating.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who and what art thou?" the usurer demanded, with no little admiration
+in his tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am," Marsyas answered, "a doctor of Laws, a master of languages, a
+doctor of medicines, a scholar of the College at Jerusalem, a postulant
+Essene."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The reply was intentionally full.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And a steward for love, only!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only for a time.  When I can repay thee a debt long standing, I shall
+cease to serve at all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The usurer's eyes brightened.  "A debt," he repeated softly.  "Is this
+my fortunate day?  Which of the bankrupts who owe me has been
+replenished?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not yet, the one of whom I speak," Marsyas replied.  "Hast thou heard
+of Herod Agrippa?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Herod Agrippa!  Evil day that he borrowed a talent of me, never to
+return it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance, some day&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never!  Whosoever lends him money pitches it into the sea!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yet the sea hath given up its treasure, at times.  But let me trouble
+thee with a question.  What price did the costliest slave in thy
+knowledge command?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What price?  A slave?  In Rome?  Nay, then, let me think.  A Georgian
+female captive of much beauty was sold to Sejanus once for six hundred
+thousand drachmæ&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I speak of serving-men," Marsyas interrupted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, then: Cæsar owns a physician worth eighty thousand drachmæ."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hath he cured any in Cæsar's house of poisoning; can he speak many
+languages; is he also a doctor of Laws and a good Jew?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The usurer shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What price, then, should I he worth to Cæsar?" Marsyas demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sell not thyself to Cæsar," Peter cried, flinging up his hands.  "It
+is forbidden!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall not sell myself," Marsyas said.  "I have come only to find how
+to value my services."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whom dost thou serve?" the old man demanded.  Marsyas was not ready to
+disclose his identity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Roman.  Peace and the continuance of good fortune be thine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He bowed and passed out of the counting-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The usurer stood a moment, then summoned his servants, and, getting
+himself into street dress, hastened to follow the young man.  Marsyas
+turned his steps toward the house in the suburbs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were several torches about the painted gate in the wall and the
+light shone on a group alighting from a curricle.  Cypros and her
+children had returned from the city, and Agrippa had come forth to
+receive them.  Marsyas joined the group and Peter's lectica was borne
+up to the circle of radiance under the torches.  The old man's eyes
+filled with wrath when he recognized Agrippa.  He stood up and surveyed
+him with scorn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Roman!" he scoffed.  "A Roman, only to add the vices of the race to
+the meanness of a Herod!  Back to my house, slaves!  We have taken
+profitless pains!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's anger leaped into his face and Marsyas pursued and overtook
+the litter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy pardon, sir," he began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have a right to attach thee for the talent thy master owes me,"
+Peter stormed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peace, good sir!  I am not a slave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter chewed his mustache impotently, but the young Essene dropped his
+Greek and spoke in Hebrew, the language of the synagogue, the true
+badge of Judaism.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance we may bargain together.  Wouldst have me for hire?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter smoldered in sulky silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can not serve longer without compensation," Marsyas pursued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What sum in hire?" Peter demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twenty thousand drachmæ&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter blazed, but Marsyas stopped his invective with a motion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, peace!  I have not finished.  Twenty thousand drachmæ in loan to
+Agrippa, and I will serve thee gratis till he redeems me by paying the
+principal and the talent he owes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The usurer, with a snort, abruptly ordered the slaves to proceed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next day, Marsyas, loitering on purpose near the usurer's, was
+approached by a servant and sent into the presence of Peter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hath the bankrupt any hopes?" the money-lender demanded without
+preliminary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He goes to Alexandria, for money, and thence to imperial favor in
+Rome.  There is Antonia who will aid him, as thou knowest.  Unless thou
+helpest him to reach either of these two places, he is of a surety
+bankrupt; wherefore he can never pay thee the talent or even the
+interest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter dismissed him moodily and Marsyas returned to the prince.  But
+the next day Peter appeared at Agrippa's door and was conducted to the
+prince's presence, where Cypros sat with him and Marsyas waited.  The
+old man made no greeting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou knowest me, Agrippa," he began at once.  "For thy mother's sake,
+whose happy slave I was, I will take thine Essene at his terms, less
+the interest on the twenty thousand drachmæ."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My Essene at his terms," Agrippa repeated in perplexity.  But Marsyas,
+with a movement of command, broke in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The bargain is at first hand between thee and me, good sir," he said
+to Peter.  "The second contract shall be between the prince and myself.
+Bring the money here at sunset and the writings shall be ready for
+thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twenty thousand drachmæ, less mine interest on the sum," Peter
+insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Less thine interest," Marsyas assented, and Peter went out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa got upon his feet and gazed gravely at Marsyas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is this?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have bound thee to my cause," the young man answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How?  Nay, answer me, Marsyas.  What hast thou done?" the prince
+urged, impelled by affection as well as wonder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have bought my revenge, and have paid for it with a season of
+bondage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hast thou given thyself in hostage for us?" Cypros cried, springing up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas, without reply, moved to leave the room.  But Agrippa planted
+himself in the young man's way, and Cypros in tears slipped down on her
+knees at his side, and, raising his hand, kissed it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We shall not forget," she whispered to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall not know peace till I have redeemed thee," Agrippa declared
+with misted eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Great haste to get away from the overwhelmed pair seized the Essene.
+Trembling he shook off their hold and hurried out into the air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had to quiet a great amazement in him at the thing he had planned
+for so many days to do.  After a long agitated tramp in search of
+composure, he began to see more clearly the results of his extreme act.
+He had fixed himself within reach of Vitellius and the Sanhedrim:
+unless the ill fortune of the luckless prince improved, he had bound
+himself to servitude for a lifetime.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he drew his hand across his troubled forehead and smiled grimly.
+He had made his first decisive step against Saul!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VIII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+AN ALEXANDRIAN CHARACTERISTIC
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Nothing but prescience could have inspired Alexander, the young
+Macedonian conqueror, to decide to plant a city on the sandy peninsula
+which lay hot, flat, low and unproductive between the glassy waters of
+Lake Mareotis and the tumble of the Mediterranean.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a century previous, a straggling Egyptian village, called Rhacotis,
+eked out a precarious existence by fisheries; the port was filled with
+shoals or clogged with water-growth, and the voluptuous fertility of
+the Nile margin followed the slow sweep of the great river into the sea
+twelve miles farther to the east.  No other port along the coast
+presented a more unattractive appearance.  But Alexander, having no
+more worlds to conquer, turned his opposition upon adverse conditions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So he struck his spear into the sand, and there arose at the blow a
+city having the spirit of its founder&mdash;great, splendid, contentious,
+contradictory, impetuous and finally self-destructive through its
+excesses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He enlarged and embellished Rhacotis, which lay to the west of the new
+city and left it to the tenantry of the Egyptians, poor remnants of
+that haughty race which had been aristocrats of the world before Troy.
+In its center arose that solemn triumph of Pharaonic architecture, the
+Serapeum.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it was they who approached from the south, with the sand of the
+Libyan desert in their locks, who saw noble Alexandria.  Between them
+and the city was first the strength of its fortifications, prodigious
+lengths of wall, beautiful with citadels and towers.  Within was the
+Brucheum, with the splendor of the Library, for the Alexandrian spirit
+of contentiousness sharpened and forced the intellect of her
+disputants, till her learning was the most faultless of the time and
+its house a fit shape for its contents.  After the Library the pillared
+façade of the Court of Justice; next the unparalleled Museum, and,
+interspersed between, were the glories of four hundred theaters, four
+thousand palaces, four thousand baths.  Against the intense blue of the
+rainless Egyptian sky were imprinted the sun-white towers, pillars,
+arches and statues of the most comely city ever builded in Africa.
+Memphis, lost and buried in the sand, and Thebes, an echoing nave of
+roofless columns, were never so instinct with glory as Egypt's splendid
+recrudescence on the coast of the Middle Sea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To the northeast, there was abatement of pagan grandeur.  Here were
+quaint solid masses of Syriac architecture, with gowned and bearded
+dwellers and a general air of oriental decorum and religious rigor
+which did not mark the other quarters of the city.  In this spot the
+Jews of the Diaspora had been planted, had multiplied and strengthened
+until there were forty thousand in the district.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Those turning the beaks of their galleys into the Alexandrian roadstead
+saw first the Pharos, a mist-embraced and phantom tower, rising out of
+the waves; after it, the Lochias, wading out into the sea that the
+palaces of the Ptolemies might hold in mortmain their double empire of
+land and water; on the other hand the trisected Heptistadium; between,
+the acreage of docking and out of the amphitheatrical sweep of the
+great city behind, standing huge, white and majestic, the grandest
+Jewish structure, next to Herod's Temple, that the world has ever
+known&mdash;the Synagogue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Jews of Alexandria; as a class of peculiar and emphatic
+characteristics, a class toward which consideration was due in
+deference to its numbers, its wealth and its sensitiveness, were
+necessarily the object of particular provision.  Therefore, that they
+might be intelligently handled as to their prejudices, they were
+provided with a special governor from among their own&mdash;an alabarch;
+permitted to erect their own sanctuaries and to practise the customs of
+race and the rites of religion in so far as they did not interfere with
+the government's interests.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus much their privileges; their oppressions were another story.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peopled by three of the most aggressive nations on the globe, the
+Greek, the Roman and the Jew, Alexandria seemed likewise to attract
+representatives of every country that had a son to fare beyond its
+borders.  Drift from the dry lands of all the world was brought down
+and beached at the great seaport.  It ranged in type from the
+fair-haired Norseman to the sinewy Mede on the east, from the Gaul on
+the west to the huge Ethiopian with sooty shining face who came from
+the mysterious and ancient land south of the First Cataract.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It followed that such a heterogeneous mass did not effect union and
+amity.  That was a spiritual fusion which had to await a perfect
+conception of liberty and the brotherhood of man.  The racial mixture
+in Alexandria was, therefore, a prematurity, subject to disorder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So long as a Jew may have his life, his faith and his chance at
+bread-winning, he does not call himself abused.  These things the Roman
+state yielded the Jew in Alexandria.  But he was haughty, refined,
+rich, religious, exclusive, intelligent and otherwise obnoxious to the
+Alexandrians, and, being also a non-combatant, the Jew was the common
+victim of each and all of the mongrel races which peopled the city.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The common port of entry was an interesting spot.  The prodigious
+stretches of wharf were fronted by packs of fleets, ranging in class
+from the visiting warrior trireme from Ravenna or Misenum, to the squat
+and blackened dhow from up the Nile or the lateen-sailed fishing-smack
+from Algeria to the papyrus punt of home waters.  Its population was
+the waste of society, fishers, porters, vagabonds, criminals, ruffian
+sea-faring men, dockmen, laborers of all sorts, men, women and
+children&mdash;the pariahs even of the rabble and typically the Voice of
+Revilement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa, landing with his party, attracted no more attention than any
+other new-comer would have done, until Silas gravely inquired the way
+into the Regio Judæorum.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jupiter strike you!" roared the man whom the sober Silas had
+addressed.  "Do I look like a barbarian Jew that I should know anything
+about the Regio Judæorum!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His words, purposely loud, did not fail to excite the interest he meant
+they should.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Regio Judæorum!" cried a woman under foot, filling her basket with
+fish entrails.  "What say you, Gesius?  Who, these?  Look,
+Alexandrians, what tinsel and airs are hunting the Regio Judæorum!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Purple, by my head!" the man exclaimed.  "Roman citizens with the bent
+nose of Jerusalem!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Agrippa, or I am a landsman!" a sailor shouted.  "Fugitive from
+debtors, or I am a pirate!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jews!" another woman screamed; "coming to collect usury!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A howl of rage, threatening and lawless, greeted this cry, out of which
+rose the sailor's voice with a shout of laughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Usury!  Ha, ha!  He has not a denarius on him that is not borrowed!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Jewish prince had lived a life of diverse fortune, but never until
+then had he been the object of popular scorn.  A surprise was aroused
+in him as great as his indignation; he stood transfixed with emotion.
+Cypros, thoroughly terrified, came out from among her servants and
+clung to his arm.  On her the eyes of the fishwives alighted.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3b">
+[Illustration: Cypros, thoroughly terrified, clung to his arm (missing from book)]
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Look!  Look!" they cried.  "Sparing us our husbands by hiding her
+beauty!  The rag over her face!  Bah! for a plaster of mud!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fish-scales will serve as well," another cried, snatching up a handful
+and throwing it at the princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have mine, too, Bassia!  Thou art a better thrower than I!" a third
+shouted, handing up her basket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be sure of your aim, Bassia!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The uproar became general.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A handful for the simpering hand-maid, too!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't miss the she-Herod!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fall to, wives; don't leave it all to Bassia!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Way for the proconsul!"&mdash;a distant roar came up from the water's edge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bilge-water in my jar, there, mate; it will mix their perfumes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Way for the proconsul!" the distant roar insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't soil the proconsul, women!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Ware, Bassia!  The proconsul is coming!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perpol! he will not see!  He is the best Jew-baiter in all Alexandria!
+Sure aim, O Phoebus of the bow!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Way for the proconsul!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pluto take the legionaries; here they come!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One more pitch at them, though Cæsar were coming!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No privileges exclusive for thyself, Bassia!  <I>Habet</I>!  More scales!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Scales; shells; water!  Scales; sh&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fish-heads!  <I>Habet</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Entrails&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Way for the proconsul!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Directly, comrades!  Shells, water!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ow!  You hit a soldier!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bad aim, Bassia!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The legionaries!  Scatter!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The centurion at the head of a column now appeared, with his brasses
+dripping with dirty water, threw up his sword and shouted.  The column
+flung itself out of line and went into the mob with pilum butt or point
+as the spirit urged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Pell-mell, tumbling, screaming, scrambling, the wharf-litter fled,
+parting in two bodies as it passed Agrippa's demoralized group, one
+half plunging off the masonry on the sands or into the water, the other
+scattering out over the great expanse of dock.  The soldiers pressed
+after, and, following in the space they had cleared, came a chariot, a
+legate in full armor driving, his charioteer crouching on his haunches
+in the rear of the car.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His apparitors brought up against Agrippa's party.  They did not
+hesitate at the rank of the strangers; it was part of the blockade.
+Eutychus took to his heels and Silas went down under a blow from a
+reversed javelin.  Agrippa, besmirched with the missiles of his late
+assailants and blazing with fury, breasted the soldiers and cursed them
+fervently.  Two of them sprang upon him, and Cypros, screaming wildly,
+threw off her veil and seized the foremost legionary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The legate pulled up his horses and looked at the struggle.  Cypros'
+bared face was presented to him.  With a cry of astonishment, he threw
+down the lines and leaped from the chariot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Back, comrades!" he shouted, running toward them.  "Touch her not!
+Unhand the man!  Ho!  Domitius, call off your tigers!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How now, Flaccus!" Agrippa raged.  "Is this how you receive Roman
+citizens in Alexandria?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The legate stopped short and his face blackened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Agrippa, by the furies!  I knew the lady, but&mdash;" with a motion of his
+hand he seemed to put off his temper and to recover himself.  "Tut,
+tut!  Herod, you will not waste good serviceable wrath on an
+Alexandrian uproar when you have lived among them a space.  They are no
+more to be curbed than the Nile overflow, and are as natural to the
+place.  But curse them, they shall answer for this!  Welcome to
+Alexandria!  Beshrew me, but the sight of your lady's face makes me
+young again!  Come, come; bear me no ill will.  Be our guest, Herod,
+and we shall make back to you for all this mob's inhospitality.  Ah, my
+lady, what say you?  Urge my pardon for old time's sake!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned his face, which filled with more sincerity toward Cypros than
+was visible in his voluble cordiality to Agrippa.  Cypros, supported by
+the trembling Drumah, put her hand to her forehead and tried to smile
+bravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But thou hast saved us, noble Flaccus; why should we bear thee ill
+will?  Blessed be thou for thy timely coming, else we had been killed!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa, still smoldering, with Silas at his feet, alternately brushing
+the prince's dress and rubbing his bruises, took the word from Cypros.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do Roman citizens, arriving in Alexandria, and no proconsul to
+meet them?  Perchance Rome's sundry long missing citizens have been
+lost here!" intimated Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho, no!  They never kill except under provocation.  Yet I shall have a
+word with the wharf-master and the prætor.  But come, have my chariot,
+lady.  Apparitor," addressing one of his guards, "send hither
+conveyance for my guests!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy pardon and thanks, Flaccus," Agrippa objected shortly, "we are
+expected by the alabarch."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, by the Horæ, he should have been here to meet you.  Forget him
+for his discourtesy and come with me.  Beseech your husband, sweet
+lady; you were my confederate in the old days."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled, in a pleased way.  "But we did not inform the alabarch when
+we expected to arrive," she answered.  "He hath not failed us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And perchance," Agrippa broke in, "it might disturb Alexandria again
+to know that the proconsul had entertained Jews!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Still furious!" Flaccus cried jocosely.  "Oh, where is that elastic
+temper which made thee famous in youth, Herod?  But here are our
+curricles; at least thou wilt permit me to conduct thy party to the
+alabarch's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the bluff courtesy of a man who assumes polish for necessity's
+sake, and suddenly envelopes himself with it, momentarily for a
+purpose.  Agrippa, looking up from under his brows, glanced critically
+at the proconsul's face for some light on his unwonted amiability, but,
+failing to discover it, submitted with better grace to the Roman's
+offers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The proconsul was near Agrippa's age, and on his face and figure was
+the stamp of unalloyed Roman blood.  He was of average height, but so
+solidly built as to appear short.  His head was round and covered with
+close, black curls; his brows were straight thick lines which met over
+his nose, and his beardless face was molded with strong muscles on the
+purple cheek and chin.  He was powerful in neck and arm and leg, and
+prominent in chest and under-jaw.  Yet the brute force that published
+itself in all his atmosphere was dominated by intellect and giant
+capabilities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was Flaccus Avillus, Proconsul of Egypt, finishing now his fourth
+year as viceroy over the Nile valley.  One of the few who stood in the
+wintry favor of Tiberius, the imperial misanthrope of Capri, his was
+the weightiest portfolio in all colonial affairs; his state little less
+than Cæsar's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Wherever he walked, industry, pleasure and humankind, low or lofty,
+stood still to do him honor.  So, when he headed a procession of
+curricles and chariots up from the wharves of Alexandria, he did not go
+unseen.  Many of the late disturbers watched with strained eyes and
+gaping mouths and saw him turn his horses into the street which was the
+first in the Regio Judæorum, and not a few stared at one another and
+babbled, or pointed taut or shaking fingers at the prodigy.  Flaccus,
+the most notorious persecutor of the Jews among the long list of
+Egyptian governors, was visiting the Regio Judæorum escorting Jews!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sight created no less wonder and astonishment under the eaves of
+the Jewish houses, and throughout their narrow passages, but there was
+no demonstration.  Each retired quietly to his family, or to his
+neighbor, and gravely asked what new trickery was this.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Agrippa's party, following their conductor, proceeded through the
+less densely settled portion of the quarter into a district where the
+streets opened up into a stately avenue, lined by the palaces of the
+aristocratic Jews of Alexandria.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before one, not in the least different from half a dozen surrounding
+it, their guide halted.  The residence was square, with an unbroken
+front, except for a porch, the single attribute characteristic of
+Egypt, and the window arches and parapet relieved the somber masonry
+with checkered stone.  The flight of steps leading up to the porch was
+of white marble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of the proconsul's apparitors knocked and stiffly announced his
+mission to the Jewish porter that answered.  Immediately the master of
+the house came forth, followed by a number of servants to take charge
+of the prince's effects.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The master of the house, Alexander Lysimachus, alabarch of Alexandria,
+was a Jew by feature and by dress, but sufficiently Romanized in
+disposition to propitiate Rome.  He wore a cloak, richly embroidered,
+over a long white under-robe; and the magisterial tarboosh, with a
+bandeau of gold braid, was set down over his fine white hair.  His
+figure was lean and aged, a little bent, but every motion was as steady
+as that of a young man, and his air had that certain ease and grace
+which mark the courtier.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His first quick glance sought Flaccus, for the visit was without
+precedent and highly significant.  But there was neither hauteur nor
+suspicion in his manner.  The bluff countenance of the proconsul showed
+a little expectancy, but there was even less to be seen on the Jew's
+face that should betray his interpretation of the visit.  The
+magistrates bowed, each after his own manner of salutation&mdash;the Jew
+with oriental grace, the Roman with an offhand upward jerk of his head
+and a gesture of his mailed hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Behold your guests, Lysimachus," Flaccus said, "or what is left of
+them after an encounter with the rabble at the wharf.  You should have
+been there to meet them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I should, had I been forewarned," the alabarch explained, the
+peculiar music of the Jewish intonation showing in mellow contrast to
+the Roman's blunt voice.  "What!  Is this how the accursed vermin have
+used you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put out his old waxen hands to the prince and searched his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O thou son of Berenice!" he said softly.  "Welcome to the worshiping
+hearts of Jews, once more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks," replied Agrippa, embracing the old man.  "My latest adventure
+with Gentiles has well-nigh persuaded me to remain there!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God grant it; God grant it!  And thy princess?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cypros had uncovered her face and was reaching him her hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mariamne!" he exclaimed in a startled way.  "Mariamne, as I live!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus, who had fixed his eyes on Cypros the instant her veil was
+lifted, started.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mariamne!  The murdered Mariamne!" he repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, sir!" the alabarch protested, smiling.  "Thou wast not born then.
+But I knew her: as a young man I knew her!  But enter, enter!  Pray
+favor us with thy presence at supper, noble Flaccus.  It shall be an
+evening of festivity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He led them through a hall so dimly lighted as to appear dark after the
+daylight without, and into one of the noble chambers characteristic of
+the opulent Orient.  The whole interior was lined with yellow marble,
+and the polish of the pavement was mirror-like.  The lattice of the
+windows, the lamps, the coffers of the alabarch's records, the layers
+for the palms and plantain, the clawed feet of the great divan were all
+of hammered brass.  The drapery at arch and casement, the cushions and
+covering of the divan were white and yellow silk, and, besides a
+sprawling tiger skin on the floor, the alabarch's chair of authority,
+and a table of white wood, there was no other furniture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch gave Flaccus his magistrate's chair, and, seating his two
+noble guests and their children, clapped his hands in summons.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A brown woman, with eyes like chrysolite and the lithe movements of a
+panther, was instantly at his elbow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch spoke to her in a strange tongue, and the servant
+disappeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I send for my daughter," he explained to his guests.  "The
+waiting-woman does not understand our tongue.  My daughter&mdash;the only
+one I have, and unmarried!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember her," Agrippa said with a smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that moment in the archway leading into the interior of the house a
+girl appeared.  She lifted her eyes to her father's face, and between
+them passed the mute evidence of dependence and vital attachment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She wore the classic Greek chiton of white wool without relief of color
+or ornament, a garb which, by its simplicity, intensified the first
+impression that it was a child that stood in the archway.  She was a
+little below average height, with almost infantile shortening of curves
+in her pretty, stanch outlines.  But the suppleness of waist and the
+exquisite modeling of throat and wrist were signs that proved her to be
+of mature years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her hair was of that intermediate tint of yellow-brown which in adult
+years would be dark.  It fell in girlish freedom, rough with curls, a
+little below her shoulders.  There was a boyishness in the noble
+breadth of her forehead, full of front, serene almost to seriousness,
+and marked by delicate black brows too level to be ideally feminine.
+Her eyes were not prominent but finely set under the shading brow,
+large of iris, like a child's, and fair brown in color.  In their
+scrutiny was not only the wisdom of years but the penetration of a
+sage.  Though her tips were not full they were perfectly cut, and
+redder than the heart of any pomegranate that grew in the alabarch's
+garden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it was not these certain signs of strength which engaged Agrippa.
+Beyond the single glance to note how much the girl had developed in
+four years he gave his attention to certain physical characteristics
+which called upon his long experience with women to catalogue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she stood in the archway, the prince had let his glance slip down to
+her feet, shod in white sandals, and her ankles laced about with white
+ribbon.  One small foot upbore her weight, the other unconsciously, but
+most daintily, poised on a toe.  She swayed once with indescribable
+lightness, but afterward stood balanced with such preparedness of young
+sinew that at a motion she could have moved in any direction.  Foremost
+in summing these things, Agrippa observed that she was wholly
+unconscious of how she stood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terpsichore!" he said to himself, "or else the goddess hath withdrawn
+the gift of dancing from the earth!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Enter, Lydia, and know the proconsul, the noble Flaccus," the alabarch
+said.  The girl raised her eyes to the proconsul's face and salaamed
+with enchanting grace.  Flaccus checked a fatherly smile.  He would
+wait before he patronized a girl-child of uncertain age.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And this," the alabarch went on, "thou wilt remember as our prince,
+Herod Agrippa."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alas! sweet Lydia," Agrippa said, fixing soft eyes upon her.  "Must I
+be introduced?  Am I in four years forgotten?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, good my lord," she answered in a voice that was mellow with the
+music of womanhood&mdash;a voice that almost startled with its abated
+strength and richness, since the illusion of her youth was hard to
+shake off, "thou art identified by thy sweet lady!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa stroked his smooth chin and Flaccus shot an amused glance at
+him.  Meanwhile the girl had opened her arms to Cypros.  The children,
+one by one, greeted her.  The alabarch went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My sons are no longer with us," he said.  "They are abroad in the
+world, preparing themselves to be greater men than their father.  But
+go, be refreshed; it shall be an evening of rejoicing.  Lydia, be my
+right hand and give my guests comfort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He bowed the Herod and his family out of the chamber and they followed
+the girl to various apartments for rest and change of raiment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch turned to the proconsul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If thou wilt follow me, sir&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; I thank thee; I shall return to my house and prepare for thy
+hospitality.  But tell me this: what does Agrippa here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He comes to borrow money, I believe."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doubtless."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Put him off until you have consulted me.  He is not a safe borrower."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IX
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+"&mdash;AS AN ARMY WITH BANNERS!"
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa emerged at sunset from his apartment and descended to the first
+floor of the alabarch's mansion.  The hall was vacant and each of the
+chambers opening off it was silent, so he wandered through the whole
+length of the corridor, composedly as a master in his own house.  No
+one did he see until he reached the end of the hall, when there
+appeared suddenly, as if materialized out of the gloom, the brown
+serving-woman.  The olive-green of her immense eyes glittered in the
+light of a reed taper she bore.  She stepped aside to let him pass and
+proceeded to light the lamps.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa stopped to look at her, simply because she was lithe and
+unusual, but she continued without heeding him.  On one of the
+lamp-bowls the palm-oil had run over and the reed ignited it; but with
+her bare hand the woman damped it and went her way with a running flame
+flickering out on the back of her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perpol!" the prince exclaimed to himself as he rambled on.  "No wonder
+the phenix comes to Egypt to be born."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the end of a corridor he passed through an open door into a
+colonnade fronting a court-garden of extraordinary beauty.  It was
+carpeted with sod, interlined with walks of white stone which led at
+every divergence to a classic Roman exedra.  The awning which usually
+sheltered the inclosure from the sun had been rolled up and the cooling
+sky bent loftily over it.  The inert summer airs were heavy with the
+scent of lotus, red lilies and spice roses which were massed in an oval
+bed in the center.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that moment he caught sight of an indolent figure, half sitting,
+half lying in one of the sections of the exedra.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He knew at first glance that it was not the alabarch's daughter, and,
+remembering that his last glance in the mirror after his servant had
+done with him had shown him at his best, he moved without hesitation
+toward the unknown.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he approached she raised her eyes and coolly scrutinized him.  Her
+face, thus lifted for inspection, showed him a woman in the later
+twenties, and of that type which since the beginning could look men
+between the eyes.  She was a Roman, but never in all the Empire were
+other eyes so black and luminous, or hair so glossy, or cheek so
+radiant.  Her face was an elongated oval, topping a long round neck,
+which broadened at the base into a sudden and exaggerated slope of
+marble-white shoulders.  The low sweep of the bosom, the girdle just
+beneath it, shortening the lithe waist, the slender hips, the long lazy
+limbs completed a perfect type, distinct and unlimited in its powers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a fraction of a second the two contemplated each other; perhaps
+only long enough for each to confess to himself that he had met his
+like.  Then Agrippa came and sat down beside her, and she did not stir
+from her careless posture.  So many, many of the kind had each met and
+known that they could not be strangers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The alabarch should turn his prospective son-in-law into his garden if
+he would speed the marrying of his daughter," the prince observed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He hath the daughter, the garden, and the notion to dispose of her,"
+she answered, "but it is the son-in-law that is wanting."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But in my long experience with womankind," he replied, "it would not
+seem improbable to believe that it is the lady and not the lover that
+makes the witchery of the garden a wasted thing.  I have heard of
+unwilling maids."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unwilling in directions," she replied with a smile, "and under certain
+influences.  For if there were any to withstand my conviction, I am
+ready to wager that there never lived a woman before whom all the world
+of men could pass without making her choice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And perchance," he said promptly, "if there were any to withstand my
+conviction, I would wager that there never lived a man before whom the
+world of women could pass without making his choice,&mdash;again and again!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which declaration," she responded evenly, "publishes thee a married
+man; the single gallant declares only for one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O deft reasoning! it establishes thee a Roman.  What dost thou here,
+in Alexandria where there is no court, no games, no senators, no
+Cæsar&mdash;naught but riots and Jews?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jews," she said, scanning a rounded arm to see if its rest on the back
+of the exedra had left a mark on it, "Jews are red-lipped, and eyed
+like heifers.  Sometimes brawn and force weary us in Rome; wherefore we
+go into Egypt or the East to seek silky and subtle devilishness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa moved along the exedra and looked into her eyes.  He saw there
+that peculiar expression which he had expected to find.  It was a set
+questioning, one that runs the scale from appeal to demand&mdash;the asking
+eye, the sign of continual consciousness of the woman-self and her
+charms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why make the effort?  Only tell us of the East that you want us and
+the East will come to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?  Oriental love-philters, simitars, poisoning, silks and
+mysticism in the shadow of the Fora and within sound of the
+Senate-chamber?  No, my friend; we must hear the lapping of the Nile or
+the flow of the Abana, behold camels and priests, and the far level
+line of the desert, while we languish on bronze bosoms and breathe
+musks from oriental lips."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not then the Jews," he objected.  "They are a temperate, a
+passionless lot, that carry the Torah like hair-balances in their
+hearts to discover if any deed they do weighs according to the Law.
+No, Jews are a straight people.  Thou speakest of the&mdash;Arab!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned her eyes toward him and measured his length, surveyed his
+slender hands, and glanced at the warm brown of his complexion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So?" she asked with meaning.  "An Arab?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He continued to smile at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And every Jew is thus minded?" she asked, observing later the
+unmistakable signs of Jewish blood in his profile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unless he is tinctured with the lawlessness of Arabia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!"  She moved her fan idly and looked up at the sky.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is then, of a truth, the Arab, we seek," she added presently.  "The
+Arab that knows no manners but his fathers' manners; who eats, drinks,
+loves, hates and conquers after his own fashion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Without having seen Jerusalem, or Rome?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rome!" she repeated, looking at him again.  "Yes, without having seen
+Rome or Jerusalem or Alexandria."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa tilted his head thoughtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, it is good only for a time&mdash;for as long as the surfeit of
+civilization lasts&mdash;which lasts no longer the moment one realizes the
+Arab is not devoted to the bath and that he counts his women among his
+cattle!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed outright.  "I remember thou didst indorse him not a moment
+since!  Wherefore the change?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Refinement in all things!  To get it into an Arab, he has to be
+modified by alien blood."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A truce!  I am in Alexandria; her poetic wickedness has not been
+entirely exhausted.  I&mdash;meet new, desirable things&mdash;daily!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her fan was between them as she spoke and he took the stick of it just
+above where she held it and was putting it aside when the proconsul,
+resplendent in a tunic of white and purple, appeared in the colonnade.
+Beside him was Cypros in her Jewish matron's dress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa put the fan out of the way and made his answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forget not that the East, whether Arab or Alexandrian, is
+intense&mdash;once won.  It might harass thee, if thou weariest of it,
+before it wearies of thee&mdash;even to the extreme of pursuing thee to
+Rome."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The proconsul and the princess approached.  The deep-set eyes of the
+Roman wore a peculiarly satisfied look.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Men seek for stray cattle in the fields of sweet grass, look for lost
+jewels in the wallets of thieves, and missing Herods in the company of
+beautiful women," he observed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is good to have an established reputation, whether we be cattle or
+jewels or Herods," Agrippa laughed; "for, thou seest, we are disjointed
+and unsettled, seeing Flaccus now enduring a Jew, again attending a
+lady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Again," said the beauty, "we mark the work of circumstances, which led
+us into difference just now, O thou disputatious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well said, Junia," the proconsul declared; "some ladies would make
+gallants out of the fiends!  Know ye all one another?" the proconsul
+continued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Except my lovely neighbor," Agrippa replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Lady Junia, daughter of Euodus, who with her father hath been
+transplanted here from Rome."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the colonnade Lydia, the daughter, appeared and beside her a man, by
+certain of the more obvious signs, of middle-age.  But when he drew
+closer the more obvious gave way to the indisputable testimony of
+smooth elastic skin, long lashes and strong, white, unworn teeth that
+the man was not yet thirty.  He was a little above medium height,
+spare, yet well-built except for a slight lift in the shoulders,
+beardless, colorless, with straight dark hair, bound with a classic
+fillet.  His general lack of tone brought into noticeable prominence
+the amiability and luster of his fine brown eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That he was a Jew was apparent no less by dress than by feature.  His
+Jewish garments differed only in color and texture from those worn by
+his fathers in Judea.  The outer gown was of light green scantly shot
+with points of gold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The pair walked slowly as if unconscious of the presence of others, and
+the attitude of the man, bending to look into Lydia's face as she
+walked, was clearly more attentive than ordinary courtesy demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Approacheth Justin Classicus," said Flaccus.  "In that garment he
+looks much like a chameleon that has strayed across an Attic meadow in
+spring."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Behold, already the witchery of the garden!" Agrippa said softly to
+Junia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This," added the proconsul, introducing the new-comer, "is Justin
+Classicus, the latest fashion in philosophers, the most popular Jew in
+Alexandria."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Classicus bowed, glanced at Junia and again at Agrippa, and made a
+place for Lydia on the exedra, so that he might sit on a taboret at her
+feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What news, good sir," Agrippa asked, "among the schools over the
+world?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"News?" Classicus repeated.  "Nothing.  Philo is silent; Petronius is
+mersed in affairs in Bithynia; Rome's gone a-frolicking, scholars and
+all, to Capri."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alas!" said Flaccus; "nothing happens now but scandal; even the
+ancient miracles of divine visitations, phenixes, comets and monsters
+have ceased."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you say nothing of religion," said Classicus.  "Yet possibly it
+follows, now, in order."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After monsters, phenixes and the rest," put in Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?" Flaccus asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance thou hast heard," Classicus responded.  "It issues out of
+Judea, which adds to its interest, since we are accustomed to nothing
+but sobriety from Palestine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?" Flaccus insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A new Messiah!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," Agrippa cried wearily, "a new Messiah!  How many in the past
+generation, Cypros?  Ten, twenty, a hundred?  Alas!  Classicus, that
+thou shouldst serve up as new something which every Jew hath expected
+and discovered and rejected for the last three thousand years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O happy race!" Junia exclaimed; "which hath something to which to look
+forward!  But what is a Messiah?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A god," said Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The anointed king," Cypros corrected hastily, "of godly origin that
+shall restore the Jews to dominion over the world!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Mirabile dictu!</I>" Junia cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Olympian Jove!" Flaccus exclaimed, smiting his muscular leg.  "What a
+task, what an ambition, what an achievement!  I behold Cæsar's dudgeon.
+Go on, Classicus; though it be old to thy remarkable race, used to
+aspiring to the scope of Olympus, let us hear, who have never wished to
+be more than Cæsar!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not so much of the Messiah," Classicus responded, smiling, "as
+his&mdash;school, if it may be so called.  One of the followers appeared at
+the Library some time ago, perchance as long as three years ago&mdash;an
+Egyptian of the upper classes, much traveled, and told such a
+remarkable tale of the Messiah's birth and death that he instantly lost
+caste for truthfulness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alas!" Lydia exclaimed in a tone of disappointment.  "Why will they
+insist that the Messiah must be a miraculous creature, demeanored like
+the pagan gods and proceeding through the uproar of tumbling satrapies
+to the high place of Supreme Necromancer of the Universe!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sweet Lydia!" Agrippa protested.  "Roman hard-headedness hath turned
+thee against our traditions!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the Egyptian did not picture such a man," Classicus said very
+gently.  "He went to the other extreme, so far that his hearers had to
+contemplate an image of a carpenter's son, elected to a leadership over
+a horde of slaves and outcasts and visionary aristocrats; who taught a
+doctrine of submission, poverty and love, and who finally was crucified
+for blasphemy during a popular uproar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It hath the recommendation of being different!" Lydia declared
+frankly.  "Tell me more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is no more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!  Is it dead?" she insisted.  "Dead as all the others?  Then it
+is different only in its inception."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Agrippa thoughtfully; "it is not dead, but dying hard.  The
+Sanhedrim is punishing its followers in Jerusalem at present.  Thou
+rememberest, Cypros; Marsyas was charged with the apostasy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So material as to engage the Sanhedrim?" Lydia pursued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We hear," responded Classicus, "that Jerusalem and even Judea are
+unsafe for them, and numbers have appeared in the city of late&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Among us?" Lydia asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; in Rhacotis," replied Classicus; whereupon Flaccus raised an
+inquiring eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that the sect that the prefect has been warned to observe?" he
+demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doubtless; it seems that their foremost fault is rebellion against
+authority," Classicus made answer.  "So much for their doctrine of
+submission."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell us that," Lydia urged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Apostasy," Agrippa answered for Classicus, "flagrant apostasy; for the
+Sanhedrim came out of the hall of judgment to stone an offender, for
+the first time in seven years.  I saw the execution; in fact, in a way
+I was brought close to the circumstances by a friend of the apostate
+who was attached to my household."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is he with thee?" Flaccus asked pointedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, we left him in Ptolemais.  But the note of their presence in
+Alexandria must have been sounded early, directly they arrived, for I
+departed from Jerusalem the day following the first movement against
+the sect, and thence to Ptolemais and Alexandria with ordinary
+despatch."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They did not announce themselves," Flaccus replied.  "Vitellius
+announced them.  He wants an Essene who is believed to be among them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa raised his head and looked straight at Flaccus.  He remembered
+that he had betrayed Marsyas' refuge.  Cypros drew in a breath of alarm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was simply done, Flaccus," Agrippa remarked coolly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The princess laid her hand on the ruddy flesh of the proconsul's arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have been frank with thee, my lord," she said, "and thou art a
+noble Roman&mdash;therefore a safe guardian of our unguarded words."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The others maintained a wondering silence.  Flaccus smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Vitellius hath bidden me to look for him, adding with certain fervid
+embellishments that he hath sought everywhere but in Egypt and Hades.
+Vitellius is no diplomat.  Whistling finds the lost hound sooner than
+search."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But thou wilt not find him, noble Flaccus," Cypros besought in a
+lowered tone.  "Yield us thy promise that thou wilt not betray him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My promise, lady!  Indeed, I gave it in my heart a moment since.  Hear
+it now.  Alexandria is subject to thee.  Let him come and be our ward."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall depend on that," Agrippa said decidedly.  "For I shall
+despatch a servant for the man, the instant I can so do!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And yet," Cypros insisted, still distressed, "if Vitellius requires
+him at thy hands, how shalt thou avoid giving him up?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus smiled at her with softened eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O gentle lady, the day the young man should arrive, I shall set the
+prefect on the Nazarenes in Rhacotis.  If he be not found, none without
+this trustworthy circle shall have cause to believe that I am not in
+all conscience striving to help a brother proconsul run down a
+fugitive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A shrewd strategy," Lydia said dryly, "but one rather costly for the
+Nazarenes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Nazarenes!  Who wastes tears over them?  Thine own straight people
+condemn them, lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An exhilarating recreation, indeed," she repeated as if to herself,
+"for the prefect, the rabble Alexandrians and the Nazarenes!  O seekers
+of esthetic sport, that will be a rare occasion!  Yield me thy promise,
+my Lord Agrippa, that thou wilt tell us the day the young man arrives!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus' face darkened for a moment, but at that moment the alabarch
+appeared in the colonnade.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here comes our host," said Agrippa.  "Hast ordered the garlands,
+Lysimachus?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The feast is prepared," Lysimachus replied, and, turning to Flaccus,
+continued: "Thou shalt see, now, good sir, how Jews feast.  In all
+thine experiences, thou hast never broken bread with a Jew."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so!" Flaccus retorted, "for I was present at the Lady Cypros'
+wedding-feast!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho!  Flaccus remembering a wedding-feast!" Agrippa laughed, as he
+arose, taking Junia's hand.  "Mars, cherishing a confection!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance," Cypros ventured, pleased and coloring, "if Mars'
+confections were more plentiful and the noble Flaccus' wedding-feasts
+less rare, they both might forget the one!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never!" Flaccus declared, "though I were Hymen himself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they proceeded toward the colonnade, Cypros drew closer to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou canst not know what service thou hast done us by that promise,"
+she said.  "It is more than the youth's security; it means my husband's
+success.  For in this young man, we have found Fortune itself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The proconsul made no answer, for his gray-brown eyes flickered
+suddenly as if a candle had been moved close by them.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER X
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+FLACCUS WORKS A COMPLEXITY
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Near sunset the following day the alabarch appeared in the porch of the
+proconsul's mansion,&mdash;an incident which would speedily have spread
+wildly over the Brucheum had not the shrewd Lysimachus come in Roman
+dress, unostentatiously and hidden by the dusk.  The slave who
+conducted the visitor to the master's presence was suspicious, but he
+did not lapse from courtesy.  If he had prejudices they had to await a
+popular uproar for expression, and popular uproars at present against
+the Jews were manifestly in disfavor with the proconsul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus received the alabarch in the great gloom of his atrium.  The
+torches had not been lighted, the cancelli admitted only dusk.  The
+shadowy shape of the proconsul, relaxed in his curule, alone and
+immovable, thus surrounded by meditative atmosphere, suddenly appealed
+to the alabarch as out of harmony with the legate's blunt nature.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the Jew drew near, he saw rolls and parcels of linen and parchment,
+petitions and memorials, scattered about on the pavement, as if the
+Roman had let them roll off his table or drop from his hand
+unconsciously.  His elbow rested on the ivory arm of his curule, his
+cheek on his clenched hand.  The undimmed gaze of the Jewish magistrate
+detected lines in the hard face that he had never seen before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Flaccus stirred and drew himself up to attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come up, Lysimachus," he said.  "There is a chair here, for thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch advanced and dropped into the seat that Flaccus had
+indicated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This," he observed, nodding toward the dark torch at the proconsul's
+side, "would lead me to believe thou art inventing rhymes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or conspiracies.  Plots and poetry demand the same exciting dusk.
+Well, has the Herod sued?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not he, but his lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His lady!  By Hecate, the mystery is solved.  Thus it is that he hath
+been able to borrow every usurer poor from Rome to Damascus!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He wins upon her virtue; but withhold thy interpretation of my words
+until I show thee what they mean.  She is beautiful and virtuous; a
+Herod and married&mdash;a conjunction of circumstances in these days so rare
+as to be out of nature&mdash;therefore, phenomenal.  So we toss our yellow
+gold into her lap in recognition of the entertainment she hath
+afforded&mdash;being unusual."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Virtuous; that means, faithful to the man she married.  No woman is
+faithful except she loves her love.  A just procession in the order of
+the Furies' reign.  The warm of heart, unrewarded; the unworthy,
+anointed and worshiped."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This melancholy twilight hath made thee morbid, Avillus.  You Romans
+take womankind too seriously."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When womankind or a kind of woman can drain the world's purse,
+methinks she is a serious matter.  What sum does she want?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three hundred thousand drachmæ."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Midas; give her the touch!  Let all her possessions be gold!  Didst
+advance it to her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If thou wilt remember, it was thy command that I consult thee, first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Temperate Jew!  To remember a consular suggestion, while a lovely
+woman, and a Herod at that, besought thee for the contents of thy
+purse.  Oh, thou art an old, old man, Lysimachus!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch laughed and frowned the next moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Beshrew the jest!  Men who make light of virtue deserve incontinent
+wives.  And there is this one thing apparent, which should make me
+serious.  The Herod is absolutely penniless, and I can not turn that
+tender woman and her babes out of doors to take the roads of Egypt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rest thee in that small matter.  Thou and I can spare her sesterces
+enough to ship her back to Judea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lysimachus was silent for a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She would not be satisfied," he said at last.  "She wants three
+talents, though she never had afterward a crust of bread.  It seems
+that they permitted a free-born man to pawn himself for that sum in
+Ptolemais and accepted the money from him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shade of Herod!" the proconsul exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems also that the man is in peril of the authorities, having
+placed himself in jeopardy to save Agrippa from Herrenius Capito, who
+had run Agrippa to earth for a debt he owes to Cæsar&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O, that is the way of it!  I know of that man!  Well, then, perchance
+it is not so much because she loves her husband as because the debt to
+the pawned one chafes.  I hear that he is young and comely."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forget the slanderous jest, Flaccus; I am ashamed of it.  What shall I
+do in this matter?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lend her three talents."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She would buy the man's freedom, but what then?  She would still be
+here in Alexandria as penniless as ever."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The consular suggestion, it seems, only held thee a moment in
+abeyance," the proconsul said slyly.  "She will get the three hundred
+thousand drachmæ, yet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She will not," the alabarch declared, "First, because I have it not;
+next, because I am not eager to pay a Herod's debts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or, chiefly, because thou shouldst never see it again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch tapped the pavement with his foot and looked away.  The
+attitude was confession to a belief in the proconsul's convictions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What sum couldst thou lend by pinching thyself?" Flaccus asked
+presently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two hundred thousand drachmæ&mdash;but not to a Herod.  I could lose five
+talents without ruin."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give her five talents, then; give it&mdash;do not slander a gift by calling
+it a loan."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!  Toss an alms to a Herod?  They would throw it in my face!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jupiter! but they are haughty!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch made no answer and Flaccus looked out at the night
+dropping over his garden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not hold the lady in hostage, here, for five talents?" he asked
+after a while.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch looked startled; it was Roman extremes, a trifle too
+brutal for him to dress in diplomacy.  He demurred.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not brutal, Lysimachus," Flaccus said earnestly.  "Herod can not use
+her well; it will be a respite from her long wandering and poverty.
+Thou canst say to her that the five talents are all thou canst afford.
+Tell her that it will do no more than beach them penniless in Italy;
+that thou hast a crust for Agrippa&mdash;will she starve him by eating half
+of it, herself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus laughed at his own words, but perplexity came into the
+alabarch's face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But why?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?  Is it not plain to you?  Keep her so that Agrippa will in honor
+have to redeem her if ever he become possessed of five talents!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now the alabarch laughed.  "I am not so sure.  Is it native in a Herod
+to love his wife so well?  It would be a bad mortgage for me to
+foreclose&mdash;one cast-off female whose chief uses are for tears!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, by Venus!  She is too comely to play Dido.  But try my plan,
+Alexander.  It is well worth the experiment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch arose and stepped down from the rostrum.  "It&mdash;it is&mdash;" he
+hesitated.  "But then, I should have them on my hands, under any
+circumstances."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took a few more steps, and paused for thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well enough," he said finally, "we shall see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a motion of farewell to the proconsul, he passed out and
+disappeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus dropped back into his curule, and lapsed again into gloomy
+meditation.  The night fell and obscured him.  He seemed to be waiting,
+but not with marked impatience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again the atriensis bowed before him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A lady who says she was summoned," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let her enter.  And bid the lampadary light the torch, yonder, not
+here&mdash;and only one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The atriensis disappeared, and presently a slave with a burning reed
+set fire to the wick in one of the brass bowls by the arch into the
+vestibule, and Junia appeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hither, and sit beside me, Junia," Flaccus called to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew the chair closer, which the alabarch had occupied, and Junia,
+dropping off her mantle and vitta, sat down in it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a despot one's living is!" she exclaimed.  "But for the fact I
+owe my meat and wine to thy favor, thou shouldst have come to me,
+to-night, not I to thee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I came often enough at thy beck, Junia!  It were time I was visited!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou ill-timed tyrant!  I am expected at a feast to-night, and my
+young gallant doubtless waits and wonders, at my house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let him wait!  I was his predecessor, and his better.  Methinks thou
+hast reduced thy standard of lovers of late."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No longer the man but the substance," she answered.  "In the old days
+it was muscle and front; now it is purse and position."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The first was love; the second calculation.  Why wilt thou marry this
+obscure young Alexandrian&mdash;whoever he be?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To be assured of a living&mdash;to cast off the hand thou hast had upon me,
+thus long."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He leaned nearer that he might look into her face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So!" he exclaimed.  "Does it chafe, in truth?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed.  "No," she said.  "Why should I prefer the provision of
+one man above another's?  Young Obscurity's authority over me, his
+wife, would be no less tyrannical than Flaccus'&mdash;my one-time dear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus took her hand and run his palm over her small knuckles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Eheu!</I>" he said.  "I shall not be happy to see thee wedded&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor shall I; like the fabulous maiden who weeps on the eve of her
+marriage, I shall in good earnest heave a sigh over the days of my
+freedom.  Alas! the mind grows old young, that learns the fullness of
+life early.  There are as many ashes on my heart as there are in this
+bulging temple of thine, Avillus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dost thou love this&mdash;boy?  Beshrew him, let him have no name!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How?  Dost thou love the usurer that lends thee money, Flaccus?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What dost thou love, at all?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sundry old memories; perchance the image of a consul, less portly,
+less purple, less stiff&mdash;and less imposing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pluto! am I like that?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To one that was thy dear in younger days.  To one who does not
+remember the sprightlier man, thou couldst be less charming."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Younger?  Now, how much younger?  Six years at most!  Thou hast not
+changed in that time; why should I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Avillus; between the stage of the sun at noon and the previous hour,
+there is no appreciable change.  But mark the difference an hour makes
+at sunset.  But why this inquisition?  Has Eros pierced thee in a new
+spot?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pierced me twenty years ago and his arrow sticketh yet in the wound it
+made!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!  Spitted on an arrow during all those days thou didst love me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Eros has arrows and arrows, of many kinds, and two diverse barbs
+may with all consistency find lodgment at once in a heart.  But of
+myself we may speak later; at present, I am moved to labor with thee
+for thine own welfare.  Why wilt thou marry this boy, for his purse,
+when there are men in pain for thy favor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She studied him a moment.  "I can not take thee back, Flaccus; love's
+ashes can not be refired though the breath of Eros himself blew upon
+them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Impetuous conclusion; hast thou forgotten the twenty-year-old wound
+which I confessed just now?  I am this moment only an arbiter for my
+better&mdash;my betters&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall keep the twenty-year-old barb in mind," she said.  "Methinks
+it is that which pricks thee into activity for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A wiser surmise than the first.  But curb thy frivolous spirit; I am
+weighted with the business of the great.  What dost thou here, O
+divinity, away from Rome and the arms of Cæsar?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dost thou forget that we were invited away, because of my father's
+unfortunate preference of Sejanus, during the days of Sejanus'
+greatness?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Venus, can not the ban be lifted?  Behold,"&mdash;stretching out his
+muscular arm, "Flaccus is a strong man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even then, is Tiberius thy better in comeliness?  Perchance he would
+not please me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I speak, now, to thy sordid self; but if thy maiden love of grace
+still lives in thee, there shall another serve thee.  Have I not said I
+indorse two?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two.  Of Cæsar first.  His part in the bargain is really the smaller
+thing.  Thou, who couldst dint Flaccus' heart in Flaccus' stonier days,
+who upset Caligula's domestic peace, put gray hairs in Macro's
+forelock&mdash;all these in their doughty prime, methinks my poor doting
+ancient in Capri will fall like a city with a thousand breaches in its
+wall."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, doubtless," she admitted; "but what of myself?  If thine impurpled
+countenance&mdash;for all it is as firm as cocoanut flesh&mdash;if thine
+impurpled countenance does not suit my Epicurean tastes, how shall I
+content myself with the toothless love-making of a mumbling Boeotian?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou canst comfort thyself with a comely bankrupt on the gold of the
+toothless one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is complicated; too much duplication and detail," she objected.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou hast done it before," he declared.  "Thou art right expert."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed and leaned back in her chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Name me the comely one," she commanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Agrippa."  There was silence, in which she lifted her lowered eyes
+very slowly and faced him.  Amusement made small lines about her eyes,
+and in her face was worldly wisdom mingled with a sort of friendliness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now," she said in a quiet tone, "for the twenty-year-old wound.
+Is it the Lady Herod?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His gaze dropped; emotion put out the half-humor which had enlivened
+his face.  Presently he scowled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have twitched the barb," she opined; "the wound is sore."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sore!" he brought out between clenched teeth.  "Sore!  I tell thee,
+that though it is twenty years since I stood and saw her bound to him
+by the flamens, I have not ceased day or night to suffer!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Junia looked at him with frank amazement on her face; the proconsul was
+declaring, with passion, a thing which she could not believe possible.
+Such love as she knew, by the carefulest tendance, would have burnt out
+and resolved into cold ashes in half that time.  That it should endure
+years, suffer discouragement, bridge distances and surmount obstacles,
+all uncherished and unrequited, was fiction, pure and simple.  Yet to
+reconcile this conviction with the honest suffering of the bluff man at
+her side was a task she could not attempt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Flaccus, I never pained thee so," she murmured.  "Perchance the Jewess
+dropped madness from a philter in thy wine.  And for simple cruelty,
+too, for she is fond of her graceful Arab."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The proconsul raised his head and looked at her with such speechless
+ferocity, that she shrank away from him, remembering former
+experiences.  But he dropped his head into his hands and did nothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She watched him for a moment then ventured discreetly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it thy wish to win him from her, or her from him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Both!" he answered.  "The one accomplished, the other follows!"  With
+a sudden accession of emotion, he laid his short, powerful fingers
+about her smooth wrist and bent over her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Help me, Junia!" he besought.  "Weigh what I offer against the portion
+of any Alexandrian.  By the lips of Lysimachus, the richest man in the
+city, I know how little even he may waste&mdash;two hundred thousand
+drachmæ&mdash;the cost of a single necklace Cæsar might put about thy
+throat.  I never failed Tiberius; his esteem of me is great.  I have
+only to ask and the decree of banishment, or the sentence against thy
+father, shall be lifted.  Thou shalt return in honor to Rome; thy
+father shall be one of Cæsar's ministers, and thou shalt take thy place
+among the first of the patricians.  And Tiberius lays no bond of
+fidelity upon his ladies.  I saw thee, last night!  I saw thee run
+thine eyes along the Herod's sleek length&mdash;curse him, it was that which
+undid me!  I saw thy fancy incline toward him.  It will be a new and
+pleasant game for thee, Junia&mdash;a game in which thou art skilled&mdash;but it
+is my life&mdash;my very life to me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She frowned at the jewels on her fingers.  There was no reason why she
+should not lend herself to Flaccus' schemes when her enlistment in his
+cause assured to her the realization of the highest ambitions of her
+kind.  But enough of the creature impulse toward perversity, admitting
+that his gain would be as great as hers, restrained her.  She was
+uncomfortable, uncertain, peevish.  Meanwhile, the proconsul's
+gray-brown eyes, large, intense, demanded of her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait!" she fretted at last.  "Thou art hasty!  And perchance thou dost
+only make place for this mysterious fugitive for whom she was so
+solicitous last night!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He remembered his own jest with the alabarch, and added thereto the
+impatient surmise of this penetrative woman.  Could such a thing be
+possible?  He sprang to his feet, all the intensity of his emotion
+concentrated in a spasm of fury and menace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let him come!" he said between his teeth.  "Let him come!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She worked her hand loose from him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait," she repeated.  "Thou hast built gigantically on no foundation.
+Let something happen.  And if I am pleased to follow thy plans, I may;
+but be assured if I am not, I will not.  My debt to thee is less than
+thy demands, Avillus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She arose and put on her mantle, while he stood watching her every
+movement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall wait," he said presently, "only a little time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She made a motion of impatience and withdrew from the atrium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stood motionless for a long time; then he called his atriensis.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Send hither the chief apparitor," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The captain of the proconsul's personal guard appeared and saluted.
+Flaccus, in the meantime, had searched through the documents on the
+floor and by the dim light identified one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take this," he said, handing the apparitor the parchment, "and make
+search for the man herein described.  Seek him in Ptolemais, wherever a
+Nazarene warren hides, in Jerusalem, in Alexandria&mdash;meet every incoming
+ship, spend the half of my fortune, wear out my army&mdash;but find him, or
+lose thy life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The chief apparitor looked unflinching into the proconsul's gray-brown
+eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hear," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The proconsul waved his hand and the soldier withdrew.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XI
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE HOUSE OF DEFENSE
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile Marsyas lay on his straw pallet at the house of Peter, the
+usurer, in Ptolemais, night after night and made calculation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By fair winds, Agrippa should reach Alexandria in so many days.
+Allowing time to begin and complete the negotiations for a loan, so
+many more days should elapse.  Then the same number with a few allowed
+for foul weather would be required to return to Ptolemais.  About such
+a day, so many weeks hence, he told himself he should be ransomed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Six weeks is a long time for a free man to be enslaved.  He sighed and
+turned again on his pallet and trusted in the God who does not forget
+prayers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a strange, sordid biding of time for Marsyas.  The man he served
+was the first of the kind he had ever known.  The ascetic refinement of
+the white old Essene, the simple purity of Stephen, the polished rigor
+of the Pharisee Saul, the naïve sophistication of the Romanized Herod
+had constituted his social horizon, and he had come to believe that the
+world's manner was either cultured or simple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he went into the usurer's counting-room to meet the borrowing
+world, to be amazed and shocked and finally to fortify himself to
+control it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not to change his nature; it was to develop latent powers in him
+that were the fruit of long generations of Judaism.  At night his
+fingers were soiled by contact with the coins, the counting-room had
+become noisome with the day's heat and the unhappy humanity that had
+come and gone through the busy hours.  But he summed up, not what he
+had sacrificed in soul-sweetness and optimism, for that was a loss he
+did not realize, but his triumphs in achieving whatever he had been
+bidden to do, in his mastery of men and things and in the thoroughness
+of his workmanship.  However loudly his mind declared that he was out
+of place, he felt no great repugnance to his duty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After the newness of his experience wore off, as it did in a very short
+time, the days began to go with wearing deliberation, as all days go
+that are counted impatiently.  His sorrow and his wrongs were his only
+companions; as his anxiety for his liberty and Agrippa's success
+increased, his healthy indifference to his unwholesome atmosphere began
+to decline rapidly, his resentment against his oppression to grow.  The
+six weeks ebbed out and passed.  His anxiety flowed into his bitterness
+and his bitterness into his anxiety until they were one.  Troubled
+about his liberty, he clenched his teeth and thought on Saul; thinking
+of his impotent position against the powerful Pharisee, he watched the
+harbor from the counting-room and trembled whenever a sail crossed it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Inactivity became eventually unbearable, for an unemployed moment was a
+miserable moment.  He could not devise a way to liberty, nor further
+aid his one ally into power, so he turned to his own resources against
+Saul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Continuing cautiously to visit the proseuchæ by night, he learned
+something, which he heard casually at the time, but which eventually
+developed into a matter of importance.  He heard that the Nazarenes
+were flying from Jerusalem in great numbers, scattering in bodies from
+Damascus to Alexandria, and from Jerusalem to Rome.  The rabbis of
+Ptolemais were concerned to discover that there was a community hiding
+in the city, because they feared the evils of a persecution,
+established in Ptolemais, as much as the influence of the apostasy upon
+the faithful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Marsyas admitted casually to himself, after he had heard the
+tidings, that the apostasy must have numbers of followers, he was
+carried in his thinking to the realization that numbers meant strength
+and strength meant resistance.  Why, then, should not these people turn
+on the Pharisee?  Here, in a twinkling, he believed that he had
+discovered abettors, allies whom he could instantly enlist in his own
+cause.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But before he could deduce resolution from this electrifying admission,
+events began to mark his days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Late one afternoon, after the time for his ransoming was out, a man
+approached the opening in the grating.  The shadows in the
+badly-lighted chamber made client and steward and all the appointments
+in the dingy counting-room imperfect shapes to the eye.  The new-comer
+leaned down to the opening and peered at Marsyas as he pushed a fibula
+of gold through the opening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am in need," the man said.  "Canst thou not give me the value of
+this in money?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The voice was resonant and strangely familiar to Marsyas.  In the gloom
+the great lifted shoulders of the man, bending from his height, brought
+back on a sudden the chamber in the college at Jerusalem.  The young
+Essene came closer to the grating and looked at the applicant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a mutual start of recognition; in Marsyas perhaps the chill
+that a fugitive feels who finds himself detected.  The man was the
+Rabbi Eleazar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou!  Here, with them?" the rabbi exclaimed in a suppressed whisper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am here, Rabbi," Marsyas replied, "but alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eleazar looked at him, but the examination under the difficulty of the
+gloom was not satisfactory; besides, there was the stir of others who
+had come in behind him and were able to listen.  Marsyas swept the
+fibula into one of the coin-baskets and passed a handful of silver to
+the rabbi.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Meet me without at the end of the first watch to-night," the rabbi
+added, as he thanked Marsyas.  "Do not fear me, for I am also a victim
+of thine enemy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas saluted him, and the rabbi disappeared.  A figure in armor
+stepped up to the place where Eleazar had stood.  He was helmeted and
+greaved and had a line of purple about the hem of his short tunic.  He
+applied for a loan and yielded as indorsement the favor of Cæsar and
+the family name of Aulus.  Marsyas withdrew hastily into the
+overhanging shadow of the grating, received the officer's note, counted
+out the gold and drew in a free breath when another stepped into his
+place.  It was Vitellius' legionary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Am I run to earth?" Marsyas asked himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the end of the first watch that night he prepared to follow
+Eleazar's suggestion, if only to discover what to expect.  That he was
+not filled with confidence nor resigned to suffer what might befall him
+was evident by his slipping a knife into his belt when he made himself
+ready.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went out into the unlighted street and looked about him for Eleazar.
+The tall figure of the rabbi emerged from the darkness a moment after
+Marsyas appeared and approached the young man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have no fear," the rabbi said.  "We are common victims of the same
+unjust suspicion; let us not be suspicious of each other."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy words are fair, Rabbi, but I do not know thee.  Whom I most
+trusted hath failed me of late; it must follow then that I am not sure
+of strangers.  Tell me first thy business with me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am Eleazar, the rabbi, who sat with Saul in the college that day
+when Joel, the Levite, came with news of Stephen of Galilee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know that; also that thou knowest that Saul oppresses me.  Thou art
+a rabbi and zealous for the Law.  Art thou sent for me on Saul's
+mission?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, brother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or the proconsul's?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know nothing of the proconsul; I am here, driven from Jerusalem by
+Saul who charged me with apostasy because I would not aid him in his
+oppression."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment Marsyas was dumb with amazement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is mad!" he cried when speech came to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it madness when he persecutes others, but villainy when he
+oppresses thee?" Eleazar demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I pray thy pardon," Marsyas said quickly, "if I seem to miscall his
+work.  It might follow in reason that he should accuse me, but
+thou&mdash;thou a rabbi, accepted before the Law and clean-skirted before
+all Judea&mdash;that he should accuse thee of apostasy seems to be the work
+of no sane man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it is!  He layeth plans keen as Joshua's who warred under God's
+banner, and he striketh with the strength of an army.  Unless he is
+stayed he will devastate to the end!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas came close and laid a hand on the rabbi's shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What of Stephen?" he asked with stiffened lips.  "How did it come to
+pass?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment there was silence, and then the rabbi drew up and shook
+himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will not help thee, young brother," he said, with an impatience
+which was only fortification against feeling.  "It is ill enough to
+take a blasphemer and deliver him up to punishment; ask no more, for it
+wrenches me to think of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas stood frozen; he did not want to hear more, after the rabbi had
+spoken, but when the reviving current of life stirred in his veins, it
+was turned to a fever for vengeance.  Now!  Not to wait for safety, or
+for circumstances or for men or things.  It seemed that he should not
+eat or sleep till his work was done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eleazar, seeking to turn the current of the young man's thoughts, which
+he believed, being unable to see his face, must be sorrowfully
+retrospective, asked presently:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Art thou here with&mdash;them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With whom?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Nazarenes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas seized the rabbi's shoulder with a fresh grasp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where are they?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dost thou&mdash;in truth, dost thou not know?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Accused though I am, I am a good Jew, Rabbi.  Never until now have I
+wished to know where they house themselves.  But even were it the
+powers of darkness which alone could help me, now, I should not
+hesitate!  Where are these apostates?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here, in Ptolemais.  What wilt thou have of them, Marsyas?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Were not heathen and idolaters instruments for the Lord's work?  Have
+not even the beasts of the fields served His ends?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What dost thou meditate?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Saul's undoing!"  Eleazar heard him thoughtfully and answered after a
+silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So be it, then; if thou choosest that spirit, it must serve.  Thou
+hast a dead friend to avenge and I, the guiltless oppressed to justify.
+So the one end, the prevention of Saul's work, be attained, what matter
+if the spirit be mine or thine!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well enough; the means, then!  Where are these Nazarenes?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They&mdash;they meet on the water-front, nightly, since the oppression hath
+been instituted against them," Eleazar answered reluctantly, as if he
+doubted the propriety of betraying a knowledge of the apostates' habits.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nightly!" Marsyas repeated.  "So then to-night!  Where is the place?
+We will go there!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eleazar stood undecided and debated with himself.  But the pressure of
+the young man's impelling firmness assumed material force against him
+and he yielded doubtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, then," he said, and his hesitation melted in the face of the
+other's decision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas put himself at the rabbi's side and together they tramped
+through the dark streets toward the poorer districts of Ptolemais,
+along the harbor.  It was poor indeed; the houses were the smallest in
+the city, low, square boxes of sun-dried earth little higher than a
+man's head and mere stalls for space and comfort.  Each, however, had a
+numerous tenantry, and wherever doors were opened the two men saw
+within, now Jews, now Greeks or Romans.  Although uproar and disorder
+common in the lower walks of the city went on in the environments, the
+particular passage Marsyas and the rabbi walked was quiet though not
+deserted.  But it was a veritable black well, that maintained a swift
+slope for many rods and indicated the proximity to the water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How found you them, in this hole?" Marsyas asked, astonished, in spite
+of his intent thoughts, at the black labyrinth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I, too, was in hiding for my life's sake," Eleazar answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The brooding cornices of the houses, visible against the strip of
+starry sky, rounded suddenly and closed in upon the passage.  Marsyas
+saw that they were nearing a blind end, when a door opened in the
+cul-de-sac, disclosing several other men preceding Marsyas and the
+rabbi.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Haste!" Eleazar whispered, and, seizing Marsyas' hand, ran so that
+they reached the lighted doorway before it closed again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They entered with the others, and the bolts were shot behind them.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+SCATTERING THE FLOCK
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+They were in a single large chamber, rough, barren and barn-like.  The
+gray drapery of cob-webs was sown with chaff; there was the fresh smell
+of grain with the mustiness of dust contending for prominence; the
+floor was dry packed earth that had not tasted rain for a century.
+High above the few resin torches burning on the walls, huge cedar beams
+traversed the ceiling which was tight, that no moisture nor the
+consuming rays of the sun should enter.  It was an abandoned grain
+house, builded just without the reach of the highest storm-wave on the
+water-front.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were two or three benches, but not seating capacity for the
+number gathered there.  So the youths, women and children sat on the
+earth along the walls and left the benches to the older men of the
+assembly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas glanced at the gathering.  He saw there not one, but many
+races, however Jewish in predominance.  In most of the number he found
+a common expression, which made him think.  It was a certain
+delineation of fortitude, a brave patience that does not forswear
+persistence, however seriously the heart fears.  In others, there were
+curiosity and expectation; in still others, apprehension and suspicion.
+These, he noted, seemed not to wear that look of uplift; intuitively,
+he knew them to be investigators, more or less convinced, at the
+moment.  Others, he saw, came with bundles of belongings as if prepared
+for a journey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eleazar selected a place by the door and signing to Marsyas that he
+would sit and await the young Essene's will, dropped down on the packed
+earth, and, drawing up his powerful limbs, clasped his arms around
+them.  The torch above his head threw the shadow of his projecting
+kerchief over his face and hid his features.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was space between him and the next sitter, a young woman wearing
+the dress of a Jewish matron.  She glanced uneasily at the huge
+stranger and drew closer to a man of her own age, on the other side.
+Marsyas, seized with a new interest, sat down between the rabbi and the
+woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the farther end of the building a man arose.  He had a pilgrim's
+scrip at his side; he put away a staff as he gained his feet, and the
+heightened color of the brown on his cheek-bones and his nose showed
+that he had but recently come from a long journey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He raised his arms over the assembly, and each of those gathered there
+bowed his head and clasped his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O patient Bearer of the Cross," he prayed, "let us not faint thus
+soon&mdash;we who are driven on!  Let Thy footsteps be illumined that we may
+go Thy way, even though they lead unto Calvary!  Teach us Thy
+submission, quicken us with Thy love, clothe us with Thy charity, that
+they who oppress us may see that submission is stronger than rebellion,
+that love is more enduring than hate, that charity is broad enough for
+our enemies.  And if it be Thy will that we should love the spoiler of
+Thy Church and the destroyer of Thy saints, teach us then to love that
+enemy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This of a surety was not what Marsyas had expected to hear.
+Undoubtedly the praying man spoke of Saul.  The prayer continued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lo, Thou hast tarried thus long away from us, and evil already
+gathereth thick about Thy people.  In those days, when we asked and
+were answered, voice unto voice, we did not grope.  Now, O Lord, we ask
+and there answers but the speech of faith left in us, and that in
+grievous hours&mdash;doth not bid the cup to pass from us!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' chin sank on his breast; somehow the faltering sentences fell
+on some keenly sensitive spot in his soul, for in spirit he winced, and
+listened intently, in spite of himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yet, judge us not as wavering, O Lord; we but miss Thee from our side,
+who loved Thee, O Christ!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sentence ceased suddenly at the edge of a break in the voice.  It
+seemed that human sorrow had broken in on an inspiration, and the sound
+of a sob arose here and there from the bowed circle of Nazarenes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas suddenly saw the dark trampled space without Hanaleel, the
+falling night, the still figure of Stephen stretched on the sand, the
+three humble mourners who of all Jerusalem were not afraid to sorrow
+for him, and the young Essene choked back a cry to the praying man,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know thy pain, brother!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For that instant bond of sorrow it did not matter that, according to
+Marsyas' lights, the praying man blasphemed and besought another than
+the one Lord God as divinity.  The Nazarene had loved a friend and lost
+him from his side; the voice had ceased and, in place of the warm
+content, only agony and emptiness abode in the heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Show us Thy will; let us see and we shall follow; above all things
+quicken our ears that Thy loved voice may still be sweet in them across
+the boundaries of Death and through the darkness which embraceth our
+heads.  Lo, Thou art with us alway even unto the end, we believe, we
+believe!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was too much human suffering, self-examination and beseeching in
+the prayer for it to help any who heard it.  It was not like Stephen's
+prayers, which had seized upon Marsyas' spirit because of their
+unshaken confidence and beatification, and had terrified him, as
+assaults upon his steadfastness.  In those moments, he had been afraid
+of the Nazarene heresy; now, he was stirred to pity for the heretics.
+The sensation added to his resolution against Saul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another voice roused him, by reason of its difference from that of the
+first speaker.  It was not loud, but it carried and penetrated every
+dusty corner of the great space, with the strength and evenness of a
+sounded horn.  The temper as well as the quality was different; it was
+triumphant, eager, glad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the hour of fulfilment, beloved; the accomplishment of the
+prophecy, for by persecution shall we who are witnesses to the truth be
+scattered into all the world that the gospel may come unto every
+creature.  The flesh in us which crieth out and feareth death shall be
+the instrument whereby fleeing to save ourselves we shall go quickened
+into distant lands and testify.  Wherefore let not any soul lament this
+day nor denounce the circumstance which sendeth him into strange places
+and unto the Gentile.  Ye were not charged to save your flesh but to
+save your souls.  And whosoever saveth his soul hath Christ in his
+bosom and Christ on his tongue; wherefore the Redeemer is not dead and
+buried, nor even passed from among you, but living and preaching
+numerously, by many tongues.  Doubt not ye shall have your Gethsemane
+and your Calvary, yet likewise ye shall arise from the dead and enter
+into Paradise.  The oppressor shall persecute, the rod hang over you,
+the Cross be set up, but though ye go forth unweaponed ye shall level
+walls and throw down tyrants by the power of love; ye shall conduct
+peace and mercy through the flights ye make from oppression, and Life
+everlasting shall begin where your hour is accomplished and ye die.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If there be any among you who are timid in flesh that say in their
+souls, 'Let us find a secure place and live secretly and in godliness
+away from the abominations of the wicked,' verily I say unto such, if
+the world were precious enough unto the Son of God that He suffered
+death to save it, it is not too evil for the habitation of them who
+were in sin and ransomed by His sacrifice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If there be those among you given to wrath and vengeance who shall
+say, 'Let us fall upon the oppressor and put him to death,' verily I
+say unto such if the Son of God, who was despised and rejected of men,
+who raised the dead and cleansed lepers, directed not His powers to
+punishment and havoc, how shall ye, who are but lately lifted out of
+sin and damnation?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye are ministers of peace and love and humility.  Go forth and testify
+to these things in His name, and I who stand before you, elected of Him
+whom ye follow to speak His word, I say unto you that if ye testify
+faithfully, no persecutor shall triumph over you, no power shall
+overthrow you, no evil shall prevail against your souls!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was not the spirit Marsyas would select to aid him in his
+punishment of Saul; it was an alien doctrine opposed to nature; but he
+did not doubt the preacher's sincerity.  His utterances were not
+strange to the ears that had listened with such fear to Stephen.  But
+it seemed that one in the assembly was not satisfied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yet the saints perish by the persecutor," the man spoke.  "Behold
+Stephen is martyred already in Jesus' name."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' eyes sought out the speaker; he was one of the unconvinced who
+sat apart and had become perplexed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O my brother, when was it said unto thee by the teachers of Christ
+that death is the end?  I saw Christ on the cross; on the third day I
+saw Him living in the council of the apostles.  The powers of evil
+pursued Him only to the tomb; there began the dominion of God, and He
+ascended unto Heaven and to eternal life.  Believest thou this?  Thy
+face sayeth me 'yea'; is it not written that they who believe on Him
+shall share each and all of His blessings?  Wherefore, though Stephen
+died, he liveth triumphant over his enemies; so shall ye, who are
+faithful unto the end."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;but," the man objected, troubled, "is the Church to perish, thus,
+one by one?  If we die in this generation, who shall gather the harvest
+of the Lord?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Whoso would save his life shall lose it,' said the Master.  Is it
+part of faith to fear that evil will triumph?  Wilt thou hold off Life
+eternal that thou mayest bide a little longer in such insecurity as
+this life?  And I tell thee that the fear of the adversary is awakened,
+and the strength of his forces is aroused.  We measure by his rage
+against the elect his fear of Christ prevailing.  No man leadeth forth
+an army with banners against that which is weak and which he fears not.
+Jesus, on whom thou believest, said, 'I have overcome the world.'  Know
+then that the Church can not perish; that the persecutor rageth
+futilely; that the oppressor fighteth against the Lord.  Doubt no
+longer, lest thy doubt become a fear that an enemy shall overthrow God!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man who sat by the woman at Marsyas' side spoke next.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am submissive, Rabbi; yet, how far shall we fly?  I am the
+bridegroom of Cana at whose marriage the Lamb was.  When He changed
+water into wine He turned my heart into wondering, and from wondering
+into belief.  But the sentence of wandering hath driven me out of Cana,
+out of Galilee, out of Judea into Syria.  How far shall we flee, Rabbi?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We, too, are driven," many broke in at once.  "Few here are citizens
+of Ptolemais; we have left our homes and have fled far.  How long must
+we go on?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As far as God's creatures fare; as far as the Word hath not
+penetrated," was the answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The faces of many fell, tears stood in the eyes of others, and still
+others murmured wearily.  The sun-browned pilgrim who had prayed and
+who had leaned with a shoulder and his head against the wall, while the
+teacher spoke, raised himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My heart goeth out in pity for you," he said sorrowfully.  "Behind you
+the consuming fire, before you the overwhelming sea.  I am newly come
+from Jerusalem; I know what awaits you if ye fly not.  Even the Gentile
+can not be worse than he who breathes out threatenings and slaughter
+against you, in the name of the Law.  Fare forth; the world can not be
+worse; it may be kindlier."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas observed this man; in him was more promising material for his
+work than in the preacher.  But the preacher looked over the
+congregation, by this time bowed and filled with distress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is your Gethsemane," he said, turning the pilgrim's declaration
+into comfort, "but He sleepeth not while ye pray."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas looked over the congregation and saw here and there strong
+faces and bold, to whom the ordinance of submission must have been a
+bitter ordinance.  He arose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I behold that this is a council, in which men may speak," he said.  "I
+take unto myself the privilege, as one akin to you in suffering if not
+in faith."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His voice commanded by its Essenic calmness.  Every eye turned toward
+him.  They saw the habiliments of a slave covering the stature and
+dignity of a doctor of Laws.  The preacher looked interested, and the
+congregation stirred toward the young man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the words of your teacher," he continued, "I see that ye are
+summoned here to be banished.  I see your reluctance; I know your
+sorrow, for I, too, have been driven on, even by your enemy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who art thou, young friend?" the preacher asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am an Essene."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An Essene!" many repeated, stirred into wonder at knowledge of the new
+apostleship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As was John the Baptist!" one declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, then;" a voice rose out of the comment, "thou shalt be kin to us
+in faith so thou acceptest Jesus of Nazareth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let us lay aside the discussion of doctrine, in which we can not
+agree," the young man went on, "and unite in our cause against Saul of
+Tarsus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The kindly eyes of the preacher became paternal as he gazed at the
+hardness growing in the young man's face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Our cause," he said gently, "is not Saul of Tarsus, but Jesus Christ."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are ye sincere in your boast that ye will not defend yourselves?"
+Marsyas demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What need, young brother?  God defends us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well enough; but what of the persecutor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God will overtake him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When?  When he hath desolated Israel, stained the holy judgment hall
+with tortured perjury, slandered the Jews before the world as slayers
+of the innocent?  Your talk is all of the life hereafter; I, too,
+expect to live again; yet I am here to come and go at God's will, not
+Saul's!  Even ye, in all your infatuation, will not call Saul's work
+God's work!  I will not be driven and desolated by Abaddon!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not wait for the preacher, who seemed prepared to speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was the friend of Stephen, of whom ye spoke with love to-night.
+Saul consented unto his death in spite of my prayers for him, and
+before I could save him.  When I rebuked Saul for his bloody zeal he
+denounced me as an apostate and set the Shoterim upon me so that I am
+obliged to flee for my life.  For mine own wrongs I do not care, but
+the blood of Stephen cries out to me, the spectacle of his death rises
+to me in my dreams, and the infamy of it fills my hours with anguish.
+Ye say he was one of your saints, a martyr in the name of your Prophet,
+a teacher and a power in your church.  Ye claim that ye loved him.  Yet
+ye make timid preparation to flee before the oppressor who brought him
+low, and lift no hand to avenge his death!  Are ye men?  Have ye loves
+and hearts?  Do ye miss him&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The pilgrim pressed his palms together and looked at the young man with
+passionate grief in his eyes.  Marsyas turned his words to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was ever his touch laid upon you, warm with life and tender with good
+will?  Did ever his eyes bless you with their light?  Can ye take it
+idly that his hands grasp the dust and the tomb hath hidden his smile?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The pilgrim covered his face with his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"These be things that philosophy can not return to me!" Marsyas drove
+on.  "I can not pray Stephen back to my side; I can not hope till his
+voice returns to my ear; I can not flee till I find him!  And by the
+holy and the pure who have gone down into the grave before him, I know
+that ye can not!  Is it no matter to you that his memory is held in
+scorn?  Are ye not stabbed with doubts that he died in vain&mdash;even ye
+who believe thus firmly that he was right?  And I, being a Jew and an
+upholder of the Law, can I be content, knowing he was cut off in
+heresy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The congregation began to move as he went on; men rose from sitting to
+their knees, as if prepared to spring to their feet.  The preacher
+circled the room with a glance, but the eyes of the people were upon
+the young man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your Prophet and my Stephen!  And ye fly!  There are certain of you
+that are strong men, and Stephen was as delicate as a child.  There is
+blood and temper and strength and numbers of you, but Stephen went
+forth alone&mdash;and died!  Where were ye?  What of yourselves, now?  Are
+ye afraid of the weakling Pharisee?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a low murmur and men sprang to their feet, with flashing eyes
+and clenched hands.  The pilgrim flung up his head and drew in his
+breath till it hissed over his bared teeth.  Eleazar stood up by the
+young Essene and gazed straight at the preacher, as if holding himself
+in check until the leader declared himself.  But the preacher put up
+his hands and hurried into the center of the building.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peace, children!" he said kindly but firmly.  His hands lifted higher
+as the stature of his authority seemed to tower over the people.  In
+the sudden silence those that had stood up sank down again, the pilgrim
+lowered his head and only Marsyas and the rabbi at his side seemed to
+resist the quieting influence of the pastor.  The extended palms
+dropped and the Nazarene looked at the young Essene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Vengeance is mine and I will repay, saith the Lord.  Eye for an eye
+and tooth for a tooth is of the old Law and is passed away!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There, O strange pastor of a human flock, our ways part.  I am a Jew,
+thou a Nazarene&mdash;our laws differ.  Yet if, as ye preach, the God of
+Moses is also the God of your Prophet, ye are delivered sentences and
+punishments for evil-doing.  Wherefore, if ye evade them, ye evade a
+divine command!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We do not punish; we correct.  Punishment is God's portion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are ye not instruments?" the young man persisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The preacher did not answer at once; his eyes searched Marsyas' face
+for some expression by which he might select his line of argument.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bethink thee, young brother," he said finally.  "How would Stephen
+answer thee in this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' demanding eyes wavered and fell; his lips parted and closed
+again; he frowned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whom then wouldst thou please in this vengeance?  Not Stephen!  Then
+wilt thou comfort thyself with bloody work, while the tomb stands
+between thee and Stephen's restraining hands?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas threw up his head defiantly, shaking off the influence of the
+argument.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do ye in all truth follow the doctrine that bids you suffer without
+requital?" he demanded, even while feeling that his logic was impotent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God directs all things; if it be His will that we shall suffer or
+escape, God's will be done!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is cowardly!" Marsyas declared with flashing eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The preacher came closer.  "I believe that thou art determined and
+sincere.  Suppose Saul fell into thy hands, as an evil-doer, and the
+Law was ready for his blood, and God bade thee withhold thy hand.
+Would it be easy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, by my soul!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look then at me and answer.  Is it easy for me, who hath suffered
+exactly thy sorrows, to stand still and wait on God?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas looked at the preacher.  He was tall, spare and old, his hair
+and his beard were so white that they shone in the torch-light, and his
+face was so thin and colorless that he seemed already to have put off
+the flesh.  But his eyes glowed with fire and youth.  Here of a surety
+was no weakness to call into account.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he answered again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, O my son, which of us is truly subject to the Lord?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye crucify yourselves to an unnatural doctrine!  It is not human to
+bow to it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When thou canst do as we strive to do, my son, thou shall know that it
+is divine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas looked at Eleazar, and the rabbi, who had his eyes fastened on
+the preacher, spoke for the first time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is sweet humility, while ye are oppressed," he said, in a voice
+almost prophetic.  "But will ye remember it, when ye come into power?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Power!  Had any of that congregation a hope for power?  The word
+startled them.  They looked at the rabbi's garments, clothing a huge
+frame, the strength of the Law typified, and wondered at his words.
+Even the preacher had no ready answer.  The intimation of the Nazarenes
+in power on the lips of an expounder of the Law was not conducive to
+instant comment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So ye were in the Jews' place, what would ye do?" he asked again.
+Marsyas looked at the rabbi in surprise, but meanwhile the preacher
+answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Christ's doctrine suffereth no change for rank or power."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Watch; forget it not!"  Eleazar turned to Marsyas.  "I have seen, my
+brother," he said.  "This is not the method.  Let us wait; our time
+will come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Contented to go, Marsyas turned with the rabbi and together they passed
+through the gathering to the door.  But before they went out, Marsyas
+spoke again to the silent congregation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rest ye," he said, "we are not informers."  They went forth.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+A TRUST FULFILLED
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas came forth moodily convinced by Eleazar's words.  No; it was
+not the method.  Revenge would have to come through another medium than
+the Nazarenes.  Stephen had told him before that the privilege of
+taking vengeance had been removed from the followers of Jesus of
+Nazareth.  At that time Marsyas had not believed it of the whole sect;
+but now he was not too much irritated to be convinced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there any doctrine too mad to get it followers?" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O brother," Eleazar said, with his chin on his breast, "it is a period
+of change.  The world wearies of its manner from time to time.  Surfeit
+of good is not less common than surfeit of evil, but it is deadlier.
+Men tire of their gods as they do of their women, and thou, being an
+eremite and unfamiliar, may not know that death is much more desirable
+than enforced toleration of satiety."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas heard; satiety was only a word to him and the rabbi's
+earnestness carried no conviction for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the time for change; rest under old usages is no longer
+possible.  But Israel hath endured a long, long time in one habit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give me thy meaning, Rabbi."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou and I are good Jews, Marsyas, yet I can not say that of a surety
+of any other man in Judea.  I have come from Jerusalem, David's City,
+the rock of Israel, but the hosts of schism possess it from the Ophlas
+to the uttermost limits of Bezetha!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rabbi!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have seen; I have seen.  Saul hath set for himself a task of
+emptying the sea.  In Jerusalem they come singing to torture and death,
+but armies of them go fleeing into the rest of Judea and all the world.
+And, hear me, thou true son of Israel, the pastor of the apostates we
+heard this night declared at least one truth.  The Pharisee hath
+diffused an influence; he hath scattered a pestilence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Because it was a new charge against Saul, Marsyas accepted it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there no help against him?" he exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marsyas, there stirreth a dread fear in me that he is the instrument
+of the time.  If not he, then another would have been called by the
+spirit of change&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is no such extenuation in me!" Marsyas broke in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Might promises no allegiance to its ministers," the rabbi replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas recalled his history for evidence to corroborate this hope that
+Saul's calamitous work might recoil upon him.  From Prometheus to
+Augustus, the declaration was sustained.  He lost sight of the rabbi's
+actual concern.  Saul covered his horizon; he could not know that
+Eleazar looked upon the Pharisee as only a detail in an immense stretch
+of grave possibilities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man made no reply.  A hope had been snatched from him that
+night before his sense could grasp its reality, but the disappointment
+had not weakened his intent.  His hope, for the moment centered upon
+the Nazarenes, turned again upon Agrippa.  He did not permit himself to
+speculate on the prince's possible failure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At an intersecting street they parted, without further plan than that
+they should meet again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the next morning when Marsyas came with little spirit into the
+sunless counting-room, his first visitor was Agrippa's lugubrious old
+courier, Silas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a cry, Marsyas wrenched open the wicket and seized the old man's
+shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dost thou bring good or evil news?" he cried, unable to wait on the
+slow servant's deliberate speech.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance either, or both," the courier answered, fumbling in the
+wallet for his written instructions.  "Perchance that which thou
+already knowest, and that which may be news.  At least, I fetch thee a
+ransom."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God reward thee for thy fidelity," Marsyas replied, "and forget thy
+sloth!  Here, let me help thee to thy message."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put away the servant's inflexible fingers and wrested the parchment
+from the wallet.  It was wrapped in silk and sealed with wax.  It was
+directed to Marsyas.  He ripped it open hastily and read:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"To Marsyas, the Essene, to whom Cypros the Herod would owe a greater
+debt, greeting and these:
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"It hath come to us here in Alexandria that Vitellius pursues thee with
+a mind to punish thee for helping my lord away from his difficulty in
+Judea.  The legate hath sent couriers broadcast over the Empire to seek
+thee out, but the noble Flaccus, Proconsul of Egypt, though forewarned
+and required to deliver thee up, hath promised thee asylum in
+Alexandria.  Wherefore, if it please God that thou art preserved until
+my servant Silas reaches thee, do thou return to this city, secretly
+and with all speed.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"That thou care for thyself and that thy despatch be assured, I add
+further that there is much thou canst do for me.  Delay not if the same
+good heart which suffered for us in Ptolemais still beats within thee.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Thy friend,<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"CYPROS."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Within were three notes of a talent each, signed by Alexander
+Lysimachus, the Alabarch of Alexandria.  Six weeks before, they would
+have been mere strips of parchment to Marsyas; to-day, with the
+commercial knowledge of a steward, Cæsar's gold would not have
+commanded more respect in him.  But he crushed them in his hand and
+turned his face, suddenly grown pale and tense, toward the east and
+Jerusalem.  They meant the beginning of the destruction of Saul!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently he signed to Silas to follow and led the way to old Peter,
+who sipped his wine in his sleeping apartment.  On the way, they met a
+slave whom Marsyas despatched to the khan for Eleazar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," objected Peter, with the querulousness of an old man, after the
+first flush of satisfaction over the return of his three talents, "I
+took thee in hostage, young man, because I wanted thy service as
+steward, not because I wished to please Agrippa."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I have summoned my better to take my place," Marsyas assured him.
+"Thou shall not be without an able steward, who will serve thee for
+hire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And thus it was arranged when Eleazar arrived, that the rabbi should
+take Marsyas' place as steward and Peter, grumbling, but no less
+mollified, put on his cloak and repaired to the authorities to make the
+young Essene's manumission a matter of record.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By sunset all the negotiations were completed and Marsyas, with Silas,
+passed out into the twilight and proceeded toward the mole.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they went, others were going; the freighter which was the first to
+sail for Alexandria bade fair to be crowded with passengers.  Curious
+that so many wished to depart, Marsyas looked critically at the people
+as they moved toward the water-front.  He saw that many of them had
+been with him in the Nazarene meeting the night before.  They were
+obeying the command to move on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly one of them, a young man in advance of two, old enough to be
+his parents, stopped and pointed with an outstretched arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas glanced in the direction the youth indicated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lower slopes of the immense western sky over the placid sea were
+delicate with the pale shades of a clear, cold, spring sunset.  The
+point where the sun had sunk, alone glowed with a sparkling, golden
+brilliance.  And set against that, far out in the bay, was a frail dark
+mast, crossed by a faint yard&mdash;a fragile crucifix sunk in a glory!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The elder man did not speak; the younger looked at the thing he had
+discovered, but as Marsyas hurried in agitation by the woman, he heard
+her speak softly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it is bright&mdash;beyond!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap14"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIV
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+FOB A WOMAN'S SAKE
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+The sails of the freighter had fallen slack in the breathless shelter
+of the Alexandrian harbor.  It was night, and only by daylight could
+the seamen pull the vessel by oar through the devious, perilous lanes
+between the fleets and navies packed in the greatest port in the world.
+The freighter would lie to until morning.  The passengers would land in
+boats.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Its anchor rumbled down and plunged into a sea of stars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It had been a ship of silence, manned by barefoot, cowed slaves,
+captained by a surly, weather-beaten Roman and freighted with a
+strange, sorrowful company.  Now that the journey was at an end, there
+were no shouts, no noisy haste, no excited preparation.  When the wash
+of the disturbed bay settled over the anchor and the reflected stars
+grew steady again, there was silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas stood in the bow and looked ashore.  Over the whole arc of the
+southern heavens, he saw long, beaded strands of infinitesimal points
+of fire, tangles, cross-hatchings, eddies and jottings of light&mdash;the
+lamps of Alexandria.  Right and left of him and embracing much of the
+bay, the confusion of stars swept, culminating in the towering flame
+surmounting the Pharos to the east, and failing in featureless
+obscurity to the west.  It might have been a congress of fireflies
+tranced in space.  But there came across the waters, not appreciable
+sound, but the mysterious telepathic communication of animate life.
+Marsyas sensed the heart-beat of the great invisible city under the
+<I>ignes fatui</I> swung in the purple night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not contemplate it calmly.  The mystery of impending destiny was
+written over it all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The silent company of Nazarenes was put ashore an hour later at the
+wharf of the Egyptian suburb, Rhacotis, and together Silas and Marsyas
+passed up through the easternmost limits of the settlement toward the
+Regio Judæorum.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had not progressed beyond sight of their former traveling
+companions, before the cluster of Nazarenes seemed to huddle and
+recoil, and presently turn back and flee over their tracks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they rushed down upon the two Jews, the body seemed to have
+increased greatly in number.  The accessions were men, women and
+children; some were very old, all apparently very poor, so that the one
+small, female figure, in fine white garments showing under a coarse
+mantle, was conspicuous among the rough dark habits.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas had time to note this one out of the many when the flying
+company rushed about him; after it a body of city constabulary, at the
+heels of which followed a howling mob of rabid Alexandrians.  In an
+instant, Marsyas and Silas were in the thick of the tumult.  The
+fugitives, demoralized by the attack of the constabulary, rushed hither
+and thither; the mob closed in upon them and a moving battle raged in
+the night on the square.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Events followed too swiftly for Marsyas to grasp them as they happened.
+He had a heated sensation that he defended himself, defended others,
+struck gallantly, received blows, snatched up a small figure in white
+from the attack of a vindictive assailant, and then the running fight
+swept by and away in dust.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He came to himself, panting and enraged, under a lamp, with a girl in
+his arms.  Confronting him with a stone in his hand was Eutychus,
+petrified with amazement and apprehension.  At one side, groaning and
+bent double with kicks and blows, was Silas.  At the other, a silent,
+brown woman peered at the insensible girl.  Up the street receded the
+sounds of riot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas permitted his angry gaze to fall from Eutychus' face to the
+stone the servitor held.  The fingers unclosed and the missile dropped.
+Then Marsyas looked down at the girl in his arms.  He drew in a full
+breath.  The hill bird in the broken wilds of Judea whistled again; the
+incense from the blooming orchards breathed about him, and the flower
+face that had looked back at him from the howdah rested now, white and
+peaceful against his breast.  Her long lashes lay on her cheeks, the
+pretty disorder of her yellow-brown curls was tossed over his arm.  He
+was strangely untroubled for all that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The brown woman watched him from the gloom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silas meanwhile had straightened himself and was gazing with
+stupefaction at the insensible face on the Essene's breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It&mdash;it&mdash;" he began, stammering before the rush of recognition and
+astonishment.  "It is the alabarch's daughter&mdash;hither, fellow!" to
+Eutychus; "see this face!  See whom thou wast pursuing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eutychus looked and fell immediately into a panic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did not know her!" he cried.  "By my soul, I did not know her!  I
+was only visiting vengeance on the apostates, with the people!  How
+should I expect to find her here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas broke in on his avowal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do we go now to her father's house?" he asked of Silas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lead on, then.  Eutychus!  Follow!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silas looked at the brown woman in the shadows, who beckoned and,
+turning, took roundabout and deserted passages toward the Jewish
+quarter, so that the extraordinary party proceeded unseen to the house
+of the alabarch.  Once or twice, Eutychus attempted to press up beside
+Marsyas and excuse himself, but he was bidden to be silent.  Then, on
+missing the charioteer's footfall, Marsyas turned to see him slipping
+away.  Immediately Silas was despatched to bring him back; and so,
+placed between the two, he was dragged on to the house he had attempted
+to injure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Remembering Eleazar's statement concerning the breadth of the schism,
+Marsyas was prepared to discover the alabarch a Nazarene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Israel! after triumph over the oppression of the mighty, is this
+your overthrow?" he said bitterly to himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Long before he reached the alabarch's house, the figure in his arms
+stirred and made a little questioning sound.  But against her manifest
+wish, the promptings of his Essenic training and the admission that she
+had been overtaken among apostates, something in him locked his arms
+about her and brought a single word to his lips.  The gentleness of his
+voice surprised him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peace," he said, and she lay still.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After he had said it, a sudden rage against Eutychus seized him.  The
+charioteer's part in the pursuit of the fugitive apostates assumed a
+brutality and an enormity many times greater than it had originally
+seemed.  He took savage pleasure in anticipating turning over the
+culprit to Agrippa for justice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was led presently into a dark porch and admitted into a hall.  The
+startled porter glanced at him, and, seeing Lydia in the stranger's
+arms, the serving-man cried out.  The brown woman answered with a
+guttural sentence or two, and by the time Marsyas, following the lead
+of the agitated porter, entered a beautiful chamber, people were
+running in from brilliantly-lighted apartments beyond.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The spare and elegant old figure in the embroidered robes and cap of a
+Jewish magistrate hurried toward him with terror written on his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia!  What hath befallen thee?  Is she dead?" he cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Back of him came a rush of people.  Foremost was Herod Agrippa; behind
+him, Cypros.  With the growing group, Marsyas ceased to note the
+details of their identity and remarked at random that one was a man who
+wore a fillet and that the other was a woman and beautiful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The number of servants increasing, the babble of questions and
+exclamations creating a great confusion, none who made answer was
+heard.  But Marsyas looked at the master of the house.  He saw this
+time, not the magistrate's alarm, but his character, his nationality,
+his religion.  In that aristocratic old countenance there was nothing
+of the Nazarene.  Marsyas let his eyes fall on the face against his
+breast.  By the brighter light, he saw now that which he had not seen
+under the smoky street-torch.  In the folds of her white dress,
+beautiful and rich enough for a feast, reposed a small cedar cross,
+depending from a scarlet cord.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young Jew with the fillet about his forehead sprang forward to take
+Lydia from Marsyas' arms.  But with the instinctive feeling that none
+must see but himself, he disengaged one hand and stopped the Jew with a
+motion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will put her down," he said calmly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Classicus drew himself up to his full height, but Marsyas had already
+turned toward the divan.  With a quick movement, he slipped the
+crucifix from about the girl's neck and thrust it into his tunic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Out of the babble about him he learned that the girl had supposedly
+gone to attend a maiden gathering in the Regio Judæorum with the brown
+woman as an attendant.  Catching with relief at this bit of foundation
+for a story, he stood up prepared to tell anything but the truth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meantime, attendants and a house physician bent over the girl with wine
+and restoratives, and the company's attention was directed toward her
+recovery.  Presently she put aside her waiting-women and sat up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas glanced from her to the brown woman, who hovered on the
+outskirts.  The handmaiden's great, mysterious, olive-green eyes were
+fixed upon him, half in appeal, half in command.  Before he could
+understand the look the Jew in the fillet turned upon him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, we are learning nothing," he said in a voice that silenced the
+group.  "Thou," indicating Marsyas with an imperious motion, "seemest
+to show the marks of experience.  Tell us what happened."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' mind went through prodigious calculation.  If he frankly told
+the truth, he betrayed the girl to much misery and peril.  If he
+evaded, Eutychus, wishing to justify himself and to escape punishment,
+might wreck a fabrication by a word.  But the young man made no
+appreciable hesitation in answering.  He caught the charioteer's eye
+and held it fixedly while he spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know little," he said.  "From the ship we came up a certain street,
+where we met tumult between fugitives and pursuers.  So disorderly the
+crowd and so extensive its violence that whosoever met it on the street
+was instantly caught in its center and mistreated as much as the
+guiltiest one.  Thus I and Prince Agrippa's servant were caught; thus,
+the lady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We defended ourselves and should have escaped scathless, but that we
+stayed to save the lady from the rioters.  This done we came hither.
+That is all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who were the fugitives?" the Jew in the fillet demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The thick lips of Eutychus parted and he drew in breath, but the lower
+lids of the black eyes fixed upon him lifted a little and he subsided.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir, one does not stop to identify passing strangers when one fights
+for his life," Marsyas explained calmly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eutychus lost his air of trepidation, and his taut figure relaxed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where was it?" the beautiful woman asked of the charioteer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas answered directly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lady, one does not locate himself in the midst of turbulence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lysimachus came closer to Marsyas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who art thou?" he asked.  "I met thee once, it seems."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," Agrippa broke in, "by every act he hath done since I knew him,
+is the most generous of Jews, Marsyas, an Essene, by his permission, my
+friend and companion.  Know him, Alexander; it is a profitable
+acquaintance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas flushed under the prince's praise, and Cypros, drawing closer,
+took his arm and pressed her cheek against it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thrice welcome to my house," the alabarch said with emotion.  "Blessed
+be thy coming and thy going; may safety be thy shadow!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas, coloring more under the comment, thanked the alabarch and cast
+a beseeching look at the prince.  The prince smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let us supplement blessings with raiment and thanks with wine," he
+said to the alabarch.  "This is an Essene to whom uncleanliness is as
+great a crime as a love affair."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou recallest me to my duty," the alabarch returned, at once.
+"Stephanos,"&mdash;signing to a servitor,&mdash;"thou wilt take this young man to
+the room which hath been prepared for him and give him comfort.  If he
+hath any hurts, the physician will wait on him.  Remember, brother, I
+am at thy command."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With these words, he bowed to Marsyas, who inclined his head to the
+company and followed Stephanos.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But at the arch leading into the corridor, there was a low word at his
+hand.  Lydia, with the rough mantle dropped from her, stood there in
+her rich white garments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I owe thee my life," she said, in a little more than a whisper.  "Aye,
+even more&mdash;a greater debt which I can not make clear to thee now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked down into her lifted eyes, pleading for pity and forgiveness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I made thee traffic with the truth," they said.  "Thou who art an
+Essene and a holy man!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something happened in Marsyas; a quickening rush of rare emotion swept
+over him.  He took her small hand and held it, until, shyly and
+reluctantly, she drew it away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went then through broad halls, flooded with lights from costly
+lamps, past whispering fountains and motionless potted plants, through
+arches relieved by silken draperies which adorned without screening, up
+a broad flight of stairs to his own chamber.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was all very beautiful and restful with its occasional whiffs of
+incense, or the musical drip of the waterfall or the soft murmur of
+distant voices.  His lot had fallen in splendid places, he told
+himself, and, though opposed, by teaching, to the difference men make
+in each other, he was glad that he was not to live as a manumitted
+slave under the roof of the alabarch's house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he stepped into the chamber which Stephanos told him was his own,
+Drumah appeared.  Startled at first sight of a man bearing marks of
+ill-usage, she stopped and cried out as she recognized him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not hurt, Drumah," he said, to quiet the rush of questions on her
+lips.  "I was caught in a riot.  It is nothing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I see marks on thy face," she persisted, coming near him; "and thy
+garments have bloodstains on them.  Thou dost not know that thou art
+hurt.  O Stephanos," she cried to the servitor, "fetch balsam and
+volatile ointment.  Eutychus, art thou there?  Run to the culina and
+get wine!  Where is the physician?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The charioteer, who had appeared in the upper story for the express
+purpose of seeking Drumah to tell the details of the day's excitement,
+stopped short and scowled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thank thee," Marsyas said to her.  "I am not in need of assistance.
+The physician is with the master's daughter.  I can care for myself.
+Pray, do not give thyself trouble."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stepped into the apartment and dropped the curtain upon himself and
+Stephanos.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had given himself up to the servitor's attentions, when it occurred
+to him that he had let slip a chance to deliver a telling and a
+much-needed warning to Eutychus.  The more he considered his neglect,
+the more serious it seemed.  At last he hurried his attendant, and,
+getting into fresh garments, descended again to the first floor.  He
+despatched Stephanos in search of Eutychus and stopped by the newel to
+await the charioteer's coming.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he stood, the brown waiting-woman came to him, gliding like a sand
+column across the desert.  Coming quite close to him, she dropped on
+her knees at his side and touched her forehead to the ground.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am a Brahmin," she said in Hindu, "and I owe thee a debt.  I shall
+not forget!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rising, she flitted away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas looked after her in amazement.  It was the same slave-woman
+whom he had helped at Peter the usurer's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cypros, with her head drooping, a delicate forefinger on her chin, came
+slowly and sorrowfully into the hall.  As Marsyas looked at her, she
+seemed to him to be half-woman, half-child.  But when she saw him, her
+face lighted, her eyes glowed.  With extended hands she came toward him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, nay," she said, seeing that thanks were on his lips.  "Do not
+shame me with thy thanks, Marsyas, for I had a selfish use in releasing
+thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I know, nevertheless, that I should have had freedom at thy hands
+though I never saw thee again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, be not so filled with confidence and sweet believing, else I fear
+for myself," she said earnestly.  "Nay, if I were wholly unselfish, I
+should come to thee, this hour of thy honor, to bring thee praise.  Yet
+I come with mine own interest, to charge thee anew!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Command me; thou hast purchased me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so; but thou hast purchased my husband, with the extreme of thy
+sacrifice for his sake!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lady, I did that thing for myself&mdash;for mine own ends!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nevertheless, it was my husband who profited.  Thou must learn that
+much hath transpired here in Alexandria.  The alabarch had not the
+three hundred thousand drachmæ to lend&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' forehead contracted; was not his work against Saul of Tarsus
+progressing?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;but he gave my lord in all readiness five talents, with which we
+ransomed thee.  It was all the good alabarch could afford, but it is
+not enough for me and my babes.  Wherefore Agrippa goes to Rome without
+us.  There, infallibly he will obtain money from Antonia, discharge his
+debt to Cæsar and settle Vitellius' vengeful search after thee.  There,
+he shall be restored to favor with Cæsar and come into possession of
+his kingdom!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How thou liftest my bitter heart!" Marsyas exclaimed.  "Go yet further
+and say that, thereafter, I shall have my requital, my hunger after
+vengeance satisfied!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All that shall be," she said with gravity, "on one condition!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" he besought earnestly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That he who hath Agrippa's welfare deepest in his heart shall ever be
+near my lord to protect him against himself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O lady, even thou canst not wish thy husband successful with greater
+yearning than I!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I do believe!  But hear me.  Thou seest my husband; thou knowest
+that he plans only for the moment, risks too much, is over-confident
+and too little cautious!  In the beginning he believes that he is
+right, and thereafter and on to the end he acts, chooses friends, and
+makes enemies as his conviction directs him.  Thus he ruined himself
+thrice over from Rome to Idumea.  None but one so eager for his success
+as I, but abler than I, can govern him!  And thou must be his keeper,
+Marsyas!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou yieldest me a welcome charge, lady," he said quickly.  "Thou
+knowest that I would not have him fail; wherefore, I yield thee my
+word!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be thou blessed!  Yet there is more!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In spite of her preparation, her face flushed, and she hesitated.  Then
+as if forcing herself to speak, she said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou&mdash;thou wilt keep my lord's love for me, Marsyas?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not understand," he said kindly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou didst not say such a thing when my lord asked thee for twenty
+thousand drachmæ.  Thou didst get the drachmæ; keep now my husband's
+love for me.  As thou didst offer thyself for his purse, offer thyself
+for his soul&mdash;if need be!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He frowned at the pavement and then at her.  He had evolved enough from
+her words to believe that her call aimed at his spiritual welfare and
+he remembered that he was an Essene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be his companion," she hurried on, "be more; be his comrade, his
+abettor, even; sacrifice much; thy prejudices, even some of thy
+spotlessness, but make thyself desirable to him.  Then thou canst
+control him.  Promise, Marsyas!  Oh, thy hope to overthrow Saul is not
+dearer to thee than this thing is to me!  Promise!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be comforted," he said hurriedly, for there were steps approaching
+from the inner room.  "I shall do all that I can.  More than that, one
+less than an angel can not promise!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She, too, heard the footsteps and passed up the stairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Looking up from his disturbed contemplation of the pavement, Marsyas
+saw Classicus in the arch leading into the hall.  If the young Essene
+had been a cestophorus upholding the ceiling, the philosopher's gaze
+could not have been more indifferent.  He passed on and disappeared
+into the vestibule.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hardly had he passed, before the dark end of the corridor leading in
+from the garden gave up the stealthy figure of Eutychus, running, bent,
+purposeful and a-tiptoe, to overtake Classicus.  Evidently he had not
+seen Marsyas, for he passed without faltering and disappeared the way
+Classicus had taken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Instantly and as silently Marsyas followed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the porch, the alabarch bade his guests good night, and when Marsyas
+brought up, he found Classicus just departing and Eutychus nowhere to
+be seen.  Surmising that there was a humbler exit for the servants, out
+of which the charioteer had taken himself, Marsyas passed out directly
+after the philosopher.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His surmises were not wrong, for the instant Classicus planted foot on
+the earth without, Eutychus came out of the darkness and bowed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good my lord," he began, "the story truly told is this&mdash;" but his
+words babbled off into stammers and inarticulate sound, for Marsyas,
+large in the gloom, stood over him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy master hath need of thee, Eutychus," he said in a soft voice.  The
+charioteer gulped and slid back into the door that had given him exit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peace to thee, sir," the Essene said to Classicus, and bowing,
+returned into the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The truth of the story is this," said Classicus as he stepped into his
+chair and was borne away, "the Essene is no Essene!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the farther end of the corridor within, Marsyas saw Eutychus
+lurking.  Silent and swift the young Essene went after him.  The
+charioteer, fearing for cause, fled and Marsyas followed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa, on the point of ascending to his chamber, saw them flit
+noiselessly into the dusk.  His wonder was awakened.  Drumah, with a
+laver under her arm, was emerging from the kitchens when she caught a
+glimpse of them.  The prince stepped down and followed; Drumah slipped
+after.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the door leading into the colonnade of the garden, Marsyas seized
+Eutychus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou insufferable coward!" he brought out.  "Thou blight and peril
+under a hospitable roof!  I know what thou wouldst have said to the
+master's guest!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eutychus paled and struggled to free himself, but Marsyas forced him
+against the wall and pinned him there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If so much as a word escape thee, concerning the alabarch's daughter,
+if by a quiver of thy lashes thou dost betray aught that thou knowest
+to any living being, or dead post, or empty space, I shall kill thee
+and feed the eels of the sea with thy carcass!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fixing the charioteer with a menacing eye he held him until he was sure
+his words had conveyed their full meaning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have spoken!" he added.  Then he threw the man aside and turned to
+go back to his room.  But in his path, though happily out of earshot of
+his low-spoken words, stood Agrippa; behind him, Drumah.  Not a little
+disturbed, Marsyas stopped.  Eutychus saw the prince and expected
+partizanship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Seest thou how thy servant is used by this vagrant?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Agrippa laid his hand on Marsyas' arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not know thy provocation," he said, "but I know it was just.  Go
+back!  It is not enough.  Teach him to respect thy strength.  Thou hast
+merely made him dangerous!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Marsyas begged Agrippa's permission to go on and the prince, still
+declaring that the Essene had made a mistake, turned and went with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Drumah, with her head in the air, passed Eutychus without casting a
+look upon him.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap15"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XV
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE FALSE BALANCE
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas did not sleep the sleep of a man worn with exertion and
+excitement.  Instead he lay far into the night with his wide eyes fixed
+on the soft gloom above him.  He had many diverse thoughts, none wholly
+contented, many most unhappy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The instance of apostasy under the roof troubled him; not as apostasy
+should trouble one of the faithful, but as an impending calamity.  He
+had strange, terrifying, commingling pictures of Stephen's dark locks
+in the dust of the stoning-place, and the pretty disorder of
+yellow-brown curls thrown over his arm.  His purpose against Saul of
+Tarsus seemed to magnify in importance, by each succeeding momentous
+event.  He remembered Cypros' charge and bound himself to keep it,
+again and again through the dark troubled hours.  It was a long way yet
+until he could triumph over the powerful Pharisee, and the stretches of
+misfortune that could ensue, in the time, were things he drove out of
+his thoughts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When at last he fell asleep, he dreamed that he stood on Olivet and
+watched Saul and Lydia seeking for him in the trampled space without
+Hanaleel, while a crucifix, instead of the moon, arose in the east.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old Essenic habit was strong in Marsyas.  In spite of his long
+wakefulness, the dark red color in the east which announced the sunrise
+yet an hour to come was as a call in his ear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He arose while yet the night was heavy in the halls of the alabarch's
+house and the whisper of the sand lifting before the sea-wind was the
+only sound in the Alexandrian streets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stairway was intensely quiet and he hesitated to descend.  But at
+the end of the upper corridor a slight dilution in the gloom showed him
+a loft let into the ceiling.  He went that way and came upon another
+stairway leading up and out into the open.  He mounted it and found
+himself on the roof of the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the rear was a double row of columns, roofed, and hung with matting
+which inclosed an airy pavilion where the dwellers of the alabarch's
+house could flee from the heat closer the earth.  It was furnished with
+antique Egyptian furniture, taborets of acacia, seated with pigskin, a
+diphros and divan, built of spongy palm-wood, but seasoned and hardened
+by great age, and grotesquely carved by old hands, dead a century.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man entered and, seating himself, awaited the day and the
+arousing of the alabarch's household.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Jewish housetops toward the east made an angular sea, broken by
+parapets and summer-houses in relief against the red sky, and the
+pavements in gloom.  Strips of darker vapor meandering among them
+showed the course of passages leading with many detours into the great
+open, where was builded the Synagogue of Alexandria.  It was of
+tremendous dimensions, yet so majestically proportioned as to attain
+grace, that most difficult thing to reconcile with great size.  The
+type of architecture was Egypto-Grecian,&mdash;repose and refinement,
+antiquity and civilization conjoined to make a sanctuary that was a
+citadel.  Here, the forty thousand Jews of Alexandria could gather, nor
+one rub shoulder against his neighbor.  Marsyas looked with no little
+pride at the triumph of the God of Israel in this stronghold of
+paganism.  What a reproach it must be to them that had departed from
+the rigor of the Law!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He became conscious of the little cross.  He drew it forth from its
+hiding-place and looked at it.  It was made of red cedar, slightly
+elaborated, and the cord passed through a small copper eyelet at the
+head.  To his unfamiliar eye, it was a dread image, at once a
+suggestion of suffering and retributive justice.  He had not seen one
+since his last talk with Stephen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The acute wrench the reflection gave him now incorporated a fear for
+Lydia.  Saul of Tarsus should not lay her fair head low!  He braced his
+fingers against the head and foot of the emblem to break it, when
+suddenly a bewildering reluctance seized his hand.  At the moment of
+destruction, his hand was stayed.  Stephen had loved it and died for
+its sake, and Lydia&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His resolution dissolved; slowly and unreadily he put the crucifix back
+in his bosom, over his heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that moment, a little figure, on the brink of the housetop, was
+projected against the glowing sky.  It was firmly knit and outlined
+like an infant love.  The apparition brought, besides startlement, a
+prescient significance that made his heart beat.  Synagogue and
+Alexandria dropped out of sight.  He saw only the rosy heavens with a
+beautiful girl marked on them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He arose, and the new-comer turned toward him and approached.  And
+Marsyas watching her, in a breathless, half-guilty moment, told himself
+that never before had the fall of a woman's foot been a caress to the
+earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw that she carried over her arm a many-folded length of silk, in
+the half-dusk, like a silvery mist, very sheeny and firm.  Here and
+there he discovered flame-colored streaks in it.  One of the
+morning-touched vapors in the east, pulled down and folded over the
+girl's arm, would have looked like it.  At the threshold of the
+summer-house, she let the arm fall which carried it, dropped the many
+folds and with a sudden uplift and deft circle of her hand, partly
+cocooned herself in the silken vapor.  Her eyes, lifted in the
+movement, fell on Marsyas.  With a little start, she unfurled the
+wrapping and doubled it over her arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I pray thy pardon," he said, with a sincerity beyond the formality of
+his words.  "I am an intruder.  But&mdash;the Essenes do not keep their beds
+long."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Neither do all Alexandrians," she said, recovering herself.  "Thou art
+welcome, for I would speak with thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She put up one of the mattings by a pull at a cord, and sat down on a
+taboret.  She laid the silk across her lap and folded her hands upon it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I pray thee, be seated.  I have not said all that I would say
+concerning last night.  Art thou well&mdash;unhurt?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The morning lay faintly on her face and he saw that she was paler and
+sadder of eye than was natural for one so young and so round of cheek.
+He was touched, and his answer was a tender surprise to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou seest me," he said, making a motion with his hands, "but thou&mdash;I
+would there were less of last night in thy face!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am well," she said, as her eyes fell.  "For that I give thee thanks,
+and for the security of my fame among my friends&mdash;and&mdash;the sacrifice
+thou madest to preserve it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She meant his evasions that had kept the true story of her rescue
+secret.  He was glad she touched so readily upon the subject.  It gave
+him opportunity to relieve his soul of part of its burden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was glad," he assured her.  "Now, that thou art still safe, I pray
+thee, lady, preserve thyself.  None in all the world is so able to
+understand thy peril as I!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at him, remembering that Agrippa had told them that he had
+been accused of apostasy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are&mdash;are these&mdash;thy people?" she asked in a whisper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; but dost thou remember why I went with such haste to Nazareth?" he
+asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To save a life, thou saidst."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even so, I failed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She caught her breath and her eyes grew large with sympathy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I failed," he continued.  "I went to save a friend who had gone astray
+after the Nazarene Prophet.  But they stoned him before mine eyes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her lips moved with a compassionate word, more plainly expressed in all
+her atmosphere.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They cast me out of Judea," he went on, "because I was his friend.
+Wherefore I have tasted the death and have died not; I have suffered
+for their sin, yet sinned not!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had never told more of his story than that, but her eyes, filled
+with interest, fixed upon him, urged him to go on.  Believing that he
+might deliver her if he told more, he proceeded, but the sense of
+relief, the lifting of his load that followed upon the course of his
+narrative were results that he had not expected in confiding to this
+understanding woman.  At first he felt a little of the embarrassment
+that attends the unfolding of a personal history, but ere long the
+fair-brown eyes urged him, with their sympathy, and consoled him with
+their comprehension.  He left the outline and plunged into detail, and
+when he had made an end, the glory of the Egyptian sunshine was
+flooding Alexandria.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the end of the story, Lydia's eyes fell slowly, and the interest
+that had enlivened her face relaxed into pensiveness.  She was
+oppressed and sorrowful, almost ready to be directed by this man of
+many sorrows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he leaned toward her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Henceforth, therefore," he said, "I am not a man of peace, but one
+burdened with rancor and vengeful intent.  I go not into En-Gadi, but
+into the evil world to use the world's evil to work evil.  I am
+despoiled and blighted and without hope.  Is that the inheritance which
+thou wouldst leave to them who love thee?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She drew away from him, half alarmed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I am not a Nazarene," she faltered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do not go to them, then!" he urged eagerly.  "Do not listen to their
+teachings; for whosoever listens must die!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I went yesterday for a different cause," she said finally, "but
+before, of interest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But thou art a faithful daughter of Abraham; be not led of any cause.
+Remember yesterday!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yesterday?" she repeated quietly.  "Why yesterday?  Only the faith of
+the oppressed was different.  We of Israel's faith in Alexandria know
+many of yesterday's like, and worse!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suffer, then, the sufferings of the righteous!  Be not cut off for a
+folly!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She fell silent again, and smoothed the silk on her lap.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Justin Classicus told me of them," she began finally, "and their very
+difference from other philosophies, new or old, the simple history of
+their Prophet attracted me.  I sought them out, and learned that an
+Egyptian merchant who traded in Syria had passed through Jerusalem at
+the time of the Nazarene Prophet's sojourn in the city, and had become
+converted to His teaching.  He returned to Egypt and planted the seed
+of the sect in Rhacotis.  And of power and attraction, he gathered unto
+him men of his like.  Finally he carried his teaching into the
+lecture-rooms of the Library and all Alexandria heard of the Nazarenes.
+Reduced in its frenzy, his faith had a burning and unconsumed heart to
+it.  Many searched and many accepted it.  I went once&mdash;with my
+handmaiden&mdash;and heard his preaching.  And I saw in it a remedy for the
+sick world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas looked away toward the Synagogue, glittering purely against the
+dark blue waters of the bay.  He felt a recurrence of the old chill
+that possessed him, when he had failed to shake Stephen in his
+apostasy.  But she went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Since there is but one God there can be but one religion.  I do not
+expect a new godhead, but a new interpretation of the ancient one.
+Bethink thee; all the world was not Rome, in the days of Abraham or
+Moses or Solomon or David.  This is the hour of the supremacy of one
+will, one race.  Man does not fear God so much when he does not respect
+his neighbor at all.  Therefore, Rome, being autocrat of the earth, is
+an atheist.  She hath set up her mace and called it God.  There is no
+hope against Rome unless we hurl another Rome against it.  That we can
+not do, for there is only one world.  Sheol will not prevail against
+Rome, for Rome is Sheol.  Only Heaven is left and Heaven does not
+proceed against nations with an army and banners.  There is only one
+untried power in the list of forces, and the Nazarene hath it in His
+creed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas knew what it was; Stephen was full of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a difficult vision to summon," she continued, "but it may fall
+that a dove and not an eagle shall sit on the standards of Rome and
+that the dominion of God and not of Cæsar shall prevail on the
+Capitoline Hill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused, and Marsyas, waiting until he might speak, put out his hand
+to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I heard another building such fair structures of his fancy and his
+hopes," he said, with pain on his face.  "Even though they were
+realized to-morrow, he can not see it; I, being broken of heart, could
+not rejoice.  And Lydia&mdash;for they call thee by that name&mdash;I can not see
+another in the dust of the stoning-place!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her face flushed and paled and he let his hand drop on hers, by way of
+apology.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, thou wilt give over the companionship of these people?" he
+persisted gently.  She hesitated, and finally said in a halting voice:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;went&mdash;I knew that&mdash;by thy leave, sir, thou camest to them as a
+peril.  Thou wast expected of the authorities, being doubly charged
+with apostasy and an offense against Rome, and they were permitted to
+go thither, by the legate, even by this household, in search of thee,
+when I and all under this roof knew that thou wast not among them.
+I&mdash;went to give them&mdash;warning&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, the call hath been obeyed," he said kindly.  "Shut thy hearing
+against another.  I thank thee, for the Nazarenes.  Thou art good and
+wise and most generous&mdash;too rare a woman for Israel to surrender."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She arose, for sounds were coming up the well of the stair, which told
+of the awakening of the alabarch's household.  She wrapped the silk in
+a closer roll and let the folds of her full habit fall over it.  After
+a little hesitation, she extended her hand to him, and he took it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Under its touch, he felt that his hour of mastery had passed.  The
+gentle, thankful pressure had put him under her command.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she disappeared into the well of the stairs, Marsyas, glancing
+about him, saw on the housetop next to him Justin Classicus.  The
+philosopher was choicely clad in a synthesis to cover him completely
+from the chill of the morning air, while yet the warmth of his bath was
+upon him.  His locks were anointed, his fillet in place.  Even in
+undress, he was elegant.  He rested in a cathedra, and contemplated his
+neighbor as distantly as he had the night before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not until after he had broken his fast with the alabarch and his
+daughter and returned again to the housetop did he see any other of the
+magistrate's guests.  Junia's litter brought up at the alabarch's
+porch, and presently Agrippa came up on the housetop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How now?" he exclaimed, seeing Marsyas.  "Is it the air or the sense
+of superiority over the sluggard that invites thee up at unsunned
+hours?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Both," Marsyas replied, giving up the diphros to the prince, "and the
+further urging of an old unsettled grudge.  My lord, when dost thou
+proceed to Rome?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shortly; after the Feast of Flora, which is to be celebrated soon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay; I pray thee, let it be directly," Marsyas urged; "for my
+bitterness unspent bids fair to rise in my throat and choke me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Proh pudor</I>!  Cherishing a pulseless rancor with all fervor, when
+thou art here, in arm's reach and in high favor with that which should
+make back to thee all thou hast ever lost in the world!  Oh, what a
+placid vegetable of an Essene thou art,&mdash;in all save hate!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am to go to Rome with thee, my lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of a surety!  My wife sees in thee a kind of talisman which will
+insure me favor with emperors and usurers, ward off the influence of
+beautiful women and give me success at dice!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas glanced away from Agrippa and his face settled into
+uncompromising lines.  Agrippa continued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, thou goest to see that I make no misstep toward getting a
+kingdom.  Welcome!  Be thou hawk-eyed vigilance itself.  But my
+pleasure might be more perfect did I know that thine and our lady's
+determination to crown me were less selfish!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou shalt not complain of more than selfishness in me," Marsyas
+answered calmly.  "But by my dearest hope, thou shalt live a different
+life than that which hath ruined thee of late.  I know that thou canst
+win a kingdom by a word; but thou shalt not lose it by a smile.  For,
+by the Lord God that made us, thou shalt not fail!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa turned half angrily upon the young Essene, but the imperfectly
+formulated retort died on his lips.  He met in the resolute eyes fixed
+upon him command and mastery.  Words could not have delivered such a
+certainty of control.  In that moment of silent contemplation the
+contest for future supremacy was decided.  Agrippa frowned, looked away
+and smiled foolishly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perpol!  Did I ever think to lose patience with a man for swearing to
+make me a king?  But mend thy manner, Marsyas.  Thou'lt never please
+the ladies if thou goest wooing with this rattle and clang of
+siege-engines!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Junia appeared on the housetop.  She came with lagging steps and sank
+upon the divan, gazing with sleepy eyes at Marsyas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I emancipated myself," she said, "from the study of new stitches, the
+neighbor's dress and the fashion in perfumes.  A pest on your rustic
+habit of early rising!  Here we are aroused in the unlovely hours of
+the raw dawn to achieve business, ere the sun bakes us into stupidity
+at midday!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A needless sacrifice to these Egyptians," Agrippa declared.  "They are
+all salamanders.  I saw a serving-woman in this house pick up a flame
+on her bare palm and carry it off as one would bear a vase."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Vasti?  Nay, but she comes from India; fled from servitude to the
+Brahmin priesthood to take service with the man who had pitied her
+once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The alabarch?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even so.  He bought the gold and onyx plates that he put on the Temple
+gates, in India, where he saw her and pitied her.  So, she fled her
+owner and sought the world over till she found the alabarch to enslave
+herself anew."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So!  Small wonder, then, she is annealed like an amphora.  Yet I had
+believed she was a bayadere."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A bayadere?" Junia repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Brahmin dancer, having the peculiarities of an Egyptian almah, a
+Greek hetæra, and a Pythian priestess, all fused in one.  But now that
+she hath repented, she is rigidly upright and a relentless pursuer of
+evil-doers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alas!" sighed Junia, still watching Marsyas, "is it not enough to grow
+old without having to become virtuous?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa lifted his eyes to her face, and the look was sufficient
+comment.  But Marsyas had been plunged in his own thoughts and did not
+hear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is the Feast of Flora?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Roman woman smiled and answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A popular expression of the world's joy over the summer.  That was its
+original motive, but it has been conventionalized into a feast formally
+celebrating the reign of Flora.  It was pastoral, but the poor cities
+walled away from the wheat and the pastures adopted it, in very hunger
+for the feel of the earth.  It falls in the spring under the
+revivifying influence of awakening life and the loosed spirit of the
+populace grows boisterous.  We become a city of rustics and hoidens.
+Pleasure is the purpose and love the largess of the occasion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa smiled absently.  These two remarks of diverse character were
+tentative.  She was sounding Marsyas' nature.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall not sail till it is done," Agrippa declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A rare diversion to tempt a man from his ambitions," the young Essene
+retorted quickly.  Junia had made her sounding.  She persisted in her
+latter rôle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is," she averred.  "Flora is elected among the beautiful girls of
+the theaters; she typifies universal love; she runs, leaving a trail of
+yellow roses behind her, which lead the multitude on to the delight she
+means to take for herself&mdash;and that is all.  It is merely a pretty
+feast, but the world is made of many well-meaning though blundering
+natures; and the revel does not always reach the high mark of
+refinement at its highest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's eyes on the Roman woman expressed intensest amusement and
+admiration, though they lost nothing of their cool self-possession.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My lord," Marsyas observed coldly, "there are as choice evils in Rome."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Junia laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Evil!  Tut, tut!  How monstrous serious the little world takes itself!
+How great is its problems, how towering its philosophies, how bad its
+badness!  See us wrinkle our little old brows and smile agedly over the
+creature impulses of children and forget that the gods sit on the brink
+of Olympus and smile at us.  How we deplore the Feast of Flora&mdash;and out
+upon us!  None&mdash;save perchance thyself, good sir, and thy rigid
+order&mdash;but goes reveling after pleasure and chooses a love or casts a
+stone at an offender&mdash;and soberly calls it a crisis or a principle!
+Philosophy!  Discovering the obvious!  Badness!  Only nature, more or
+less emphatic!  All a matter of meat and drink, shelter and apparel and
+the recreation of ourselves!  Everything else is merely an attribute of
+the simple essentials.  Is it not so, good sir?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas shook his head.  For the first time in his life he had heard
+the world forgiven and the sound of it was good.  He could not help
+remembering Lydia's words, in contrast.  But he was not convinced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not from the place of the gods that we feel, do and believe," he
+said.  "The child's difficulties are heavy to it; it can not imagine
+them to be greater.  So if thy reasoning hold, lady, perhaps the higher
+God smiles at the rage of Jove and the threats of Mars and the loves
+and pains of Venus.  But Jove and Mars and Venus do not smile at them;
+nor does the child at his fallen sand-house or his ruined bauble.  It
+is therefore a serious world for worldlings."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Junia lifted her white arms, and, dropping her head back between them
+against the divan, smiled up at the roof of the pavilion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought thee to be large and far-seeing," she said.  "But go follow
+Flora, and thou shall either be driven mad with astonishment, or
+persuaded to look upon the world henceforward with mine eyes!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap16"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVI
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+A MATTER HANDLED WISELY
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus Avillus, Proconsul of Egypt, held audience in his atrium.  He
+received a commission of three from the Jews of Alexandria.  One was
+Alexander Lysimachus, who came with a civil petition; the other two
+were despatched from the congregation with a hieratic memorial.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The three were stately and deliberate in manner, handsome even for
+their years, and as courtly as Jews can be when they bring up their
+native grace to the highest standard of culture.  They were bearded,
+gowned in linen, covered with tarbooshes, and as they walked their
+indoor sandals made no sound upon the polished pavement of the atrium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One wore on his left arm a phylactery, the last clinging to the old
+formality which had separated his fathers' class in Judea from the
+others, as a Pharisee.  The second was an Alexandrian Sadducee.  The
+third had over his shoulders the cloak of a magistrate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus did not rise from his curule as they approached, but he
+returned their greetings with better grace than they had formerly
+expected of a Roman governor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be greeted," he said bluntly.  "And sit; ye are elderly men!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lysimachus took the nearest chair and the others retired a little way
+to an indoor exedra.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus thrust away parchments and writings to let his elbow rest on
+his table, ordered the bearers of the fasces to withdraw to a less
+conspicuous position, and looked at Lysimachus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou lookest grave, Alexander," he said.  "Art thou commissioned with
+a perplexity?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch, being a magistrate and therefore recognized by Rome
+before the synagogue, answered readily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so much perplexed, good sir, as troubled.  I come with a petition,
+not in writing, but nevertheless most urgent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me hear it," Flaccus said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, then; thou knowest that a certain celebration of the Gentiles in
+this city is approaching.  It is a feast of much magnitude and of much
+lawlessness.  Thou knowest the temper of the city toward my people, and
+after three days of drunkenness, Alexandria will love the Jew no more,
+but much less.  Thou rememberest, as I and my people remember with
+mourning, that last year, the excited multitude, that followed Flora's
+trail of yellow roses through the Regio Judæorum, fell upon the Jews by
+the way and slaughtered and sacked as if it had been warfare instead of
+festivity.  It was a new diversion for the multitude, and one like to
+be repeated.  But we, who are led to believe by thy recent good will
+that thou dost not cherish Rome's ancient prejudice against our race,
+come unto thee and hopefully beseech thee to forbid the Flora to lead
+her rioters upon our peaceful community."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have already warned the prætor," Flaccus responded, "that Flora is
+not to run through the Regio Judæorum this year."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The prætor dare not disobey thee," Lysimachus said, with a tone of
+finality in his voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus smiled grimly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor Flora," he added.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou hast our people's gratitude and allegiance; mine own thankfulness
+and blessings," Lysimachus responded heartily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus waved his hand, and glanced at the other two, sitting aside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And ye?" he said.  "Are ye but a portion of the alabarch's commission?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, good sir," the Sadducee answered, "we come upon a mission for the
+congregation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lysimachus arose, but the Sadducee turned to him with a bow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pray thee, sir, it concerns thee as well.  Wilt thou abide longer and
+hear us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch inclined his head and sat down.  Flaccus signified that he
+was ready to hear them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou didst ask our brother, the alabarch, if he were commissioned with
+a perplexity," the Sadducee continued.  "Not he, but we come perplexed.
+Were we Jews in Judea, the method would be laid down to us by Law.  But
+in Alexandria we have grown away from the method, while yet we have the
+same object to achieve."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We lose in guidance what we gain in freedom," the Pharisee added.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In Judea," the Sadducee continued, "they are still bound by the usages
+of the Mosaic Law.  An offender against the Law is stoned.  We do not
+stone in Alexandria; yet we have the offender, and suffer the offense.
+What, then, shall we do to cleanse our skirt and yet offer no violence
+to our advanced thinking?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give me thy meaning," the proconsul said impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance it hath come to thee that there is a sect known as the
+Nazarenes, followers of Jesus of Nazareth, which are spreading like a
+pestilence on the wind over the world.  So full of them is Judea, even
+David's City, that the Sanhedrim, in alliance with the Roman legate, is
+proceeding against them with extreme punishment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have heard," Flaccus assented.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the numbers have grown so great and so far-reaching that the
+Sanhedrim hath achieved little more than to drive them abroad into the
+world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So the legate informs me," Flaccus added.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance then thou knowest that Alexandria hath its share."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even the Regio Judæorum."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Strange," Lysimachus broke in.  "Strange, if they be such
+law-breakers, as they are reputed to be, that they have not been
+brought before me for rebellion and violence, ere this!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Pharisee put his plump white hands together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou touchest upon the perplexity, brother," he said, addressing
+himself to Lysimachus.  "We are warned by the scribe of Saul of Tarsus,
+who leadeth the war against the heretics, that they are invidious
+workers of sedition; whisperers of false doctrines and pretenders of
+love and humility.  They do not persuade the rich man nor the powerful
+man nor the learned man.  They labor among the poor and the despised
+and the ignorant.  Saul, himself, though first to be awakened to the
+peril of the heresy, did not dream how immense an evil he had attacked
+until he found the half of Jerusalem fleeing from him.  Wherefore,
+brother, we may be built upon the sliding sands of an evil doctrine;
+the whole Regio Judæorum may be going astray after this apostasy ere
+the powers know it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lysimachus stroked his white beard and looked incredulous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Jews of Alexandria will not tolerate a persecution," he said
+emphatically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So thou dost grasp the perplexity wholly," the Sadducee said.  "What
+shall we do?" he turned to the proconsul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am to advise, then?" Flaccus asked indifferently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou wilt not suffer them to lead our men-servants and our
+maid-servants and our artisans into heresy?" the Pharisee asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We do not persecute in Alexandria, thou saidst," Flaccus observed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," declared Lysimachus.  "If all the Regio Judæorum were as we
+three, the apostates might come and go, strive their best and die of
+their own misdeeds, unincreased in number or in goods.  But the
+clamoring voice of the mass&mdash;nay, even Cæsar hath harkened to it!
+Those that have not followed the Nazarenes demand that they be cut off
+from us.  But we can not kill, and not even death daunts a Nazarene.
+Commend thyself, Flaccus, that thou didst call my brothers' mission a
+perplexity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you have come formally to me with your people's plaint and expect
+me to solve a question that you yourselves can not solve," Flaccus
+said.  "<I>Poena</I>!  But you are a helpless lot!  I shall pen the heretics
+in Rhacotis forthwith, and command them neither to visit nor to be
+visited!  Is it enough?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The three Jews arose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is wisdom," said the Sadducee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will serve," the Pharisee observed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall ferret them out," Lysimachus said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks," the three observed at once.  "Peace to all this house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus waved his hand and the three passed out.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap17"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+A WORD IN SEASON
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+The summer waxed over Egypt.  The Delta, back from the yellow plain
+which fronted the sea, was in full flower of the wheat.  The happy
+fellahs lay under the shade of dom-palms and drowsed the morning in and
+the sunset out, for there was nothing to do since Rannu of the Harvests
+had laid her beneficent hand upon the fields.  Across the
+Mediterranean, nearer the snows, the wheat flowered later and the Feast
+of Flora held in celebration of the blossoming fields would arrive with
+the new moon.  Egypt could have given her celebration in honor of Flora
+weeks earlier, but she preferred to wait for Rome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These were not uneventful days in the alabarch's house, for Cypros,
+with Drumah at her feet, fashioned with her own hands Agrippa's
+wardrobe and prepared for his departure, while the prince idled about
+the alabarch's garden, apparently oblivious to the call of his need to
+go to Rome, in his enjoyment of Junia's fellowship.  And Marsyas, daily
+more grave, gazed at him askance and furthered the plans for the trip,
+tirelessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His patience might have continued unworn, but for a single incident.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Late one night, when oppressed by the crowding of his unhappy thoughts,
+he arose from his bed to walk the streets in search of composure, and,
+descending into the darkness of the alabarch's house, he heard the
+doors swing in softly.  Expecting robbers, or at least a servant
+returning by stealth from a night's revel, he stepped down into the
+gloom and waited till the intruder should pass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Softly the unknown approached and laid hand on the stair-rail to
+ascend.  At the second step the figure was between him and the window
+lighting the stairs.  Against the lesser darkness and the stars
+without, he saw Lydia's outlines etched.  Noiselessly, she passed up
+and out of hearing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In his soul, he knew that she had been to the Nazarenes!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-morrow," he said grimly to himself, "I prepare the prince's ship!
+There passes a stiff-necked sacrifice to Saul of Tarsus, unless I can
+bring him low!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next morning, Justin Classicus received a letter, by a merchant
+ship from Syria.  He retired into his chamber and read it:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"O Brother," it said, "that dwelleth among the heathen, this from thy
+friend who envieth thy banishment:
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"I delayed opening thy letter three days, believing it to come from him
+who lined my threadbare purse while in Alexandria, asking usury, long
+since due, but at the end of that time, I received his letter of a
+surety.  So I made haste to open thy slandered missive, and greater
+haste to answer it by way of propitiation.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"I read much of thy letter with astonishment, some of it with rancor,
+some with congratulation.  By Abraham's beard, it is almost as good to
+be fortunate as it is to be single; wherefore in answer to thine only
+question, I say that I am neither.  Thus, am I led up to comment on the
+facts thou offerest me.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"I remember the little Lysimachus, a bit of Ephesian ivory-work, that I
+augured would go unmarried, seeing that she was so hindered with
+brains.  But naught so good as a dowry to offset the embarrassment of
+sense in a woman.  Prosper, my Classicus!  For if thou art the same
+elegant paganized son of Abraham thou wast in thine old days, thy debts
+are as many as thy usurers are scarce.  Half a million drachmæ; demand
+no less a dowry than that, my Classicus!
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"But here, below, thou writest that which hath cut my limbs from under
+me and set me heavily and helpless on the carpet!  A manumitted slave,
+a cumbrous yokel of an Essene, hath given thee troublous nights,
+because the lady's eyes soften in his presence!  Thou scented son of
+Daphne; Athene's darling; Venus' latest joy!  To let a Phidian
+colossus, with a face high-colored like a comic mask, outstrip thee!
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Thou camest upon them once, the lady's hand in his!  Again, she
+stammered under his look!  And yet a third time, he wrapped a cloak
+about her, and lingered getting his arm away!  And all these things
+thou didst suffer and didst take no more revenge than to write thy
+plaint to me, eight hundred miles away!
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"By the philippics of Jeremiah, thou deservest a wife with a figure
+like a durra loaf, and dowered with nine sisters for thy support!
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Thou opinest in a lady-like way, that he is a Nazarene!  Thou addest,
+with a flurry of spleen, that the proconsul of Egypt hateth him!  Thou
+offerest a womanish suspicion that he fled from difficulty here in
+Judea!  Now, any blind dolt could see substance in this for the
+overthrow of a rival.  Lackest thou courage, Classicus, or hast thou
+money enough to last thee till thou findest another lady?
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Is it not a sufficient cause against him that he is a Nazarene?  Or
+perchance thou dost not know of them, which astonishes me more, since
+Pharaoh in the plagues was not more cumbered with flies than the earth
+is of Nazarenes.  But read herein hope, then, against thy suspected
+rival.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"These heretics are persistent offenders against law and order,
+rebellious and otherwise unruly.  One Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus,
+proceedeth against them, for the Sanhedrim.  Whether he is an
+instrument of a political party or an immoderate zealot, is not for me
+to say; perchance he is both.  At any rate he rages against the
+iniquity of the apostasy as a continuing whirlwind.  He is not applying
+his methods locally, only.  He reaches into neighboring provinces, and
+it is his oath to pursue the heresy unto the end of the world and bring
+back the last to judgment.  Vitellius is assisting him in Judea, Herod
+Antipas in Galilee and Aretas in Syria.  I expect hourly to hear that
+Cæsar hath lent him a strong arm, because the rebels are particularly
+rabid against Rome.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Of course, the members of the congregation are divided, but thou
+knowest that even a small number of zealous defenders of the faith can
+set a whole Synagogue by the ears.  Even so tepid a Jew as I should not
+care to rub shoulders with a Nazarene.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Do I give thee life, O languid lover?
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Of thyself, I would hear more and oftener.  Await not the rising of a
+new rival to write to me.  Fear not; I shall not ask to borrow money of
+thee&mdash;until thou hast wedded the Lysimachus.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"All thy friends in Jerusalem greet thee.  Be happy and be fortunate.
+Thy friend,
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"PHILIP OF JERUSALEM."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+At this point Classicus composedly doubled the parchment, broke it
+lengthwise and cross-wise and clapped his hands for a slave.  A Hebrew
+bondman appeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This for the ovens," said Classicus, handing it to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the servant disappeared, the philosopher descended into his house
+and was dressed for a visit.  An hour before the noon rest, he appeared
+in the garden of the alabarch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There he found Lydia and Junia, Agrippa, Cypros, the alabarch and
+Flaccus, idly discussing the day's opening of the Feast of Flora.  He
+had given and received greetings and merged his interests in the
+subject, when Marsyas appeared in the colonnade.  He had taken off the
+kerchief usually worn about the head, and carried it on his arm.  As he
+passed the spare old alabarch, the heavy purple proconsul and the
+exquisite Herod, not one of the guests there gathered but made
+successive comparisons between him and the others.  Junia gazed at him
+steadily, under half-closed lids, but Lydia followed him with a look,
+half-sorrowful, half-happy, and wholly involuntary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cypros glanced at his flushed forehead and damp hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hast thou been into the city?" she asked with sweet solicitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To the harbor-master," he answered, "I have been making ready thy
+lord's ship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa overheard the low answer, and turned upon him irritably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have said that I do not depart until after the Feast of Flora," he
+remarked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The men of the sea do not expect fair winds before three days,"
+Marsyas replied, "wherefore we must abide until after the Feast."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But my raiment is not prepared," Agrippa protested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou goest hence, my lord, to Rome, to be dressed by the masters of
+the science of raiment," Marsyas assured him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Classicus raised his head and addressed to the Essene the first remark
+since the memorable night of Marsyas' arrival in Alexandria.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a game it is," he opined amiably, "to see thee managing this
+slippery Herod!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa flushed angrily, but Marsyas did not await the retort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My brother's pardon," he said, "but the Herod has fine discrimination
+between cares becoming his exalted place, and the labors of a steward."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's face relaxed, but Classicus broke off the swinging end of a
+vine that reached over his shoulder and slowly pulled it to pieces.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Junia sitting next to Marsyas turned to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So thou wilt follow Flora?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?" she insisted, smiling.  "Thou must go to Rome, where Flora runs
+every day.  Wilt thou turn thy back upon Egypt's joy and see only
+Italy's?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is Rome so much worse than Alexandria?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not worse; only more pronounced.  There is more of Rome; the world
+gets its impulse there.  So much is done; so many are doing.  And, by
+the caprice of the Destinies, thou art to see Rome more than commonly
+employed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How?" he asked.  By this time, the others were talking and the two
+spoke unheard together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hist!  I tell it under my breath, because the noble proconsul is
+burdened with the great responsibility of declaring the emperor's
+deathlessness, and I would not contradict him aloud.  But Tiberius is
+old, old&mdash;and Rome casts about for his successor.  But chance hath it
+that interest hath uncoupled the two eyes so that the singleness of
+sight is divided.  'Look right,' saith one; 'look left,' saith the
+other, and each looking his own way reviles his fellow and creates
+disturbance in the head.  But it behooves thee, gentle Jew, to bid
+thine eyes contemplate Tiberius, to do oriental obeisance and say as
+the Persians say; 'O King, live for ever!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But yesterday, thou didst cast a kindly light over the world's
+hardness.  Tear it not away thus soon and frighten me with the fierce
+power against which I must shortly go and demand tribute," he protested
+lightly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took down her arms, clasped back of her head, to look at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Light-hearted eremite!" she chid.  "Never a Jew but believed that all
+the happenings in the world happen in Jerusalem&mdash;that there is nothing
+else to come to pass after Jerusalem's full catalogue of possibilities
+is exhausted.  But I tell thee that, compared to Rome, Jerusalem is an
+unwatered spot in the desert where once in a century a loping jackal
+passes by to break its eventlessness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lady," he said with his old gravity, "Judea is a Roman province.  Is
+Rome harsher to her citizens than she is with her subjugated peoples?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art nearer the executive seat; under the eye of Power itself.
+Icarus, on his waxen wings, was unsafe enough in the daylight; but he
+was undone by soaring too close to the sun!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What shall I do, then?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Attach thyself to a power; get behind the buckler of another's
+strength!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Power is not offering its protection for nothing; what have I to give
+in exchange for it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Almost inadvertently, she let her eyes run over him, and seemed
+impelled to say the words that leaped to her lips.  But she recovered
+herself in time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a generous world," she said, "and such as thou shall not go
+friendless; depend upon it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Marsyas glanced up, his eyes rested on Lydia's, and for a moment
+he was held in silence by the faint darkening of distress that he saw
+there.  Something wild and sweet and painful struggled in his breast
+and fell quiet so quickly that he sat with his lips parted and his gaze
+fixed until the alabarch's daughter dropped her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I heard thee speak of Rome," she said.  "After thy labor is done, wilt
+thou remain there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he answered slowly, "I return to En-Gadi."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"En-Gadi," Junia repeated.  "Where is that and why shouldst thou go
+there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the city of the Essenes, a city of retreat.  It is in the Judean
+desert on the margin of the Dead Sea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After Rome, that!" Junia cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Lydia said nothing and Marsyas, gazing at her in hope of
+discovering some little deprecation, some little invitation to remain
+in the world, forgot that the Roman woman had spoken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Classicus, who had been a quiet observer of the few words spoken
+between the Essene and the alabarch's daughter, drew himself up from
+his lounging attitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To En-Gadi?" he repeated, attracting the attention of the others, who
+had not failed to note his sudden interest in Marsyas.  "Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am an Essene fallen into misfortune; but once an Essene, an Essene
+always," Marsyas answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An Essene?" the philosopher observed.  Then after a little silence he
+began again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In Alexandria, we live less rigorously than in Judea, even too little
+so, we discover at times.  Wherefore it is needful that we watch that
+no further lapse is made, which will carry us into lawlessness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye are lax, yet wary that ye be not more lax?" Marsyas commented
+perfunctorily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even so.  From Agrippa's lips, we learn that thou hast led a
+precarious life of late; an eventful, even adventurous life: that thou
+hast been accused and hast escaped arrest.  Thou wilt pardon my
+familiarity with thine own affairs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on," said Marsyas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In Alexandria&mdash;even in Alexandria, of late, the Jews have resolved not
+to entertain heretics&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In Alexandria, the extreme ye will risk in hospitality is one simply
+accused."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I commend thy discernment.  But we separate ourselves from the
+convicted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So it is done in Judea.  But continue."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Classicus waited for an expectant silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou carryest about thee," he said, "an emblem which none but a
+Nazarene owns."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas contemplated Classicus very calmly.  He had been accused of
+apostasy before, but by one whose every impulse had root in irrational
+fanaticism.  He had not expected this Romanized Jew to become zealous
+for the faith; instead, he knew that Classicus would have pursued none
+other for suspicion, but himself.  Why?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He glanced at Lydia.  Alarm and protest were written on every feature.
+Classicus saw that she was prepared to defend Marsyas and his face
+hardened.  Then the Essene understood!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A flush of warm color swept over his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without a word he put his hand into his robes and drew forth and laid
+upon his palm the little cedar crucifix.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cypros uttered a little sound of fright; Agrippa whirled upon Marsyas
+with frank amazement on his face.  After a moment's intent
+contemplation of the Essene's face, Junia settled back into her easy
+attitude and smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia sprang up; yet before the rush of precipitate speech reached her
+lips, there came, imperative and distinct, Marsyas' telepathic demand
+on her attention.  Tender but commanding, his dark eyes rested upon her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou shall not betray thyself for me!" they said.  "Thou shalt not
+bring sorrow to thy father's heart and disaster upon thy head!  Thou
+shalt keep silence, and permit me to defend thee!  I command thee; thou
+canst do naught else but obey!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She wavered, her cheeks suffused, and her eyes fell.  When she lifted
+them again, they were flashing with tears.  A moment, and she slipped
+past her guests into the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch broke the startled silence; he had turned almost
+wrathfully upon Classicus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems," he exclaimed, "that thou hast needlessly broadened thine
+interests into matters which once did not concern thee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good my father," Classicus responded, "thou hast lost two sons already
+to idolatry and false doctrines.  And thy lovely daughter, thou seest,
+is no more secure from the seductions of an attractive apostasy than
+were they!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" Marsyas asked quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not needful to point the man of discernment to his duty,"
+Classicus returned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Methinks," said Marsyas, rising, "that the sharp point of a pretext
+urges me out of Alexandria, as it did in Judea.  Thou hast had no
+scruples," he continued, turning to Agrippa, "thus far in accepting the
+companionship of an accused man, so I do not expect to be cast off now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," Agrippa protested, stammering in his surprise and perplexity,
+"acquit thyself, Marsyas.  Thou art no Nazarene!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No charge so light to lift as this, my lord," Marsyas answered.  "Yet
+even for thy favor I will not do it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa looked doubtful, and the alabarch exclaimed with deep regret:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What difficulty thou settest in the way of my debt to thee!  Thou, to
+whom I owe my daughter's life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yet have a little faith in me," Marsyas said to him.  "And for more
+than I am given lief to recount, I am thy debtor!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put the crucifix into the folds of his garments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am prepared to go to Rome, even now," he added to Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;I would stay until after the Feast of Flora," the prince objected
+stubbornly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cypros was breaking in, affrightedly, when Flaccus interrupted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come! come!" he said, with a bluff assumption of good nature.  "Thou
+art not banished from the city, young man!  I am legate over
+Alexandria, and a conscienceless pagan, wherefore thou hast not
+offended my gods nor done aught to deserve my disfavor.  Get thee down
+to Rhacotis among thy friends&mdash;or thine enemies&mdash;till the Herod hath
+diverted himself with Flora, and go thy way to Rome!  What a tragedy
+thou makest of nothing tragic!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O son of Mars," Marsyas said to himself, "I do not build on finding
+asylum there.  Never a pitfall but is baited with invitation!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Cypros turned to the proconsul, her face glowing with thankfulness
+under her tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it pleasing to thee, lady?" the proconsul asked jovially.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twice, thrice thou hast been my friend!" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall go," said Marsyas.  "Remember, my lord prince, these many
+things which I and others suffer add to the certainty that thou shalt
+be called to pay my debt against Saul of Tarsus, one day!  Three days
+hence, thou and I shall sail for Rome!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saluted the company and passed out of the garden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance," said Flaccus dryly, with his peculiar aptitude for
+insinuation, "an officer should conduct him to this nest of apostates."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He will go, never fear!" Cypros declared, brushing away tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By Ate! the boy is spectacular," Agrippa vowed suddenly.  "He is no
+Nazarene!  I know how he came by that unholy amulet.  It is a relic of
+that young heretic friend of his, whom they stoned in Jerusalem!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Junia found immense amusement in that surmise.  Presently, she
+laughed outright.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Classicus, what a blunderer thou art!  Right or wrong, thou hast
+brought down the ladies' wrath, not upon the comely Essene, but upon
+thine own head for abusing him!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap18"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVIII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE RANSOM
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas passed up to his room to put his belongings together.  The
+sound of his movements within reached Lydia in her refuge, and, when he
+came forth, she stood in the gloom of the hall without, awaiting him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Moved with a little fear of her reproach, he went to her, with extended
+hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What have I done?" she whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou hast done nothing," he said quickly.  "I blame myself for keeping
+the amulet about me, when I should have destroyed it.  But I could
+not&mdash;I have not yet; because&mdash;it is thine!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I kept silence&mdash;I who owned the crucifix&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I made thee keep silence!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But what have they said to thee; what wilt thou do?" she insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I go without more obloquy than I brought hither with me; I was
+accused, before; I could stand further accusation, for thy sake!  They
+have said nothing; done nothing&mdash;I go to Rhacotis, to await the
+departure of Agrippa, who goes to Rome at the end of three days&mdash;nay;
+peace!" he broke off, as a momentous resolution gathered in her pale
+face.  "Thou wilt keep silence, else I do this thing in vain!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not slander myself!" she cried.  "I am not afraid to confess my
+fault&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But thou shall not do it!" he declared.  "The punishment for it would
+not be alone for thyself!  Choose between the quiet of thy conscience
+and the peace and pride of thy father!  Bethink thee, the inestimable
+harm thou canst do by this thing!  Be not deceived that the story of
+thy lapse would be kept under thy father's roof.  That ignoble pagan
+governor below has no care for thy sweet fame!  He would tell it; thy
+maidens would hear of it and fear thee or follow thee!  Thy father's
+government over his people would be weakened; the elders of the
+Synagogue would question him&mdash;Lydia, suffer the little hurt of
+conscience for thine own account, rather than afflict many for thy
+pride's sake!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her small hands, white in the darkness of the corridor, were twisted
+about each other in distress.  Marsyas' pity was stirred to the deepest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How unhappy thou hast been!" he said, touching upon her apostasy.
+"Give over thy wavering and be the true daughter of God, once more!
+Let us destroy this evil amulet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He plucked the crucifix from his tunic and caught it between his hands
+to break it, when she sprang toward him and seized his wrists.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do not so!" she besought, her eyes large with fright.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had forced her to defend it, and she had stood to the breach; he had
+proved the gravity of her disaffection for the faith of Abraham.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why wilt thou endanger thyself for this social drift?" he demanded
+passionately.  "Lydia!  How canst thou turn from the faith of thy
+fathers?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I am not worthy to be a Nazarene!" she answered.  "They are
+forbidden to enact a falsehood!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let be; I do not care for their philosophy; it is like the Law of
+Rome.&mdash;an empty armor that any knave can wear.  But I urge thee to
+behold what misery thou invitest upon thyself!  What will come of it?
+Immortal as thou art in soul, thou canst not keep alive the single
+spark of wisdom in the ashes of their folly; thou canst not save them
+against the combined vengeance of the whole world!  But thou canst be
+disgraced with them, persecuted with them, and die with them!
+Unhallowed the day that ever Classicus spoke their name to thee!
+Cursed be his words!  May the Lord treasure them up against him&mdash;!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush! hush!" she whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He became calm with an effort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia," he began after a pause, "it is a poor intelligence that can
+not foresee as ably as the augurs.  One successful life gives
+opportunity, to all that spring from it, to be successful; a failure
+scatters the seed of misfortune through all its blood.  Choose thou for
+thyself and thou choosest for a nation which comes after thee.  I see
+thee radiant, crowned, worshiped; and if they who come up under thy
+guidance walk as thou dost walk, Lydia shall give queens unto
+principalities and rulers unto satrapies.  These be days when women of
+virtue and women of remark; women of wisdom are remembered women.  And
+thou, virtuous, wise and noble&mdash;the empresses of coming Cæsars will
+assume thy name to conceal their tarnishment under a badge of luster!
+This on one hand.  On the other thou shalt flee from the stones of the
+rabble, come unto the humiliation of thy womanhood and the agony of thy
+body in the torture-cell, and die like a criminal!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shrank away with a quivering sound and flung her hands over her
+ears.  He caught her and drew her close, until she all but rested on
+his breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia, naught but mine extremity could make me speak thus to thee," he
+said tremulously and in a passion of appeal.  "If the words be hideous,
+let the actualities that they mean warn thee in time!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;thou dost not understand," she faltered, drawing away from him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do understand; through anguish and rancor and suffering, I have
+learned.  Must I give all to the vengeance of God, who visiteth
+apostates for their iniquity?  Lydia, depart not from the righteous
+religion, I implore thee.  Behold its great age," he went on, speaking
+rapidly and with quickened breath, "behold its history, its monuments,
+its achievements, its great exponents, its infallibility!  The rest of
+the world was an unimagined futurity when an able son of thy race was
+minister to Pharaoh and lord over the whole land of Egypt.  The godly
+kings of thy people were poets and musicians when Pindar's and Homer's
+ancestors were still Peloponnesian fauns with horns in their hair.
+Before Isis and Osiris, before Bel and Astarte, thy God was molding
+universes and hanging stars in the sky.  And lo! the sons of the
+Pharaohs are wasted weaklings, fit only for slaves; the Chaldees are
+dust in the dust of their cities; Babylonia is hunting-ground for
+jackals and the perch of bats; Rome&mdash;even Rome's greatness hath
+returned into the sinews of her hills, but there is no decadence in
+Israel, no weakness in her God!  Aid not in the perversion of her
+ancient faith&mdash;thou who art the incarnation of her queens&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He halted, but only for an instant, in which he seemed to throw off
+recurring restraint and drove on:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"David did not seek for one more lovely, nor Solomon for one more wise!
+Truth, even Truth demands dear tribute when it takes a life.  For a
+mere scintillation of verity, wilt thou die?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I fear not," she answered painfully.  "I&mdash;who could be affrighted
+out of telling a truth!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not his prayer, but the Nazarene's teaching had weight with her, at
+that moment!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All thy hazard of life and fame for their vague philosophy," he cried,
+"and not one stir of pity for me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a moment of complete silence; then she lifted her face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou knowest better," she said, "thou, who labored in vain with
+Stephen, who loved thee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His heart contracted; for a moment he entertained as practicable a
+resolve to stay stubbornly under the alabarch's roof until he had
+broken the determination of this sweet erring girl to destroy herself.
+He drew in his breath to speak, but the futileness of his words
+occurred to him.  Again, he had a thought of telling the alabarch
+privately of his daughter's peril, but instantly doubted that the good
+old Jew could move her.  While he debated desperately with himself, she
+drew, nearer to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be not angry with me!  If thou leavest Alexandria in three days, it
+may be that I&mdash;shall not see thee again&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I am dismissed to know no rest until I have brought Saul of Tarsus
+low, for thy sake, as well as for Stephen's!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He knew at the next breath that he had hurt her, and repented.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall see thee once more," he said hurriedly, feeling that he dared
+not make retraction.  He took up the pilgrim's wallet containing his
+belongings, and put out his hand to her.  She took it, so wistfully, so
+sorrowfully, that a wave of compunction swept over him.  Bending low,
+he pressed his lips to her palm, and hastened, full of agitation, out
+of the alabarch's house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The preparations for the Feast of Flora had been brought to
+completeness.  The funds for the lavish display had come out of the
+taxes upon provinces, the flamens managed it, the patricians and the
+rich patronized it and all Alexandria, whether rich or poor, free or
+enslaved, plunged into its celebration with recklessness and relish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dwellers of the Regio Judæorum took no part in the celebration, but
+Marsyas saw that a spirit of interest invaded the district, even to the
+doors of the great Synagogue.  Mothers in Israel put aside the wimples
+over their faces when they met in the narrow passages or the
+market-places to talk of the recurring abomination in lowered voices
+and with sidelong glances to see if the velvet-eyed children, who clung
+to their garments, heard.  Fathers in Israel, rabbis and constabularies
+were abroad to make preparation against the local characteristic which
+tended to turn every popular gathering into a demonstration against the
+Jews.  The bloody uproar of the preceding year was fresh in the fear of
+the people, and though Lysimachus had spread abroad the promise of the
+proconsul, the Regio Judæorum had cause to be doubtful of the favor of
+a former persecutor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But as the young man entered the Gentile portion of the city, he saw
+that, from the Lochias to the Gate of the Necropolis, Alexandria was no
+longer a city of normal life and labor but a play-ground for revel and
+lawlessness.  The two main avenues which crossed the city toward the
+four cardinal points were cleared of traffic and the marks of wheel and
+hoof were stamped out by crowds that filled the roadways.  The crowding
+glories of Alexandrian architecture which lined these noble
+highways&mdash;temples, palaces, theaters, baths, gymnasia, stadia and fora,
+high marks of both Greek and Roman society&mdash;were wreathed, pillar and
+plinth, with laurel and roses, lilies and myrtle, nelumbo and lotus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fountains gave up perfumed water; aromatic gums in bowls set upon
+staves fumed and burned and were filling the dead airs of the
+Alexandrian calm with oriental musks; everywhere were the reedy
+shrilling of pipe, the tinkle of castanet, the mellow notes of flutes
+and the muttering of drums.  Wine was flowing like water; immense
+public feasts were in progress, at which droves of sheep and oxen were
+served to gathered multitudes, which were never full-fed except at
+Flora's bounty.  Processions were streaming along the streets, meeting
+at intersections to romp, break up in revel and end in excess.  Tens of
+thousands with one impulse, one law, frolicked, fought, drank, danced,
+sang, piped, wooed, forgot everything, grudges and all, except Flora
+and her license and bounty.  The citizens were no longer the
+descendants of Quirites, remnant of the Pharaohs or the Macedonian
+kings, but satyrs, fauns, bacchantes, nymphs, mimes and harlequins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas kept away from the crowds and went by deserted paths toward
+Rhacotis.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He knew without inquiry where to find the Nazarene quarter.  It was
+marked by the strange, strained silence that hovers over houses where
+life is not secure, by poverty, by orderliness, by the patient faces of
+the humble dwellers, by the brotherly greeting that the few citizens
+gave him as he approached.  He saw many of the garrison loitering
+about, but they permitted him to pass without notice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The roar of the merrymaking without swept into the quiet passages like
+a titanic purr of satisfaction.  The young man had grown away from his
+toleration of solitude.  His Essenic training had suffered change; its
+usages, at variance with his nature, had become difficult as soon as
+the opportunity for more congenial habits had presented itself.  Only a
+few weeks before, he could voyage the giant breadth of the
+Mediterranean, excluding himself from the contaminating Nazarenes,
+without effort.  Now, he asked himself how he was to live among these
+people for three days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He found the quarter absolutely packed with people, and realized then
+how many followers of Jesus of Nazareth there were in Alexandria, and
+how thoroughly Flaccus had weeded them out of the rest of the city.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked about him, grew impatient, and, with the ready invention of a
+man who has lived only by devices for the past many months, made up his
+mind to house himself elsewhere than in the crowded Nazarene quarter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will go to the ship," he said to himself.  "It is victualed and
+ready for the prince's arrival to weigh anchor.  No one but my seamen
+need know that I am there, and they will be too intent on Flora to
+speak of me abroad in the city!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned promptly and made his way down the quarter toward the harbor.
+Within sound of the waters lapping on the wharf piling, a soldier of
+the city garrison stepped into his way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Back!" he said harshly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas stopped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why may I not pass?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None passes from this rebel's nest hereafter!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap19"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIX
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE DELIVERANCE
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+There followed time for diverse and earnest meditation for Marsyas: He
+criticized himself sarcastically, for permitting himself to be so
+easily entrapped, and cast about him for means of escape.  He found by
+successive trials that the siege was perfect.  Half of Alexandria's
+garrison had been posted about the district.  The more he considered
+his predicament, the more an atmosphere of impending danger weighted
+the air of the Nazarene community.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not seek the hospitality of the Nazarenes, because he had not
+come to the point of admitting that he was to remain among them.  At
+nightfall, while the roar of the reveling city without swept over the
+community, he hoped to find some unguarded spot in the Roman lines, but
+his hope was vain.  With his attention thus forced upon the people
+penned in with him, he began to wonder if there might not yet be some
+profit in counsel with his fellows, hemmed in for some purpose by
+Flaccus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He found the inhabitants gathered in a broad space in one of the
+streets, where at one time a statue or a fountain might have stood, but
+after a few minutes' listening, he heard only prayers and words of
+submission to the unknown peril threatening them.  Angry and
+disappointed he flung himself away from the gathering, to spend the
+night in the streets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But after the first gust of his anger, it was brought home to him very
+strongly, that these people were gifted with a new courage, the courage
+of submission&mdash;to him the most mysterious and impossible of powers.
+Led from this idle conclusion into yet deeper contemplation of the
+Nazarene character, he found himself admitting astonishing evidences in
+their favor.  He had known not a few of them.  Stephen had been
+beatified, the most exalted, yet the sweetest character that he had
+ever known.  Lydia, wavering and hesitating between Judaism and the
+faith of Jesus of Nazareth, struggled with fine points of conscience,
+and persisted, in the face of terror,&mdash;the most potent controlling
+agent, Marsyas had believed, over the spirit of womanhood.  The
+Nazarene body at Ptolemais had displayed before him a humanness in
+subjection, that, in spite of his own resolute disposition, seemed
+triumphant, after all.  They had preached peace, and had maintained it
+in the face of the most trying circumstances.  On ship-board, he had
+been shown that they were long-suffering.  About him now, while
+Alexandria rioted and reveled in excess, their order and decorum were
+highly attractive.  These were excellences that he did not willingly
+see; circumstances and environment had forced their recognition upon
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At a late hour, he was sought and found by their pastor, the tall old
+teacher, whom he had come to consider as a man whom, for his own
+spiritual welfare, he should shun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Young brother," the pastor said, "thou art without shelter here, and
+imprisoned among us.  I respect thy wish to be left to thyself, yet we
+can not see thee unhoused.  I have a cell in yonder ruined wall; it is
+solitary and secluded.  Do thou take it, and I shall find shelter among
+my people."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas felt his cheeks grow hot, under the cover of the night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thank thee," he responded, "but I am here only for a little time.  I
+am young and hardy; I will not turn thee out of thy shelter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If thy time with us is stated, thou art fortunate.  Alexandria hath
+not set her limit upon our imprisonment.  Yet, I shall find a niche in
+the house of one of my people; be not ashamed to take my place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without waiting for the young man to protest, the Nazarene signed him
+to follow, and led on through the dark to the place indicated&mdash;the
+remnant of an ancient house&mdash;a single standing wall of earth,
+sufficiently thick to be excavated to form a shallow cave.  There was
+room enough for a pallet of straw within, and a reed matting hung
+before the opening.  The pastor bade the young man enter, blessed him
+and disappeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas sat down in the cramped burrow, and, resting his head on his
+hands and his elbows on his knees, said to himself, in discomfiture:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Beshrew the enemy that permits you to find no fault in him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not the last time in the memorable three days of imprisonment
+that he frowned and deprecated the excellence of his hosts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He accepted their simple hospitality in moody helplessness, and spent
+his time either hovering on the outskirts of their nightly meetings, or
+vainly searching for a plan to escape.  He noted finally that they
+stinted themselves food, but gave him his usual share; water appeared
+less often and less plentiful.  The pastor was not less confident, but
+more withdrawn within himself: the elders became more grave, the
+people, oppressed and prayerful.  At times, when the gradual growth of
+distress became more apparent, Marsyas walked apart and chid himself
+for his resourcelessness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am another mouth to feed, among these people," he declared.  "And by
+the testimony of mine own instinct, I am not the least cause of that
+which hath thrown this siege about them!  I will get out!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He began at sunset the second day to discover the extent of the
+besieged quarter and sound every point for the strength of its
+particular blockade.  He found that the Nazarene portion of Rhacotis
+stretched from the landings of the bay inland to a series of granaries
+where Rhacotis, in its smaller days, had built receptacles for the
+wheat which the rustics brought for shipping.  To the west it ended
+against a stockade for cattle, upon which mounted sentries could
+overlook a great deal of the quarter.  To the east, the limit was a
+compact row of well-built houses, remnants of the Egyptian aristocratic
+portion in Alexander's time.  The streets intersecting the row and
+leading into pagan Rhacotis were each closed by a sentry.  After his
+investigations, Marsyas felt that here was the weakest spot in the
+siege.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Central in the row was a tall structure, with ruined clay pylons, blank
+of wall and, except for supporting beams, roofless.  It had been a
+temple, but was now a dwelling, a veritable warren since the Nazarenes
+were all driven to occupy a portion which could shelter only a fifth of
+the number comfortably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Upon this structure, Marsyas' eye rested.  Either it would be closely
+watched from without or not at all.  It depended upon the features of
+the wall fronting on the street at the rear, in which the sentries were
+posted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For once he blessed a Nazarene night-gathering, when he saw family
+after family emerge from the tunnel-like doors of the temple-house and
+proceed silently toward the meeting of their brethren in the street
+below.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A long time after the last emerged and disappeared into the dark,
+Marsyas crossed to the doors and knocked.  For a moment after his first
+trial, he listened lest there be an answer.  He knocked more loudly a
+second time, and, after the third, he opened the unlocked doors, and,
+putting in his head, called.  The heated interior was totally dark and
+silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stepped in and closed the doors behind him.  When at last his eyes
+became accustomed to the darkness, he saw that he was in a single
+immense chamber; the entire interior of the old temple was unbroken by
+partition of any kind.  Above him, he saw the crossing of great
+palm-trunks, bracing the walls, and over them the blue arch of the
+night.  At the rear, the starlight showed him the wall abutting the
+street of the sentries.  It was absolutely blank and fully thirty feet
+in height.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas sighed and shook his head.  Though he made the leap in safety,
+he could not alight without noise enough to attract the whole garrison
+to the spot.  But, determined to make his investigation thorough before
+he surrendered the scheme as hopeless, he felt about the great chamber
+and stumbled on a rude ladder leaning against a side-wall.  He climbed
+it, to find that it reached to a ledge, where the deeper lower half of
+the wall was surmounted by a clerestory just half its thickness.  He
+found here rows of straw pallets where the overflow of Nazarenes took
+refuge by night.  He pulled up his ladder, set it on the ledge and
+climbed again, finding himself at the uppermost rung within reach of
+one of the palm-trunks.  He seized it, tried it for solidity and drew
+himself up on the top of the wall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fearing detection by the sentries more than the return of the
+householders, he crept with caution to the angle at the rear, and
+looked down into the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He located two sentries, but no nearer the back of the temple than the
+two streets opening into the other several yards away to the north and
+south.  He lay still to note the direction of their post and found
+that, in truth, they turned just under him.  At a point half-way
+between either end of their walk, they were more than two hundred paces
+apart.  But Marsyas looked down the sheer wall.  He could not possibly
+accomplish it without injury or discovery or both.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a heavy heart he retraced his steps, descended into the old temple
+and made his way toward the doors.  Before he reached them, he
+frightened himself by stumbling upon a huge light object that rolled
+away toward the entrance.  He followed cautiously, and touched it again
+while fumbling for the latch.  He felt of it, and finally, swinging the
+door open, saw by the starlight that it was a huge hamper of twisted
+palm-fiber, tall enough to contain a man and wide enough for two.  He
+set the thing aside and went out into the night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To-morrow was the last day of his confinement, but he did not expect
+liberty.  He did not doubt that the city meditated the destruction of
+the Nazarenes, nor that Flaccus would permit him to be overlooked in
+the general slaughter.  Not the least of his fears was that Lydia might
+be thrust among them at any moment, to share the fate he had striven so
+hard to avert from her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He returned to his cave in the ruined wall, and lay down on his
+matting, not to sleep, nor even to plan intelligently, but to submit to
+his distress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At high noon the third day, on the summit of the Serapeum in Egyptian
+Rhacotis, there appeared a slender figure in the burnoose of an Arab.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Five hundred feet distant, in the beleaguered Nazarene settlement, a
+woman stood in her doorway to pray, that the earthen roof might not be
+between her supplication and the Master in Heaven.  She saw the
+microscopic figure on the pylon of the Temple, but daily a priest came
+there to worship the sun.  She saw the figure lift and extend its arms,
+presently, but that was part of the idolatrous ritual, she thought.
+She dropped her eyes to the crucifix in her hands and her lips moved
+slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that instant, at her feet, as a thunderbolt strikes from the clouds,
+an arrow plunged half its length into the hard sand, and leaned,
+quivering strongly toward the tiny shape on the summit of the pylon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Nazarene woman dropped her crucifix and shrieked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The slow fisher-husband appeared beside her, and, seeing the fallen
+cross, picked it up with fumbling fingers, muttering an exclamation of
+remonstrance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look!" the Nazarene woman cried, pointing to the half-buried bolt,
+still quivering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fisherman gazed at it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whence came it?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The trembling woman shook her head and clasped and unclasped her hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An affront from the heathen," the man said.  "It was despatched to
+murder thee.  The Lord's hand stayed it; blessed be His name!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He plucked the arrow with an effort from the sand, and looked at it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a witness of the Master's care; let us take it to the pastor,"
+he suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The trembling woman followed her husband as he stepped into the street
+and raised her eyes to give thanks.  She saw that the figure on the
+summit of the pylon was gone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two found the leader of their flock, sitting outside an overcrowded
+house, bending over a half-finished basket of reeds.  Beside him was
+one complete; at the other hand were his working materials.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greeting, children, in Christ's name," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greeting, lord; praise to God in the highest!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Nazarene woman dropped to her knees, and her husband, extending the
+arrow in agitation, stumbled through their story.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May His name be glorified for ever," the woman murmured at the end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the pastor took the arrow and examined it.  It was uncommon; the
+story was uncommon, and he believed that there was more than a wanton
+attempt at murder in its coming.  The bolt was tipped with a pointed
+flint, and feathered with three long, delicate papyrus cases, one dark,
+two white.  The pastor felt of one of the white feathers, and presently
+ripped it off the shaft.  It opened in his hand.  Within was lettering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a little puzzled study of it, he shook his head and put it down.
+He loosened the other from the transparent gum and opened it.  Written
+in another hand were the following words in Greek:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"To the Nazarene to whom this cometh:<BR>
+"Deliver the arrow unto the young Jew, Marsyas,
+who dwells among you, but is not of your number."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The pastor took up the arrow and the papyrus and arose at once.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Verily, a sending, but it is not for us.  Abide here until I deliver
+it to him that expects it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned toward the ruined wall where Marsyas secluded himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The pastor knocked on the dried earth wall without the cave, and the
+matting was thrust aside.  The young Jew stood there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I bring thee a message from without," the pastor said at once.  "Peace
+and the love of Christ enter thy heart and uphold thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put the arrow into the young man's hand and saluting him with the
+sign of the cross, went his way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What blind incaution," Marsyas said, after he had stared in
+astonishment at the things delivered him.  "A message!  How does he
+know that he does not bear to me treachery against his people, and his
+undoing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he sat down and undid the white case.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is Agrippa's writing!" he declared after he had read it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took up the other.  The writing was in Sanskrit.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"O white Brother:" it ran; "this by an arrow from the strong bow of thy
+lord Prince.  Him I compelled.  Come forth from among the Nazarenes!
+Deliver thyself, by nightfall, in the pure name of her whom thou
+lovest!  Come ere that time, if thou canst, but fail not, otherwise, to
+be in the forefront of Flora's followers!  Be prepared to possess her!
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Fail not, by all the gods!<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Vasti, by the hand of Khosru, priest to Siva."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas seized the writing with both hands and sprang up; reread it
+with straining eyes; walked the two steps permitted him in his cave
+over and over again; or leaned against the earthen wall to think.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the pure name of her whom he loved!  Lydia?  He felt his Essenic
+self dissolve in a flood of glad confusion, for the moment; instead of
+self-reproach, he felt more joy than he ever hoped to know in a life
+devoted to vengeance; instead of guilt, an uplift that separated him
+for an instant from even his terror for the rapture of contemplating
+Lydia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the grave alarm that the bayadere's letter aroused possessed him.
+A rereading filled him with consternation.  The unrevealed peril that
+he was to avert, the intimation that Lydia was endangered, the
+practically insurmountable obstacles in the way of his escape, shook
+him strongly in his self-control.  He made no plans, for desperate
+conditions did not admit of formulated action.  To pass outposts of
+half a cohort of brawny guards offered success only by a miracle, and
+the miraculous is not methodical.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently, he burst out of his burrow and tramped through the bright
+hours of the afternoon, cursing the sun for its deadly haste to get
+under the rim of the world, and dizzy with the pressure of terror and
+anxiety.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Near the softening hours of the latter part of the day, while the
+awakening revel roared louder in the distance, he stopped before the
+ancient temple.  The great hamper stood without the heavy entrance with
+three little Nazarene children tying ropes to the interstices between
+the fibers to pull it after them like a wagon.  Marsyas looked at the
+hamper, glanced with intent eyes at the front wall,&mdash;a duplicate,
+except for the entrance, of the rear one,&mdash;and then rushed away in
+search of Ananias, the pastor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He found the pastor sitting outside the house that had given him
+refuge, cutting soles for sandals from a hide that lay by his side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Nazarene raised a face so kindly and interested that the young man
+dropped down beside him and blundered through his story, in his haste
+to lay the plan for escape before the old man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At sunset," he hurried on, "or when the night is sufficiently heavy to
+hide us, I can be let down in the hamper by the rear wall of the old
+temple&mdash;if thou wilt bid some of thy congregation to help me!  I pray
+thee&mdash;let not thy belief deny me this help, for the life of my beloved,
+or mayhap her sweet womanhood, dependeth upon my escape!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He clasped his hands, and gazed with beseeching eyes into the pastor's
+face.  He did not permit himself to think what he would do if the old
+man denied him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is manifest," Ananias said, after a pause for thought, "that only
+Nazarenes are to be confined herein.  And thou, being a Jew, art here
+under false imprisonment.  We shall not be glad to have thee suffer
+with us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, yes!" Marsyas cried.  "I am falsely accused, and thou wilt avert
+an injustice&mdash;nay, by the holy death of the prophets!" he broke off,
+"if I could bear you all to refuge after me, I would do it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the spirit of Christ in thee, my son; nourish it!  Yet be not
+distressed for our sake; He who holdeth the world in the hollow of His
+hand is with us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas awaited anxiously the old man's further speech, when he lapsed
+into silence after his confident claim of divine protection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give us the plan, my son, and we will help thee," he said at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas took the old man's hand and lifted it impulsively to his lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While yet the Serapeum was crowned with pale light, but the more
+squalid streets were blackening, Marsyas, led by Ananias, came to the
+old temple-house, and briefly unfolded his plan to three stalwart young
+Gentiles, who had turned their backs upon Jove and assumed the grace of
+Jesus in their hearts.  The hamper with which the children had played
+all day was brought.  Three troll-lines, each forty feet in length and
+borrowed from the fisher Nazarenes who lived along the bay, were
+securely knotted in three slits about the rim of the basket.  Then,
+waiting only for the rapidly rising dusk, Marsyas, the three young
+Gentiles and the pastor climbed cautiously to the top of the side-wall
+of the old structure, and pulled up the hamper after them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the angle in the rear, Marsyas, who led the way, stopped.  Below it
+was already night, and he could hear the steps of the sentries in the
+echoing passage.  He had not planned how he should pass them after his
+descent, but the houses opposite were dark and he did not look for
+interference, if he took refuge among them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stepped into the hamper, and the three young men laid hold on the
+ropes.  The pastor spread his hands in blessing over Marsyas' head, and
+when the sound of the sentries' footsteps was faintest, the hamper,
+with little sound and at cautious speed, was let down the steep wall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It touched the sand with a grinding sound.  Marsyas leaped out, jerked
+one of the ropes in signal and the hamper sprang aloft.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a muttered blessing on the heads of the apostates, Marsyas leaped
+across the narrow street, to the shadows of the other houses.  Creeping
+from porch to porch with the sheltering shade of overhanging roofs upon
+him, he passed guard after guard, until the row finally ended and the
+open space between him and safety on the bay showed up a line of
+soldiers guarding the water-front.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The distance was not great, and success thus far had made Marsyas
+strong.  With a prayer to the God of those who help themselves, he
+burst from the passage into the great open of the docking and sped
+straight for the bay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Instantly a howl went up, a pilum launched after him, shot over his
+shoulder, the rush of twenty mailed feet came in pursuit, swords,
+spears and axes flew and fell behind him, but panting and unfaltering
+he rushed straight to the edge of the wharf and dropped out of sight
+into the bay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The guards came after him, and hanging over the wharf looked down for
+him to come up.  They saw the circles of water widen and widen, grow
+stiller and stiller, and finally cease to move, but the head for which
+they looked did not rise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile Marsyas, native of Galilee and lover of her blue sea, arose
+between sleeping boats far out into the bay.  He caught a chain and
+clung while he drew breath and rested.  Not a vessel was manned; every
+seaman, officer and passenger had gone ashore to follow Flora.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently, he looked about and took his bearings.  There through a
+darkening lane of water, a hundred feet long, he made out the ornate
+aplustre of Agrippa's ship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He let himself down into the water again, and, swimming around to port,
+away from land, climbed by her anchor-chains and got upon deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The ship was wholly silent and deserted.  None was there to ask why he
+came so unconventionally aboard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went to the cabin prepared for the prince's reception, and with
+steward keys still fast to his belt let himself in and prepared to
+return to Alexandria.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap20"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XX
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE FEAST OF FLORA
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas had assumed pagan dress, bound a scarlet ribbon for a fillet
+about his head, and flung a scarlet cloak over his tunic, and so,
+identified with the revelers, he safely entered the city.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of the first he met on the brilliantly lighted wharves, he inquired, as
+a stranger, where he should find the night's celebration.  The citizens
+he addressed, intoxicated with revel, smote him with palm-leaves or
+thyrsi and haled him with them, as their fellow, seeking Flora.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They skirted the Regio Judæorum toward the northwest and swept him
+along toward the Serapeum.  Ever the streets opened up, more
+brilliantly lighted, more thickly crowded, more boisterously noisy;
+ever the nucleus of the crowd that had encompassed him increased and
+thickened and spread, until he was in the heart of a hurrying
+multitude.  Ever they shouted their indefinite anticipations, boasts of
+their favor with Flora, hopes that the run would be diverting, threats
+that were half-jocular, half in earnest.  And some of them, drunk with
+anarchy, made hysterical, inarticulate, yelping cries, like dogs on a
+heated trail.  And so, with their silent fellow among them, they went,
+started into an easy trot, and unhindered, like waters turning over a
+fall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The strange, half-mad revelry did not make for reassurance in Marsyas.
+His unexplained fears swept over him from time to time like a chill,
+and an unspeakable hatred for the unwieldy host about him, as well as
+the protest of his caution against the quick pace they had set, moved
+him to separate himself from them as soon as he might.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flora was to begin her flight from the Serapeum, but because the grove
+was most beautiful and the Temple most rich, the aristocrats of the
+city had repaired thither to separate themselves from <I>hoi polloi</I>, and
+had builded for themselves the City of Love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas knew that superior advantages were always for the rich man, and
+he, who had to be in the forefront of Flora's van, had to gather unto
+himself the most propitious opportunities.  So while the riot of
+plebeians into which he had been absorbed streamed contentedly on to
+its own lowly place, Marsyas worked his way out of the crowd and
+approached the City of Love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The glow of its lights, breaking through low-hanging branches and
+pillared avenues of tree-trunks, reached Marsyas with its music, its
+shouts and its tumult, but its inhabitants were shut away behind
+foliage, that their doings might be screened from the unqualified.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man looked here and there for a way to enter, but the
+cunningly extended grove reached from street to street and blocked his
+passage.  Drawing closer he saw that a cordon of soldiers from the city
+garrison had been thrown around the grove for protection during revels.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that moment, some one whispered in his ear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art in time, white brother.  Continue and fail not!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked to catch a glimpse of Vasti, the bayadere, at his side.  She
+was wrapped from head to heel in a murky red silk, like a
+fire-illumined tissue of smoke.  He exclaimed to himself that this was
+no old woman, nor yet one young.  There was too much lissome grace in
+the sinuous figure, and too much unearthly wisdom in the dark
+mysterious face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An instant and she had disappeared like a spirit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A little dazed he turned to follow his approved course, but stopped,
+seeing that many humbler folk who had preceded him were halted and
+driven away.  The benefits of the grove were distinctly for those who
+came with a following and in chariots.  The cars of the rich were
+constantly passing through the line of guards; the numbers were greatly
+increasing, and presently became congested.  The shouts of the
+impatient waiting ones, the pawing of the horses and the calls of the
+slaves running hither and thither, added uproar to the lines which
+closed in around him, until finally he could go neither forward nor
+backward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While he turned this way and that for an avenue of escape, he found
+that he stood beside a shell of a chariot, with Junia and Justin
+Classicus seated within.  Classicus was not given readily to seeing
+people afoot, and Marsyas stepped hastily out of view.  But the Roman
+woman had already discovered him.  He saw her speak to Classicus, and,
+while he waited in resentment to be pointed out, Classicus leaped
+lightly out of the car, and, forcing his way through a crush of slaves,
+got up beside another, whom Marsyas saw to be Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Junia leaned down to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come up; thou art safe," she said.  "I will not betray thee.  What was
+it, reason or repentance that freed thee?"  Her eyes sparkled and her
+breath came and went quickly between her parted lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An errand," he answered, "and the soldiers will not let me pass."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An errand?  Flora's errand?  Nay, but thou art an Essene.  Come up, I
+say.  The soldiers must pass thee if I bid them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With thanks on his lips he stepped in beside her and was presently
+driven without further interruption through the line of sentries, to
+the circle of abandoned chariots within.  There, alighting, the young
+man found himself deftly thrust into the crowd by Junia to avoid
+meeting the proconsul or Justin Classicus.  She lost herself with him,
+and entirely obscured from any he had ever seen before, they proceeded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have delivered thee an evil charge," she said, and there was a note
+of regret in her voice.  "Yesterday and the day before they would have
+been less objectionable, and seeing them hour by hour thou shouldst
+have become gradually accustomed to their aberration.  But suddenly
+exposed to this night's work, thy soul will be covered with confusion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas smiled awkwardly.  The woman could not understand that nothing
+short of the motive that had actuated him could have moved him to
+follow Flora; neither did he wish her to rest under the self-blame that
+she had urged him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not go of mine own will, nor even thine," he answered.  "I was
+summoned."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What! has Flora summoned thee?" she cried, gazing at him in unfeigned
+astonishment.  "Fie on her boldness!  Only the Floras of Rome do such a
+thing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A new evil in Rome?" he responded, smiling.  "O lady, I can not go
+thither unless thou promise me protection!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed and waved him a warning hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Behold how thou acceptest my counsel here in Alexandria!  What
+obedience need I expect in Rome?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without waiting for his answer, she turned him out of the open into the
+grove.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No extensive vista greeted him.  No lamps, only their lights were
+visible.  No green-and-gold walled aisle led far in a straight line.
+The woodland screening of leaf and branch prevailed everywhere.  The
+music, the shouts, the tumult seemed to be in another direction than
+the one toward which they were tending.  Marsyas went uncertainly; he
+had been bidden to be in the forefront of Flora's van, and ahead of him
+was falling silence.  The splendid creature at his side held her peace,
+and moved rapidly.  Gradually, the people thinned out, and when Junia
+turned him into another aisle they were alone.  She seemed to be
+conducting him away from the music and noise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Only for a moment, he hesitated at a loss, and then with an apologetic
+smile, he said to her:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We will go this way,"&mdash;and, turning at right angles, led back toward
+the tumult.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marsyas," she said, with more impatience than reproach, "and thou art
+an Essene!  How I reproach myself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he smiled uncomfortably, and kept on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The wail of instruments, wild and discordant, the blowing of horns, the
+pulsation of drums, seemed suddenly to unite as they approached.  Above
+the clamor and squeal of cymbals and pipes, voices were lifted, loud
+and strained as if striving to be heard above the uproar.  Some of them
+merely shouted, most of them were singing, not one but many songs;
+shrieks and laughter shrilled through it all, and once in a while the
+musical tone of a rich throat triumphant above the noise bespoke the
+presence of gift with frenzy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tumult was not now distant, and Marsyas did not wish Junia's
+further aid.  His search after Flora was not a thing to be published
+abroad.  He glanced at the lights, looked about for a less circuitous
+route, and, with a word to her, plunged through the brake toward the
+revel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before she had thought to protest, the forefront of a procession
+penetrated from the side of the aisle and, streaming across, broke
+through the green on the other side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The first were flamens, Greek, Roman and Egyptian, robed in the pallium
+and carrying the lituus&mdash;first, if the order of procession had been
+observed, but before them, and about them bounded a harlequinade of
+baboons, centaurs, goats, swine&mdash;loose, ill-fashioned disguises that
+only robbed their wearers of human form and did not achieve the animal
+semblance.  Among them were slighter figures of lizards, snails on
+active pretty limbs, toads, beetles&mdash;glittering, sinuous things that
+surpassed the heavier figures in agility and boldness.  After them came
+a great cornucopia of gold, banded with spiral garlands of roses,
+studded with jewels and drawn on low ivory wheels by snow-white
+mule-colts.  Out of the shell-tinted mouth of the great horn, and
+luxuriously bedded on a gauze of gold cast over the flowers and fruits,
+was the rosy figure of a little boy, with pearly wings bound to his
+shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus Eros proceeded to Flora.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Only thus far was any semblance of order distinguishable in the
+procession.  The wave of uproar suddenly assumed overwhelming
+proportions; the aisle was inundated with frenzy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas moved forward, Junia moving with him, and the tumult drawing
+its bulky length across the aisle swept in now by multitudes.  He was
+caught; Junia clung to him determinedly for a moment, but was torn
+away; he permitted himself to be swallowed up and pitched along by the
+flood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He attracted no consecutive attention.  Mænads flung themselves upon
+him because his cheeks were crimson and his figure notable, but other
+youths with glowing cheeks drew the mænads away, now and again.
+Satyrs, fauns and bacchantes saluted him, tumbled him, buffeted him:
+one snatched off his scarlet fillet and crowned him with a wreath of
+grape-leaves, while a second thrust a thyrsus into his hand.  Some
+clung about his shoulders and bawled into his ear; others reached him
+flagons of wine and did not notice that others snatched the drink away.
+These things were single events that stood up out of the daze of
+astonishment and shock that confounded him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The noise roared louder at every step: the thousands about him
+augmented.  The grove opened more; the lights became more scattering
+and presently he found that he had been swept through another circle of
+chariots and outpost of soldiery into the city again.  Hurriedly
+glancing at the buildings on each side of the street into which the
+procession poured, he saw a sufficient number of familiar marks to
+inform him that he had been borne out on the Rhacotis side of the city.
+Then the blood within him chilled.  This half-maddened, half-murderous
+multitude was upon the trail of Flora, and was driving toward the
+settlement of the Nazarenes!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An unshakable conviction possessed him, that Lydia stood between!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the army of rabble joined the procession of aristocrats.
+From every avenue fresh multitudes poured in and added to the
+thousands.  Except for the bounding mimes about them the flamens kept
+the front of the horde, following with downcast eyes the trail of
+yellow roses which, Marsyas now knew, led the procession.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the midst of the gigantic hurly-burly he saw with strained eyes and
+a laboring heart that the light-footed goddess had made a long,
+deviating flight: that over and over again she doubled on her tracks,
+but that the detours led with deadly sureness toward the Nazarenes.
+Impelled now by desperation, he began to work his way toward the front.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he had not reckoned on the immense length of the procession, nor
+how far he had been absorbed into the heart of it.  Only when he was
+rushed over a slight rise in the street did he know that ahead of him
+for a great distance was a sea of tossing heads and moving shoulders,
+and on either side a compact wave wholly filled the two hundred feet of
+street and washed up against the walls of the houses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The street opened up into an immense square, the last stadium which
+marked the limit of the Roman influence in the Egyptian settlement.
+Beyond that, on the water-front, were the streets of the Nazarenes!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Praying and struggling, Marsyas hardly noticed the increase of noise
+beginning at the front and extending back to him and passing until the
+wild clamor resolved itself into a stunning shout that shook Alexandria
+and rippled the face of the bay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Flora!  <I>Dea maxima</I>!  <I>Solis filia</I>!  Give us joy; give us joy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The trail of roses had been broken off.  Flora had been found.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But another roar went up, here and there from the great body there were
+cries of protest and disappointment: the voice of looters and brawlers
+that had been deprived of sacrificial blood.  There were hisses, shouts
+of derision and cries to the populace to press on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the flamens stopped; the great concourse halted by rank and rank
+until the slackening and final cessation of movement imprisoned the
+dissenters that were resolved to go on.  The main body continued its
+greetings to the goddess, above the cry of the dissatisfied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the far side of the open was a tiny squat temple, hardly more than a
+shrine, to Rannu, the Egyptian goddess of the harvests.  On the top of
+the cornice with the blush lights of the City of Love upon her, stood a
+girl.  Thus lifted into the night sky, her features could not be
+distinguished, and Marsyas believed that she was mummied, face and
+figure, in wrappings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He continued to press forward.  The small figure on the summit of the
+Temple stirred, turned half about and slowly raised her arms with a
+motion that seemed half-command, half-salute to the great expectant
+crowd below.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then wing-like mists, taking into themselves the sunset flush of the
+fires of the City of Love, rose up and fluttered about her.  Long,
+flaming, melon-colored tongues licked in and out of the illusion:
+distended convolutions of tissue tinged with rose floated and drifted
+above her, beside her, before her; shivering streamers of silver
+reached up and failed and dissolved; jagged streaks and reduplications
+of fiery jets stood out and up and all about her.  When the clouds of
+pearly vapor lifted and eddied about her head, girdled her with circles
+or framed her with rosy wheels, the center of all this motion was
+distinguishable only as a snow-white spindle that whirled with dizzy
+rapidity.  And presently it was noted that the shape was losing the
+mummy form, that more and more the outlines of a beautiful body were
+blossoming out of the impearled mists: that petaline wings opened out,
+fold on fold, as a rose-bud would blow, and each successive disclosure
+gave the entranced vision a clearer image of the dancer at the heart.
+Ever the motion seemed slow and stately as do all great and graceful
+things maintaining splendid speed; ever the crimson light from the City
+of Love lent its illimitable range of shade to the motion of the mists.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Below the great multitude, with its face lifted to the midnight sky,
+passed from uproar into silence and from silence into thunders of
+applause.  The immense voice was the voice of admiration, for the
+cooling hand of wonder pressed back the crowd's passion for a let to
+its reason.  They forgot their disappointment, their bloodthirst, their
+hate of the Nazarenes, and stood to marvel that the goddess burned but
+was not consumed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Marsyas, patiently working his way forward, pressed by a tall black
+man who was saying over and over to himself in Hindu:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the bayadere dance, for the glory of Brahma!  A sacrilege!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rest of Flora's program meanwhile was proceeding.  Slowly and
+mightily, magnificent young athletes, for only such could drive their
+way through so solid a pack of humanity, were working toward the
+portico of the Temple.  These were candidates for Flora's favor.  Among
+them were black-eyed Roman youths with laurel around their heads;
+golden-haired Greeks, crowned with stephanes; lithe, bronze Egyptians
+with ribboned locks at the temple which were the badge of princehood.
+And after them came one, crowned with grape-leaves, with a thyrsus in
+his hand, but he had shining black curls, the silken beard and the
+crimson cheeks of a Jew.  The eyes of this one glittered, not from
+excitement of fancy, but from desperate resolution and astounded
+recognition.  The pagans were far in advance of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now the crowd understood where they were bound and shouted to them; now
+the youths forced themselves past the cornucopia, the mimes, the
+flamens, and ran into the open space before the Temple.  In poses
+characteristic of their captivation and intent, they looked up at the
+dancing fires and cried aloud to the goddess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the morning-tinted mists whirled in a circular plane about
+the girl; suddenly they began to tremble and rise,&mdash;up, up until the
+ripple and shiver of the shaken silk took on the action and appearance
+of an illuminated cataract.  Through it, the beautiful outlines of the
+dancer were distinguished, veiled as a Nereid beneath waters, leaping,
+running.  Thousands below instinctively raised their arms to catch the
+figure which inevitably must leap through the inspirited cataract and
+over the parapet of the Temple unless the rosy element pent her within
+its bosom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The flight gradually changed from a simple step into the entanglement
+and intricacy of a dance.  No gossamer adrift on the wind was more a
+creature of the air, no tranced ephemera more the genius of motion.
+The roar of the multitude failed in a vast suspiration of surprise and
+bewildered delight.  Flora had invented, not a new wantonness, but a
+new grace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the young men shouted: each sprang to a column which upheld the
+portico upon which Flora danced, and began to climb, helping themselves
+by the incrusted garlands of stone which ran up the pillars from base
+to capital.  It was a contest in climbing, and the best of the
+contestants was not long in proving himself.  He was one of the
+golden-haired Greeks and the multitude, for ever partizan to the
+strongest man, roared and thundered its encouragement to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went up with an ease and swiftness almost superhuman; now, he drew
+himself across the outstanding corner of the architrave, and stood with
+delicate foothold on its molding while he reached up past the frieze
+and caught the cornice with his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dancer caught the flash of light on his golden stephane and wavered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Habet</I>!  <I>Habet</I>!" roared the multitude.  "Evoe, Ionides!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Ionides, lazily lifting himself to the top of the portico, lingered
+a moment on one hand and knee to contemplate his prize.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cataract sank; the flying feet halted, the glory of fire and motion
+was lost in lengths of silk which the dancer began hastily to wind
+about her head and body.  Sufficiently covered to hide her face, she
+paused and looked to see his further move.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Greek, with shining eyes and smiling lips, began slowly to raise
+himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the one with the black curls and silken beard tore himself from
+the foremost of the crowd and rushed toward the portico.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dancer saw him come.  She moved toward the edge of the cornice.
+The Greek leaped: the other below flung up his arms, but the roar of
+the multitude swept away the cry that came from his lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dancer, eluding the triumphant Greek, rushed over the brink of the
+portico and dropped like a plummet entangled in gossamer into the
+upreached arms of Marsyas below.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both fell like stones.  But Marsyas sprang up with his prize in his
+arms, and fled up the steps through the black porch and the stone
+valves into the Temple of Rannu.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3b">
+[Illustration: Marsyas sprang up with his prize in his arms (missing from book)]
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Outside, the multitude, having seen Flora flout her rightful possessor,
+fell for a moment silent.  Then, a part having but one desire to choose
+for itself, fell to its own choosing; but the rest, already cheated of
+blood and spoil, howled their disapproval, fought their way through
+disinterested masses in order to reach the refuge of the capricious
+Flora, met resistance and precipitated warfare, and in an incredibly
+short time, bedlam reigned in the square before the Temple of Rannu.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The public celebration of the Feast of Flora was at an end.  Meanwhile
+there was a trail of yellow roses, beginning abruptly in the Nazarene
+community and leading around every household and out and on toward the
+west.  The roses lay untouched and wilting through the night and were
+shoveled up and carted away by the street-cleaners the next morning.
+And on the summit of the Gate of the Necropolis, a painted beauty sat
+in jewels and flowers and little raiment, and wondered why she was not
+sought and found and why her followers stayed and roared before the
+Temple of Rannu.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap21"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXI
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE FINING FIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+As Marsyas leaped into the Temple of Rannu, a figure started up beside
+him.  He sprang away from it in alarm, but a word in Hindu reassured
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is I, Vasti."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the bayadere following he raced through the cloyed musk of the
+temple toward the square of lesser darkness at the rear, which showed
+the exit into the court.  He flung himself across the pavement of the
+inner inclosure and down its aisle of sphinxes, through the gate in the
+rear wall and out into a black passage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Behind, the roar of the contending host of Flora followed him.  Though,
+for a second time this day he had run with peril on his track, the
+threatened identification of the precious burden he bore was more
+terrifying than death had been at sunset.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a long alley, the single outlet for a jam of humble houses
+surrounding the temple, and it opened into a street deep in the
+Egyptian quarter.  Though Marsyas ran splendidly, he carried no little
+burden, and the way was black, unpaved and treacherous.  He had begun
+to fear that he could not reach the end before pursuers, so minded,
+could hem him in, when almost as if the thought had invited the
+actuality, he saw a figure appear at the mouth of the alley.  With a
+furious but repressed exclamation, the unknown plunged at the Essene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Determined to defend Lydia's identity as long as he might, Marsyas
+swung her behind him, and with a whisper to Vasti to hide Lydia, made
+ready to fight fast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the dim illumination of the city behind him, Marsyas was better
+able to see his antagonist.  As the solid body projected itself at him,
+like a springing beast, he met it with a raised left arm and a ready
+right hand.  Instantly the two closed and for a brief, fierce moment,
+fought savagely.  But Marsyas discovered that he was far more agile,
+taller and apparently younger than his assailant, and for a space he
+had only to fight away the knife that glinted and darted hungrily at
+his throat.  Then, seizing upon his antagonist's first imperfect guard,
+he delivered a stunning blow over the heart.  The heavy body staggered,
+quivered and collapsed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Expecting to find the passage before him filling with ruffians, Marsyas
+was astonished to see the way clear and vacant.  Without waiting to
+catch breath Marsyas sprang back in the alley, and, whispering the
+bayadere's name, found Lydia and the serving-woman only a pace from the
+spot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Catching Lydia up again, in spite of her protests, he was about to
+spring over the prostrate body that all but blocked the passage, when
+his eye fell upon the upturned face.  The dim light of the city fell on
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Flaccus!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a single moment of surprise and bewilderment, Marsyas stood still.
+Then very surely it penetrated through his brain that the proconsul had
+recognized him at the moment of Flora's drop into his arms, and had
+come to capture him&mdash;or to identify the Dancing Flora!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He knew that he had not struck a fatal blow and the proconsul's knife
+lay near.  He picked it up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was bloody.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Startled and aghast, he flung the weapon away, and, leaping over the
+unconscious Roman, fled out of the alley.  A torch of pitch, burnt down
+to a charred knot, with a feeble flame playing over it, was set upon a
+staff hardly ten paces from the mouth of the passage.  It was a dark
+street, and deserted.  The roar of the populace still centered about
+the square of the Temple of Rannu.  Marsyas turned toward the torch,
+and, as he ran, he saw under its sickly light the figure of a man
+stretched on the earth.  At another step, he tripped over a second
+fallen body.  It moved and groaned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas put Lydia down.  Carrying her through a street cumbered with
+prostrate men might mean bodily injury for both of them.  With a
+reassuring word, he led her between the head of the obscured man and
+the feet of the one under the torch, and stumbled at his second step on
+a contorted shape.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas stopped, to ask himself if the deadly hand that had brought
+these men low might not await him and his dear charge farther on.
+Vasti leaned over the one under the torch.  Then she sprang up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come!  Look!" she whispered in excitement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas hurried to the man, and met at that instant the last conscious
+light in the eyes of Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young Essene dropped to his knees without a word, thrust his hand
+into the embroidered tunic and felt for the prince's heart.  It beat
+but slowly.  Vasti, meanwhile, snatched the torch from the staff and
+beat the charred pitch knot on the ground till the still inflammable
+heart broke open and ignited afresh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By its light Marsyas examined Agrippa.  Between the prince's shoulders,
+his hand touched chilling blood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ambushed!" he said grimly.  "Stabbed in the back!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas looked at the prince's right hand.  It was still clenched, and
+the flesh on the knuckles was abraded, the second joints swelling fast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Vasti, with suspicion in her olive eyes, carried the torch over to the
+contorted shape.  Then she made a sign to Marsyas.  He looked.  It was
+an Egyptian wearing the livery of Flaccus.  The prince's Arabic dagger
+was neatly buried to the hilt in the servitor's breast.  Vasti examined
+the second prostrate form.  By her torch Marsyas saw that it was
+Eutychus, conscious but benumbed.  His left ear, cheek and eye were
+swollen and black.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems," said Marsyas, stanching Agrippa's wound, "that the prince
+disabled his own support!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Vasti, by deft twitches of ear and hair and threats in Hindu,
+significant in tone if not in speech to the charioteer, finally got
+Eutychus upon his feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take up the prince," she said to Marsyas.  "The slave may follow or
+lie as he chooses.  I shall attend my mistress."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas lifted the Herod and, following Vasti, hurried on again into
+the darkness.  The bayadere made toward the sea-front, not many yards
+distant, sped across the wharf and over the edge apparently into the
+water.  Marsyas, by this time ready to follow the brown woman into any
+extreme, plunged after her.  He landed abruptly in the bottom of a
+punt.  Lydia followed, and Eutychus, with an alacrity not expected of
+one who groaned so helplessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Vasti severed the rope that tied up the boat, and, with a strong thrust
+of her hands against the piling, pushed the boat away from the wharf.
+But she did not take up the oars.  She left them to Marsyas, trained on
+the blue waters of Galilee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a moment he had pulled out into the black expanse of the bay, and,
+with the prince's ship in mind, rowed among the sleeping shipping.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How came the prince in this plight?" Marsyas demanded of Eutychus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The charioteer, with his head in his hands, groaned and murmured
+unintelligibly.  Lydia dipped an end of the wonderful silk that
+enveloped her into the water and pressed the wet corner to the
+charioteer's temples.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas frowned blackly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, but thou canst answer, Eutychus," he said shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After further murmurings, the charioteer brought out between groans an
+avowal that he was completely mystified.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How came Agrippa in the street?" Marsyas insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He was with Justin Classicus; I attended him.  When Flora danced and
+chose her lover, and the two fled into the Temple of Rannu, the
+Alexandrian cried to my lord that there was another passage into the
+Temple, by which they could go in, or the Flora and her lover come out.
+And he proposed for a prank that he and the prince go thither and
+discover Flora and her lover.  We were on the roof of a bath and could
+get down at once, so we ran through private passages, my lord and I,
+outstripping Classicus, whom the crowd swallowed.  And when we got into
+this dark street, two fell upon us without warning and killed us both!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it was Agrippa who struck that blow," Marsyas declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man murmured again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some one struck me," he said finally; "mayhap the prince, not knowing
+friend from foe in the street."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of a surety, this stiff old Roman took chances," Marsyas averred after
+thought, "with but one apparitor to aid him against Agrippa,
+palestræ-trained and this young charioteer!  Art sure thou didst not
+play the craven, Eutychus?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or should I be blamed," Eutychus groaned, "when it was three against
+me, with the prince striking at his single defender?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas fell silent.  It was not like Agrippa to be confused under any
+circumstances.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pulled up beside Agrippa's vessel, roused the watchman and had the
+prince and Eutychus taken aboard; but Vasti and Lydia he left in the
+borrowed punt, out of sight of the crew that had returned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He followed the injured men on deck and hurriedly dressed Agrippa's
+wound, restored him to consciousness and left him in the charge of the
+captain of the vessel.  He ordered one of the skilled seamen to attend
+Eutychus and hurried back to the women in the boat under the black
+shadow of the ship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pulled straight for the sea, rounded Eunostos point and skirting the
+tiny archipelagoes in the broad light of the Pharos, brought up at a
+small indented coast between two sandy peninsulas.  Here the residence
+portion of Alexandria came down to the ocean.  The locality was dark
+and wrapped in sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he lifted Lydia from the boat, Marsyas turned to Vasti.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why didst thou not prevent her in this thing?" he asked in Hindu.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The white brother forgets that I am a handmaiden," she replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But what if I had not come?" he persisted, growing more troubled by
+his perplexities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had prepared a path for escape; I was armed, and watching!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did&mdash;did she expect me?" he asked after silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she had done this thing for him.  Oh, for the safe refuge of the
+alabarch's musky halls that he might harken to the sweet distress in
+his soul and tell her of it!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without further event, they reached the alabarch's house and the
+bayadere, producing keys, let her charges into the servant's entry
+beneath the porch.  Lydia instantly disappeared, but Vasti in obedience
+to a word from Marsyas conducted him through the well-beloved chambers
+to the corridor lined by the sleeping-rooms of the servants.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before one, she stopped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Herein is the prince's other servant," she said, and quickly
+disappeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas opened the door and entering aroused Silas.  With a bare
+explanation that the prince would sail the instant the courier got
+aboard, he urged the grumbling old man into activity, and went back to
+the alabarch's presiding-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had a moment of waiting&mdash;at last a moment to think!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He realized that an extreme of some nature had been reached; all his
+purposes had been brought up to a climax.  There was no lingering in
+Alexandria possible for Agrippa, wounded or well, for Marsyas knew that
+Flaccus had the Herod's undoing in mind.  If Lydia were a Nazarene,
+Marsyas had now, of a surety, though all Heaven and earth intervened,
+to bring Saul of Tarsus to death before the Pharisee's dread hand fell
+upon Lydia for apostasy!  For that purpose, he must go to Rome&mdash;and
+leave Alexandria&mdash;to return?  For his love's sake?  He, an Essene?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silas came, bowed, and was dismissed to wait in the street for the
+moment.  And still Marsyas stood.  The house was silent and dark.  The
+slumber that overtakes those relieved from a three days' strain
+enwrapped all under the alabarch's roof.  Presently he thought of
+Cypros, in his search for an excuse for lingering.  A lamp on the
+alabarch's table was ready to be lighted, and, finding the materials
+for fire-making in the drawer, he lighted it.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Sweet lady," he wrote on a parchment at hand, "the winds favorable to
+thy lord's departure blow, and he will not awaken thee to the pain of a
+farewell.  Be comforted, be brave, be hopeful; for when he returneth,
+he bringeth thee a crown.  I remember my pledge to thee.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"Be thou blessed.<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"MARSYAS."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+It was the first letter he had ever written to a woman; he did not
+dream that he had written so tenderly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rolled the parchment and addressed it to the princess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was nothing more to be done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Was he not to see Lydia again?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Filled with rebellion and fear, he hurried toward the hall; in the
+semi-dark, cast by the lamp within the larger room, he saw a small
+figure slip quickly behind a hanging.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had been waiting to have a stolen look upon him as he went!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He caught her in his arms and drew her out into the light.  Under its
+revealing ray, he saw her lovely face smitten down with shame, but he
+lifted it, to kiss her eyes, her temples and her lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia!  Lydia!  I fear to leave thee!" he whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She let her eyes light upon him, to catch his meaning, and when she saw
+terror for her apostasy and amazement for the thing she had done for
+the Nazarenes, a sudden misery leaped into her face.  She tried to put
+him back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia, Lydia!" he begged, feeling the repulse, "dost thou not love me,
+then?"  His tone urged, his eyes pleaded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment, she was silent; then she said, with infinite pain:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marsyas, I broke off the trail of roses through Rhacotis, and held
+back the multitude from the Nazarenes.  But thou art an Essene, and a
+Jew; wherefore, in thy sight I can not be justified.  Forget not these
+things for my sake!  Go, ere thy teaching hath cause to reproach thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no!" he agonized.  "Do not say that to me!  Say rather that thou
+wilt turn away from this heresy and be led no more by it into
+transgression!  Better thy sweet life and thy sweet fame than all the
+truth in the world!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The word he used caught her.  She waited and seemed not to breathe.  He
+swept on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Art thou, beyond saving, a Nazarene?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her face fell, and her soft red lips were parted with a heavy sigh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From this night henceforward, Marsyas!  I have purchased the blessing
+dearly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took the hands about her and undid them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go!" she whispered.  "Farewell, and the one God, that loves us all,
+shield thee from harm all the days of thy life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A moment and she was gone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a while he turned and walked with stumbling feet into the new
+dawn on Alexandria.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap22"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+"IN THE CLOAK OF TWO COLORS"
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas turned on the gilded couch, threw off the light covering and
+sat up.  A Syrian slave thrust aside the heavy drapery over the
+cancelli, which had been drawn in the atrium while the young man slept.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the brilliant light of the Roman mid-afternoon, Marsyas looked
+sleepily at the slave that bowed beside him, and the courier that stood
+near by.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A message for thee," the slave said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas put out his hand and the courier laid in it a package wrapped
+in silk.  Marsyas broke the seal and read the contents.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"O MARSYAS:
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Gossip hath it now that thou art no longer confused when a woman
+addresses thee: wherefore I write with less trepidation and more
+confidence.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"I am in Rome these seven days, under my father's roof, for a little
+space before we are commanded to join Cæsar in Capri.  In this time I
+have not seen thee nor thy lord.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"If not myself, then perchance the news I bring from Alexandria may
+urge thee to accept the invitation I extend.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"There exists no greater claim than thine upon my hospitality.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Come thou, and make me welcome in mine own city.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"JUNIA."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas sprang up, the last of the languor gone from his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou shalt conduct me," he said to the messenger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He disappeared in the direction of his cubiculum.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a time longer than he had consumed in his old Essenic days to
+prepare himself for the streets he came again into Agrippa's atrium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was hard to recognize in him the picturesque Jewish ascetic that had
+bent over the scroll in the great college of Jerusalem.  He had
+permitted the blade to come at his hair and beard; the kerchief had
+been replaced by the fillet; the cloak and gown by the scarlet tunic
+and mantle, the daylight had been let in on his fine limbs, and there
+was the fugitive glitter of jewels on his fingers and arms.  He had
+assumed perfumes and polishes, had laid aside all his oriental habit
+and had become not only a Roman but an exquisite.  The change was not
+all in his dress; the indefinable something that marks the man of
+experience was upon him and the ascetic blankness was gone from his
+brow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He signed to the messenger to follow, and passing out of the house and
+down the long banks of marble steps which led up to Agrippa's
+magnificent eyrie on the brink of the Quirinal, entered a lectica that
+awaited him in the streets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Years are not time enough to weary one of Rome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas had come into the capital with a spirit benumbed by a great
+shock, so that the first day he walked the imperial streets he was less
+conscious of their wonders than he was at this hour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was borne through narrow lanes that were like clefts between heights
+of marble, under arches, chronicling the solemn consummation of
+triumph, along crowding pillars that arose out of the ravines between
+the seven hills, and, catching the sunlight on their white capitals,
+cast it down in the gloom of the depressions.  Glories clambered up the
+bosom of the Esquiline; templed sanctity crowned the Aventine, and
+might in marble and gold sat on the Palatine.  Between were splendor
+and squalor, confused, for only beauty stood up above the miseries and
+defilement that made Rome hateful in its unsunned ways.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The feebleness of unwieldy and disunited multitudes cumbered the
+Carinæ, along which he passed.  Starvation and the excess of plenty,
+power and abject subjection, unspeakable depravity and innocence met
+and passed.  The slaves preceding the young man's litter made way for
+it with staff and pilum, or again it made way for slaves bearing fasces
+and maces.  He did not proceed unnoticed.  Albucilla, widow of Satrius
+Secundus, in a litter with Cneius Domitius, turned from the languid
+senator at her side to cast a bewitching smile at the young Essene;
+Ennia, wife of Macro, the prætorian prefect, leaned from her litter to
+cry him an invitation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To Tusculum!  Come with us!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Many thanks: yet I would the invitation came to-morrow!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It shall," she said in answer and was borne on.  Running slaves pushed
+by him to overtake her chair, and Marsyas knew without looking that the
+lectica they bore contained Caligula, Cæsar's grand-nephew.  Agrippina,
+a young matron in a chair, with a month-old babe in her arms, cast a
+sidelong glance out of her black eyes at the young man as he
+approached.  Stupid old Claudius, clad in a purple-edged toga and
+stumbling as he walked, acknowledged the precedence Marsyas gave him
+with a smile and a greeting.  As the young Jew was borne on he did not
+realize that he had made room for three coming Cæsars in the Carinæ.
+After them streamed a great number of patricians in chairs, all
+proceeding to the races at Tusculum, but Marsyas' bearers turned off
+the Carinæ and began to mount the Esquiline.  In a few minutes he was
+set down before a small, newly-erected house as classic as a Greek
+temple, as compact as a fortification.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The messenger bowed him into the hands of the atriensis, who led him
+into the vestibule and left him for a moment.  Presently, a
+soft-footed, scantily-clad boy bowed gracefully beside him and begged
+him to follow.  He was led into Junia's atrium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Roman woman, who had been lounging in a chair at the cancelli,
+turned languidly, and sprang up in feigned surprise.  But honest
+feeling came into her face as she looked at the changed man that stood
+before her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Welcome!" she cried, hastening to meet him.  "Would thou wast a god!
+Perchance there would be despatch about answering prayers!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give the gods as welcome a supplication, and the answer would come
+riding upon Jupiter's thunderbolts!" he responded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed and shook her finger at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How hopeless a ruin thou art!  A Jew speaking of the gods!"  He led
+her to a chair, and, drawing one up beside her, sat.  With bright eyes
+and a little changing smile she inspected him for a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is true!" she cried at last.  "And I do not like to see it!  Thou
+art indeed changed; no longer the sincere Jew that I met in Alexandria."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Jew, lady, nevertheless," he answered.  "But tell me of thyself, and
+after that of them that remain in Alexandria."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No: thou canst not avert the preachment I have ready for thee.  All
+thy misdeeds are known to me.  When I forewarned thee of the various
+attributes of Rome, I did not add that Rome talks!  I have heard how
+thou hast put chaplets on thy head, reclined at feasts and upset half a
+score of merry running courtships in the capital.  I see thee, how thou
+hast put off thy sober habit and got into raiment that makes thee
+thrice and four times more deadly to the hearts of women.  And thou an
+Essene!  Prayerfully hoping to return into the peace and inertia of the
+salty desert of En-Gadi&mdash;some time!  Overshadowing the Herod till in
+very despair he hath taken to racing and left the triclinia and the
+atria to thee!  Fie and for shame, Marsyas!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man smiled a little bitterly.  Cypros' charge had not been
+difficult, since his Essenism had been the obstacle which lay between
+him and that love he would have, though it cost him his soul!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Rome enlarges," he protested.  "Agrippa chaseth the elusive bubble
+of Fortune: and I&mdash;having a purpose to be achieved in his success&mdash;I
+speed him&mdash;in mine own way.  But enough of ourselves.  Tell me of
+Alexandria!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But wait!  I have not done.  The charm of beauty hath lost its potency
+here in Rome, where it is the business of every one to be beautiful.
+The charm of riches is debased because of its great prevalence, since
+every one hath his honor to sell, and honor commands the highest price.
+The charm of rank is dissolved, for there is no rank with a centurion's
+son bearing the ægis, and freedmen dispensing hospitality in the
+mansions of the ancient Quirites!  Wherefore there is only one rare,
+unpurchasable charm&mdash;newness&mdash;and Roman society speedily dulls the
+luster of that, if one stoops to flourishing socially.  Beware, my
+Marsyas!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He remembered that she had always been concerned for his uprightness,
+in a strangely unspiritual way.  He had heard of upright atheists;
+somehow she seemed to belong in that category with her moral, but
+irreligious chidings.  Now, she was bearing him welcome testimony that
+he had changed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be neither frequent nor democratic.  Saith Agricola, the pleb,
+'Brutus, the senator, is nobody; he speaks to me!'  By Castor!  I had
+rather endure the contempt of the great than the approval of the small.
+Wherefore, save thyself, as a rare wine, fit for only imperial feasts.
+And lest thou be lonely meantime, let me amuse thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How can I expect it, when thou wilt not tell me now what I wish?" he
+complained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But this is trial of thy gallantry: I have as great a curiosity as
+thine.  So thou wilt wait for me.  Thou hast been in Rome four months.
+Tell me what happened in that time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas slipped down in his chair and clasped his hands back of his
+head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None leads a droning life who associates with Agrippa," he said.  "I
+have not seen a restful hour since I met him in Judea.  Nay, then; hear
+me.  He landed at Capri, on the invitation of the emperor, and repaired
+to the palace where, with the same grace that hath made me and others
+his slaves, he won back in a single audience all the favor that he had
+forfeited in twenty years.  He came away radiant and under promise to
+return the following night, and dine with the emperor.  But the next
+morning, who should drop anchor in the bay but Herrenius Capito, livid
+with wrath because he had been outwitted at every turn by Agrippa.  One
+would think it were he whom Agrippa owed, so indecent his fervor in
+reporting him.  What followed but that the same imperial hand which had
+been stretched in welcome to the prince one day, was, the next,
+extended in banishment over him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What misfortune!" Junia exclaimed, half in sympathy, half in irony.
+"Ate, herself, must be the patron genius of the Herod."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hot upon Herrenius' heels came Vitellius' contubernalis, with a
+warrant for me, but we, meanwhile, had taken ship and sailed for Ostia.
+And hear me, when I say, that some rabid foe had dropped the
+information of our whereabouts, in Judea!  I repaired to Rome, borrowed
+three hundred thousand drachmæ of Antonia, the <I>univira</I>, and
+despatched messengers to Cæsar and Herrenius Capito telling that the
+debt so long overlooked had been paid, before my pursuer reached Rome.
+So we laid the ghost of our debts.  But feeling unhappy owing no man, I
+immediately borrowed a million drachmæ of Thallus, Cæsar's freedman,
+repaid Antonia, and established ourselves magnificently on the
+Quirinal.  Hence, being in debt and in favor again, we have nothing to
+trouble us but the serious pursuit of our respective ambitions.  But&mdash;!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stopped abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O prescient contingent!" she said softly.  "Does the Herod dally with
+his opportunities?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Worse: he affronts them!  Worse: those opportunities are not alone for
+him!  Part of them are mine!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her lips shaped an exclamation, but he went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen; it is a proper sending on thee, for insisting on plunging me
+into narrative.  An oriental story-teller and a circle make no end.
+Even as thou saidst to me in Alexandria so many weeks ago, Rome looketh
+two ways for a new Emperor.  Here is the little Tiberius, Drusus' son,
+and there is Caligula, Cæsar's grandnephew.  Now Cæsar seeth in the
+little Tiberius a successor.  Fatuous dotage!  The prætorians are
+stubbornly attached to Caligula, because forsooth he wore miniature
+boots like theirs when he tumbled about in the peplus of an infant.
+The reason is good enough to be a woman's!  Be it as it may, that lean,
+sallow, gluttonous Caligula is brow-marked for the crown!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Hercle</I>! but thou art as good an image-maker with words as Phidias
+was with a stone!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Patience!  On a certain day, Agrippa and I went without the Porta
+Esquilina to get into our chariots and drive to Tusculum.  Many were
+going, as many go every day.  We had mounted our car, with
+Eutychus&mdash;would he were at the bottom of the Tiber!&mdash;as charioteer,
+when young Tiberius came and mounted his, and Caligula came and mounted
+his.  After them directly followed a cohort of prætorians.  Their
+bright armor, their noise, their steady undeviating advance, frightened
+little Tiberius' horses, which backed into Caligula's chariot and
+frightened his pair.  The four bolted at once; the chariots upset and
+both princes were spilled on the ground directly in front of the
+advancing cohort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The tribune hastily brought up the column and Tiberius and Caligula
+were helped to their feet.  The lad withdrew to the roadside, but
+Caligula turned upon the soldiers and flung camp-jokes at them, so
+broad, so bold, so rough, that, at first chuckling, then roaring, the
+whole cohort burst into a great shout in honor of their favorite.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Meanwhile, Eutychus had permitted his horses by bad management to
+become unruly.  Agrippa seized the lines away from him and lashed him
+across the shoulders once or twice, to the great rage of the
+charioteer.  I had in the meanwhile to alight and quiet the animals.
+Agrippa then drove toward Tiberius to offer him the hospitality of his
+chariot, while the slaves were pursuing the runaways.  The boy saw him
+coming, understood the prince's intent and handed his cloak to a slave
+preparatory to mounting Agrippa's car, when the cohort began to cheer
+Caligula.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did Agrippa, then, but wheel his horses, drive over to the
+soldiers' favorite and take him into the car!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!  Did that thing openly?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Deliberately!  The boy paled, flushed, and whirling about, stalked
+back inside of the walls, before I could invent an excuse to cover
+Agrippa's slight.  And after him rushed a crowd of senators and
+ædiles&mdash;his umbræ&mdash;to feed his hate of the Herod!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did Agrippa, then?" Junia asked after a dismayed silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He was long gone up the road to Tusculum with Caligula by that time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not hard to guess how he lost Fortune before," Junia declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He plays at legerdemain with Cæsar's favor," Marsyas said, annoyed at
+his own narrative.  "Tiberius, most solemnly commended the boy Tiberius
+to Agrippa's care and companionship.  Cæsar will hear of this!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Inevitably!  Tale-bearing is a fine art in Rome and Tiberius is its
+patron.  And thus he conducts himself in the face of Cypros' peril, who
+gave herself in hostage for him that he might succeed!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cypros' peril!" Marsyas repeated, with startled eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of Flaccus!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' astonishment was not pleasant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why of Flaccus?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!  Hath Agrippa kept his counsel, thus long?  Dost thou not know
+that Flaccus hath an eye to the timid Cypros and Agrippa, discovering
+it, all but killed Flaccus in a passage back of the temple, on the
+night of the Dance of Flora?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas looked at her steadily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How much dost thou know of this thing?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can I know too much of it?" she asked plaintively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" he answered penitently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I know all of it, cause, process and result," she declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell it me, then!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, then; Flaccus was in love with Cypros in Rome, when she was sent
+here twenty years ago to marry Agrippa.  So much he loved her, that
+twenty years after, when next he met her, his old passion was
+revived&mdash;stronger, less submissive and more dangerous than that of his
+youth.  Whether or not he spoke of it to Agrippa, or simply betrayed
+himself, the night of the Feast, is not patent; nevertheless the
+proconsul was discovered half-killed, in an alley back of the Temple of
+Rannu, and the Herod had sailed suddenly and without farewell to
+Cypros, in the night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How didst thou learn of this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O simple youth!  Is it then so common in Judea for powers to be
+discovered with their hearts stunned, that no comment is made upon it?
+Or perchance thou givest Flaccus credit for suffering in silence?  That
+is better.  Know, however, that he was discovered by the constabulary,
+and straightway such an outcry was never heard in Alexandria.  But the
+proconsul aroused and cut it off in full voice.  And there he made an
+error.  He was made to be a straightforward man; he is too cumbrous to
+be a knave.  So speculation ran abroad in whispers, till the true cause
+was unearthed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Cypros?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cypros?  Now canst thou, knowing Cypros, ask of her expecting any
+change?  Beautiful statues do not change.  What they express when they
+are finished they express until they are broken.  When she came from
+under the sculptor's chisel, she was made to love her husband, and her
+babes, to believe whatever is told her, be beautiful, simple and good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So much the more Flaccus must have distressed her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She does not suspect him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Amazement, at times, gentle sir, is reproach; wherefore since I am the
+author of this device, thou wilt be less astounded and, so, more
+complimentary.  I knew that Cypros, being sweet, simple and guileless,
+would do no more than treat the proconsul with bitter disdain
+thereafter, and precipitate a climax, which in my opinion would entail
+twenty diverse calamities.  I know Flaccus, I have sent the plummet to
+the bottom of his oceanic nature.  I also know that the Lady Herod is
+an anomaly in her family, clean, faithful and loving.  So with Agrippa
+out of reach, the proconsul may conspire all he pleases to alienate the
+princess from her Arab, in vain.  Wherefore I permitted the good
+alabarch in all innocence to go in his magisterial robes to the
+proconsul's mansion and express his indignation, concern and anxious
+hopes, and to say that Agrippa had taken advantage of favorable winds
+to depart for Rome.  I can see the smoldering eyes of the proconsul
+study the white old face of that perfect diplomat and discover no guile
+thereon.  So apparent the alabarch's sincerity, that after due lapse of
+time in which the proconsul plucked up courage and front, Flaccus
+resumed his visits to the alabarch's house.  And for all outward signs,
+it was another and not Agrippa that dinted the Roman's chest!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas leaned his elbows on his knees and a line appeared between his
+level brows, marking the growing change from the thought of youth to
+the thought of man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lady," he said gravely, after a pause, "it was Flaccus and not Agrippa
+that did the bloodthirsty deeds back of the Temple of Rannu; and it was
+I&mdash;and not Agrippa, that dinted the Roman's chest!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" she ejaculated, springing up to lay hand on his arm.  "Thou!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Flaccus led Agrippa into a trap and stabbed him in the back," he went
+on, "and I struck the blow that laid Flaccus low.  And Agrippa was
+taken aboard his ship that night, with a knife wound between his
+shoulders, wholly ignorant of the identity of his assailant&mdash;until I
+told him&mdash;three days out at sea!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a long silence, she said softly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And that was thine errand&mdash;for Flora!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without a tremor he inclined his head in assent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, then," she began again, after another pause, "what more dost thou
+know?  How much of this tale thou heardest so deceitfully is incorrect
+history?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Enough of Flaccus," he parried, smiling.  "Tell me of&mdash;Classicus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Junia leaned back in her chair and laughed a little at his evasion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Classicus?  Classicus is a knave, one lacking invention, but not
+executive ability&mdash;wanting cunning, not courage.  Now he leads us to
+believe that he examines a new religion&mdash;that same heresy for which he
+plunged thee into the Rhacotis peril.  Some one put him up to it&mdash;mark
+me.  Thus, he hopes to recant his fault against thee, for which the
+little Lysimachus was most unbending to him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Lydia?" he asked in a low tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her softened eyes, steadily contemplating the yellow light on the
+leaves of a huge plantain growing near her, narrowed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia?" she repeated thoughtfully.  "Oh, Lydia dances and studies and
+makes ready for her marriage with Classicus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of those utter silences fell, which mark the announcement of
+critical news.  After it, Marsyas arose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have profited by my visit," he said, in that soft and silken voice
+which she had never heard before and did not understand.  "I thank thee
+for thy counsel&mdash;and thy news."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He extended her his hand, and she looked at him, feeling that it was
+not steady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And thou wilt come again before I go?" she went on.  "We are summoned
+to Capri where my father hath been recently made a minister to
+Tiberius.  Come again, and let me lead thee back to thine old self."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance," he said evenly, "I have uselessly troubled myself to
+change."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pressed her hand and passed out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the threshold of her portals, he met Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perpol!" the prince cried.  "Hast thou supplanted me here, too?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Marsyas smiled painfully and went on.  Agrippa looked after him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, now: the boy is as pale as ivory!" he ruminated.  "That is an
+honest youth, and Junia must let him alone."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap23"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+A LETTER AND A LOSS
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+When Agrippa returned to his house that night, he found old Silas
+sitting in the vestibule, opposite the place of the atriensis, his
+hands on his knees, his dull face uncommonly animated and expressive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was long past the hour when the household servants had retired, and
+the porter at the door was drowsy, but the instant Agrippa set foot on
+his threshhold Silas started up and bowed in excitement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An evil day," he said.  "Thy wardrobe hath been entered and much fine
+raiment is gone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But thou hast made an evil night of it, Silas: thou shouldst have
+withheld thy calamitous recital until the morning.  Hast discovered the
+thief?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silas bowed again.  "I have: yet, I have been restrained from taking
+him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O pliable Jew!  None but Cæsar can steal my wardrobe unmolested.  Who
+protects the thief?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marsyas."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!  Marsyas?  Save thou art too unimaginative to be a fictionist I
+should say thou makest thy story.  Why does Marsyas protect my
+pillager?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He says we are well rid of the knave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not if he carried off so much as a sandal-lace.  I am a Jew and
+therefore jealous for my own property.  Marsyas, as an Essene, is given
+to dividing without protest with thieves.  I remember the Greek who
+helped himself to Marsyas' patrimony on Olivet.  But who is the thief?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eutychus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eutychus!  By Hermes, he could not help it with that face!  But go on;
+what is the circumstance?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He took," Silas continued, "the umber toga, embroidered with silver,
+much of thy Jewish vestments, the gazelle wallet which contained thy
+amulet, and drachmæ and bracelets of gold.  He is rich!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of a surety: the knave hath only the more attached himself to me.
+What a pity!  Otherwise we were well rid of him.  And Marsyas bade thee
+let him go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The young man was disturbed.  According to instructions, he sent a
+messenger to thy stables, without the walls, to bid Eutychus have thy
+car ready to-morrow for thy visit to Tusculum.  But the messenger
+presently returned with the information that Eutychus had not been seen
+about the stables that day.  At the same moment, I discovered the
+losses among thy apparel.  And Marsyas instantly suspected Eutychus.
+He sent two slaves in search of him.  They returned in an hour saying
+that he had been discovered in Janiculum in a wine-shop, robed like an
+Augustan in thy umber toga, and making merry with wine that could only
+tickle a Samaritan's throat.  When they tried to bring him, he
+objected, saying thou shouldst not miss him, seeing that thou hadst
+learned the pleasure of walking in thy less fortunate days."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's forehead darkened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even for that I should hand him over to the lictors!" he exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not all.  When the two slaves then tried to fetch him by force,
+they were attacked by him and the wine-shop keeper and others, and
+obliged to flee for their lives.  I besought Marsyas, then, to permit
+me to inform the authorities and have him taken, but he opined that the
+charioteer's insolence was new and sudden, wherefore full of meaning.
+Seeing that it was Eutychus' intent to enrage thee, thou wast better
+not enraged; to wash thy hands of him and bless the day that he
+departed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa yawned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-morrow we shall search for him and have him taken.  It is
+improvident to have so much philosophy as Marsyas.  But what had the
+knave of a charioteer against me?  It is Marsyas who hath enchanted
+Drumah, and who took him by the throat in the alabarch's house.  I
+shall speak with Marsyas to-morrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took himself with increasing effort up the stairs along the corridor
+toward his rest.  With the facility which characterized many of
+Agrippa's troubles, the offender had already dropped out of his mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had fenced with Caligula that morning, he had feasted with Macro
+that night.  At midday he had slighted Piso, the enemy of both.
+Caligula had had him draw a sketch of Judea on the wax of the gymnasium
+floor and designate the possessions of the old Herod; Macro, in his
+cups, had asked confidentially if Caligula approved him.  Altogether
+the day had been filled with tokens presaging success.  He smiled
+sleepily, remembering Silas' extravagant concern over the robbery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Calamity is all in the mark on the scale of Fortune," he opined.  "A
+year ago to lose a handful of drachmæ would have ruined me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he passed Marsyas' door, he stepped back suddenly and stopped.  The
+long curtain dragged on the floor at one side had given him an
+interesting glimpse of the lighted interior.  Within, Marsyas, seated
+at a table, had at that moment flung away his stylus and dropped his
+head on the writing.  Almost immediately he sprang up, and, seizing the
+parchment, thrust it into the blaze of the lamp at his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Astonishment gathered on the Herod's face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the blaze the writing curled, the flame eating into the slow-burning
+parchment, burned low, but surely, reaching toward the fingers that
+grasped it.  Presently Marsyas dropped it.  Then the night-wind, rising
+from the sea, swept in through the cancelli with a shriek, put out the
+lamp instantly and swept the long dragging curtain against the Herod
+standing in the dimly-illuminated corridor.  He got out of sight
+hurriedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After the first gust, the wind dropped, sending long streams of
+impelling draft through cancelli, doorway and hall.  Before it, along
+the pavement, something came skittering out of Marsyas' cubiculum.
+Agrippa looked at it.  It was a roll of parchment, charred and crushed
+by the tense grip of fingers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa waited.  After a slight movement within, silence fell again,
+and was not thereafter broken.  The prince's eyes fell on the charred
+writing.  It was almost at his feet.  His fine head dropped to one
+side, then to the other; he put his fingers into his hair, smiled a
+little and picked up the parchment.  A moment later, in his own
+apartment, he unrolled it by his lamp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Only a word here and there, at the end held in Marsyas' fingers, was
+legible, but Agrippa gathered from these the tone, the purpose and the
+identity, as he thought, of the one addressed.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"&mdash; me for loving thee &mdash; my punishment &mdash;.  Yet &mdash;&mdash; sin against my
+teachi &mdash;&mdash; Willingly for thy sake &mdash;&mdash;&mdash; but to pretend &mdash;&mdash; continue
+my &mdash;&mdash; against &mdash;&mdash; which threatens thee.  Have I lost &mdash; soul for a
+caprice &mdash;&mdash; and beseech levity &mdash; to lov &mdash; me?  the pointing finger
+&mdash;&mdash; of sel &mdash; scorn!  An outcast from Heaven &mdash;&mdash; truant from hell,
+haunting earth in search of thee for ever!&mdash;SYAS."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's eyes sobered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Junia is a brand of fire," he said to himself.  "I shall make an end
+of this!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap24"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIV
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE DIGGED PIT
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Junia raised herself hastily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Call the slaves," she commanded the servant who had announced Marsyas,
+and, in a moment, half a score of house-slaves rushed in from various
+openings leading into the atrium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Away with this and that and that," she exclaimed pointing to the
+statue of a bacchante, that had not been visible in the chamber on the
+occasion of Marsyas' expected calls; a tray of wine and a tablet with a
+list of charms and philters sent recently from a haruspex.  "Bring me a
+shawl&mdash;close around my neck: curse thee for a blunderer, Iste; thou
+shalt pay for that scratch!  Here, unwind the scarf about my hips and
+fold it less closely; the amulet, take it off!  By Ate!  Here:
+Caligula's note, spread open!  Into the brazier with it.  Do I smell of
+wine?  Fetch hither&mdash;that fresco!  The Pursuit of Daphne!  Draw the
+arras over it!  Quick!  The unguentarium, I said, snail!  The one with
+the attar.  Now, look about.  Is there anything in sight to disturb a
+vestal?  If I find it afterward, twenty lashes for you all!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mistress and slave looked anxiously over the chamber, but nothing
+unseemly greeted their eyes.  Junia sank back on her couch, not now so
+recumbent, but at ease.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go fetch the Jew," she said, the languor of her manner combatted by
+the fire in her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A moment later Marsyas appeared in the archway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She arose and came to meet him.  When he took her extended hands, she
+led him to the light of the cancelli and inspected him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sit," she said, drawing him down on the divan under the casement.
+"And speak first.  Only a word, so I may see if the prologue is indeed
+as tragic as the mask."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let the mask suffice," he answered, "the prologue might be
+insufferable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Proh pudor</I>!  Thy friend the Herod hath just been here with pagan
+oaths upon his lips about thy dullness.  I tell thee it is hard enough
+to make him walk as he should, but a groaning comrade is a gravel in
+his shoe.  If thou wouldst manage him, be merry.  Remember we have this
+Herod to crown, though he stood on the Tarpeian Rock and sang sonnets
+in dishonor of Cæsar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the certainty of Death, I have," he said sententiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at him and waited for him to go on, but he seemed to forget
+her, in his preoccupation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am a generous woman, Marsyas," she said softly.  "I do not resent
+thy lack of confidence in me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay!" he exclaimed.  "My lack of confidence, lady?  What meanest thou?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In thy bosom, gentle sir, thou keepest thine own counsel, and wearest
+signals of thy self-containment on thy brow.  Wherefore, I am informed
+thou hast thoughts that I may not know!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I spare thee my sorrows, my cynicism, my hopelessness," he
+protested earnestly, "my disbelief in humankind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Marsyas, wert thou not Jewish, I should call thee unmanly.  Listen!"
+She laid a warm hand, colored like a primrose, upon his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou wast an anchorite; thou didst attain manhood's stature and mind
+as an anchorite; into the world thou camest with all an anchorite's
+slander of the poor world in thee.  The eye is a spaniel; the tyrant
+Prejudice controls even its images.  I warned thee in Alexandria.  I
+confess that there is evil in the world, but it is more the work of an
+elementary impulse rather than calculation.  Flaccus is bad, but
+because he is in love.  Agrippa does foolhardy things, because he is
+ambitious.  What?  Did the preachment afflict thee which I delivered
+the other day upon thy levity and riotous living?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, but this moment's preachment crosses me," he said.  "Thou
+offerest pardon for all the wickedness in the world, and I, sworn to
+punish one evil deed, am thus constrained, if I harken unto thee, to
+hold off my hand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, thou approachest the deep-hidden secret which I may not know.
+Whom wilt thou punish?  Flaccus or Classicus?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He hesitated.  His vital hate of Saul of Tarsus, his fear for Lydia,
+his love and its deep wound, were things too close to the soul for him
+willingly to bring forth and display to this woman who acknowledged
+only a mind, and not a spirit.  Yet it seemed unfair to withhold
+anything, however sacred, from one who had unbosomed so much to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I lead a selfish life and an unhappy one.  I am stricken in my loves;
+one dead, one a murderer, a third faithless; a fourth I use to speed me
+in mine intents concerning the other two.  If I avenge the death of
+one, I displease his spirit!  If I visit punishment on his murderer, I
+make it possible for the destroyer of my love-story to go on.  If I
+withhold my hand, I give another, much beloved, unto death.  And him I
+help, I help for mine own use.  My life is at cross purposes; my right
+hand worketh against the left!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy love?" she repeated softly, with a question in her tone.  But he
+did not answer it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A hopeless tangle," she said at last, "from which our ruling
+philosophers, degenerate imitators of Pyrrho, offer but one escape.
+Turn from it, cease to trouble over it, leave it, cast off all thought
+and memory of it&mdash;and begin anew!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shook his head, his eyes on the pavement, his hands clasped before
+him.  But the primrose hand found his again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou canst not, by the choicest revenge, force Thanatos to yield up
+thy dead; thou confessest the evil thou workest in revenge as equal to
+the satisfaction; thou complainest that thy love is faithless&mdash;what
+else?  So many thy pains, I can not remember them all; but in them all
+there is not the worth of one of thy sleepless nights.  If thou canst
+not be a Spartan, be a Stoic; if not an avenger, then a forgetter; if
+not a lover, then a gallant!  Above all things, harken unto a pagan
+truth: love's a lusty wight and can suffer forty mortal wounds and love
+again.  None but an ostrich loves but once!  Perchance I was right at
+first; thou shouldst have begun thine education in the first of Flora's
+celebration."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He winced, but presently raised his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What didst thou when the procession carried me away that night?" he
+demanded, searching her face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When thou didst go away with the procession?" she laughed.  "I went
+with them&mdash;of a necessity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And how didst thou escape?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When they all departed after Flora danced."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus beyond doubt assured that she had witnessed the dance of Flora, he
+was afraid to inquire further, lest he betray Lydia.  But he wanted
+mightily to know if she had recognized the alabarch's daughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The disturbing reflection diverted his line of thought.  Many of the
+night's events which the greater one had overshadowed came back to him.
+He saw again the miraculous dance of Brahma on the roof of the Temple
+of Rannu, fled again with Lydia in his arms into the musky shrine and
+thence into the city; strove hard to convince himself that if he,
+sharpened of sight by love, had not recognized Lydia except for the
+bayadere's note and his acquaintance with Lydia's apostasy and her
+former defense of the Nazarenes, others could not have done so.  Again
+he fought with Flaccus and discovered Agrippa in the dark and abandoned
+street in Alexandria.  And now the image of Eutychus became
+particularly distinct.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His brow blackened suddenly and he sprang to his feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is solved!" he cried, striking the palm of one hand with the other.
+"By the wrath of God, he is Flaccus' emissary.  He turned on Agrippa in
+Alexandria when Flaccus ambushed the prince!  He was part of the
+conspiracy!  It was no blind blow that Agrippa struck.  And the soul in
+me nourishes a lie or he meditates more work for the proconsul in this!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Throughout his intensely confident accusation, Junia had watched him
+with changing eyes.  She had had to feel her way frequently in this
+last hour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" she asked finally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a few and rapid words, Marsyas told her of Eutychus' theft and
+flight, but his ideas hasted from his narrative to more testimony in
+favor of his conclusion.  He remembered Eutychus' jealousy of Drumah,
+his ruffian mistreatment of Lydia when the prætor moved against the
+Nazarenes, his attempt to expose her to Justin Classicus because, his
+jealousy of Marsyas revived, he had no other way of retaliating; and
+finally of his humiliation at Marsyas' hands before Agrippa and Drumah.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bitter fool that I was not to understand him in time!" he cried.  "In
+my soul, I know that we follow him to a pitfall in this matter!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Junia slipped her fingers along the gilt grooves in the arm of the
+divan.  Flaccus was a clumsy villain, of a surety!  What overt
+conspiracies he evolved!  A wild boar of the German forests would not
+make more clamor at its attacks!  A wonder he had not exposed her, ere
+this.  But for his influence, which made her a place in Cæsar's house,
+she had given up his service long ago.  Her lips curled with disgust
+and perplexity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forewarning," she said gloomily, "is a torture when forearming avails
+naught."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He caught the depression in her tone and turned to her quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Agrippa hath been here, Marsyas," she continued.  "Yet he was not to
+be stopped, I thought, then, that it was only the knave's playing for
+time!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What dost thou mean?" he demanded.  "Tell me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Agrippa was here.  Eutychus hath been caught, but Piso notifies the
+Herod that the prisoner hath appealed to Cæsar, claiming to have
+information against Agrippa which concerns Cæsar's life and welfare!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas seized her arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What sayest thou?" he cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And since thou hast uncovered Flaccus' hand supporting the villain,
+Agrippa is in greater peril than I had supposed!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment the two looked at each other: Junia with uneasiness on her
+face, and Marsyas transfixed.  He saw his plans against Saul of Tarsus
+tumbling; he saw the Pharisee triumphing over Lydia!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It may still be hoped," she ventured, "that the knave lies!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Junia, thou knowest Agrippa!  It is my terror lest the knave be armed
+with a truth!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Out with it all," she went on desperately.  "The Herod is convinced
+that he is innocent&mdash;this time&mdash;of any ill-will against Cæsar, and he
+came here and spent the greater part of an hour, beseeching me to use
+my influence to hasten Cæsar's hearing of Eutychus!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In God's name, answer!  Did you refuse him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did!  I besought him to let Cæsar follow his own way, since the
+emperor is notedly slow in hearing charges in these later years.  I
+assured him that Cæsar might be more displeased, urged against his
+inclination to hear a stupid slave, than the slave's charge could make
+him.  But the Herod is more stubborn than the classic steed of Judea.
+He demanded haughtily of me, if I expected him to treat with a
+slanderer or beg a truce with a lie.  Then I refused him my offices.
+Wherefore he hath posted off to Antonia!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She will not harken to him&mdash;!" he cried with sudden desperation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Marsyas, this day I should be exorcised as a fury, bringing evil
+happenings.  But better the sorry truth than a fair lie.  Antonia hath
+lived out of the world for the last decade, as hast thou.  But her
+seclusion hath achieved the opposite harm, that is hatched by
+solitariness.  She retired, full of years and honor; the world,
+approaching her door, comes in fair garments, bringing tokens of
+esteem, talks of ancient triumphs, the virtues of Antonia and the great
+respect Cæsar hath for her.  Wherefore, kindly treated by the world,
+remembering nothing but the good of the old days and believing in her
+sweet dotage that she crushed evil when she crushed Sejanus, her
+natural strategic sense hath been lost in a great, all-enveloping
+charity.  Her natural nobility hath outgrown the wariness which aids
+youth, and her dimmed sight sees things of stature, only, or of high
+relief.  She will see in the prince's desire only a desire to clear
+himself of a charge and she will honor him for it!  She will do his
+bidding!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas snatched up his cloak and sprang toward the archway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me to her!" he cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait!" Junia cried.  "Be prepared against defeat, though it never
+come!  What wilt thou do, if she be immovable, or already gone&mdash;for
+Cæsar is in Tusculum to-day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas stopped and his face grew ashen.  He saw Lydia again, among the
+stones of the rabble, and murder leaped into his heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kill Eutychus!" he declared desperately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would be fatal for Agrippa," she protested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His hunted ideas turned then upon Cæsar.  Suddenly he rushed back to
+Junia and seized her hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art close to Cæsar," he said rapidly and with great supplication
+in his voice, "and thou art in Cæsar's favor!  Beseech him and right
+Agrippa's mistakes, I implore thee!  Help me, Junia!  Be my right arm!
+Promise me thine intercession!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her face suffused, and she waited a moment before she could trust her
+voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For thy sake, Marsyas," she answered.  "I give thee my word!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pressed her hands to his lips and ran out of the house.  She dropped
+back on her couch and put her fingers to her temples.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Save Agrippa, to kill Saul, to save Lydia, for this Judean vestal's
+sake?" she speculated to herself.  "And where doth Junia profit?  Ah!
+I shall get him in debt, and extort mine own price!  Jew or Gentile, he
+will not think it exorbitant, for under it all, he is a man!  But to
+Tusculum!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She clapped her hands and ordered her litter.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap25"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXV
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE SPEAKING OF EUTYCHUS
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+The imperial ruin drooped in the gilded lectica, now comatose, now
+animate.  Under the purple robe the long, old, wasted limbs vibrated
+and the gems, quivering on the gnarled fingers, scintillated
+incessantly.  Now that the rich winds from the gardens of Tusculum
+breathed on him, he cursed and groped for his mantle; again, when the
+inimitable sun of the Alban Hills smiled on him, his face purpled with
+suffusions of heat.  Now that his wrinkled blue lids drooped half-way,
+Euodus, who walked by his side, told himself that he looked on death;
+but when the sunken eyes unclosed, he had to say that the will therein
+was immortal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a great, withered, tall, old frame, diseased and fallen into
+decay.  Life seldom of its own accord clings with tenacity to so
+ancient and utter a ruin.  Mind stood in the way of the soul's egress
+and penned it into its dilapidated shell.  It was a habit Cæsar's mind
+had of blocking people, things and himself.  A creature of
+contradicting impulses, affectionate, sensitive, soldierly,
+immeasurably capable, with harsh standards of uprightness for others,
+stoic, enduring, ruggedly simple for the time, he was on the other hand
+one of the bloodiest and most unnatural monsters that ever disgraced
+the throne of the Cæsars.  Moody, taciturn, perverse, superstitious,
+unspeakably sensual and cruel, yet withal an admirer of honor, the
+inalienable friend of the inalienable servant, he was a Roman emperor
+in every phase of his many-sided nature.  It is not recorded that any
+ever loved Tiberius; neither is it recorded that any ever failed to
+respect him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was finishing his twenty-fifth year as Emperor of the World, but of
+late, Macro's capacities as prætorian prefect had been enlarged to
+those of vice-regent, and Cæsar returned from Capri, his retreat from
+the trying climate of Rome, only on occasions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beside him walked eight prætorian guards, picked, not for appearance
+but for age and integrity.  There walked Gallus who had followed
+Augustus, thirty years before; Attius Paulus, who had one hundred and
+thirty-nine wounds on his huge hulk; Severus Vespasian, who had been a
+soldier forty years and had twice refused to be retired; Plautius Asper
+who had been surnamed Leonidas, because he and a handful had held a
+German defile in the face of a whole barbarian army&mdash;and lived to
+refuse to be knighted.  If Cæsar spoke to one, the answer came in
+monosyllables and with a touch of the helmet.  Flattery never passed
+their lips, but if one lent his arm to the tall old emperor it was done
+with a rude tenderness that even the most polished courtier could not
+have improved.  And Tiberius, being blunt and impatient of pretenses,
+walled himself away from the rest of his following with this bulwark of
+dependable ruggedness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After his lectica came another, borne by four Georgian youths.  Within
+lounged the latest of Tiberius' favorite ladies, Euodus' daughter, the
+Lady Junia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had passed the corner of Cicero's villa when a litter approached
+from an intersecting avenue and was set down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A woman stepped out.  White her hair, her dress the ancient palla and
+stola of white and purple, her jewels, amethysts.  The rheumy emperor
+saw her imperfectly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stop!" he ordered his bearers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman approached and made obeisance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Humph!  Antonia," he muttered in some disappointment.  But he drew his
+old frame together and inclined his head respectfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greeting, sister," he said.  "The gods attend thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art good, Augustus.  Welcome to Tusculum once more," she replied.
+She took the hand he extended and raised it to her lips.  The old man
+gazed at her with a wavering eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come closer.  Art so gray?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"White, Cæsar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took the hand from hers and put back the vitta that covered her
+hair.  There were the sorrows of seventy years, in its absolute
+whiteness, and the Roman duskiness of skin was brought out very
+strongly in contrast.  But her eyes were still full and bright, even
+tender, her thin lips lacking nothing of the color of her youth.  Age
+had not laid its withering touch on her stature or even on the fullness
+of her frame, but the hand, Time's infallible tally, was the worn-out
+hand of seventy years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was the noblest woman of her age, <I>univira</I>,&mdash;the widow of one
+husband, dead in her youth, the mother of statesmen, generals and
+emperors, a scholar and at one time a diplomat,&mdash;in all things, the
+ancient spirit of the First Republic, solitary, rugged, irreproachable
+in the vicious age of the Cæsars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eh!  White, wholly white," he assented, running his fingers through
+her locks with a movement that was almost tender.  "And I am thine
+elder.  Yet," he drew himself up and defiance hardened his face, "I am
+not a dead man, Antonia!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, who says it, Cæsar?  And it is not age that hath blanched me.  I
+was gray at forty&mdash;much more gray than thou art now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no!  Not age!  Truly a woman's protest.  But then, perchance not.
+Thy husband's death undid thee.  How thou didst love him!  Save for
+thine example I should say that Eros himself is dead!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a little he muttered to himself:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alas!  What a name to conjure death!  My son Drusus, thy spouse
+Drusus, and thy son Drusus, the Germanicus.  Dead!  All! and in their
+youth.  The very name hath a sinister look."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man shook his unsteady head and knuckled his sunken cheek.  The
+widow's saddened face wore also some surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Canst thou speak of thy son Drusus, now?" she asked.  "Not in these
+many years have I heard thee name him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" he answered shortly.  "I speak of dreams; new dreams, which I
+mean to have the soothsayers interpret."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me of them, Augustus," she urged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is one, and it comes nightly.  It is a Shade from Thanatos,
+which approacheth.  I put the ægis into its dead hands, crown its
+death-dewed brow, do obeisance before a pale ghost that melts again
+into the Shades&mdash;and after it passes all Rome, and the Empire of the
+Cæsars."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The widow's eyes showed unutterable sadness, which was unrelieved by
+tears.  The unanointed Cæsars that had passed into the Shades had
+gathered unto their number no nobler one than the gallant young
+Germanicus, and the last remnant of the ancient glory of Rome had
+passed with him.  But she put off the encroaching lapse into
+retrospection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One of the departed cometh to ask that his offspring be thine heir,"
+she suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old emperor nodded eagerly.  "It may be, it may be," he assented.
+"I have been pondering long upon the matter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A silence fell and the two gazed absently across the shimmering vision
+of Rome, below them, three leagues to the west.  About them were spread
+the villas of the rich in retreat, the very essence of repose, the
+birdsong and the murmur of laurels in the breeze; in the distance was
+the apotheosis of power, but their thoughts overreached the things seen
+and questioned after things unknown.  In their philosophy, life was
+all.  After it was Shadow, an inevitable obliteration in which the just
+and the unjust were immersed eternally.  But no youth, looking forward
+to the long, eventful days to come, experienced the grave wonder that
+these expended on the time after things were expected to end.  The awe
+of the unexplored Hereafter&mdash;what a waste of universal, earth-old,
+intuitive awe, if there be no Hereafter!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tiberius muttered, as if to himself:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is another&mdash;yet another dream.  I cast dice with Three; three
+grisly hags, and I lose, though the tesseræ were cogged.  But let be,
+let be; the soothsayers shall read me that one!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sat up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Came you of a purpose to speak with me, Antonia?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did," she said, "but it seems that the time is not propitious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any hour is propitious for thee, Antonia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art a kind man, Cæsar.  I came to speak of Agrippa."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Agrippa!" the emperor exclaimed, a sudden transformation showing in
+his voice and manner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman in the litter behind stepped out, but paused without
+advancing.  She made no attempt to conceal her attention to the talk
+between the widow and the emperor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Antonia studied the face of the old man; it was significant, when,
+after his lapse into the softened mood of retrospection, he should
+return to his old manner.  She felt her way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Agrippa ceases not to be interesting.  Thou and I remember him as the
+faithfulest friend thy son Drusus had; to this day of all who knew
+Drusus it is only Agrippa who still hath tears for his name."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The emperor's wrinkled mouth was set, his face absolutely without
+telling expression.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He hath had years of want and humiliation," she continued.  "He hath
+walked under clouds and suffered from ill report, until he is soulsick
+of it.  Now, the favor of his emperor and the peace of good repute
+restored to him, are things that he would not willingly let go from him
+again.  The inventions of an enemy have risen against him in Rome; even
+hath the ill-favored sire of the story been discovered, and Agrippa,
+conscious of his integrity toward thee, is restive.  He wants to be
+examined; his innocence proven and thy good will toward him firmly
+established."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, well!" Tiberius said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall await your happier mood," she said, gathering her robes about
+her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any mood is happy enough for the Jew," was the retort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Antonia unmistakably eyed the old man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say on, good Antonia," he urged uncomfortably.  "I have not forsworn
+justice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Agrippa asks nothing more.  His charioteer robbed him, and when he was
+captured and in danger of punishment, he claimed that he had
+information against Agrippa which concerns thy welfare.  It is simply a
+device to put off punishment.  He hath appealed to thee and thou hast
+not yet heard him.  The Herod is eager that the matter be settled and
+begs that the slave be heard at once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eh! what a fanfare of probity!" the emperor mumbled.  "Leave it to a
+Jew to flourish his righteousness.  If he is innocent, he can wait; if
+he is guilty, we shall overtake him soon enough.  I owe him a sentence
+of uncertainty for his slights to my grandson, the little Tiberius."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And thou hast but this moment said that thou hadst not forsworn
+justice!" Antonia exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jupiter, but thou art provoking!" he fumed.  "Hither, Euodus!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Junia made a slight movement as if she meant to step between her father
+and the emperor, but was suddenly reminded of her part.  She stopped
+again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How my sentimental heart cries out against my obligation to Flaccus!"
+she said to herself.  "Here must I stand idly by, while this new
+Penelope to a dead Ulysses works the Herod's ruin!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Euodus bowed beside Cæsar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bring me the Jew's slave that hath a charge for me to hear.  Bring him
+hither, and haste!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man turned to Antonia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go tell thy valiant Herod that he shall have justice.  Justice!  Say
+that.  It may not please him so much to have that message."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gilded lectica moved on.  The widow went back to her litter and was
+borne away.  Junia remounted her chair and followed the emperor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O lady," she said, looking after Antonia's litter, "it may be very
+superior to live aloof from the world, and ignorant of its intrigues,
+but it is fatal for thy friends, I observe."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the brink of a precipitous descent into the valley west of Tusculum,
+Euodus returned with Eutychus, whom Piso, at Agrippa's defiant
+instigation, had been forced to send to Tusculum to be available in
+event of Cæsar's summons.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Junia looked at Eutychus, livid with fear in the presence of the
+unspeakable might of the emperor, and held debate with herself.  She
+had not agreed that Agrippa should be other than alienated from his
+wife.  She was human enough not to wish the death of any man to whom
+she was indifferent, and for a moment she seemed about to alight from
+her chair.  Even Flaccus' power over her for the time seemed to lose
+its effect, for a picture of Marsyas' suffering was a more distinct
+image.  But one of the causes of Marsyas' concern, nay, the chief
+cause&mdash;the protection of Lydia to be achieved by the Herod's
+success&mdash;occurred to her in an evil moment.  She turned her face away
+from the colloquy between Cæsar and the charioteer and studied the
+summer-green Alban Hills that shouldered the sky behind her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eutychus collapsed to his knees at sight of the emperor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Speak, slave," Euodus ordered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Cæsar," the charioteer panted when his voice would obey him, "once I
+drove the Herod and Caligula, the Roman prince, to the Hippodrome in
+this place and they talked of the succession.  And Herod said that he
+wished that thou wast dead and Caligula emperor in thy stead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The emperor's eyes glittered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What else?" Euodus demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Somewhat about the young Prince Tiberius which I did not hear,"
+Eutychus trembled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what said Caligula to that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That the Herod had his own making and not Caligula's to achieve!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Roman's answer," Junia said to herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there nothing more?" the questioner insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing, lord!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Euodus bowed to the emperor and waited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give him ten stripes and turn him loose," Tiberius said.  Two of the
+prætorians led Eutychus away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Eheu</I>!" Junia sighed.  "I could have stared the knave between the
+eyes and made him discredit himself in a breath!  Ai!  Owl-faced Lydia!
+thou art a destroyed peril, but at what a price!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bearers stood patiently under the glow of the morning sun, waiting
+their royal burden's humor to go on.  But Tiberius shrank into the
+relaxation of thought.  He had outlived every plot to assassinate him;
+he held in his hands consummate might; he was surely approaching the
+Shades; but the example of his infallible fortune, the fear of his
+merciless hand and the fact that he would not stand long in the way of
+ambitions, had not quieted the fatal tongue which bespoke him evil!  He
+was sick of blood and torture, tale-bearing and intrigue, because he
+was surfeited with it all.  But here, now, was this precarious Herod,
+barely escaping disaster which had pursued him for twenty years,
+wishing brutally and incautiously that he might die!  Tiberius was at a
+loss to know what to do with the man.  The thought wearied him.  He
+wished now that he had ordered a hundred stripes for Eutychus instead
+of ten.  What an officious creature Antonia had become!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Euodus folded his arms and waited; the patricians, approaching in
+chairs of their own, alighted, bowed, passed out of the path and went
+around, remounted their chairs and disappeared.  The birds in the trees
+about, hushed by the talk below them, twittered and flew again.
+Euodus, casting a sidelong glance at the emperor, nodded at the nearest
+bearer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To the palace," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The slaves turned back up the slanting street and the motion of the
+lectica aroused Tiberius.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whither?" he demanded irritably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To the palace, Cæsar," Euodus answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did I command thee?  To the Hippodrome, slaves!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bearers turned once more and began the ticklish descent of the
+paved roadway to the valley below, where the Circus of Tusculum was
+built.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The huge elliptical structure stood out in the plain, alone and solid
+except for the low, heavy arch of the vomitoria which broke the round
+of masonry.  The trees about it were dwarfed in contrast, the columns
+shrunken, the viæ, approaching it from all directions straight as
+arrows fly, curbed and paved with stone, were as mere taut ribbons.
+But in the great slope of the Campagna, under the immense and sparkling
+blue of the Italian sky, it was only a detail in rock.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rome had long since outgrown her walls and ceased to contemplate them
+except as landmarks and conventionalities, useless but as significant
+as Cæsar's paludamentum.  Inns and mile-stones along the viæ proved
+them once to have been things distinctly suburban, but the city crying
+for room had passed the walls and built its own
+characteristics&mdash;temples, tombs, villas, circuses, fora and arches as
+far as Tusculum along the roads.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lovelier beyond comparison than Rome's loveliest spots, it was small
+wonder that to fill their Augustan lungs with the freshness of the
+Campagna, the idle were borne out of the contained airs of the city,
+which were of such seasonal peculiarities that temples in propitiation
+of Mephitis and the goddess Febris had been erected.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So daily groups of patricians collected at the Hippodrome of Tusculum,
+with laughter and badinage, the flashing of jewels and the glittering
+of cars, the flutter of lustrous silks and the tossing of feathers, to
+spend the bright hours of the day watching the races that proceeded in
+the arena below.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The races had not begun, the crowds had not assembled.  The gilded
+lectica was borne through the tunnel-like entrance up the stairs, not
+to the amphitheater but to the arena.  Slaves with blanketed horses and
+clusters of betting patricians were here and there over the sanded
+ellipse within.  The bustle of preparation slackened at the approach of
+the august visitor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The eyes of the emperor opened and closed dully.  Nothing was here to
+interest a man worn out with seventy years of change and excitement.
+Nothing new could have aroused him, for his attention rebelled against
+the call.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently, during one of the intervals that his eyes were open, he saw,
+within touch of his hand, Agrippa and Caligula side by side, talking to
+a gladiator.  The emperor scowled and looked away.  The bearers plodded
+on, rounded the upper end of the ellipse and, passing down the side,
+neared the mouth of the cunicula.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa and Caligula had moved from their position and were there, with
+a notary taking down the terms of a wager.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Apart from them stood a small but important man, frowning over a waxen
+tablet which a slave had cringingly handed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tiberius looked at him, then at Agrippa.  His brows lowered more, this
+time with irritation.  It seemed that action had been formulated by
+circumstance and that the emperor was not to avoid a tiresome
+prosecution.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put out his hand as the bearers bore him by and it touched the Roman
+on the shoulder.  The man turned on his heel, but seeing who was near
+bowed profoundly.  If he meant to speak to the emperor he was not given
+opportunity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bind that man, Macro," Cæsar said, nodding at Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lectica moved on.  As it passed up the opposite side Macro crossed
+to it and, puzzled and disturbed, bowed again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cæsar's pardon, but whom am I to bind?" he questioned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That man," Tiberius replied irritably, pointing to the Herod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Agrippa!" the astonished prefect exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have said."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lectica went on, up and around the curve of the ellipse, and back
+again to the cunicula.  The few within the walls of the Hippodrome had
+gathered there in an interested and excited group.  In the center stood
+Agrippa with manacles on his wrists and ankles.  The charm and sparkle
+in his atmosphere were gone; even as Tiberius looked, he saw the cold,
+evil, vengeful countenance of the Asmonean Slave, the Terror of the
+Orient, Herod the Great, appear, like a face putting off a mask, behind
+the graceful features of his grandson.  Tiberius was grimly satisfied;
+he felt the first interest in the arrest; he was always by choice a
+preferrer of noble game.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On either side of the prisoner stood a Roman soldier; aloof and passive
+was Macro, but the earth had apparently opened and swallowed Caligula.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the lectica approached, the crowd gave way and his captors permitted
+Agrippa to come nearer the emperor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At Cæsar's command, I am arrested," he said evenly.  "Will Cæsar grant
+me the prisoner's privilege and tell me why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy charioteer hath spoken, Agrippa," was the response.  "The slave
+swears that on such and such a day he drove thee and Caligula to this
+place.  Instead of horses you talked of kings, instead of bets, the
+succession.  And thou madest moan that I was not dead so that Caligula
+could reign in my place!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The jaws of many round about relaxed in horror.  Agrippa's muscles made
+an involuntary start, but his face retained its calm.  But the emperor
+caught the start.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forgot that unctuous bit of tittle-tattle when thou didst make Antonia
+bearer of thy boasts, eh?" he piped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My words have been distorted," Agrippa spoke, though he seemed to hate
+himself for offering a defense.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah-r-r!  Wilt thou snivel and deny?" Tiberius snarled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prince's manacled hands clenched and a glimmer of hate showed in
+his eyes.  Cæsar nodded; that was better.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-308"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-308.jpg" ALT="The prince's manacled hands clenched" BORDER="2">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center">
+The prince's manacled hands clenched
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"Agrippa, the king-maker!" he went on, "late mendicant from Judea; heir
+presumptive to the ax!  Eh?  Take him away!  Macro, come thou to the
+palace to-night, and I'll deliver sentence!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gilded lectica moved on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Twenty minutes later, Marsyas, white to the lips, his eyes enlarged and
+dangerous, sprang from a clump of myrtle by the roadside, after the
+litter had passed up toward Tusculum and, thrusting a hand into Junia's
+chair, seized her arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See that Tiberius forgets his audience with Macro to-night," he said
+to her.  "See that he yearns after Capri, and returns to-morrow&mdash;or
+thou bringest upon me the pain of killing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Terrified for the first time in her life, Junia shrank under the
+crushing grip.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Him or me!" she told herself.  "I promise!" she whispered to Marsyas.
+"But acquit me of blame.  What could I do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have shown thee, now!" he said intensely, and was gone.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap26"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXVI
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE ARM MADE BARE
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Lydia went up on the housetop into the shade of the pavilion with the
+writing her father had put into her hand, and drawing the hangings on
+the east side of the pavilion to shut out the morning sun, sat down to
+read how Marsyas had revealed the evil tidings to the alabarch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the first moment of rest she had had since the messenger had
+arrived at daybreak with the letter which had flung Cypros into
+paroxysms of suffering and desperation.  Now that the unhappy princess
+had yielded to the benign influence of a narcotic simple, Lydia had
+time for her own thoughts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not the same Lydia that had danced on the Temple of Rannu.
+Spiritual change as infallibly marks the countenance as physical
+change.  The last of the half-skeptical, half-philosophical tolerant
+equanimity was gone from her face; the self-reliance had been
+transformed into a look of faith and believing, and a certain
+tranquillity, no less sweet and unshaken because it was sorrowful, no
+less patient because its hope was faint, made her forehead placid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She read:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+ROME, Kal. Jul. X, 790.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"TO THE MOST EXCELLENT ALABARCH, ALEXANDER LYSIMACHUS, GOVERNOR OF THE
+JEWS OF ALEXANDRIA, GREETING:
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"It is my grief to inform thee that at the command of Cæsar, my lord
+and patron, Herod Agrippa, hath been confined in the Prætorian Camp
+awaiting sentence for utterances pronounced treasonous to Cæsar.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Immediately after the prince's arrest, one of the ladies of Cæsar's
+train was stricken by an illness, resulting from the malarious airs of
+the Campagna, and the emperor ordered the immediate return to Capri.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Inquiry among the emperor's ministers discloses the fact that he left
+no explicit instructions concerning the execution of a sentence upon
+Agrippa.  It is noted in Rome that, owing to the multiplicity of his
+duties and the weariness of his mind, the emperor forgets readily, and
+is not pleased to be reminded of that which he hath forgotten to
+perform.  Wherefore, if it please God to erase Agrippa from his mind,
+it shall be seen to, here in Rome, that no one recall the unfortunate
+prince to Cæsar's attention.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Canvass among the fellows of Agrippa conducted by certain powers in
+the state reveals that the movement against the prince did not have its
+inception in Rome; however, many were not unwilling to have it come to
+pass because of the prince's aggressive political preferences.  But now
+that he is at the edge of ruin, the insignificant activity in the
+capital hath fallen inert; those who contributed to it are alarmed, for
+the accomplishment of Agrippa's death will inevitably revert upon the
+heads of them who endangered him, should Caius Caligula be crowned.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"The movement against the prince, consummated by the charioteer
+Eutychus, had its inception, as I have said, not in Rome.  The man
+stole of his master's wardrobe and ran away.  When he was apprehended
+he claimed that he had information against Agrippa which concerned the
+life and welfare of Cæsar.  Piso, city prefect, bound the man and sent
+him to Tusculum, where, by the solicitations of Antonia, who was
+commanded by Agrippa, the emperor heard the charioteer's charge.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Thou and I know, good my lord, that Eutychus is too clumsy a villain,
+too much of a coward, to invent and push this bold work himself,
+without support.  Wherefore, I and others are convinced that he must
+have been inspired and aided by some secret and shrewd enemy outside of
+Rome.  If the proconsul of Egypt is not yet informed of this disaster,
+do not trouble him with the information!
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"It may assist thee to know that Eutychus, given ten stripes as earnest
+of Cæsar's respect for him, and turned loose, eluded mine and
+Caligula's vengeance and immediately took ship for Alexandria.  Expect
+him in the Brucheum.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Know this, also.  If Cæsar forget and Agrippa live on, this enemy will
+grow restive and bestir himself again, wherefore it is the duty of them
+who love the prince to watch for any coiling which prepares for the
+stroke.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"For thine own comfort and for the comfort of his unhappy princess, I
+add here, though in peril to the prince's benefactor and to myself,
+that Agrippa's prison discomforts are alleviated, and kind usage
+secured him by the generous distribution of gold among them who
+surround him.  It is not a difficult matter to secure him comparative
+comfort.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Silas and I daily come to him with fresh clothing, and abundant food:
+he hath his own bedding and his daily bath.  Through the influence of
+the prætorian prefect, obtained at great price by Antonia, none is
+permitted to pronounce Agrippa's name outside the camp, on pain of
+extreme punishment&mdash;a clever pretense at abhorring a traitor which aims
+only at his defense.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Thy part is to quiet, within thy powers, any work in Alexandria which
+may lead to Cæsar's remembering Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"I have closed the prince's residence, dispersed his slaves among the
+families of his friends, and with Silas I am living under the roof of
+Antonia, in whose care I am permitted to receive letters.  The Lady
+Junia is at Capri at my solicitation, pledged to do a woman's part in
+the protection of Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"May the God of our fathers arm thee.<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Peace to thee and thine.<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"MARSYAS."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Lydia sighed and let the writing drop into her lap.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can not hope, my Marsyas," she said to herself, "if thou art
+schooled in the understanding of women by Junia!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Roman tincture was patent in the letter, but the Jewish manner,
+Jewish penetration, and the Essenic coldness were strong and unaltered.
+His well-beloved and unchanged hand had pressed all the surface of the
+parchment, but she did not lift it to her lips.  There had been no word
+beyond the general greeting to her as the family of the alabarch, and
+proud, even in her sorrow and the new-found humility, she saved her
+endearments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a moment of further thought, she was aroused by the rattle of
+wheels which came to an end before the porch of her father's house.
+She arose and going to the parapet looked over.  Justin Classicus'
+chariot stood there.  She caught the last flutter of his garments as he
+disappeared under the roof of the porch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She went back to her place and waited for a servant to announce the
+guest.  But Classicus lingered.  The alabarch was not like to be
+telling him the account of Agrippa's latest misfortune.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She put away Marsyas' letter and gazed at the Synagogue immersed in the
+golden flood of Egyptian sunshine.  She had not ceased to love it, nor
+to attend it with all maiden fidelity since she had followed Jesus of
+Nazareth, but it seemed to love her less, to throw a shadow darker, but
+less benign, over her, as she approached its giant gates.  Saul of
+Tarsus whom she had feared for Marsyas' sake was a hidden menace now in
+its great angles, a threat in its rituals, a brooding danger held up
+only so long as she hid in deceit.  She felt unutterably lonely and
+friendless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently Classicus came up unannounced.  She knew at a glance that he
+had learned from some source of Agrippa's misfortune, and wondered for
+a moment if her father had forgotten Marsyas' charge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alexandria hath heard of Agrippa's disaster," he began, as he seated
+himself beside her, "and I came to offer my consolation and my aid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Flaccus already had the news!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I would thou couldst aid us, Justin.  Not now is anything more
+precious than help, and nothing less possible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And to say lastly," he continued, looking into her face, "that I
+deplore that haunted look in thine eyes, Lydia.  What does it mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That I grow older, wiser, sadder&mdash;and less fortunate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou shouldst study the philosophy of the Nazarenes," he declared.  "I
+find that much of their teaching, stripped of its frenzy and reduced to
+the dignity of pure language, hath much comfort in it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does it promise that sorrow will not come to them who espouse it?" she
+asked, looking away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, but it preaches universal love.  Could I teach thee that, sorrow
+should never approach thee or me henceforth!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I fear thou dost not understand them," she said dubiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not wholly," he admitted.  "I have not yet been able to agree with
+them, that I, Justin Classicus, scholar and Sadducee, should find it in
+my heart to love a crook-back shepherd that speaks Aramaic, rejoices on
+conchs, relishes onions and is washed only when the rains wet him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He smiled, and Justin Classicus' face was helped by a smile.  Mirth
+possessed him entirely, cast up a transitory flush in his cheeks and
+lighted torches in his eyes.  But Lydia looked across the Alexandrian
+housetops.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why dost thou seek this new philosophy, Justin?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To see if it be safe enough heresy to teach thee," he returned.  "If
+it be, thou shall learn it, for in its creed of universal love, I put
+mine only hope that thou shalt come to love me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Learn the universal love for thyself, Justin: learn to love the
+shepherd and thine enemy&mdash;learn it in all truth, and thou mayest be
+content with that, and no more!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Lord forbid!" he cried.  "If that should come to pass, learning
+this new philosophy, I pause, even now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Enemy?" he repeated, after a little in a gentler tone.  "Save another
+hath possessed thy heart, I have no enemy&mdash;the Nazarenes recommending
+that one leave them out of one's catalogue of fellows!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Canst thou not hold off thy hand, even from an enemy?  Hath thy search
+after their philosophy taught thee so much?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at her face, and saw thereon something to follow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can&mdash;be bought," he answered softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She remembered his part in the ambuscade the night of the Dance of
+Flora, and her face paled a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not the Nazarene way," she replied unreadily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, but if the demand be great enough, any method must serve.  Shall
+I name my price?"  His voice was clear and illuminating.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She arose and moved over to one of the columns, and leaning against it
+gazed across toward the blue sparkle of the New Port.  She felt the
+strength of his fortification, the extent of his power over her.  Not
+any of the many things she had hidden from all but Marsyas were unknown
+to him!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned to him with appeal in her eyes, but he laughed very softly,
+and wrapped the kerchief skilfully about his head.  His composure
+terrified her.  He held out his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Think," he said, "and to-morrow or the next to-morrow, but soon, thou
+wilt tell me.  Meanwhile I shall tell thy father that I have spoken
+with thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took her fingers and kissed them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Farewell.  And let the Nazarenes persuade thee, if I can not!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A long time after she heard the wheels of his chariot roll away from
+before the alabarch's porch.  Then with slow, weary steps she went down
+into the house.  She would seek out her father, and discover what to
+expect from Flaccus and if disaster could be averted from the beloved
+head of Marsyas and the unhappy Herod.  Not until then would she
+entertain the suggested sacrifice which Classicus had so deftly
+demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But when she reached the inner chamber, with the arch opening into the
+alabarch's presiding room, she saw within the proconsul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She hesitated, surprised and alarmed, but presently her father, raising
+his eyes, saw her and signed to her to enter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The proconsul stopped in the middle of a sentence to greet her, not
+from courtesy, but because she was a consideration.  She took her place
+on an ivory footstool at the foot of the alabarch's chair and seemed to
+efface herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lysimachus trifled with a stick of wax and heard Flaccus to the end of
+the sentence.  The old tone of assumed cordiality was gone.  Flaccus
+had ascended again to the plane of a legate speaking with a Jew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I shall pay thee thy five talents and release the lady, that she
+may be sent to Rome," he concluded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The gossip of the lady's arrival in Rome would work havoc, sir.  She
+would be there engaging Antonia's attention, which should be devoted
+without lapse, in other directions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Herod's lady need not arrive with the blare of trumpets," was the
+cool retort, "and since thy talents are returned to thee, Lysimachus,
+thou art not asked to carry thy concern into Rome."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The thin cheeks of the alabarch grew pink and Lydia raised a pair of
+somber eyes to the proconsul's face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not a matter of my loan," the alabarch answered without a tremor
+in his melodious voice, "but it is that I held her in hostage in the
+beginning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At my suggestion.  Then thou canst release her at my suggestion&mdash;and
+if the loan sits roughly on thy conscience we shall call it a gift at
+this late day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If it please thee, good sir, we have left the discussion of the
+talents.  It is the lady who concerns us now.  I would be plain with
+thee; I should reproach myself did I let her proceed out of my house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Call the lady," Flaccus commanded.  "We will lay the matter before
+her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She sleeps," Lydia said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I bring her more relief than sleep," was the blunt reply.  "Bring her
+hither."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On one promise," Lydia said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That I and my servants alone shall accompany her to Rome."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flaccus gazed straight at the alabarch's daughter.  Lysimachus sat
+without movement.  He knew that his daughter had seen at once that
+which he had instantly divined&mdash;that Flaccus had no intention of
+sending Cypros to Rome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bring the lady," Flaccus insisted, "and we shall lay our plans
+thereafter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia sat still; she knew Cypros' believing nature; that she would see
+nothing but a generous offer in the proconsul's intent; that to prevent
+the simple woman from consenting to destroy herself the whole villainy
+of the proconsul would have to be uncovered to her&mdash;doubtless before
+Flaccus, with unimaginable results.  The alabarch looked down on his
+daughter's fair head, away from Flaccus' threatening gaze and waited
+for her answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My lord," she said composedly, "we have complicated our associations
+with thee and this unfortunate family long enough.  Perchance we erred.
+At best it may no longer be maintained.  Though the Lady Cypros is
+uninformed, I and others know why thou hast been tolerant of our people
+of late; what deed thou didst attempt in the passage back of Rannu's
+Temple on the closing night of Flora's feast; what disaster overtook
+thee there; why Agrippa, now, is undone and what thou meanest in truth
+to do with his princess."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was silence.  Then the alabarch's hand dropped down on Lydia's
+curls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Daughter, thou art weaponed with testimony new to thy father; thou
+hast kept thy arms concealed.  Yet I will take them up, now."  He
+raised his eyes to Flaccus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance thou wouldst explain to me my daughter's meaning?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a dangerous dilation of his gray-brown eyes, Flaccus seemed more
+than ever composed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is my favor worth aught to the Jews?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jews," the alabarch replied, "do not purchase immunity at sacrifice of
+the honor of their women."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not enraged, Alexander," was the reply.  "I am only diverted.
+But the Herod under sentence of death and the Alexandrians loosed upon
+the Regio Judæorum, it seems that the Lady Herod will soon be without a
+protector or a roof-tree.  She had much better go&mdash;to Rome!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He strode out of the presiding-room and into the street before the
+alabarch could conduct him to the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lysimachus and his daughter looked at each other.  Their thoughts
+reached out and gathered in for contemplation all the details and the
+results of the climax.  Then the alabarch opened his arms to his
+daughter and she slipped down on his breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me what thou knowest against Flaccus, and why I have not learned
+of this?" he urged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a sore trial to Lydia's conscience to leave out her own part in
+the story she told, but the alabarch was less attentive to the source
+of her information than to the information itself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did not tell it sooner, because, in ignorance thou wouldst not be
+constantly hiding from Flaccus a distaste, distrust and watchfulness
+that infallibly would have controlled thee hadst thou known his hands
+were red with the blood of a man of whom he spoke fair and whom he
+pretended to love, before the world!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What shall we do?" she asked after a long silence, for the press of
+many evils had stunned her resourcefulness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell the princess first," the alabarch responded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fight!  He can invent twenty excuses to take Cypros from me by law and
+against her will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then we must hide her and speedily!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch thrust his old waxen fingers into his white locks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now who will imperil himself by giving her asylum?" he pondered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia looked up after a little thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Nazarenes," she ventured timidly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!  The apostates!  The community is the most perilous spot in
+Egypt!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here in Alexandria, of a truth," Lydia hurried on eagerly, "but thou
+knowest by report that they have spread abroad among rustics and
+shepherds as a running vine.  Many are living about over the Delta.
+One of them will shelter her, I know.  She will go when we have told
+her what threatens, nor fail to flourish on their rough fare, since she
+hath made her bed by the roadways, and had her bread from the hands of
+wayside mendicants!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch arose and set her on her feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Haste, then, Lydia; no time is to be lost!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But before she reached the threshold of the archway she turned back and
+came slowly to him, closer and closer, until she raised her arms and
+put them about his neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father!" she whispered, "we need have fear of Classicus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The pallor on the old man's face quivered like the reflection of a
+shaken light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is jealous," he answered, "of Marsyas!  Hath he cause, my daughter?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia dropped her head on the alabarch's breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marsyas is an Essene!" she whispered, and the alabarch smoothed her
+curls and was filled with pity.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap27"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXVII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE PROCONSUL'S DELIBERATIONS
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Before sunset that day, Flaccus had received two messages.  One was
+brought by a Jewish slave.  It read:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"TO FLACCUS AVILLUS, PROCONSUL OF EGYPT, GREETING:
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"I have departed.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"CYPROS."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The other came by a Roman courier, who had landed an hour before from
+one of the swift-going triremes which had left Ravenna three days later
+than the passenger boat that had brought Marsyas' tidings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The message also was written in a woman's hand and was no less enraging
+than the other:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"ROME, Kal. Jul. X, 790.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"This bulletin to tell thee, O my raging corybant, that thy cause hath
+ceased to prosper for the past three days.  Mine own part was well
+performed as was thine other minion's, the bewitching Eutychus, but
+desperate work hath been done which bids fair to upset thee and me and
+preserve thine enemies.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"First and above all things, thou wilt remember that it was not in the
+pact that I should do more than lead the Herod out of the path of
+domestic uprightness and hold off my hands.  This hath been already
+done, but the Parcæ have grown weary of yielding thee favor, so read,
+here, following, disaster!
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Herod and his friend, the Essene Marsyas, who had become a dangerous
+Roman, filled with a Jew's cunning and the boldness of a wolf-suckled
+Romulus, till misfortune cut him down&mdash;this same fallen Herod and his
+friend have dropped out of sight, except as Death may bare its arm and
+reach down to cut off the head of the one and the income of the other.
+This much in three days; but Rome hath taught herself to forget in a
+twinkling.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"But Cæsar hath been for many days troubled of a dream.  He telleth it
+thus, in no more words, no fewer: 'I cast dice with Three; three grisly
+hags, and I lose, though the tesseræ were cogged!'  His collection of
+soothsayers, the completest in the world, offered as many readings as
+there are numbers of them in the court.  But Tiberius drew his lip and
+bared his teeth at them and called them pea-hens and cockchafers.  Even
+Thrasullus, he lampooned&mdash;Thrasullus, whom once he feared.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Whereupon, the store of haruspices and augurs that feed upon
+superstitious Rome were brought in&mdash;only to furnish mirth for the court
+and victims for Tiberius.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Then Macro, rummaging about in musty and alien-peopled corners of the
+Imperial City, brought forth a wonder!
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"It&mdash;and would I could call the sex of the creature&mdash;came hither from
+the Orient.  On that naked fact, Rome is left to build its biography,
+describe its looks and fathom its purpose.  For it came before Cæsar,
+and stood, a column in white&mdash;hooded, mummied, shawled, veiled in
+white!  The court hath had spasms, since, fearing that it might have
+been a leper, but I say that there was no sick frame within those
+cerements!  It had the stature and brawn of a man, but it managed its
+garments with the skill of a woman.  It came, heard Cæsar's dream,
+plucked off a husk of its wrappings, produced pigment and stylus and
+wrote thereon.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Then it vanished quite away.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"A hundred courtiers rushed upon the wrapping that it left, and Cæsar,
+pallid even under his wrinkles, screamed to them to pursue the Thing
+and fetch it back.  But it was gone; vanished into thin air.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Then Macro plucked up courage and, taking up the cloth, fetched it to
+Cæsar to read.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"And Cæsar, ashamed to show fear in the face of his court, snatched the
+linen away and read&mdash;to himself!
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Now, whether the writing assured Tiberius that he was the comeliest
+monarch on the earth, or unfolded this scheme which is to follow, no
+man knows.  But that which was written contained persuasion which
+worked on Cæsar's mirth, for he smiled, as he hath not smiled since
+Sejanus tasted death.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"'Go forth and search out that soothsayer,' he commanded Macro, 'that I
+may give him whatsoever thing he would have!'  But Macro hath not
+discovered the soothsayer unto this day.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Meantime Cæsar cleared his audience-chamber, but despatched a slave to
+bring me back to him.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"And when I came I was bidden in whispers to take Caligula to the
+deepest hidden villa on Capri, and entertain him until I was bidden to
+return.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"An hour later, I met my father, the simple Euodus, who told me after
+many charges to keep it secret, that he had been bidden to fetch at
+daybreak the coming morning, whichever prince, Caligula or Tiberius,
+who stood without the emperor's door to give him greeting.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"And yet another hour later, the little Tiberius' tutor was summoned to
+the imperial bed-chamber and came forth some minutes later with a face
+as blank as a Tuscan sherd.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Now, though I saw not the cloth of revelation, nor heard the emperor's
+plans, I knew then, as I know now, that the mysterious soothsayer wrote
+that the dream meant that Cæsar and the Destinies should choose the
+coming emperor, and bade him proceed by these means.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"And I, dutiful lady to an engaging prince, took Caligula, nothing
+loath, and went privately into the interior of the island to that small
+wasp-nest palace clinging to the side of the cruelest precipice in
+these bad hills of Capri.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"But in the night, while yet Caligula lingered at the board, because
+forsooth the slaves had carried me away first, there came the thunder
+of hoofs without, sentries and servants, asleep or drunken or afraid,
+fell right and left, flying feet rang upon the pavement, and before any
+could resist, Caligula was snatched up, rushed out and away into the
+night&mdash;and not any one saw the face of his abductor.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"But when my father duly emerged from the emperor's bed-chamber there
+stood without, not little Tiberius, but Caligula, drenched as if he had
+been soused in a horse-trough to sober him, with immense dazed eyes and
+trembling like an aspen.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"When he was led within, Cæsar started up and glared at him with
+baleful eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"'I was sent by a Dream,' Caligula whispered.  'What wilt thou have of
+me?'
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"And Tiberius, struggling with an apoplexy, fell back and made no
+instant answer.  But presently he said,
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"'Perpol!  I cogged the dice for myself, but it was the Destinies who
+threw them!  Oh, well, it was written, and had to come to pass!'
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Where was the little Tiberius?  Being assured that naught should
+prevent his election, he lingered for his breakfast.  O fatal appetite
+of lusty youth!  He lost an empire by it.  For Cæsar, still afraid of
+the mysterious Thing from the Orient, ratified the choke of the
+Destinies.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"But Caligula hath discovered the identity of the Dream that fetched
+him; which being very substantial and human stands in high favor with
+the prince imperial.  And so, through him as well as through the
+Herod's own claim on Caligula, Agrippa's hopes are brighter.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Wherefore thy campaign against the obstacle between thee and the maker
+of that twenty-year old wound in thy heart must be cautious, no longer
+overt, and above all things not of such nature as may recoil upon thee.
+Hear for once a woman's reason.  If thou accomplish the Herod's end,
+remember that Caligula succeeds Tiberius and will not fail to visit
+vengeance on those who ruined his friend!
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Be wise, be covert, be wary!  If thou hast made mistakes, correct
+them!  Make no new enemies, and turn old ones into friends.  I will
+help thee, here, in Rome, except to the point of exposing myself.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"If thou wilt work, be rapid, for Cæsar declines.  We go hence as soon
+as he may be removed, to Misenum.  But it is only animal flight from
+death; he seems to turn like a wounded jackal and snap at his heels.
+Matters of state, beyond the satisfying of a multitude of grudges, are
+entirely given up to Macro.  But daily the dullness on his brain shifts
+a little, so that the light of recollection penetrates to it, and he
+remembers forgotten animosities.  Herein lies thy hope.  I will not
+suggest Agrippa to him; Caligula would cut my throat before daybreak,
+for the eaves-dropping Macro would know what I did.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Calculate for thyself; get others to do thy work and to shoulder the
+peril.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Meanwhile Venus prosper thee, and may the Parcæ repent.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"JUNIA."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well I know that mummied mystery, that Dream, that unseen
+abductor!" Flaccus raged, gnawing his nails.  "It is that villain
+Essene to whom I owe torture and death!  He, to direct the imperial
+succession!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he fell to considering his obstacles.  Caligula as prince imperial
+and friend to the Herod would permit no persecution of the Jews.  That
+method of coercing the alabarch had to be abandoned.  Next, he re-read
+the single line from Cypros.  She had not gone to Rome; she had hidden
+herself.  That was what the line meant.  They had told her, so she
+hated him.  But he did not wince so much under her hate, as he raged
+over his bafflement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he thought of Classicus, and with the thought his hope revived.
+Finally he sprang up, and, summoning slaves, scattered them broadcast
+over Alexandria in search of the philosopher.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He would go to Rome!  He would bear to Cæsar an appeal from Flaccus to
+command the alabarch to produce Cypros, Herod Agrippa's wife, who had
+been abducted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The plan unfolded itself so readily and so helpfully, that the
+proconsul's face grew radiant with anticipated triumph.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In an hour, a slave returned with Justin Classicus.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap28"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE STRANGE WOMAN
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Cæsar left Capri and roved along the Italian coast in his splendid
+barges, or approached by land close to Rome, even to spend the night
+just without her walls, or in Tusculum, Ostia, Antium or Baiæ.  He
+dragged his court with him, by this time deserted of all upright men,
+and circling, slinking, making sorties and retiring, he brought up at
+last in the villa of Lucullus on Misenum with all his unclean party.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Macro in attendance upon Cæsar had left a tribune in Rome as a post of
+despatch from which necessary information could be communicated to the
+prefect in Misenum.  The tribune, a sour old prætorian, with more
+integrity than graciousness, charged to protect Agrippa's interests for
+Macro's sake, now that Caligula was prince imperial, was empowered with
+not a little of the prefect's authority, which he administered with a
+kind of slavish awe of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So, when a young Alexandrian Jew, giving the name of Justin Classicus,
+bearing a letter of introduction from the Proconsul of Egypt, applied
+for a tessera which would give him admission to Misenum, the tribune
+refused, declaring that the visitor must be indorsed by a Roman of rank
+and in good odor with the emperor.  Classicus took his departure,
+assuring the tribune that he would go to Baiæ where young Tiberius
+lived in his father's villa, and get the indorsement of the lad, to
+whom Flaccus was notedly a partizan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As soon as Classicus had departed, the tribune rushed a messenger to
+Marsyas, with Macro's signet which would command horses at posts
+between Rome and Misenum, and informed the young man what menaced the
+Herod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas did not tarry for preparation.  He knew that Classicus would go
+by the common route, by sea from Ostia, and that the overland route was
+only, by the luckiest of circumstances, the speedier.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before the messenger had returned to the tribune, Marsyas was on the
+road to Misenum.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A day later, he passed the picket thrown out a hundred paces from the
+actual precincts of the villa of Lucullus, but when he offered his
+tessera to the prætorian posted at its inner walls, the soldier did not
+lower his short sword.  Marsyas, who had come to know many of the
+prætorians, looked in surprise at the man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Turn back, good sir," the man said.  "None enters the lines to-day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While he knew that it was useless to ask the sentinel why the arbitrary
+order was in force, the question leaped to his lips before he could
+stop it.  His voice was eager.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What passeth within?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The soldier shook his head.  Marsyas drew away a space and thought.  He
+knew that the little Tiberius was an exception to every law laid down
+by Cæsar; Classicus could not have armed himself with a more potent
+name.  Caligula's friends, even Macro's friends, might be barred, not
+the friends of the little beloved Tiberius.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The obstruction was dangerous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He knew that he had to deal with Classicus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bitterness in his heart rose up and smothered his distress: for the
+moment he lost sight of Agrippa's peril, his hope against Saul of
+Tarsus and his fear for Lydia, in the all-overwhelming rancor against
+the man who was setting foot upon all the purposes in the young
+Essene's life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While he stood wrestling with a mighty impulse to kill Classicus, a
+courier in a well-known livery bowed beside him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Lady Junia sends thee greeting and would see thee in her father's
+house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas turned readily and followed the servant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had come to look upon the Roman woman as a counselor, of whom he had
+some serviceable ideas out of the many he had not adopted.  He knew
+that if he crossed her threshold to find distressing tidings within, he
+was sure of finding an attempt at alleviation at the same time.  He
+might come forth vexed with all his friends, hating more hotly his
+enemies, but less amazed at sin in general.  He had not learned to
+apologize for the world, nor even to believe in it; he had simply come
+to accept it as a necessary and irremediable evil.  The general
+condemnation of his skepticism had not left her untouched, but he felt,
+nevertheless, that no one was so bad that another much worse could not
+be found.  Junia, therefore, occupied a position of lesser blame.  She
+was charitable and amiable, and whatever she had done that failed to
+measure up to his Jewish standard of virtue had been overshadowed by
+her usefulness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was led toward a little inclosure of lattice-work and vines on the
+summit of a knoll, from which the imperial demesnes were visible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Between the screen and the brink of the eminence was earth enough for
+the foothold of an olive, and its dark crown reached over and shaded
+the space within.  There was a single marble exedra with feet and arms
+of carven claws, and through the interstices of the vinery and the
+farther shade and foliage of the new spring, the insula of Euodus arose
+white and graceful.  The sunshine lay in brilliant mosaics over the
+thick sod, and above, lozenges of blue showed where the light had
+entrance.  The breeze from the warm bay went soft-footed through the
+trees, and for the moment Marsyas felt that all the friendliness which
+the world held for him had been caught and pent in the little garden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Junia was there, luxuriously bestowed in the cushions of the stone
+seat.  She made room for him beside her, but he took one of the pillows
+and, dropping it on the grass, sat at her feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at her with expectancy in his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O my Junia," he said, "why dost thou wear that eager, uninformed look,
+as if thou wouldst say, 'Tell me quickly what news thou hast!' when
+thou knowest invariably I bring no cheer!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hear him!" she cried.  "Shall I look thus: 'Here comes Marsyas,
+bearing evil tidings and craving comfort, for he does not care for me
+except when I may do something for him?'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of a truth, dost thou not say that in thy heart?" he insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!  I say this: 'Yonder young man is much in debt to me, but my
+requital when I ask it will be equal to his debt.'  Wherefore, I shall
+serve on till the sum is equal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou speakest truly when thou sayest I am in debt to thee, but if thou
+hast in thy heart something which thou wouldst have me do, command me
+now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance when I see what brought thee to Misenum, to-day," she smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If thou canst help me, Junia, I shall owe thee a life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy life, Marsyas?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; Agrippa's&mdash;or the life of Justin Classicus!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How now!" she cried, and there was more genuine interest in her soft
+voice than she had previously shown.  "What hath stirred thee against
+Classicus?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that moment an indistinct shout of great volume, as of many men
+cheering behind walls, interrupted him.  He turned his head quickly in
+the direction of the palace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What passeth within?" he asked; "why will they not admit me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing, nothing," she said hurriedly, "or at least only an important
+ceremony which none but Cæsar can perform; Macro does not wish him to
+be interrupted.  Go on with thy story!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Flaccus hath sent a messenger to the emperor&mdash;a messenger that
+commands the favor of the little Prince Tiberius."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who told thee?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" she inquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He studied the look on her face and felt that it was strangely composed
+for the assumed eagerness in her voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The tribune refused him the tessera which he must have to approach the
+emperor's abode, and required that he produce the indorsement of some
+notable Roman before he return again.  The messenger went away boasting
+that he would get it of the little Tiberius."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He will!" she assented, "for little Tiberius is not on the promontory
+to-day, and the sentries without dare not refuse the lad's signet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas frowned and looked down: he was perplexed that she did not help.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there no way to shut him out of Misenum?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cæsar's passport is as much a command as Cæsar's denial&mdash;when the
+little Tiberius delivers it," she repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But can I not reach Macro?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," she said decisively.  "Macro's powers pale before the lad's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Was she at the end of her ingenuity, or her willingness, he asked
+himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He will get to the emperor, then, if he start?"  His desperation grew
+under the lady's easy irony.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unless thou or some other of Agrippa's friends disable him permanently
+with a bodkin, or a storm deliver him up to the Nereids."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' hands clenched: he moved as if to rise, but she slipped her
+hands through the bend of his elbow and let them retard him, more by
+their presence than by actual strength.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there something thou canst do?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She hesitated; something seemed to fill her eyes; her lids quivered and
+dropped; speech trembled on her lips, but the momentary impulse passed.
+After a little silence, she lifted her eyes, composed once more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I told thee, once upon a time," she said, "of the world.  I have
+counseled with thee for thine own good, and sometimes thou didst heed
+me, but on the greater number of occasions thou hast chosen for
+thyself.  What hast thou won from thy long battle for the stern
+purposes which have engaged thee?  What hast thou achieved in
+controlling this Herod, or in working against Saul of Tarsus?  What?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He frowned and looked away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing," she answered, "save thou hast gathered perils around thee,
+forced thyself into sterner deeds, and there&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laid a pink finger-tip between his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;there is a blight on thy comeliness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dost thou urge me to give over mine efforts?  If so, speak, that I may
+tell thee I can not obey!" he declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No?  Not even if thy work maketh another unhappy&mdash;whom thou wouldst
+not have to be unhappy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at her: did she mean Lydia?  Or was she concerned for
+Classicus?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Art thou defending Classicus?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay," she smiled, "but I defend myself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was puzzling, and at best irrelevant.  He had come, burdened with
+trouble and concern for Agrippa's life, and she was leading away into
+less serious things.  It was not like her to be capricious.  Perhaps
+there was more in her meaning than he had grasped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I pray thee," she continued, "mingle a little sweet with thy toil!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He arose and moved away from her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Junia, how can I?" he demanded impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, but I am asking payment of the debt thou confessest to me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Help me yet in this danger of Classicus, and I shall be thy slave!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She arose and approached very close to him.  Her face was flushing, her
+hands were outstretched.  He took them because they were offered.
+"Marsyas," she whispered, her brilliant eyes searching his face, "I
+shall not cease to be thy confederate, but I would be more!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a little wrench she freed her hands from his and drew a packet
+from the folds of silk over her breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See!  I have here thy letter, which Herod brought and bitterly
+reproached me for mine enchantment of thee.  And I kept it, till this
+hour!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She put into his hands the scorched and broken letter that he had
+written to Lydia and had believed that he had destroyed so long before.
+While he looked at it, stupefied with astonishment, she slipped her
+arms about his neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not ask thee to marry me," she whispered, a little laugh rippling
+her breath.  "Eros does not summon the law to make his sway effective.
+For thou art an Essene, by repute, and no man need surrender his
+reputation for his character.  Wherefore, though ten thousand dread
+penalties bound thee to celibacy, they do not dull thine eyes nor make
+thy cheeks less crimson!  Be an Essene, or a Jew, Cæsar or a
+slave&mdash;that can not alter thy charm!  And I shall not quibble, so thou
+lovest me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas stood still while he searched her changing face.  It was not a
+new experience for him who had brought picturesque beauty into Rome,
+but the source was different, the result more grave.  On this occasion
+the seductive enumeration of his good looks awakened in him something
+which was affronted; whatever thing it was, it possessed an
+intelligence which comprehended before his brain grew furious, and,
+flinging itself upon his soul, buffeted it into sensitiveness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a rush of rage, he understood all that her act had accomplished
+for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The world of helplessly-impelled children that she had pictured to him,
+the world of innocence and forgivable inclinations, little warfares and
+artless badness, play or the feeding of primitive hungers, or of
+building of roof-trees&mdash;all that with which she had partly enchanted
+him was suddenly stripped of its atmosphere, and the glare of
+realities, fierce passions, deadly hates, shamelessness and blood stood
+before him.  In short, he had been instantly precipitated into his old
+Essenic misanthropy now directly imposed upon the heads of individuals,
+which before in his solitary days had been heaped without understanding
+upon the heads of strangers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did care because that the creature had simply betrayed her true
+self; more dreadful than that, she had wrested from him the charity his
+experience in the world had yielded him&mdash;for Lydia!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blind fury maddened him; her offense called for a fiercer response than
+a blush; she had robbed his heart wholly and was burning its empty
+house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put forth his strength, undid her arms and flung her from him.  For
+a moment he felt a bloodthirsty desire to follow her up and break her
+over the stone exedra, but remnants of reason prevailed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Springing through the exit, he was gone without uttering a word in
+answer to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Junia heard the last of his footsteps on the flagging leading out of
+her father's grounds, and for a moment wavered between screaming for
+her own slaves to pursue him, or delivering him up to the prætorian
+guards.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For what?" Discretion asked.  "To have him tell, under torture, thy
+part in sheltering Agrippa?  At thy peril!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he had flung her away; he had rejected her; he had escaped after
+all her pains, her pretensions, her plans!  For him, she had left
+Alexandria and endured Cæsar.  For him, she had forgone seasons of
+conquest in Rome!  For him, she had neglected Caligula, and now
+Caligula would be emperor.  For him she had sacrificed everything and
+had lost, at last.  He, a Jew, a manumitted slave, a barbarian!  She, a
+favorite of emperors and consuls, a manipulator of affairs, fortunes
+and families!  And he had rejected her!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were muffled flying footsteps on the sod without, and Caligula,
+pallid and moist with terrified perspiration, dashed into the inclosure
+as if seeking a place to hide.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he saw her, he sprang back, but halted, on recognizing her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ate and the Furies!" he said in a strained whisper.  "What hath
+happened but that Cæsar revived while the guards were hailing me as
+Imperator!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A hater of pork, a wearer of gowns, a mutterer of prayers, a bearded
+clown of a rustic!  And she, it was, whom he had rejected!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stand like a frozen pigeon!" Caligula hissed, "while I tell thee of my
+death!  He knew what the shouts meant!  He showed his teeth like a
+panther, transfixed me with his dead eyes and signed for wine!  When he
+hath strength enough to order it, and breath enough to form the words&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she had not urged the Herod's death for his sake, and thereby
+imperiled her own living with Flaccus; she had sent him a passport to
+Capri and one to Misenum, and rescued him from the admiring eyes of
+other women, to make sure of him&mdash;and he had flung her away, at last!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He will starve me to death: drown me in the Mamertine!" Caligula raged
+under his breath.  "Starve me, I say!  Speak, corpse!  What shall I do!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her rage by this time had so filled her that it meant to have
+expression or have her life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kill him!" she hissed through her teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Marsyas' sentence, but it fell upon Tiberius.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Caligula ceased to tremble and stared at her with a strange look in his
+bird-like eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She seized one of the pillows and brought it down over the seat of the
+divan, and held it firmly as if to prevent it from being thrown off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thus!" she said venomously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the nurses and Charicles, the physician," Caligula protested,
+fearing nevertheless that his protest might hold good.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Put them out!  Will they dare resist the coming emperor?  Have Macro
+aid thee, so he dare not tell upon thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was becoming cool.  It would be good to vent her murderous impulses
+on something.  Caligula gazed at her with fascination in his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, then, thou, and see it done!  Neither shalt thou talk," he said
+suddenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stepped to his side, but before she reached the exit of the
+inclosure, she stopped and looked squarely into his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Herod hath a slave who hath wronged me," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which one?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Essene!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, take vengeance on some other, then, for He is my friend!  I have
+vowed him favor!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?" she demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay; do not stop&mdash;thou art to see this thing done!  Why do I promise
+the Essene favor?  Because, forsooth, he made an emperor of me!  Come!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap29"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIX
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+IN EXTREMIS
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas left the promontory at once.  He had hired one of the public
+passenger boats to cross from Baiæ to Misenum and the boatman had
+waited for the return of his fare.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Many went as he was going, but they were patricians singly and in
+groups that passed him, with sober faces and without a word to each
+other.  He recognized senators, ædiles, consuls, duumvirs, prætors,
+legates all hurrying toward the landing.  All noble Misenum seemed
+suddenly to have determined on an exodus.  An anxious and distressed
+company they were, and had Marsyas' own brain been less hot with anger,
+he might have meditated on the meaning of it all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the time he reached the bay, the sunset-reddened water was covered
+with light-running coasters, by the signs on aplustre or vexillum, a
+fleet of patrician craft making across the bay to Neapolis, or scudding
+for the open sea and Ostia.  He saw one or two vessels approaching
+Misenum, hailed by departing ones, and, after a colloquy, turned back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Vaguely wondering whether Cæsar's latest whim was to drive his court
+from him, Marsyas got into his own highly-painted shell and told his
+oarsman to take him across to Baiæ.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he sat at the tiller and moodily watched the Italian night come up
+over the sea, the capes, the hill-slopes and finally cover the somber
+head of the unsuspected Vesuvius, he was afraid that his long ignored
+Essenic rigor would assert itself.  He was ashamed of himself, and for
+the moment looked upon the life he had led in Rome with revulsion.  But
+he put off his self-examination with a kind of terror.  There was yet
+much that was harsh and unlawful to be done, and he dared not hold off
+his hand.  Lydia's life and good name, the avenging of Stephen,
+Agrippa's life and Cypros' happiness were weighed against Classicus and
+his own soul in the other balance.  He could not hesitate now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he set foot in opulent Baiæ the night had fallen and with his
+return to the city, which he knew sheltered Agrippa's most active enemy
+at that hour, all his energies turned toward the purpose that had
+originally brought him to Misenum.  He believed that if Classicus had
+insinuated himself into young Tiberius' favor, doubtless the prince's
+hospitality had been extended to him.  He turned his steps toward the
+range of villas built between Baiæ and Puteoli, overlooking the bay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had in mind the method of his last resort, and he went as one goes
+when desperation carries him forward&mdash;swiftly and relentlessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But, crossing the town by the water-front, he met a handful of slaves
+bearing baggage toward the wharves.  With his old Essenic thoroughness
+he halted to examine them to make sure that Classicus had not
+outstripped him finally.  By their particularly fine physique and
+diverse nationality Marsyas knew them to be costly slaves of the
+familia of no small patrician.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He heard the ramble of chariot-wheels on the lava-paved streets; the
+master was following.  As the vehicle passed under a lamp a few paces
+away, Marsyas distinguished the occupants as Classicus and the young
+Tiberius.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He felt a chill creep over his heart; the hour had come.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He moved after the slaves toward the wharf.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Baiæ's beauties extended out and waded into the waves.  The landings of
+marble had to be fit masonry for the feet of the Cæsars and their train
+when they asked the hospitality of the sea.  Luxury, not commerce, came
+down to the water's edge and gazed Narcissus-like at its lovely image
+in the quiet bay.  Here were no Algerian hulks with their lateen sails,
+no evil-smelling fishing fleets, or docks or warehouses, or city
+cloacas.  Baiæ was a city of dreams and warm baths, of idleness and
+temples and villas, of gardens and fragrance and beauty and repose.
+Now, the velvet winds of the starry Italian night rippled the face of
+the bay; the last faint luster of a set moon showed a bar of white
+light, low down in the southwest, and against that, blackly outlined, a
+splendid galley was driving like the wind into port.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A dozen yards from the end of the pier lay a passage-boat, with a light
+on its mast and a soft glow in its curtained cabin, Marsyas wondered if
+Tiberius meant to accompany his guest to Misenum.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But while he thought, Tiberius set Classicus down, took leave with an
+apology and a reminder that guests awaited him at home, and drove
+rapidly back into Baiæ.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A small rowboat lay under shadow at the side of the landing and the two
+couriers loading the baggage awaited now their passenger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Marsyas emerged from the dark and stepped before Classicus.  A
+glance at the tidy countenance of the philosopher sent a rush of heat
+through Marsyas' veins.  Classicus was not feeling the spiritual combat
+within him, for the work he meditated, that racked the young Essene.
+That fact acknowledged helped Marsyas in his intent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A word," Marsyas said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Classicus stopped, a little startled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who art thou?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marsyas, the Essene."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man had not helped his cause by the introduction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Out of my path," Classicus said coldly.  "I have nothing to say to
+thee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have somewhat to say to thee, Classicus.  If thou must be hard of
+heart, be not foolish and injurious to thyself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suffer no pangs of concern for my welfare," the philosopher said.
+"Preserve them, lest thine own cause find thee bankrupt in tears!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My cause will not need them: thou mayest.  I know why thou art here
+and whither thou art going and for what purpose.  I know who sent thee,
+why and what thou wilt accomplish.  I know how feebly thou art aided
+and how much imperiled.  Above all things I know what will happen to
+thee unless thou hearest me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a number of door-cracks hath yielded thee information!  Stand
+aside before I call my servants to thee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas folded his arms.  The green blackness of the bay threw his
+solid outlines into relief.  The threat he had made suddenly appealed
+to Classicus as ill-advised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jewish brethren," Marsyas answered, his voice dropping into the
+softness which was premonitory, "do not speak thus with each other.
+This was taught thee in the Synagogue.  If thy lapse into evil hath let
+thee forget it, I care enough for thy manner to recall it to thee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"First and above all things, know thou that I am not here to satisfy
+the hate of thee because thou hast wrested from me my beloved!  Next,
+that I am here to stop thee in order to save her life, more than any
+other's.  Now, for thyself.  Thou goest to accomplish a deed that would
+recoil upon thine own head.  If thou be tired of living, Classicus,
+choose another way than to perish for the entertainment of him who
+duped thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For thy peace of mind, O sage fool," Classicus observed, "know that I
+come bearing a petition to the emperor to seek for Agrippa's wife, who
+hath been abducted!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If thou present a petition which in any way favors Agrippa or his
+wife, Tiberius will test the cord on thee to be sure it is strong
+enough to strangle Agrippa.  And I tell thee, Classicus, the Charon of
+the heathen Shades will not push off with the Herod; he will save
+himself a journey and await thy arrival!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Still threatening, still trembling for me!  If I call these slaves to
+remove thee thou mayest tremble for thyself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am large, Classicus, strong and determined.  I could kill thee
+before thy stupid slaves ran three paces!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Classicus turned his eyes to the level line to the southwest.  The
+luster on the horizon was gone.  The great galley, broadside now as she
+hunted her channel, loomed large on the outskirts of the sheltered
+water.  Once, the deck-lights flashed on a bank of her oars, rising wet
+and slippery from the sea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen, brother," Marsyas continued.  "Thou shall proceed with me to
+the maritime harbor at Puteoli, and get aboard the vessel there which
+sails for Alexandria.  Thou shall leave Italy: thou shalt discontinue
+thy work against Agrippa&mdash;or have the knife, now!  Decide!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hiss and protest of plowing waters came now on the breeze; the
+regular beat of many oars, working as one, broke the hiss into
+rhythmical bars: an invisible pennant, high up in the helpless shrouds
+where night covered canvas and mast, was caught suddenly by a vagrant
+current of wind and fluttered with rapid pulsations of sound.  Long
+lances of light reached out on the water and began to stretch
+broadening fingers toward the pier.  Humming noises like blended voices
+came with the rattle of chains.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas knew that Classicus was awaiting the arrival of the galley for
+the advantages of the interruption and to secure Marsyas' arrest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young Essene stepped close to Classicus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall wait no longer for thy answer," he said softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The philosopher's voice rang out, clear and unafraid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hither, slaves!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas was not unprepared.  He seized Classicus and forced him back
+into the black shadows of the clustered columns with which the inner
+edge of the landing was ornamented.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two couriers came running, but Marsyas spoke authoritatively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good slaves, if ye come at me ye will force me to kill this young
+man!" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take him!" Classicus cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two servants sprang forward, but Marsyas, seizing Classicus by the
+hair, thrust his head back and put the point of the knife at his throat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two halted, tautly drawn up as if the point of the blade touched
+their own flesh.  Instinctively they knew that the silky quiet in the
+voice was deadly; Marsyas had them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the galley was delivering up her passengers to the land.  The
+first ship's boat that touched the landing carried four patricians.
+The soft sound of heelless sandals on the pavement drifted down from
+Babe.  Some one of the citizens was coming to meet the arrivals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The four stepped out, and the ship's boat shot back into the darkness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho!  Regulus," one of the four cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Coming!" the citizen answered from the street.  "What news?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cæsar is dead!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Classicus relaxed in Marsyas' grip; the slaves stood transfixed; the
+young Essene, holding fast, stilled his loud heart and listened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Old age?" the citizen ventured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perchance; yes, doubtless," one of the four answered in a lower tone,
+for the citizen had come close and was taking their hands.  "Smothered
+in his silken cushions&mdash;died of too much comfort!  Dost understand?
+Well enough!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' hands dropped from Classicus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the time the Alexandrian aroused to his opportunity, Marsyas had
+disappeared like a spirit into the night.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap30"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXX
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE EREMITE IN SCARLET, AND THE BANKRUPT IN PURPLE
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Lydia came upon Vasti, the bayadere, returning to the culina with a
+flaring taper in her hand.  The brown woman's eyes were fixed on the
+flame and she whispered under her breath, till the licking red tongue
+of the taper flickered and wavered back at her as if speaking in signs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What saith the Red Brother?" Lydia asked, in halting Hindu, for she
+had begun to learn her waiting-woman's tongue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He keeps his own counsel, who is fellow to the Fire," was the answer.
+"Thy neighbor, the philosopher, awaits thee within."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia went slowly on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she entered the alabarch's presiding-room, Classicus arose from a
+seat beside a cluster of lamps and came toward her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy servant at the door tells me that thy father is not in," he said.
+"I came to speak with him of thee: but perchance it is better that I
+tell thee that which I have to tell, before any other."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia sat down on the divan, and Classicus sat beside her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I come to submit to thy scorn or thy pity," he said, "either of which
+I deserve!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What hast thou done?" she asked, feeling a vague sense of fear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have been Flaccus' fool!" he vowed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia's eyes grew troubled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What didst thou for him?" she asked in a lowered tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I permitted him to catch me up in the city and rush me to Rome with a
+memorial to Cæsar, beseeching the emperor's aid in seeking the Lady
+Cypros, who had been abducted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia's level brows dropped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Charging us with abduction?" she remarked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Charging no man with abduction, but declaring that she was missing
+from thy father's roof!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Classicus' face filled with contrite humiliation under her gaze.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why so late with the story?" she asked.  "Why didst thou not come to
+us before thou wast persuaded to go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Charge me not with more folly than I did commit!" he besought.  "I was
+caught by his servants in the Brucheum and haled before him, where, in
+all excitement, he told that the Lady Cypros was missing, and that I,
+as the safe friend of the alabarch and the proconsul, had been
+commissioned to enlist Cæsar's interest in her cause!  The vessel ready
+for Puteoli waited only on the night-winds to sail!  I was not given
+time to change my raiment, or to fill my purse from mine own treasure,
+much less to take counsel with thy father and learn the truth!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And besides Flaccus, we must now take Cæsar into consideration in
+protecting this unhappy woman!" she exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" he cried.  "A friend of Agrippa's, whom I met in Rome, stopped me
+in time!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked away from him and he took her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Am I pardoned?" he asked plaintively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou didst no harm; but it should serve to awaken thee to the evil in
+this dangerous Roman!  If only Agrippa would return, how readily the
+skies would brighten for us all!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What wilt thou do if the Herod returns not?" he asked after a little
+silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do not speak of it, Classicus," she said hurriedly.  "Flaccus is
+desperate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If Agrippa abandon Cypros," he offered, "she can divorce him, and
+simplify the tangle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, Justin!  Cypros is bound heart and soul to Agrippa.  Even if
+he died, she would not turn to Flaccus!  The dear Lord be thanked that
+we have a virtuous woman to defend!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, then, thou strict little rabbin, what shall we do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How slow these ships!  The last letter we sent to him can hardly have
+reached Sicily!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He hath had a sufficiency of letters by this time!  What was it he
+wrote thy father, last: 'I come with all speed; but reflect that Cæsar
+is master over me: his consent is needful!'  Ha! ha!  Caligula would
+give Agrippa half his Empire did he ask for it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She leaned her cheek in her hand, turning her face away from Classicus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alas!  I know why he lingers," she said to herself.  "Marsyas hath
+departed unto Judea, and Agrippa lacks his controlling hand!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I appreciate the peril threatening thy father's house," the
+philosopher added after her continued silence, "and thou knowest thou
+shall have my help&mdash;blundering as it may be!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were footsteps in the vestibule, and the alabarch stood in the
+archway.  Lydia sprang up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What," she cried, unable to wait for his report, "what said the
+proconsul?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch came into his presiding-room with a slow step; he let his
+cloak fall on his chair, and stood in the lamplight worn and troubled.
+Seeing Classicus, he greeted the visitor before he answered Lydia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Evil, evil; naught but evil," he sighed, "and threats.  And the
+proconsul's threats are never empty!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What does he threaten?" Classicus asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Me&mdash;and mine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alas! our people!" Lydia sighed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, daughter!  Thee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia!" Classicus exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why does he threaten me?" Lydia cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch shook his head.  "Flaccus betrayed only enough to show
+that he will concentrate his vengeance against me and thee, or me
+through thee, but thee of a surety, my Lydia!  Yet, he was as dark and
+ominous as the wrath of God!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia came close to her father and he laid his arm about her shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia, that bat escaped from Sheol, Eutychus, is openly attached to
+Flaccus' train; once, he abode under my roof, where he could learn many
+things.  Has he any information against thee which Flaccus could use?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia's answer was not ready.  It meant too much to tell that which the
+alabarch groped after.  Already she had surrendered until she was
+stripped of all but her father's confidence, and her people's respect.
+She could not cast off these ties to all that was desirable on earth.
+And Classicus, silent and smug behind her, seemed to be a prepared
+witness awaiting a confession.  Conscience and human nature had the
+usual struggle, and when she replied she did not raise her head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My father, Eutychus will never be at a loss for information.  What
+actualities he can not furnish, he may have from his imagination."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alexandria does not wait for charges against the Jews," the alabarch
+said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But what says Flaccus?" Classicus urged after a silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That I have abducted Agrippa's wife; that I have been guilty of
+insubordination to him, my superior; that thou, my Lydia, art amenable
+to him and all the people of Alexandria, and that he will proceed as
+his information warrants, unless I produce Cypros&mdash;between sunrise and
+sunset, to-morrow!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What wilt thou do?" Lydia asked in a suppressed voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can produce Cypros," he answered, torn by the inevitable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" Lydia cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If Agrippa cares so little for her&mdash;" the alabarch began, but Lydia
+put off his arm and stood away from him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This matter is neither thine nor Agrippa's to decide!  Cypros is a
+good woman and she shall be kept secure&mdash;even against herself, if need
+be!  Thou shalt not bring her before Flaccus!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia, I am brought to decide between her and thee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou canst suffer dishonor and peril, even as Cypros," Classicus put
+in, to Lydia.  "We are no less unwilling to surrender thee to the
+unknown charges Flaccus brings against thee, than thou art to give up
+Cypros!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Flaccus is no arbiter of the virtue of women!  He is not Cæsar, beyond
+whom there is no human appeal!  Let him remember that it is no longer
+the old man Tiberius who is emperor of the world, but the young man
+Caligula, whose warmest friend is a Jew!  Let him touch Cypros at his
+peril!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Daughter, why should Cæsar defend a woman for whom not even her
+husband cares?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no ready reply to this, and Lydia's face grew white.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it like thee, my father, to abandon the wholly undefended?" she
+asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch bit his lip and turned his head away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Granted, then," put in Classicus in his even voice, "that we shall
+keep the lady in hiding and treat her to no ungentle usage!  Now, what
+will become of Lydia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch raised his eyes, filled with fire and desperation.  Lydia
+drooped more and more, and presently she put her hand to her forehead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there nothing to be done?" Classicus persisted calmly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The silence became strained and lengthened to the space of many
+heart-beats before he spoke again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia can be hidden, with the princess," he offered finally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia raised her head, and looked at Classicus.  Not for her the refuge
+that was Cypros', for if Flaccus held in truth the secret of her
+conversion to the Nazarene faith, she would only lead his officers
+straight upon the Nazarenes all over Egypt.  Whatever people sheltered
+her, she would bring disaster and death on their heads.  As Marsyas had
+been under the oppression of Saul of Tarsus, she had become as a
+pestilence!  She wondered if Classicus realized how thoroughly she
+understood him.  His face did not wear an air of respect for his plan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It can not be," she said quietly, and the alabarch looked startled at
+her words.  Classicus submitted to her objection at once.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," he said, "there is but one other way that I can invent&mdash;and
+this I offer last, because it is dearest to me.  I have lands in Greece
+and favor with the legate there.  Flaccus' power can not extend beyond
+his own dominions.  Wilt thou not come to Greece&mdash;with me, my Lydia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia's gaze did not falter throughout this speech; she had expected,
+long ago, that when Classicus had hedged her about, he would offer his
+hand as her one escape.  Drop by drop the color left her face; her lips
+grew pale, and took on a curve of mute appeal; her eyes were the eyes
+of suffering, but not the eyes of a vanquished woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch had turned hurriedly away.  But Classicus gazed, as if
+awaiting her reply, at his smooth, thin hands, now stripped of their
+jewels, incident to the shrinkage in his purse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The drip of the waterfall in the garden within came very distinctly
+upon the silence in the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A cry from the porter, speaking in the vestibule, brought the alabarch
+up quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Master! master!  The prince!  The prince!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The king, thou untaught rustic!"  Agrippa's tones, subdued but
+mirthful, followed upon the porter's cry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lysimachus sprang toward the vestibule, but Lydia, transfixed by
+reactionary emotions, did not move.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But before the alabarch reached the arch, two men appeared in the
+opening.  Except for the fillet of gold set so low on his head that it
+passed around his forehead just above the brows, Agrippa might have
+been the same nonchalant bankrupt gambling with loaded tesseræ or
+hunting loans on bad security.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other was Marsyas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Classicus lifted his brows and arose to the proper spirit in which to
+greet a king.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Count it not flattery, lord," the alabarch cried, extending his hands
+toward the new-comers, "that I say that Abraham's radiant visitors were
+not more welcome than thou!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better the unprepared alabarch," said Marsyas, "than any host who hath
+expected his guests!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prince laughed, and discovering Lydia, bowed low to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No change in thee, sweet Lydia," he exclaimed as she bent in obeisance
+to the fillet of gold about his forehead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas stood a moment aside, his glance roving quickly from her to
+Classicus.  With an effort he put back the rush of feeling that crowded
+upon his composure and came to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hast thou not changed, Lydia?" he asked.  The hand closing over his
+did not belie the tremor in her voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A blessing on you both," she said.  "You are the redemption of this
+house of trouble!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have been everything but heroes in our days," Marsyas said.
+"Welcome the opportunity!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho!  Classicus!" Agrippa cried jovially, "hast thou failed to
+overthrow the tribute-demanding Sphinx or the Dragon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas gazed at the philosopher standing with inclined head, while he
+made felicitous answers to the prince, and said to himself:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Happy phrase, my lord King!  There standeth the tribute-demanding
+Sphinx, even now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa addressed himself to the alabarch, and between Marsyas and
+Classicus there stood no saving obstruction.  Marsyas' nostrils
+quivered; he had fleeting but perfect summaries of the wrongs the man
+had worked against him.  To find him now a guest entertained under the
+roof he had striven to injure, brought the Essene's temper up to a
+climacteric point.  But he felt Lydia's presence, pacific, temperate
+and persuasive, restraining him.  Of all the many deceits he had used
+throughout his precarious life of late, none seemed so impossible of
+practice as to offer a dispassionate word to Classicus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was saved for the moment by an exclamation from the alabarch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In all truth, that manifestation of Cæsar's favor?" he cried eagerly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A truth!" Agrippa declared.  "Rome made a dandy out of Marsyas.
+Twelve legionaries, before he would stir a step to Egypt!  Twelve!  All
+armed; brasses so polished that one looks into the sun who looks at
+one.  None short of three cubits in stature and visaged like Mars!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas cut off the prince's raillery with a direct and serious query.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How is it with our lady?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Still in hiding from Flaccus," the alabarch replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa looked in astonishment from one to another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Surely," he said earnestly, "you have not carried this delusion to
+such an extreme!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Delusion, lord," Marsyas repeated, facing him.  "Let those first speak
+who are not deluded.  Then thou shall apply the word to him it fits."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good friends," the Herod protested, "all wise men cherish a folly.
+Marsyas, being the wisest of my knowing, hath his own.  He hath held
+fast against flawless argument and solid truth to the delusion that my
+honest, timid wife hath awakened passion in the heart of this
+proconsul, who hath all the beauty and wit of Egypt and Rome from which
+to choose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wilt thou continue further, lord," Marsyas said, "and tell them how
+thou hast explained this mystery to thyself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, Marsyas!  Make confession here, openly, of a thing which I blush
+to confess to myself?" the Herod laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never fear; thy audience hath already acquitted thee of blame!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, then; so assured of clemency, I tell this behind my palms and
+with the prayer that the walls do not repeat it to my lady's ears!
+Learn, then, for the first time, that Junia is the cause of my
+disaster, because, forsooth, she is as fickle and capricious a woman as
+she is bad.  Until the unhappy Herod was blown of ill winds to
+Alexandria, his single haven, she was Flaccus' mistress.  When I
+appeared, for no other cause than the Mightiness of her fancy, she
+dropped Flaccus and precipitated all manner of disaster upon my head.
+There is the true story!  Cypros, forsooth!  Cypros is an upright Arab,
+twenty years married and mother of three!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Junia!" the alabarch repeated irritably.  "Junia constructed more of
+Flaccus' villainies than Flaccus himself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And will nothing dislodge this wild thing from your brain?" Agrippa
+cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Name it what you will, lord," the alabarch answered, "but I have a
+further story to tell than all my fruitless letters told, when I stood
+in fear of their interception!  Thou hast not forgotten the attack on
+thee on the night of Flora's feast; that, thou canst ascribe to
+Flaccus' jealousy, but how wilt thou explain that when the news of thy
+disaster reached Alexandria, Flaccus put off his amiable front and
+commanded me to deliver Cypros to him&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Commanded you to deliver Cypros to him!" Agrippa cried, the fires of
+anger igniting in his eyes.  "What had she to do with this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch drew himself up, ready in his dignity and authority to
+justify his deeds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If it proceedeth to an accounting, I and mine will bear witness to her
+innocence and loving fidelity to thee!  Yet, remember, lord, she hath
+the first right to ask why she hath been left without thy care thus
+long!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa flushed darkly, but Marsyas stopped the retort on his lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let us not try each other!  Go on, good sir," he pleaded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I refused, and he threatened to hurl the Alexandrians on the Regio
+Judæorum.  But in the meantime, fate or fortune, God knows which,
+ordered that Tiberius should choose Caligula to succeed him.  The news
+reached Alexandria and stayed Flaccus' hand, for then he stood in
+wholesome fear of thy friend, the prince imperial.  But thou didst
+tarry and tarry, and the more thou didst tarry, the more his hopes and
+his desires grew.  No longer the Regio Judæorum dared he threaten, but
+me and mine&mdash;Lydia, above all!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia!" Marsyas exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I tell thee, my Lord Agrippa," the alabarch continued, by this
+time a picture of refined indignation, "at this very hour I was brought
+face to face with a hard decision between my daughter and thy wife!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas turned toward Classicus, but the storm of denunciation that
+leaped to his lips was checked.  What should he win for his exposure of
+Classicus, but scorn from Lydia, and a misconstruction of his motive?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Atavistic ferocity glittered in Agrippa's eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is my turn!" he brought out between clenched teeth, "and I have a
+long score, a long score with Flaccus!  Where is my lady?  Let her be
+brought!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia broke in before the alabarch could answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In hiding!" she answered quickly, and Marsyas fancied that she feared
+a too explicit answer from her father.  Before whom was she afraid to
+disclose the princess' refuge, if not Classicus?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take four of my prætorians, then," Agrippa commanded, "and lead me to
+her hiding-place!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch bowed and summoned servants.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have we, then, delivered this house of peril?" Marsyas asked of
+Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Flaccus," said Classicus, speaking for the first time, "may feed his
+thirst for revenge!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get but my lady, first!" Agrippa insisted.  "Flaccus hath played and
+lost!  He shall pay his forfeit!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The servants were ready with the alabarch's cloak; the porter announced
+chariots waiting, and in an incredibly short time, Marsyas was alone
+with Lydia and Classicus, in the presiding-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall return to the ship and prepare it for voyage," Marsyas said,
+in the silence that instantly fell.  "Since I return to Judea with the
+King, perchance I should say farewell!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia's lips parted, and her miserable eyes turned away from him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Await my father's return," she said in a low voice,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hath he far to go?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;far!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Classicus waited serenely for Marsyas' answer.  In that composure
+Marsyas read unconcern, which the Essene interpreted as hopelessness
+for his own cause.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So long as we abide in Egypt, we are a peril," he replied.  "Even now
+we have delayed too long!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He extended his hand to Lydia, and slowly, she put her own into it.
+The touch of the small fingers played too strongly upon his
+self-control.  He released them hurriedly and strode toward the
+vestibule.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But at the threshold, indecision and astonishment and acute realization
+of the meaning of the thing he was doing seized him.  He whirled about.
+Classicus stood beneath the cluster of lamps, his face alight with
+triumphant superciliousness.  Even under Marsyas' eye the expression
+did not alter.  Lydia seemed to have shrunk; her hands clasped before
+her were wrung about each other in an agony of restraint, but the
+pitiful appeal in her eyes was all that Marsyas saw.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In an instant he was again at her side, his heart speaking in his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou wearest yet the free locks of maidenhood," he said, in a voice so
+smooth and low that it chilled her, "perchance thou wilt tell me ere I
+depart if thou art to marry&mdash;this man?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment there was silence; Marsyas heard his mad heart beating,
+but if Classicus felt apprehension, there was no display of it on his
+face.  Then Lydia raised her head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," she said, in a voice barely audible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas turned upon Classicus, and between the two there passed the
+silent communication of men who wholly understand each other.  Then
+Classicus took up his kerchief, and, with a smile and a wave of his
+hand, walked out of the presiding-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Lydia was out of reach of Marsyas' arms when he turned to her.
+Crying and afraid, she motioned him back as he pressed toward her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stopped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Am I still unacceptable to thee, Lydia?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Marsyas, thou returnest in the same spirit as thou didst depart from
+me&mdash;unchanged, unchanged!  But striving to change&mdash;for my sake!  Do not
+so, for me!  Not for me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The grief and pleading in the black eyes that rested upon her changed
+slowly.  Rebuffed and stung he threw up his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better the old Essenic shape in which I was bound against thee and
+thou against me?" he said bitterly.  "So!  The Essenes seem not to be
+wrong in their teaching of distrust in women!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If he expected her to retort, the compassion and gentleness in her
+answer surprised him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not that, my Marsyas," she said, coming nearer to him in her
+earnestness.  "But change does not consist in the raiment thou wearest,
+nor in the claim to be altered.  Thou canst not in truth believe that I
+have done right!  Thou forgivest me for thy love's sake, but thy
+intelligence is no less critical!  I can not, will not put away the
+faith of the Master; I can not regret the spirit of the deed I did for
+their sake.  And between us it is as it was the night I sent thee from
+me, so long ago!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I have changed," he protested hastily.  "The world hath taught me
+much: I can understand; I can extenuate greater errors&mdash;I have done so;
+believe me, it is only for thy sake&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But canst thou wholly acquit me&mdash;wholly justify me, Marsyas?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at her with pleading in his eyes, and made no answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No man should wed or worship with a single doubt," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fearing more than he dared confess to himself, he caught her hands and
+would not let her leave him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia, I have not had the portion which God and women allot to most
+men," he said almost piteously.  "There are delights that should be
+mine by right, but they are denied me!  Other men have their dreams,
+their moments of tender preoccupation.  They can live again through
+hours between only themselves and one other.  They can feel again the
+touches of a woman's hand upon them, the warmth of her cheek and the
+love in her kiss.  No matter the evil, the sorrows that follow, these
+things are theirs, to hold in memory!  No matter the time or the place,
+they can summon it all from a song, drink it from a goblet of wine, or
+breathe it in from a flower!  It is twice living it; once, in the
+actuality; again, in the dream!  But I&mdash;I have nothing!  My teaching
+did not permit me to look forward to such a thing&mdash;and thou,
+Lydia&mdash;Lydia, thou dost not permit me to look back upon it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her eyes filled with tears, and a rush of tender words trembled on her
+lips.  His gaze, quickened by longing for the thing these signs
+typified, caught the softening in her young face.  He seized upon the
+hope that it gave him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dost thou love me, Lydia?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I love thee, Marsyas."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew her to him, put his arms about her and pressed her to his
+breast.  She did not resist him, for she was tired of contention with
+herself, tired of distress, afraid of the menace the future showed her,
+and withal fainting in hope.  She dropped her head on his shoulder,
+with her face turned up to him.  Marsyas' soul filled to the full with
+subdued, bewildering emotions.  It was not the first time he had held
+this sweet child-woman in his arms, but fear, tumult, impetuousness and
+protest had claimed preëminence in his thoughts before.  Now in the
+quiet and shelter of the alabarch's deserted presiding-room, he found
+new experience, new feelings.  Under the low light of the clustered
+lamp, he looked down on the face turned to him, smoothed with soft
+touches the long, delicate black brows; passed light fingers over the
+bloom of her cheek and saw the faint rose color come again in the white
+lines the little pressure made; put back the loose curl fallen before
+her perfect ear and marveled at its silkiness; watched the quiet
+palpitation in the milk-white throat&mdash;sensed, somehow, the repose in
+herself, the command, even in this momentary surrender, the divinity in
+her womanliness.  He was ashamed of his distrust, startled at his new
+sensations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps she saw the passing of feeling over his face, for she stirred
+and would have raised herself, but the movement brought him back to
+reality, and a fiercer rebellion against it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, nay, Lydia; I love thee!  It is my one virtue; my sinful soul
+hath been married to thee these many strange months.  Thou art become a
+necessity to my life, as needful as bread and drink, as blood and
+breath!  Thou art the essential salt in my veins&mdash;the world to me!
+Nay, more!  Thou art love, for world is a word with boundaries!  I have
+striven for thy sake and I have not failed.  I am able now to obtain
+the quieting of thy chief enemy, the refreshment of the starved heart
+in me, thirsting for revenge, and of our own security henceforward in
+the world.  Yet, I am not going to Judea with Agrippa.  I abide here
+with thee in Alexandria, until I have won the immediate safety of thy
+body and thy soul!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She strove to stop him in his resolution, but he kissed her, and,
+leading her to the foot of the well-remembered stairs, whispered his
+good night.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap31"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXI
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE DREGS OF THE CUP OF TREMBLING
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+By noon the following day, all Alexandria roared with the news that
+Agrippa had returned a king!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Regio Judæorum lost its repose.  Certain irrational of the
+inhabitants displayed carpeting and garlands in honor of the Jewish
+potentate, within their boundaries.  But others, instructed by
+instinct, closed the fronts of the houses and laid their treasure
+within grasp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the advice of Marsyas, Agrippa had caused his ship to bring to,
+outside the harbor, and await the dropping of darkness before he came
+ashore.  The few hours he spent in Alexandria had been passed under
+cover, and none without the alabarch's household was aware of his
+presence in the city.  The newly-crowned Judean king found it difficult
+to repress his desire for ostentation, and when Marsyas' plan for
+secrecy miscarried at last, Agrippa was irritated because he had been
+deprived of a longed-for opportunity to astonish the Alexandrians.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But who could have told it?" he asked, with ill-concealed satisfaction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' lips curled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Classicus," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before the porch of the alabarch's house groups of people came to stand
+and discuss the fortunes of the Herod.  The sounds, never
+congratulatory, began to change in temper.  As the day grew, numbers
+began to accumulate and hang like sullen bees buzzing insurrection.
+Though they themselves were mongrels cast out of twenty subjugated
+kingdoms and bullied into unspeakable servitude by the tyrant Rome,
+Prejudice, unarmed with argument and speaking in dialect, arose and
+rebelled at Alexandria entertaining a Jewish king.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Toward sunset a group of empty curricles and chariots came and stood
+before a certain house, the last in the Jewish district, facing the
+Gentile environs of the water-front.  Had any cared to remark, it might
+have been observed that this house could be reached from the alabarch's
+by abandoned passages and private walks, a series of Jewish courts and
+stable-yards, without exposing any who went that way to the Gentile
+eye.  After a while, a body of Roman guards emerged from nowhere and
+arrayed themselves alongside the vehicles.  Presently, groups of slaves
+bearing burdens, followed by a party of high-class Egyptians, mounted
+the chariots and without hesitation the procession took up movement
+toward the harbor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But an angle in the streets brought them upon the Gymnasium.  It was
+built in a square of sufficient size to receive the crowds that usually
+attended the contests of the athletæ, and there thousands were
+assembled to do Alexandrian honor to a Jew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The daylight was still on the streets, and Marsyas, in the guise of a
+charioteer, driving the horses of the foremost car, observed that each
+of the mass was busy with his own noise, and apparently unsuspecting
+the coming of Agrippa.  So he signed to the centurion in charge of the
+prætorian squad to make way with as little ostentation as possible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the porch before the Gymnasium, the crowd was most packed, loudest
+and most entertained.  A naked, deformed, apish figure stood on a
+pedestal from which a statue had fallen and had not been replaced.  A
+wreath of rushes had been twisted about the degenerate forehead, a
+strip of matting had been bound with a tow-cord about his middle; in
+his hand was a stalk of papyrus with the head broken and hanging down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On their knees about the base of the plinth were half a score of youths
+from the Gymnasium, groaning in tragic chorus, the single Syriac word:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Maris</I>!  <I>Maris</I>!  Lord!  Lord!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Loudly the crowd roared its part, with voices raucous and hoarse from
+much abuse:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hail, Agrippa!  King of the Jews!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's chariot, following the way the centurion had quietly opened
+through the crowd, attracted little attention and the half-light of the
+twilight did not reveal his features, which he had been led further to
+conceal by an Egyptian cowl.  A long white kamis covered his dress.
+But his eyes fell upon the idiot; he caught the mockery and its meaning
+from the crowd.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A quiver of rage ran through his frame.  Laying hold of the Egyptian
+smock, he tore it off and threw it fairly into the faces of those
+nearest him; the white cowl followed, and he stood forth like a
+new-risen sun in a tissue of silver, mantled with purple, his fillet
+replaced by a tarboosh sewn with immense gems.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Defiance and insult and daring could not have been embodied in a more
+effective act.  The continuous tumult burst into a yell of fury.  In a
+twinkling his chariot was hemmed in and blocked and the raving rabble
+reached out to lay hands on him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas, seeing destruction in Agrippa's recklessness, shouted to the
+centurion, who responded by hurling his prætorians, with broadsword and
+spear into the mob.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The protection of Cæsar, thus evidenced, beat back the astonished herd
+as a charge of cavalry might have done, but it fringed the lane opened
+before the royal Jew and raged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thereafter every inch of the way was contested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not even a show of interference was made by municipal authorities.
+Instead, here and there, soldiers of the city garrison could be seen,
+singly or in groups, as spectators and applauding.  The riot began to
+take on the appearance of a holiday, for groups of upper classes began
+to appear on housetops, stairs and porches of houses, where they made
+themselves comfortable and listened to the demonstration as they were
+accustomed to watch contests in the stadia.  Below in the long way
+toward the harbor-front, the lawless of any class indulged their love
+of disorder and amused the aristocrats.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fugitives were almost in sight of the forest of masts which marked
+the wharves, when Marsyas detected a change in the tone of the tumult.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Derision and revilement began to lose impetus, flagging in the face of
+a freshened uproar of another temper, beginning far behind and sweeping
+down the street after the fugitives.  It was savage, bloodthirsty and
+menacing.  Out of the inarticulate volume he caught finally shouts
+about the Jews and Flora; next, about the dance of Flora; after that
+the whole declaration, sent thundering, like a sea over winter capes,
+that the dancing Flora was a Nazarene and the daughter of the alabarch!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' face, turned toward Agrippa, was ghastly.  The Herod felt the
+first quiver of terror he had experienced in years.  He reached toward
+the lines, meaning to give Marsyas opportunity to return to the Regio
+Judæorum.  But Marsyas was shouting mightily to the centurion to charge
+the crowds before them.  The prætorian heard and his men presented a
+double row of spears and rushed.  The lesser mob ahead broke, and
+Marsyas cried back to Cypros' charioteer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next minute with desperate mercilessness he had loosed a long
+plaited whip like a crackling flame upon the necks of his horses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The terrified beasts leaped; the car lurched and headlong they plunged
+into the mass before them.  Right and left the rawhide played, over
+faces, shoulders and lifted arms, searing and scarring wherever it
+touched.  With grim satisfaction, the two within the chariot felt at
+times that the car mounted and toppled over prostrate rioters, like
+sticks in the roadway.  The jam became panic and flight, and the horses
+took the free passage, mad with desire to get away from the stinging
+torment that harassed them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The driver of Cypros' car closed in quickly with its following of
+curricles, and kept close behind the flying chariot, but the
+prætorians, out-distanced, contented themselves by following through
+short ways, and the riot was left behind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the wharf the maddened animals could not be stopped until they had
+been circled again and again.  But hardly had the wheels ceased to
+move, when Marsyas leaped to the ground, and, flinging the lines to a
+slave, put up his hands to Agrippa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As the first debt to thy manhood and to the alabarch forget not this
+opportunity to help him!  Hear them!  They want Jewish blood; Lydia's
+blood!  There is none in Alexandria to stay them!  Help, my lord!
+Beseech Cæsar in thy people's behalf, as I beseech thee now!  Answer,
+answer!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hear, Marsyas," Agrippa responded, "and by all that I hold sacred, I
+promise thee Flaccus' end!  God help thee!  Farewell!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Pausing only for the word, Marsyas turned and ran with frantic speed
+back into the city.  He saw, at every step, that which made his heart
+chill in his bosom.  The tide of the riot had turned, and that which
+was not already pouring in upon the Nazarenes, was rushing into the
+Regio Judæorum.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap32"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+SANCTUARY
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+The cluster of vagabonds hanging before the alabarch's mansion stayed
+no longer after the breezes brought the first sound of tumult which
+announced a rarer sport elsewhere.  In a twinkling the Regio Judæorum
+was silent and deserted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Except for the gusts of far-off turmoil, the cooing of pigeons in
+towers, the clashing of palm-leaves, the creak of crazy gates in the
+wind, the casual calling of Numidian cranes or the crowing of poultry
+were the only sounds in the quarter&mdash;lonesome, nature sounds, signals
+of a householder's absence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it seemed as if the Regio Judæorum listened and waited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After Agrippa's departure, the alabarch came into his presiding-room,
+without purpose and visibly uneasy.  Lydia followed him, and, at a look
+from her father, came close to his chair and mingled her yellow-brown
+curls with his white locks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The silence over the quarter had become oppressive and the slightest
+break would have been no less grateful than distinct, when it seemed
+that cautious footsteps pattered by without.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two stirred and listened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a moment, they heard others, very swift and soft, as if many were
+running by a-tiptoe.  There were whispers and rustlings, excited words
+cried under the breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two in the presiding-room looked at each other.  Had the vagabonds
+returned to their place for mischief, outside the alabarch's mansion?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lysimachus stepped to the windows and listened.  But Lydia stood still,
+dreading without understanding that which he might hear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+East and west, far and near, sounds were drifting in and passing toward
+the New Port, sounds as if a multitude hastened in one direction.
+Above these stealthy, fugitive, whispered noises, there came freshened
+uproar from pagan Alexandria, swift, high, relentless and carrying like
+fire on a wind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they stood thus, perplexed and alarmed, Vasti appeared like a shadow
+out of the dusk and caught the alabarch's arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is come!" she hissed with compelling vehemence.  "To the Synagogue!
+Fly!  For the hosts of Siva are upon you even now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lysimachus grasped the grill of the window, and turned slowly toward
+his daughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lydia?" he asked helplessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl came to him, and Vasti began to motion her toward the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?  What passeth?" the alabarch insisted, unable to act
+without perfect conception of the conditions he had to fight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia's eyes, fixed on her father's face, deepened with misery and
+widened with suffering.  The hour had fallen!  She was to be the
+outcast and the abomination at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They accuse me," she said, "of being a Nazarene; that I committed
+sacrilege, to hold off the mob from Rhacotis&mdash;that I was the Dancing
+Flora!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch put his thin hands to his forehead, as if to ward off the
+conviction, which all the fragmentary intimation against Lydia, and her
+own words conjoined, threatened to establish in him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it so, my daughter?" he asked in a benumbed voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cause was submerged in effect; she felt less fear of the confession
+than of her father's suffering.  In the appreciable interval his figure
+shriveled; age and the encroachment of death showed upon him.  The
+atmosphere of the magistrate, the courtier and the aristocrat dissolved
+under the anguish of a father and the horror of a Jew.  He had
+surrendered his two sons, Tiberius and Marcus, to paganism; in Lydia,
+he had reposed the unwatchful faith, that had permitted his other
+children to apostasize under his roof.  He had believed the more in
+her, and the shock was the greater, therefore.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let it be the measure of my conviction, my father," she said sadly,
+"that I did this thing in the knowledge that I might forfeit thy love!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He made no movement; his face did not relax from its stunned agony.
+Lydia awaited its change with flagging heart-beat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the thunder of menace from the Gymnasium square rolled in again
+through the streets of the Regio Judæorum.  The alabarch heard it.  Up
+through the mask there struggled not rebuke and condemnation, but the
+terror of love fearing for its own.  He caught Lydia in his arms and
+turned his straining eyes toward the windows.  But the bayadere waited
+no longer for the arousing of his faculties.  She seized his arm and
+thrust him toward the vestibule.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Awake!  Get you up and be gone!  Will you wait to see her perish?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not stop until she had pushed them through the porch into the
+streets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To the Synagogue!" she commanded last, and disappeared as she had come.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All the Regio Judæorum, as far as the Brucheum on the south and the
+tumble and wash of the Mediterranean on the north, was pouring through
+the streets toward the New Port.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch's own servants went hither and thither, knocking at doors,
+from which other servants presently issued to speed with the alarm over
+the yet unwarned sections nearer the Synagogue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a moment's waiting until the light airs cleared the daze that
+enmeshed his brain, the alabarch took Lydia under his cloak and fled
+with his people toward their refuge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he went, doorways about them were giving up households, bazaars and
+booths were emptying of their patrons and proprietors; workshops, their
+artisans and apprentices; schools, their readers and pupils; the
+counting-room, the rich men and the borrowers; the squalid angles, the
+outcast and the beggar.  The oppression of terror and the instinct for
+silence weighted the darkening air; the twilight covered them, and
+hostile attention was yet far behind them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So they came: the slaves with marks of perpetual servitude in their
+ears, and ladies of the Sadducees that had rarely set foot upon the
+harsh earth; figures in Indian silks and figures in sackcloth;
+fugitives to whom fear lent wings and fugitives to whom flight was
+bitterer than death; families and guilds by the hundreds, hurrying
+together; companies of diverse people separated from their own; sons
+carrying parents and neighbors bearing the sick; friends forgetting
+attachments and foes forgetting feuds&mdash;until the streets became
+veritable rivers of running people.  And so they went, crowding,
+pressing, contending, but passing as silently as forty thousand may
+pass, toward the Synagogue, which was sanctuary and stronghold for them
+all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The keepers of the great gates were there, and the huge valves stood
+wide.  The alabarch's old composure reasserted itself, as, amid the
+panic of his people, he realized their want of leadership.  He stepped
+to one side of the nearest gate, and stood while he watched each and
+every Jew rush into the darkness and disappear under the great pylons
+of the Synagogue.  Lydia, whom he would have sent in at once, clung to
+him, and together they stood without.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile, out of the distant Brucheum, there came a snarl of monstrous
+and terrifying proportions.  The mob was gaining strength.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The last of the Jews fled praying through the giant gates and pressed
+themselves into the shelter of the Synagogue.  The keeper looked at the
+alabarch.  He lifted his arm, and Lydia and the keeper and he, shutting
+away, as best they might, the noise of the threatening city, listened,
+if any belated fugitive came through the dark.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sound of footsteps approached; a body of people, strangers to the
+alabarch, appeared; Lydia made a little sound, and moved toward them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We also are beset," the foremost said, "can we enter into the
+protection of the Synagogue?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Haste ye, and enter!" the alabarch answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And after the hindmost, he and Lydia passed into the sanctuary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The keepers swung the great valves shut, and the last sound they
+admitted was a ravening howl, as Alexandria hurled itself into the
+empty streets of the Regio Judæorum.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Until this time, Lydia had been a part of the unit of terror and
+self-preservation, but the hurry of the flight had ceased and the wait
+for events had begun.  Then ensued moments for individual ideas.  Thus
+far she had heard no murmur against her.  Fear of the Alexandrians had
+outmeasured the Jews' indignation, or else they had believed the
+informer to be the father of lies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was the never-failing lamp on the lectern, but its light
+penetrated no farther than the immediate precincts of darkness.  The
+interior was so vast that its great angles melted into shadow.  The
+immense area of marble pavement was cumbered with an army of huddled
+shapes, and when portentous red light began to sift down through the
+open roof it fell upon uplifted faces, ghastly with fear, upon bare
+arms, white and soft or lean and brown, upstretched in supplication.
+But neither moan nor murmur arose among them who waited upon siege.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the roar of violence encompassed and penetrated all portions
+of the quarter.  Great lights began to mount and redden the sky as
+torches were applied to houses looted of their riches.  The invasion
+had met no obstacle and the whole region was a-swarm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently, close at hand, the full bellow of freshly-discovered
+incentive arose, mounting above all other noises until even the Jews,
+imprisoned within walls of granite, heard it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Jews! the Jews!  The Synagogue!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Involuntarily there arose from the lips of the forty thousand a great
+moan, muffled, unechoing and filled with terror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch stood by Lydia, with his thoughts upon the strength of the
+Synagogue and the hardihood of the prisoners.  But the weight of
+culpability was heavy upon Lydia; in her great need and longing for the
+comfort of his confidence, she crept closer to her father and clung to
+his arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naught but a ram or ballista can force these gates!" he said.  "And we
+are forty thousand.  Alas, that the spirit of Joshua the warrior was
+not mixed with the spirit of Moses, who gave us the Law!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The mob came on, now in distinct hearing of the imprisoned Jews.
+Tremendous trampling without on the stone flagging and dull, fruitless
+hammering on the valves announced the assault.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Jews nearer the gates pressed away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without, indecision and tumult wrangled among innumerable voices.
+Great bodies began to shout as one, with mighty lungs:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bring out the woman!  Give up the Dancing Flora!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia felt the alabarch tremble and presently the arm to which she
+clung withdrew from her clasp and passed around her, drawing her close.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Impius</I>!  <I>Insidiis</I>!  <I>Succuba</I>!  <I>O dea certe</I>!" roared the mob.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But work was doing at the gates.  There arose blunt pounding, slowly
+and heavily delivered as if a multitude wielded a ram.  But the reports
+were too solid to indicate any weakness in the gates, and the keeper of
+the one attacked watched the sacred stone with a glitter of pride in
+his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently the hammering ceased.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yield us the woman!" the mob roared in the interval.  "Give us the
+woman and save yourselves!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Those about the alabarch, hearing the demand of the mob, turned great
+terror-strained eyes upon Lydia, and she hid her face in her father's
+shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The smell of burning pitch penetrated the interior; pungent smoke
+assailed the nostrils of the keeper, who smiled grimly, assuming that
+the mob hoped to burn the Synagogue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But there followed an explosion of steam, split by a sharp report, and
+followed by a howl of exultation.  The keeper with wild eyes sprang at
+the valve.  Immediately the hammering of the ram reverberated through
+the gloom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch understood.  They were cracking the stone with fire and
+water and beating in the fractures with a ram.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the forty thousand within realized their extremity.  The murmur
+increased to an even groan of terror, and here and there, as some more
+acutely realized the desperate straits, frantic screams would rive
+through the drone of misery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Above it all the ram beat its sentence of doom upon the gate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Splintering rock began to fall on the inner side of the assaulted
+portal.  The keeper put his hands over his ears and turned away from
+the sight.  Let but a breach be made wide enough to admit a hand to
+undo the bolts and hideous death would pour in upon the shuddering
+captives within.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without, above the noise of the ram, the roar of the multitude
+continued:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give up the woman ere it is too late!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Under the light of fires falling from above, hundreds of white faces in
+the mad mass turned toward Lydia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A lozenge of stone large enough to admit a man's body shaped itself in
+the gate under the ram, and the next instant shot out and fell near the
+keeper.  With it came a hoarse roar of triumph, drowning a scream of
+despair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A dozen arms came through the opening and fumbled for the bolts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The keeper seized the fragment of stone and hurled it at the intruding
+arms.  It struck fair and with vicious force.  Howls of pain went up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The limp arms were dragged out and as others came in the keeper bounded
+to the gate and catching up his missile beat madly upon flesh and bone
+until the besiegers abandoned their search for the bolts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The thunder of assault began again, for the gate could not hold long.
+The trapped victims shrieked and out of the mass fingers pointed at
+Lydia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly, she stood away from her father's arm.  Walking to one of the
+keepers of the unassaulted gates, she said to him:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am she whom they want without!  Let me forth!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A tall spare old man, one of the strangers who had entered last,
+approached her.  But the girl motioned him aside and he made the sign
+of the cross over her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her father, watching her, did not realize until the keeper undid the
+bolts which held the wicket, or subsidiary gate in the large one, that
+Lydia meant to pass out into the night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a cry, he sprang after her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A hush fell in the Synagogue.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap33"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE DREGS OF THE CUP OF FURY
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+The great stars were further withdrawn into the immeasurable arch of
+blue night; the winds had fled away into the ocean; the bay was angry
+with fire for leagues.  The space before Lydia was open as far as the
+reader's stone of the proseucha, for the attacking party had demanded
+room for their proceedings.  Beyond that was the front of the
+besiegers, a sea of bodies lighted by torches, tunics bloody with
+murder which had been done, mouths open, teeth shining, and eyes filled
+with the fury of bloodthirst.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As yet she was unnoticed, because the attention of the multitude was
+engaged with the assault upon the easternmost gate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia's mind did not direct her.  It had sunk long ago under the stress
+of womanly terror.  Only an involuntary obedience to an impulse
+conceived during the last conscious suggestions of her Nazarene faith,
+moved her toward the reader's stone, straight in the face of the
+multitude.  She went as all young and tender martyrs have gone, with
+the spirit already lifted out of the body.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She mounted the rock; the alabarch, unable to reach her in time, unable
+to make her hear him, gave up with a groan of despair, and followed her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the multitude saw and understood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A yell of fury went up; a mass of innumerable heads and shoulders
+lurched toward her.  Even the assailants at the gate dropped their ram
+to come.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then up and out of it Marsyas leaped!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia saw him, and a great light swept over her face.  He had come to
+die with her, to sweeten the bitter martyrdom with the faithfulness of
+his love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After Marsyas, the bayadere bounded, as if pitched from the front of
+the wave.  Between the murdering front and the three on the stone she
+interposed herself, a creature of primal fury, terrible and ferocious.
+A torch was in her hand, the badge of eligibility, which had let her to
+the forefront of this mob, that received none but destroyers.  But the
+sibilant utterance of the crimson flame, raking the air, and taller by
+half than the screaming fury that whipped it before her, was turned
+upon them that had kindled it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She carried by its bail a great copper kettle filled with bitumen, but,
+as she planted feet upon the stone, she dropped her torch and, whirling
+upon the wave of fury, swept the full contents of the giant pot over
+every face and garment for yards about her.  She caught up her torch;
+the looping flame uncoiled itself like a springing snake and shot down
+into the pack.  Instantly there was a running flash, the rip of
+explosive ignition, and the breast of the riot turned, each a great
+towering flame, and drove itself into the heart of the oncoming
+thousands behind!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rabble in cotton tunics had absolutely no defense against one
+another.  The riot of bloodthirst turned instantly into panic and a
+revel of terrible death.  The sound, the scene were indescribably awful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the hideous uproar that ensued, events followed swiftly.  Vasti and
+her tall torch, in fearful fellowship, shrilled and spun on the rock in
+a frenzy of heathen triumph.  Marsyas, for the instant stunned and
+scorched, flung his arm over his face, to shut out the horror.  But the
+Jews, the instant the ram was dropped, realizing that their citadel was
+hopeless with breaches in its gate, and seeing a respite in the riot's
+attention upon Lydia, broke from the sanctuary and poured like a sea in
+flight into the open.  The miraculous intervention of the bayadere gave
+them the opportunity to save themselves.  But when Marsyas came to
+himself and sprang to take up Lydia, the inundation of fleeing Jews had
+swept over the reader's stone behind him, and Lydia was gone!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap34"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+CAPTIVES OF THE MIGHTY
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+The second night after the riot about the Synagogue, one of Flaccus'
+sentries, posted about the small cramped portion of the Regio Judæorum,
+into which the forty thousand Jews had been driven, brought his spear
+at guard and called "Halt!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the object approaching spun on toward him noiselessly, passed the
+lines, and disappeared up the dark, sandy roadway, into the night on
+the beleaguered quarter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ha, ha!  Ho, ho!" roared the next post, who had heard his challenge,
+"challenging sand-columns, Sergius?  Flaccus should know of thy
+thoroughness!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The discomfited sentry muttered and shouldered his weapon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the column of sand disintegrated before a hovel, and became a snaky
+woman-shape that disappeared into the dark door of the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Within, she stumbled over prostrate bodies, sleeping on the earthen
+floor, and, muttering in Hindu against the darkness, stopped finally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Master!" she called softly, in her native tongue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was instant reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou, Vasti!  The Lord God be praised!  What news?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman felt her way to the voice, and, encountering the alabarch's
+outstretched hands, began at once, in a whisper:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have come, but not to abide," she said.  "The Nazarenes took Lydia,
+and fled with her unto Judea!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unto Judea!  Away from me?" the alabarch said piteously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, but Egypt hath risen against her.  The Roman hath put forth all
+his soldiery to look for her.  If she remained in Alexandria she would
+surely die!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alabarch moaned.  The last of his fortitude had gone with Lydia,
+and helpless, disgraced and old, he was beginning to surrender.  The
+bayadere put her hands on him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be of hope," she insisted, "for the white brother departed at sunset
+to seek for her, and to get protection from the Herod!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Judea!" the alabarch repeated miserably.  "There she entereth into
+equal danger, for there it is death to be a Nazarene!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the white brother is sworn to kill the leader of the persecution,"
+she said grimly.  "Speed him with thy prayers, for he is weighted with
+no little mission.  I come unto thee with cheer.  Listen, and be of
+hope!  The city of the Jews, here, is all but destroyed, but I buried
+thy moneys, thy drafts, thy money-papers and thy jewels.  Though they
+burn thy house, thou art still rich!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Buried them?" he repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the earth of thy court-yard, ere the Herod departed, for the flame
+on the altar of Mahadeva burned crimson and murky!  And I took certain
+of thy moneys and gave them to certain of the Nazarenes and bade them
+be prepared to care for her, who had cared for them!  They went unto
+the Synagogue!  They rescued her from the stone, after the sending of
+Vishnu upon the rabble!  They went unto Judea with her&mdash;and I, Vasti, I
+did it, as Khosru, the Mahatma, bade!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be thou blessed, Vasti; blessed be the day that I held up the hand
+that would have fallen on thee, in the markets of Sind!
+But&mdash;but&mdash;Marsyas&mdash;what manner of vessel carryeth him?  How long!
+Alas, how wide the sea!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the vengeance of the Divine hand is loosed!  Sawest thou the
+destruction of the host, before thy people's Temple?  The bay was black
+with them this morning and the vultures come even from Libya.  Knowest
+thou the evil mouth that spread sayings against Lydia?  I was in the
+city and beheld it!  It was the charioteer, Eutychus!  Him I kept in my
+sight, while I ran at the forefront of the riot with the white brother,
+and when we stood upon the rock, I saw him!  This morning, I sought for
+him before the Synagogue, and I found him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She brought her teeth together with a click.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I burned incense for the purification of the fire, straightway," she
+said sententiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Canst thou endure?" she asked after a silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All&mdash;so that Lydia be saved!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy spirit may be tried," she said.  "The Roman hath commanded that ye
+be pent here until Lydia is found, believing that imprisonment and
+hunger and torture may persuade the Jews to give her up if she be hid
+among them.  But I shall come to thee with comforts and such tidings as
+I may learn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She touched his hands to her forehead and moved away, calling back:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The time is not long; the Jewish king will not lag in his own
+requital!  Be assured!  I abide without these lines, since I can not
+help thee within!  Farewell!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the door she stopped, but, reconsidering her impulse, went out
+without speaking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would not be seemly to tell, now, that I saw Classicus' green and
+gold garment exposed in a usurer's shop."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A sand-column passed before the wind, by the sentry at the upper end of
+the street; but he did not attempt to halt it.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap35"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXV
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE APPROACH OF THE DAY OF VISITATION
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas sought through the Nazarene settlements in Joppa, Anthedon and
+Cæsarea, but the people could not tell him of fugitive Alexandrians,
+who had with them a maid with yellow-brown hair.  He went then to
+Ptolemais, and there, after days of patient search, discovered that
+three strange women, two men and a maiden of gentle blood, who were
+children in Christ, has passed through the city, from Alexandria to
+Jerusalem.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not pause to inquire after his former master, Peter the usurer,
+nor Eleazar, his steward.  Instead he took the road, over which he and
+Agrippa had come long before, and hastened toward the City of David.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Within sight of the Tower of Hippicus, and the glittering Glory on the
+summit of Moriah, he came upon a group, in abas and talliths, sitting
+on the soil while they ate.  He would have passed around them, without
+speaking, had he not seen the elder among them lift his hands and
+beseech the blessing of Christ upon the bread and water set before them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas stopped, and waited with as much grace as possible until the
+meal was finished and the Nazarene thanks returned, before he
+approached.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I behold that ye offer supplication to the Nazarene Prophet," he said
+to the elder, "and though I come unto you a faithful follower of the
+God of Abraham, I pray you, remember the charity ye assume, and give me
+aid!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are children of Christ," the elder responded, "and brethren to all;
+wherefore speak, and if we can help thee, we dare not deny thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I perceive that a bond of common acquaintance unites all of your
+belief; perchance certain Alexandrian Nazarenes with a maiden, who fled
+hither from the wrath of the Proconsul of Egypt, have come unto you for
+hospitality in Jerusalem."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Save for the few apostles of the Church in Christ, who have hidden
+themselves, there are no Nazarenes in Jerusalem," the elder answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No Nazarenes in Jerusalem!" Marsyas exclaimed, remembering Eleazar's
+estimation of the host of schism in the Holy City.  "Yet, two years
+ago, they possessed the city from Ophlas to Bezetha."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They have been scattered into far cities by the oppressor, or have
+passed through the dust of the stoning-place into the Kingdom of God!"
+he answered in awed tones.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man made a gesture as if he drew his hands quickly away from
+blood-stains, and a look of intense horror passed over his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Saul continueth to rage, unchecked?" he exclaimed, his old
+impatience with the passivity of the Nazarenes making itself felt once
+more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the Lord's time, in the Lord's time, my son," the elder said mildly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can not wait upon the Lord!" Marsyas cried.  "The Lord gave me
+heart, feeling, intelligence and invention, for me to use to mine own
+aid!  I have labored for two years to this end, and Herod, the king,
+will help me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so, my son!" the Nazarene said gravely.  "Build no hope for us,
+upon Herod the king, for he hath joined himself with the Pharisees, and
+he will not hinder the oppressor!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" Marsyas cried, growing black.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A truth, my son!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I crowned him!" Marsyas cried, clenching his hands.  "I held off
+the hand of death from him, and despoiled my soul for his sake!  I sold
+myself for him!  By the Lord, if he help me not, I shall have back the
+life that I preserved to him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Nazarene crossed himself quickly, and shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peace!  Peace! young brother.  Even the Law, for which thou art
+zealous, forbids thee to kill!  Behold the vanity of laying up
+confidence in man!  If thou hadst so built for the Master's favor, thou
+hadst not been forsaken, to-day!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Neither the God of Abraham, nor thy Prophet has shielded thee from the
+oppressor," he declared passionately.  "Remember thy own words.  But I
+will bring him down!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Build no hope upon Herod," the Nazarene continued, as if eager to stay
+Marsyas.  "Whatever he promised thee, he knows that Saul standeth high
+among the Pharisees, whom the king would propitiate!  He hath
+difficulty and prejudice to overcome, this grandson of an execrated
+grandsire&mdash;so build nothing upon the Herod!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Was it possible that, after all his months of patient work and
+long-suffering, he had brought up at the point at which he had left off
+two years before?  Was his punishment of Saul to be done, at his own
+risk, at last?  He would see this altered Agrippa and learn for himself!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall see this king and discover!" he declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The king is not in Jerusalem," the Nazarene said.  "He hath continued
+unto Antioch to despatch a petition to Cæsar!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man's rage changed into dismay, but he made a last appeal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I seek my beloved," he said finally, in a helpless way.  "She is a
+Nazarene and pursued by the powers of Rome!  Even besides her peril of
+Saul, she is sought after by the mighty who would destroy her.  If thou
+knowest of her&mdash;even where she might be in hiding, I pray thee, tell
+me, in the name of thy Prophet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is she?" the Nazarene asked at once.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is Lydia Lysimachus, daughter to the alabarch in Alexandria."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I turned such a maiden, and her protectors, away from the gates of
+Jerusalem, seven days ago.  They were bidden to go to Damascus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas pressed the Nazarene's hand to his lips, because his gratitude
+would not be expressed otherwise.  Safe, then, for the moment, and out
+of reach of Saul of Tarsus!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do ye fare thither? even now?" Marsyas asked, eager to attach himself
+to the body of apostates, if they led him on to Lydia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, we are certain of the faith on watch, lest any ignorant of the
+peril besetting the brethren should approach the city."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye are close unto the oppressor," Marsyas said seriously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We abide in the will of the Lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas sighed.  He had seen another, believing in the promise of the
+Lamb, go down unto death.  The recurring thought of Stephen, never
+wholly forgotten, awakened in him another impulse.  He would not go
+straightway to Damascus, and continue to retreat from Saul.  The hand
+of the Lord had led him unto the Pharisee, and he would do that which
+lay nearest him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And when I come unto Damascus, how shall I find her?" he asked of the
+Nazarene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go unto Ananias, a brother in the Lord, and tell him thy story.  Lo,
+he is keeper of the Lord's flock, and filled with the Spirit.  Thou
+wilt not ask in vain!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou hast my thanks, and my blessing!" Marsyas said.  "And the
+forgiveness of the Lord cover you all!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peace, young brother, and the love of Christ be with thee ever more!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas went through the amber light of the late afternoon, toward the
+might of Hippicus and the majesty of the City of David.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He found, by inquiry among the Jews, that Agrippa had not lingered in
+Judea, having passed through Jerusalem to give commands concerning the
+preparation of his palace, to receive the homage of the people and to
+propitiate the Pharisees, before he went on to Antioch.  It was readily
+told that the king was despatching messages to Caligula craving the
+punishment of Flaccus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But could not the king have despatched these messages from Jerusalem?"
+Marsyas asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Jews smiled and laid fingers alongside their noses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is a Herod, and not ashamed of display.  He was ill-treated in
+Antioch, by the proconsul, there, in the days of adversity.  Wherefore,
+in his purple and gold, with the favor of Cæsar behind him, he taketh
+advantage of an excuse to abash his old insulters!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was like Agrippa!  But Marsyas was glad, even in the tumult of his
+sensations, that the Herod was pushing his work against Flaccus!  At
+least, Alexandria should be safe for the alabarch.  But to his mission!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was still night in the City of David and the watcher on the pinnacle
+of the Temple had long to wait before the morning shone and the sky was
+lighted even unto Hebron.  The greater stars sparkled like jewels in
+the cold heavens, and there were already many people in the blue-misted
+streets below.  They were of all classes, but of one nation, one
+direction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Straggling numbers joined the main body from each narrow passage which
+intersected the marble-paved roadway leading toward the splendid
+Tyropean bridge.  It was a host, an army numbering thousands.  But,
+foot planted on the solid masonry that accomplished the ravine by
+flying arches two hundred feet above the dark abyss, conversation left
+off.  The company passed silent, except for the multitudinous and soft
+rustlings of garments and the chafing of feet upon rock.  Far ahead the
+foremost were rising, an undulating sea of heads and shoulders, as the
+cyclopean stairs, a cold bank of white marble, broad and gentle of
+slope, climbed toward the Royal Porch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As soon as the Tyropean bridge was passed, the Temple was shut off from
+view by the intervening cornices of the porch; and when the gate was
+reached, the stream of worshipers entered into the demesnes of the Holy
+House.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tunnel-like and drafty, the open gate revealed an immense length of
+gloom, raftered and roofed with beams and vaults of darkness, upheld by
+double rows of dim columns of enormous girth.  This, the Royal
+Colonnade, cloistered the Court of the Gentiles, through which the
+worshipers fared next.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a great quadrangle, paved with sun-colored marbles, open to the
+sky and having about it the characteristic exhilarating airs which
+inhabit the heights.  Herod the Great spent princely sums upon this
+portion allotted to the Gentiles, for the simple purpose of flattering
+the pagan.  Perhaps for no other reason than an expression of their
+displeasure did the Jews commit the sacrilege of commercialism in this
+spot.  Here the money-changer, vender of sacrificial beasts, birds and
+wines made a busy market daily, for the indignation of the Nazarene
+Rabbi had driven them away for only so long as He watched.  They
+returned when He had vanished, like flies to a honey-pot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here also awaited the Temple servitors to receive the unblemished
+offerings, the Shoterim to preserve order, the Levites of the gates and
+perchance the priests of the killing-pens and of the wood-chambers.
+Through the throng of attendants or venders, the worshipers continued,
+an uninterrupted stream of pilgrims, souls in distress, Pharisees and
+souls under vows, and all the class and kind that would be diligent for
+the Lord in the restful hours before daybreak.  And the number was not
+large, in comparison to the host of Israel, for the Temple was builded
+to contain the voice of two hundred and ten thousand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+North of the center of the Court of Gentiles, the Temple stood.  A rail
+set it off austerely from contact with the uncircumcised.  Its
+relentless command of exclusion and its threat were set forth on stone,
+forbidding the admission of a Gentile on pain of death.  But beyond, in
+mockery, rose the black bulk of Roman Antonia, the majesty of masonry
+upreared and prostituted to eavesdropping and espionage.  Yet none who
+visited the Temple was instantly to be led away from its glory to
+meditate on its humiliation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The worshipers passed around the angle of the structure to the east
+where the Gate Beautiful was hung.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a momentary slackening in the movement, for the gate was yet
+to be opened.  But, preceding the foremost, twenty Levites passed up
+the flight of steps, and under the direction of a captain, laid
+shoulder to the valves and threw all their strength against them.
+There was a flash as the light of the coming dawn, concentrated and
+intensified, shifted across the Corinthian brass, and the Gate
+Beautiful swung inward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the head of the column a young man, in ample robes, with his
+kerchief skirts hanging close about his face, stepped aside from the
+line of advance.  The crowd took up motion and went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas had washed himself in obedience to the Law; he had brought in
+his hand his trespass offering, and in his soul he was a Jew.  But he
+stood now, and watched the fours of people climb the steps abreast,
+with no mood in his heart that a man should carry into a sanctuary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Series after series passed under his sharp scrutiny&mdash;extremes of rank,
+of reputation, of calling and of kind.  Minute after minute the long,
+silent procession tramped by him and was swallowed up in the gigantic
+gloom within.  Ever the alert gaze, bright even under the obscuring
+shadow of the kerchief, slipped from rank to rank, and never once
+lingered in doubt.  No one looked at him; every eye was down, for
+though, since the eighth day after his birth, no man in the long stream
+of worshipers had been ignorant of the Temple, it never failed to be a
+place of awe, half-love, half-terror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hindmost appeared at the angle of the Temple, moved in turn after
+their fellows, climbed the steps and disappeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stragglers followed, in groups and singly, and finally Marsyas turned
+up the steps and followed the last within.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee, would have been among the earliest to
+arrive.  Perhaps by special dispensation he had entered before the
+multitude and by another gate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The keeper at the Gate Beautiful glanced at the young man's snow-white
+Essenic garments and at the stamp of Jewish blood on his face, and
+passed him without a word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Temple from the city had been a great glittering unit.  But on
+approaching its details, they became bewildering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Within was a tremendous inclosure, floored with agate, galleried with
+immense chambers which were screened with grills of beaten brass.  The
+army of worshipers was reduced, in comparison to the space they
+entered, to a mere handful of pygmy, indistinct shapes, prostrate,
+kneeling, upright, silent, infinitesimal, moveless.  At the extreme
+inner end of the men's court was a flight of fifteen semicircular steps
+which led up to the Gate Nicanor, now wide.  It was hung in the middle
+of an open arcade&mdash;an altar screen no less a grace to the Temple
+because it might have embattled a fortress.  Beyond it as the eye
+pierced the holy gloom, was a second tier of courts, less spacious than
+the first, but no less magnificent; after it, yet a third, and then a
+massive pile of ancient brass, stained and smoked, arose above all else
+before it.  A tongue of clean blue unilluminating flame wavered in the
+center of its summit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beyond that, Marsyas' gaze did not travel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Spiritual subjection surrounded him; from behind the lattice which
+screened the women's court in the lofty galleries, there came no sound.
+The twilight of early morning and the hush of a sanctity were supreme.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He crossed his hands upon his breast and let his head fall as the
+elders had taught him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Others came to stand beside him, the order of worship proceeded, and
+the singing Levites ranged themselves on the steps before Nicanor, but
+he was plunged in his spiritual difficulty and oppressed by the care
+for himself and his own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Finally there came a long, rich trumpet note above middle register; the
+voice of a brazen tongue singing through a horn of silver.  It was not
+sudden.  Beginning as the sound of wind on a fine wire, it ripened in
+tone as it grew in volume till it achieved the color, the shape of
+harmony, the very fragrance of music.  As it diminished, those who
+listened caught the sound of a second note&mdash;the voice of a twin
+trumpet, save that the tones issued in the molds of enunciation.  It
+was one singing among the Levites, as impossible to discover as to pick
+out the inspirited pipe in an organ.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they
+that dwell therein&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the voice of a young enthusiast, with the faith and spiritual
+uplift of patriarchal years, housed in a frame of youth&mdash;the voice of a
+creature of trance and frenzy, a martyr-elect from birth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But as he clung to his final syllable in a vibrato of fervor, a second
+singer, duplicating the note in barytone, took up the second verse, and
+carried it with the ease and repose of one filled with content, health
+and the ripeness of years, of one who is the founder of a house, the
+possessor of goods and a power among his fellow men.  And his voice was
+rich, level as the note of a 'cello, tender because it was strong,
+persuasive because it was believing:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the
+floods&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Wresting the word from him, the tenor again on his altitudes of ecstasy
+flung out the inquisition:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his
+holy place?&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He made answer to himself with the barytone, but there was a third now
+singing, and his voice arose out of their attendance as a great, white,
+solemn, night-blooming flower might rise out of leafage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his
+soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young fanatic might sing with the fervor of his bigotry, the
+contented man from the comfort in his heart, but this one, making
+answer, now, sang as one who was experienced and understood as the
+others could not.  It was deep bass, too deliberate to be flexible, too
+profound to be hurried, and withal a great bell booming in a dome.  And
+like a bell in travail under each stroke of its hammer, each word, in
+the full poignancy of its meaning, fell from the lips of him who had
+been tried by fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The voice of the one hundred and fifty on the steps of Nicanor, picked
+for beauty from a singing nation, burst about the trio, an eruption of
+great harmony, overwhelming the echoes of the Temple, flooding the
+purlieus of the Holy Hill, mounting the morning winds to float across
+the hollow, reverberating ravines, to resound on the bosom of Zion, to
+penetrate the dark vale of Kedron, and to fail and be one with the
+reedy rushing of airs through the cedars of Olivet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his
+soul unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from
+the God of his salvation!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas found himself coming under the influence of the psalm.  It
+seemed that the modifiers, describing the elect, had become lofty,
+solemn attributes not to be assumed by a simple claim to them, not to
+be had after the commission of deeds not specifically interdicted, not
+to be obtained by the harkening to one's own will; nor yet to be had
+did one fix himself in a chrysalis of form, wrap his soul in clean
+linen, and bury it in a remote spot, and keep hourly watch over it to
+keep it white&mdash;white but wizened.  He seemed to understand that he had
+not understood these things in the days of his Essenism, nor in the
+days of his worldliness.  And, remembering the meaning of his presence
+in the Temple, he felt peculiarly accused in his soul.  What right had
+he, who had brought with him the spirit of murder, in the Holy Hill?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He could not shake off the self-accusation, but his resolution was
+unweakened.  He would depart!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hand of one who stood beside him dropped upon his shoulder and
+lingered.  He looked and saw beside him a great man, in the garments of
+an artisan, that covered him, figure, head and face against
+identification.  But Marsyas had known Eleazar under more effective
+disguise; the rabbi was not concealed from him now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps he could learn from Eleazar the whereabouts of Saul of Tarsus,
+so he dropped his head again, and stayed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sun blazed on the spear-points, finishing the pinnacle of the
+Temple with glowing embers; the variegated marble of the Court of
+Gentiles was yellow as the gold of Ophir, and the morning radiance
+trembled over the City of David, lying in the valley two hundred feet
+below or rising up the slopes beyond the ravine.  The long winding
+stream of worshipers flowed from the Gate Beautiful, left, through the
+well of the stairs to the level where entered the Gate of Akra, down
+the long flight of steps into the vale of Gihon, and, dispersing, lost
+itself in the crowded passages of the Lower City.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before they were out of the morning shadow of the giant retaining-wall,
+Marsyas spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is our enemy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is for a time gone hence, and my soul is escaped as a bird out of a
+snare of the fowlers.  I can come now without much fear unto the Holy
+House."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hence?" Marsyas asked uneasily.  "Whither?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall tell thee.  Know thou, first, that I am here, since several
+weeks, abiding among the weavers of Bezetha, and laboring with them;
+for Peter, the usurer of Ptolemais, is dead and his servants scattered
+abroad.  Since Jerusalem hath been purified of the heresy, there is
+little search after the Nazarenes, so, as the robbed house is more
+secure than the one as yet unentered by thieves, I am unmolested in
+Bezetha.  Yet, until this morning, I have not dared venture into the
+Temple."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Saul?" Marsyas urged impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am coming unto Saul.  Jonathan, the High Priest, exhausted the
+patience of Vitellius in ten months.  The Roman's endurance wore
+through and snapped on a sudden like an overstrained cord.  On a
+certain day, in the Feast of Tabernacles, Jonathan was High Priest; ere
+nightfall some respected Jew complained to the legate; the next day,
+Theophilus, brother to Jonathan, was clothed in the robes of Aaron.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Saul was brought up for the instant, but thou knowest that he is no
+cautious weigher of conditions.  He did that which hath proven him not
+the unforeseeing time-server of a bloodthirsty man, but a follower of
+his own conscience and the servant of his own zeal.  He went to the new
+High Priest while yet the robes retained the shape of Jonathan, and
+spake unto him: 'O ruler of my people, is the purification of the faith
+to be given over, seeing that it was the way of thy brother and
+abhorred of the Roman?  Servest thou Vitellius or Jehovah?'  It is not
+told abroad among the people what answer was given, what further asked,
+except that the chastening of the heretics was continued unabated,
+until all Judea was cleansed.  And yesterday, Saul was given letters to
+Jews in Syria, permitting him to carry his examinations into Damascus
+and&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damascus!" Marsyas cried, seizing the rabbi's arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; and to bring the offenders to Jerusalem for trial."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is he gone?" Marsyas demanded in a terrible voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He passed out of the Damascus Gate at sunset last night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come!  Go with me!  Let us overtake him!  He shall not go on!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For revenge, Marsyas?" Eleazar asked mildly, but with reproof in his
+eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To cut him off from desolating me wholly!" Marsyas declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eleazar looked away over the hollows and gentler hills covered with
+houses, toward the summit of Olivet, golden in the sun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I shall not dissuade thee, Marsyas; but I can not go with thee,"
+he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?" Marsyas demanded, with a flush of feeling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have suffered from oppression in the name of the Lord; it is the
+Lord's will.  I have changed in the days of my misfortunes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas came close to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Art thou a Nazarene, Eleazar?" he asked in a low tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, I am a good Jew, a better Jew, for I have become a Jew, again,
+through understanding."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Marsyas was not willing to wait for the rabbi's philosophy; he
+moved restlessly as he stood, and finally put forth his hand to say
+farewell, but Eleazar held it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait, but a moment," he said, "and let me speak.  Thou sayest thou
+wouldst secure thyself from devastation at the Pharisee's hands; since
+nothing can stop Saul, and nothing stop thee, there is death at the end
+of thy doing.  I do not know what moves thee now; perchance it is more
+than the vow sworn to avenge Stephen.  But thou goest to help thyself;
+and&mdash;to assist in convincing the heathen that Israel is an oppressor in
+the name of God!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is!" Marsyas cried passionately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the rabbi went on patiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did not go out after Stephen," he continued.  "I was not seen at the
+crucifixion of his Prophet.  I do not urge bloodshed or urge on the
+work of Saul of Tarsus.  So, who is Israel, O son of a shut house and
+of a hermit brotherhood?  Saul, who knoweth no moderation?  Certain
+feeble and forward speakers in the synagogues, whom even an apostate
+could overthrow in argument?  Or the witnesses whom they suborned in
+revenge?  Say, be these Israel, or Gamaliel who discountenanced the
+persecution?  Or the people among whom the minions of the High Priest
+Jonathan went cautiously to arrest the fathers of the Nazarene faith,
+lest the people stone the Shoterim?  Forget not, brother, that our
+lofty are the friends of Rome; our lowly, tributaries of Rome; our
+chief priests, dependent upon Rome&mdash;and the greater Israel is the
+unheard, the unrecorded, the unpampered, the innocent!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But is it not just, then, that Saul be overtaken, who hath cast
+obloquy on Israel, having shed innocent blood and made Judea to be fled
+by the righteous?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Defendest thou the innocent of Israel, Marsyas?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the Lord, the innocent!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wouldst trouble thyself, had the doom fallen on others, instead of
+thine own, Marsyas?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man frowned and made no answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall not answer for thee," Eleazar went on, "but thou and the world
+accuse the innocent of Israel, when contempt is cast upon the race, as
+an entirety.  But the slander of Israel hath been accomplished, even
+before Saul, and ye may not run down a lie.  So thou and I and our kind
+have the hard task of upholding the glory of the people, a labor from
+which there can be no let nor easement!  The multitude which crowns
+to-day and crucifies to-morrow establishes no standard.  But they are
+witnesses to the evil-speaking of the enemy; they are a slander which
+may not be denied.  If thou join thyself with them, Marsyas, for thine
+own ends, in that much thou ungirdest Israel!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Brother, Saul of Tarsus consented unto the death of Stephen, and
+despoiled me of my one love, as an Essene; he proceedeth, now, against
+my beloved, as a man of the world!  I can not wait on conscience and
+the welfare of Judea.  She will not defend mine own; wherefore I must
+defend them, at whatever cost!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eleazar's face had grown inexpressibly sad during Marsyas' words.  His
+heavily-shaded eyes turned absently away from the speaker.  He seemed
+to see beyond the invincible walls and towers of the Holy City, even
+beyond the olive-orchards and the meeting of the earth and sky, into
+the time which would come out of the east.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps he saw waste and desolate places, lands of destruction and
+captives of the mighty, dregs of the cup of trembling and dregs of the
+cup of fury and the hostility of all nations.  The sadness in his eyes
+became fixed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Verily," he said, as if speaking of his own visions, "thou art a God
+that hidest thyself, O God of Israel!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas heard him with a stir of emotion in his soul.  He put out his
+hand to the rabbi.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I and my like be wrong, thou shall prevail, when the day of the
+just man comes, in the Lord's time!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He called us His chosen people," Eleazar continued, suffering Marsyas
+to take his hand unnoticed, "even the appointed people, the marked
+people!  Marked for His own purposes, how hidden!  But what knows the
+clay of the potter's intent that passes it through fire?  Chastening or
+vengeance, woe, woe unto them, by whom it cometh!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned away, and Marsyas looked after him until the narrow winding
+streets had obscured him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quickly then Marsyas continued toward the Gennath Gate; reared to the
+Essenic habit of traveling without preparation, he was ready to journey
+from city to city in the dress he wore on the streets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went by the cenotaph of Mariamne, past Phasælus, past the Prætorium,
+out of the gate, past the might of Hippicus, and on to the parting of
+the road, where he took the way to Damascus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently he met a horseman and, stopping the traveler, bought without
+parley the beast, and mounted it.  He knew that Saul would proceed by
+the slow mule, and the forbidden, nobler animal, the horse, would soon
+make up the distance the Pharisee had gained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So, without relaxing from his fever of determination, Marsyas sped on
+toward Damascus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He knew that the hour had come!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap36"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+ON THE DAMASCUS ROAD
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+With the solid soil of the ancient Roman road beneath his horse's feet,
+Marsyas rode north, between the hills of Judea, with the head of Mt.
+Ephraim before him.  The early morning of the second day broke over
+him, fresh on the long straight road, leading over the border into
+Samaria, past the Well of Jacob, and through the city of Samaria.  At
+noon the third day he turned at the parting of the ways, and rode east,
+along the southern edge of the Plains of Esdraelon, until, through a
+crevice in the hills, he saw the Jordan sparkling in its valley below.
+It was an old familiar way, thence, north once more, fording a hundred
+mountain brooks that fed the river of the Holy Land.  The narrow
+fertile strip that lay between the hills and waters of the Sea of
+Galilee, unto Tiberias, he accomplished after night.  At dawn he
+entered Magdala, at mid-morning Capernaum, and, leaving the margin of
+the beautiful lake, he passed north into the rocks, ridges and forests
+once more.  Through marshes and sedge, with the waters of the Jordan in
+the heart of it, he forded the south arm of Lake Huleh and entered
+Itrurea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The country changed but the road did not.  It was still the same
+compact ribbon of stone and soil in the marsh as it was in the hills,
+as it was in the fertile lowlands.  Ahead of him, through the hills it
+stretched, through the oaks of Bashan, under cliffs surmounted by
+castles, or hillsides marked by temples.  And when the oaks left off,
+and the hills fell back and the streams dried into dead, sapless beds
+watered only by infrequent rains, the road continued on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fifth dawn, he rode down a pass, through a rocky defile, and the
+Syrian desert was before him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had bought provisions for two days' journey at the last village in
+the fertile lands; his horse was freshened after a night's feeding on
+the herbage in the hills, and Marsyas' heart was resolute.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Even the road no longer led him on, but he touched his horse with his
+hand and passed into the wilderness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At a huddle of huts for goat-tenders, he found that Saul and his party
+had passed at noon the day previous.  The Arabs there besought him to
+remain until the evening, for none traveled under a Syrian noonday and
+escaped evil consequences.  But Marsyas wrapped his head in his mantle,
+watered his horse and pressed on.  He had no time to lose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Antilibanus, a glaring ridge of chalk, heightened at intervals into
+peaks that held up their blistering cold winds from the heat-blasted
+day, and swept them down by night to confound the stunned earth with
+ice.  The shale from their easternmost slopes sprawled out on the
+desert and scarred it with rock and gravel until the blowing sands
+buried it.  Far to the east, the lap of the desert dropped down into
+emptiness, marked by a level of intervening atmosphere.  Beyond that
+were bald hills outlined against the horizon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Between was a cruel waste, tufted here and there by gray-green, scrubby
+growth, half-buried in sand and rooted in gravel.  There was color, but
+it was the dye of chemicals, not refractions; chalks, not rainbows.
+The drop of water has only the true range of the spectrum and its
+merging grades, but sands may be erratic, chaotic.  Thus, the wadies,
+sallow meanderings in the trembling distance, were bordered with dull
+fawn and dull lavender&mdash;ashes of scarlet and purple; wherever hummocks
+arose there were ground-swells of lifeless gray and saffron&mdash;burned-out
+blue and gold.  Over it all were sown burnished fleckings of myriads of
+mica particles, like white-hot motes from the face of the sun itself.
+The air was flame; the sky a livid arch that no man dared look upon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At high noon, Marsyas hid from the deadly sun in a crevice in a narrow
+canyon; but pressed on while yet the scorching air burned his nostrils.
+At night, he rode through bitter winds, or broke his fast with the inky
+outlines of jackals squatting about the rim of the immediate landscape.
+He met no man, and had no desire for companionship with the burden of
+his stern thoughts to attend him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not have the murderer's heart in him; he did not go forward in a
+whirl of passion and fury; it did not once occur to him to ambush the
+Tarsian; he did not ponder on a plan of action when the moment should
+arrive; not once did he strike the fatal blow, in his imagination, nor
+speak with Saul, nor follow himself after the deed was done.  His ideas
+were largely in retrospect, or centered upon the necessity of his work.
+His love of Lydia, his love of life, his natural impulses toward
+generous things were put away from him with firmness, as things which
+had no place at such a time.  His composure was almost resignation.  He
+knew then, that which he had never been able to understand,&mdash;how men of
+great souls and previous noble lives could in all calmness kill another
+by design.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A glittering white ridge had shaped itself out of the pale blue sky of
+an early morning, while yet he rode in the hills.  It was Hermon, with
+the unmelted snows of the winter covering its crown.  Opposite it, he
+came upon another miserable cluster of hovels, the abode of pestilence,
+want and superstition, and there found that Saul had passed through the
+village at high noon that day.  Marsyas purchased water for his horse
+and rode on.  Saul was now only a half-day's journey ahead of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had come far, without rest.  Even now, with the crisis of his long
+journey at hand, he labored under prostrating weariness and a torturing
+desire to sleep.  He had periods of mental blankness from which he
+aroused with a start.  But as the night's cold deepened, after the day
+of withering heat, the sharp change added to the weakening influences.
+He meditated on the Feast of Junia and the succession of Classicus,
+until his body became a column finishing the front of Agrippa's palace,
+at which a mob at Baiæ threw stones.  He flinched, and the night on the
+desert of Syria passed across his vision once more.  But it was good to
+lie down on the couch at the triclinum of Caligula, restful, indeed, if
+it were sinful.  But not for long, because Lydia was beside him, and he
+spent hours imploring her to give up Jove and pour libations to Jehovah
+instead, for since Saul of Tarsus was Cæsar, she would be chained to a
+soldier under sentence in the Prætorium.  Even now there approached a
+decurion with manacles thrown over his shoulder!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again, he saw the drooping head of his horse before him in the dark,
+the pallid stretch of sand, and felt the sweep of harsh winds on his
+face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Lollia Paulina had laid her sesterces on this worn-out animal, when
+she knew that Cneius Domitius' horses were the best in the Circus!  Why
+did the woman insist on sitting with him, when she wanted so much to be
+with the Roman?  But nobody was good.  Even Stephen had died in heresy,
+and Lydia, for whom he had lost his soul, was an apostate!  The
+multitude had her!  Classicus turned his back upon her!  Flaccus stood
+within twenty paces of her and leveled a pilum at her breast!  And Saul
+bound his arms!  Help!  Mercy&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But a brambly desert shrub had caught at his garments, and its sharp
+dead thorns had pierced him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next mid-morning he rode up a chalky ridge and saw the picture that
+had brought praise to the lips of the prophets of despair, when Israel
+was a captive with no hope.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a vale so enchanting, so perfect, so golden that he doubted his
+eyes and feared that it was an unreality the desert had fashioned to
+lure him on to destruction&mdash;or another but kindlier dream.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yellow roadways, slender and winding, wandered hither and thither
+through emerald oceans of young grain, past ancient vineyards and
+orchards of olives, and citrons, and groves of walnuts.  Yonder was a
+cluster of palms, pilasters of silver with feathery capitals, and under
+it was builded a little town&mdash;a hive of soft-colored houses, half
+smothered in delicate green.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beyond, the roads spread out again, from their convergence in the
+little settlement, and ran abroad once more between hedges of roses and
+oleanders, across the River Pharbar, curving midway across the vale
+like a simitar dropped in the green, through crowding gardens, among
+low-lying roofs, past spreading villas of the rich, on to a glittering
+vision of towers, walls, cupolas, white as frost on the head of Mount
+Tabor in the morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At his feet was Caucabe the Star; in the distance was Damascus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas drew up his jaded horse and looked, not at the beauty of the
+scene, for he did not wish to see it now, but down the roads.  Over
+every yellow ribbon his gaze passed until, beyond the limits of the
+white-towered town, he saw a cluster of small moving figures.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O rememberer of no wrongs," he said to his horse, "only a little way
+and thou shall rest and I shall rest!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pressed on, past Caucabe the Star, down the hedges of roses between
+the emerald oceans of young grain and the odorous shade of orchards.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sun climbed higher, more heated, more merciless; the oleanders gave
+up their fast fragrance until the night fell again; the vineyards
+curled, leaf by leaf, the young grain drooped and wilted, the orchards
+pent in the heat under their boughs, the yellow roads became streaks of
+brass and the tyrant of the desert stood at its meridian.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another stadium, and Marsyas drew up his horse sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sixty paces ahead was a wayside pool, overshadowed by tall trees&mdash;an
+irresistible invitation to the traveler seeking refuge from the sun.  A
+lean, bowed figure in rabbinical robes stood beside a mule that drank
+of the spring.  Half a dozen men in the garments of Levites stood by
+their own beasts with rein in hand while they drank.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas felt in his belt for his knife, and curbing his thirsty horse
+lowered down on Saul of Tarsus.  In his association with hardy pagans,
+athletæ and the exquisite Herod, he had in a measure forgotten the
+feebleness of Saul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is weak!" he said to himself.  "But what mercy hath he shown the
+weak?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He recalled the terrible desert, remembered that Saul had sworn to
+bring back the Nazarenes to Jerusalem for trial&mdash;back across that
+empire of death!  And Lydia, gentle and without hardihood, against whom
+he could not bear to think of the wind blowing strongly, was to go that
+way!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Levites watched the Pharisee narrowly; one of them, whom Marsyas
+recognized as Joel, made tentative movements toward unpacking the
+supplies from one of the burden-bearing beasts.  But the Pharisee drew
+up the bridle of his mule and led it to the roadside toward a stone by
+which he could mount.  The eyes of the Levites followed him in a
+troubled manner, and Joel sat down as if to show that he believed the
+rabbi would not proceed in the noon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Up!" said Saul calmly, "we shall continue to Damascus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The troubled Levites stared at him, and Joel presently objected:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;but it is the noon!  And the heat is cruel!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We can proceed, nevertheless," was the reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stupefied Levite stumbled to his feet, and the party led their
+beasts out into the sun.  Marsyas with a fierce word dismounted and
+strode toward them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At his second step he faltered.  Silence dropped upon the blazing plain
+of Damascus&mdash;silence so sudden, so absolute that his footfall startled
+him.  He saw that the movement of Saul's party had been arrested.  Arm
+lifted, or foot put forward, stayed in the attitude.  The utter
+stillness seized them as a commanding hand.  Then all the noon grew
+dim, not from the abatement of the sun's light, but by the coming of a
+radiance infinitely brighter.  Descending from above, instantly
+intensifying as if the source that shed it approached as fast as stars
+move, a single ray, purer than the glitter on Mount Hermon, and more
+inscrutable than the face of the Syrian sun, stood among them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Its presence was not violent but all-compelling.  The group at the pool
+fell down in the dust and lay still.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silence such as never before and never again lay on the plain of
+Damascus, brooded about them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Out of it a single voice issued, low, trembling, filled with fear and
+reverence.  It was Saul of Tarsus, speaking:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who art Thou, Lord?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently he spoke again, eagerly, humbly, and still afraid:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3b">
+[Illustration: &quot;Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?&quot; (missing from book)]
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+After a long time, the hot breeze made a whispering sound in the sand
+of the roadway; the leaves in the hedge at hand stirred and fluttered.
+Joel, the boldest of the Levites, cautiously raised his head, and
+presently got upon his feet.  His fellows, taking heart, rose, one by
+one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A young stranger in the robes of an Essene was kneeling among them with
+large dark eyes fixed in pity upon Saul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rabbi had made an attempt to raise himself, but had paused
+transfixed.  Humility made an actual light on his forehead; his pinched
+features were stunned with helplessness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The terrified Levites crept closer to one another, but Joel finally wet
+his dry lips and spoke in a half-whisper:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rabbi?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no answer in words, but slow tears rose, brimmed over the
+lids and crept down the sun-burned hollow cheeks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young stranger came quickly and knelt beside the rabbi and laid a
+kindly hand on his shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Brother Saul?" he whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The face of the rabbi came round, but the gaze missed its mark and
+wandered over the men about him.  There was no vision in the eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is blind!" a Levite whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young stranger slipped the hand from the shoulder around the bowed
+figure, and, supporting Saul in his arm, looked down with infinite
+sorrow and concern at the darkened eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We will abide here," he said at last, to the Levites, "until the noon
+passeth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Levites looked in a little fear at the spot where they had been so
+mysteriously overwhelmed, but Marsyas lifted Saul and bore him back
+into the shade he had left to continue unto Damascus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All of his own passion and purpose had been swept away, leaving his
+mind to the tenantry of the sweetest content he had ever known.  Though
+he had seen no man nor heard a voice, he knew that the Lord had visited
+Saul, and that the eye of the Lord beheld Saul's work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After that reverent translation of the supernatural event, he troubled
+himself no more concerning the vision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Absolute relief possessed his soul; rest of spirit so all-comprehensive
+that it strengthened his body, peace so whole that it bordered on
+gladness, and confidence, new, delicious and simple, embraced all his
+being.  The old restless ambition was so stilled and soothed that it
+seemed to have been fulfilled; the old Essenic cynicism that had
+slandered all the world, tinctured his friendships with distrust and
+his love with fear, was dissipated like a distorting illusion; his
+hates, his thirst for revenge, his impatience with the deliberation of
+God, and his self-dependence were things unremembered.  He did not
+understand his change and did not seek after its meaning; his feelings
+did not even hark back to the old love for Saul.  Pity and filial
+solicitude, sensations that on a time he could not have believed
+possible as shown to Saul, made the strength of his arm gentle and his
+service reverential.  He thought now of Lydia, with worshipful,
+marvelous homage, as if his soul knelt to her.  He had ceased to be
+afraid for her or to fear that he would not find her.  Everything good
+became possible; the prospering of virtue, the fidelity of Agrippa, the
+prevention of Flaccus and the favor of Cæsar, even the restoration of
+his beloved, seemed to be things absolutely assured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not say these things to himself; they were simple convictions
+that made themselves felt in a tender blending which amounted to
+perfect waiting on the Lord.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not know that his face had become beautiful, or that Joel looked
+askance at him or that the other Levites wondered if he had come to
+them in the great light.  So when the sun stood three hours above the
+horizon, he raised Saul from the shade of the walnut grove and passed
+on to Damascus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The golden haze reddened over the glorious Damascene plain, the
+distance became obscured; the purple triumphed; then the royal color
+over the world began to run out into plum shades, and the sudden night
+came up from the east.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But before this hour at one of the north gates of Damascus, the halting
+group of Levites, the stricken man among them, and the silent, kindly
+young stranger appeared before Aretas' wiry black Arab sentry that held
+that post.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They did not know the ways of the Pearl of the Orient, and they wished
+to find Via Recta&mdash;Straight Street.  There Judas, a Pharisee of wealth
+and power, expected to entertain Saul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Though the Cæsars possessed the city's fealty, exacted tribute,
+installed Jupiter in the temples and the eagle on its standard, it was
+still the dominion of Rimmon, vassal of Nimrud, high place of the sons
+of Uz.  It had submitted to Alexander of Macedon as placidly as it
+suffered the wolfish Roman, who would pass, likewise.  It notched its
+calendar by the rise and fall of nations, and marked its days by the
+sway of kings.  It had propitiated Time, hence there was no death for
+Damascus; it steeped itself in the oils of the Orient and so was spiced
+against decay.  There were Romanized colonnades along the streets, but
+the winged bulls of the dromoes, the stucco-work and the tiles, the
+swaying of carpets from balconies obscured their influence.  Architects
+of Cæsar's extravagances scowled at the giant structures that were old
+in Baalbec's time and looked their defeat; Chaldean philosophers
+contemplated the trenches worn in the rock pavements by the feet of men
+and held their peace; olives, as old as Troy, cast their leaves down on
+the heads of Greeks who shook them off impatiently, but the sons of
+Abraham could point to a mound of clay and say: "This was a temple
+which our father builded unto God, before you all!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Jewish tincture had never been abated even, much less worked out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Therefore, as the agitated travelers from Jerusalem passed through the
+gate they went with their own kind by legions.  The slow mule was
+there, outnumbering the Arab's troops of horses, which were mettled,
+nervous creatures, caparisoned like kings; there were Israel's camels,
+bearing howdahs, rich as thrones; tall stalking dromedaries in tasseled
+housings and tinkling harnesses, passing as ships pass over
+ground-swells, with undulations dizzying in their ease; and these,
+mounted by the sons of Abraham, were more in number than the Hindu
+palanquins, Roman lecticæ, Greek litters, and Gentiles afoot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas glanced about for the eye of a citizen whom he might approach
+and ask his way, but the turmoil for the moment confused him.  Into the
+gate or out of it passed wealthy travelers, faring in state; itinerant
+merchants; squads of Aretas' soldiery, and through and among these,
+eddying and swarming, shouting, hurrying and trading were venders,
+beggars, carriers, slaves, citizens, Jews in gowns, Arabs in burnooses,
+Greeks in chitons, Romans in tunics, idlers, actors, scribes, notaries,
+priests and magistrates&mdash;of twenty nationalities, of every rank and age.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas met face to face a Pharisee of erect and imposing figure, with
+flowing beard and aggressive features, who drew his spotless linen
+draperies away from contact with the ceremonially unclean horde at the
+gate.  The man had stopped and was gazing from his commanding height
+over the rush of pilgrims flowing into the walls of Damascus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas approached him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I seek Judas, a Pharisee, which dwelleth in Straight Street!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am he," the Pharisee interrupted, examining the young man for some
+familiar feature which might justify the Essene's initiatory.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art well-met, sir; we bring unto thee, thy guest, Saul of Tarsus,
+stricken by a vision on the roads and blind!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even am I here, awaiting him," the Pharisee exclaimed.  "Thou bringest
+me evil tidings!  Lead me to him, I pray thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Levites stood with Saul outside the path of the exit to the
+gateway, and Marsyas led Judas to the stricken rabbi.  Hebrew servants
+followed respectfully after their master.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Brother Saul," Marsyas said, "I bring thee thy host; he will care for
+thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sightless eyes of the rabbi turned toward the speaker, and Marsyas
+thought that a shadow crossed the forehead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Woe is me!" Judas exclaimed, "that thou shouldst come thus afflicted,
+brother!  But perchance the vision was a blessing on thee!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He does not speak," Marsyas explained.  "I do not belong to his party.
+I joined them to offer aid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob reward thee," Judas
+said.  He signed to his servants, who brought forward a litter in which
+Judas had meant his guest should proceed to Straight Street.  Saul was
+lifted into it; Judas climbed in beside him; the servants shouldered
+the litter, and, with the Levites following, bore it away into the city.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas looked after it until the narrow ways between the high
+unsightly mud walls hid it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he put his hands together and smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Nazarene bade me ask for Ananias!" he whispered.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap37"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+IN THE HOUSE OF ANANIAS
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+But Ananias was a favorite name among the Jews of Damascus.  Weariness
+and the desire for slumber after inquiries which brought him twenty
+diverse directions, sent Marsyas to a khan when the night was old, and
+Lydia still unfound.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next morning after refreshing and untroubled sleep, he began to
+search for Ananias, carefully withholding the explanation that the
+Ananias he sought was a Nazarene, out of an impulse to protect the
+protector of his beloved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He found Ananias, the wine-merchant, and Ananias, the tanner, banished
+to the outskirts of the city, because of his unclean trade; and
+Ananias, the priest; and Ananias who was a native of Antioch and of
+mixed blood, but unalterably a Jew; and Ananias, who was a soldier,
+drafted into garrison service by Aretas, who had taken the city from
+Antipas; and Ananias, the steward of Sidon who had robbed his master
+and was now too rich and powerful to be punished; and Ananias, who was
+a reader in the Synagogue.  And for two other days, he sought Ananiases
+patiently and with pathetic hope.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At sunset on the fourth day, he saw a woman meet another woman in the
+street, and between the two there passed a communication with the
+fingers.  To others, not associated with Nazarenes, the sign meant
+nothing, but Marsyas caught the motion and his heart leaped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the sign of the cross!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He overtook the woman who had passed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I pray thee, friend," he said in a low voice, "canst thou tell me
+where Ananias, the Nazarene, dwelleth?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman raised, a pair of calm gray eyes to his face.  She was a
+Greek and fair, and her forehead was as placid as a lake in a calm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Art thou his friend?" she asked, with a touch of the caution acquired
+by the unhappy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am a friend to many who have departed into the Nazarene way," he
+said.  "I shall not betray him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Seest the house built upon the wall," she said simply, "that hath the
+white gate, at the end of the street?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas assented.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Knock," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He blessed her with a look and hurried down the darkening passage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With trembling hands, he rapped on the whitewashed gate, set deep in
+the thick clay wall, and presently the door swung open.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A woman in the house-dress of a servant stood there; behind her was a
+walk lined with white stones; cooing pigeons were disappearing into a
+cupola on the house within; an ipomoea, pallid with bloom, shaded the
+step; irises were pushing through the rich mold just inside the gate.
+There was the rainy rustling of leaves from the olive trees at the
+property wall on each side.  And there was a seat of tamarind with
+fallen leaves upon it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does Ananias, the Nazarene, dwell here?" Marsyas asked with a tremor
+in his voice.  Whither had his courage departed?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Enter," the woman said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas stepped over the threshold of the white gate, that was latched
+behind him against opening from the outside, and followed the woman
+toward the bower of ipomoea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Within a hall, lighted by a single taper, she gave him a seat, and
+disappeared through a door at the end of the room.  A moment later, the
+tall spare figure of the pastor of Ptolemais and of Rhacotis emerged
+from the interior.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas sprang up, but no sound came to his lips.  He clasped his hands
+and gazed with pitiful eyes upon the Nazarene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without pausing for the formality of a greeting, after the first
+movement of surprise, Ananias reopened the door that he had closed
+behind him and signed to the young man to pass in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas stood in a large chamber, with a spot of light in its center
+under a hanging lamp.  There, with her head bright under the rays, sat
+Lydia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her face was toward him when he entered.  She flung down the skein of
+wool she was winding and sprang up.  But the look on Marsyas' face
+arrested her cry.  One glance of supreme examination and her large eyes
+kindled with sudden triumph.  She came to him as if more than distance
+between them and danger had been overcome.  Marsyas swept her into his
+arms and folded her to his heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No more, no more!" he was saying, "from this time for ever more mine
+own!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Trembling and smiling, while tears perfect as pearls glittered on her
+lashes, she put her arms about his neck and drew his head down to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O my Marsyas," she cried, "better to die in the light of thy trust
+than to live in thy love without it!  Blessed, thrice blessed the hour
+which gave me both!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O my Lydia, thou anointest me with thy forgiveness, and clothest me in
+the holy garment of thy love!  Blessed am I and consecrated!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believed in thy wisdom, love!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had no wisdom but love!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Lord heard me, my Marsyas, for I was near mine extremity, and I
+could not have endured much longer!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had reached my extremity, Lydia, and then the Lord gave me His hand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned him toward the light, and gazed up at his eyes with such
+earnestness, such penetration on her almost infantile face, that he
+pressed her closer to him and laughed a low laugh.  Her eyes flashed on
+him a light of new interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never heard thee laugh till now!" she exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never was happy till now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why now, and not before?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was silence; he could not tell her why he had changed, but he
+could tell what had marked it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He led her to the chair she had left, and when she had sat, dropped at
+her feet and crossed his arms upon her lap.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen, and when I have done, know that the Lord loved us, and hath
+joined us with His own hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beginning at the time when he turned to find her gone from the reader's
+stone before the Synagogue in Alexandria, he told with simple
+directness of his wanderings, of his disappointments, of his growing
+fear that he would not save her from Saul.  He had her follow him to
+the Temple, where he met Eleazar and received the dire news that Saul
+had departed for Damascus; and thence along the old Roman road through
+the length of the Holy Land, up past his native hills and the waters of
+the Sea of Galilee, and the marshes of Lake Huleh, into the desert, and
+on to the beginning of the beneficence of the Pharbar and the Abana,
+until he brought up within sixty paces of Saul at the wayside pool.
+All these things she heard with the sympathetic interest which had won
+him to her from the talk in the dawn on the housetop in Alexandria.
+But when he came to the supernatural visit of the great light, and the
+prostration of Saul and his own arising a man of subdued and sweetened
+nature, her eyes shone with a repressed excitement that was not usual
+in her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naught but a miracle could have stopped me then; naught but the same
+interference could turn me again into the old way!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She lifted his face and spoke to him with deep seriousness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Didst thou hear what the Spirit said?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We heard nothing, except Saul's words, which I told thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And did Saul make thee a promise that he would persecute no more, or
+beg thy compassion or thy forgiveness for his work against thy Stephen?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He did not speak; he did not know me, for he was blind, and as one in
+a trance!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And thou hast withdrawn thy hand from him, and forsworn thine oath
+against him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have done that thing, Lydia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She held fast to her composure, but her face was transfigured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wherein art thou different, then, from the Nazarenes of Ptolemais who
+showed thee their doctrine of peace, and refused thee when thou wouldst
+have hurled them against Saul?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment there was silence.  Then he arose on his knees and raising
+his hands clasped them on his breast, while the splendor of a divine
+enlightenment shone in his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know who came unto us there," he whispered.  "It was the Christ!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laid her fluttering palms over his clasped hands and held them
+there, while each in his heart kept the silence, which, in such a
+moment, is prayer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Marsyas withdrew a hand and took from the folds of his garment the
+little red cedar crucifix, and, kissing it, put it into her hands.  The
+red cord was still attached to it, and, with solemnity on her face, she
+laid it about his neck and blessed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the ecstasy of exaltation had passed away, for they were young and
+the spirit of human love was strong between them, Lydia bade him
+listen, while she told him one other surprising thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At the command of a heavenly vision, Ananias went this day unto the
+house of Judas the Pharisee, and into the darkened chamber, where Saul
+lay, blind and dumb.  And by the gift of the Lord Jesus, Ananias laid
+his hands on Saul's head, and the blind man straightway had his sight.
+So he arose and followed Ananias unto this house&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here?" Marsyas cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unto this house, where, when he had broken fast and taken strength, he
+stood up and glorified Jesus of Nazareth, and received baptism unto the
+Church of the Nazarenes whom he persecuted hitherto unto death!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas was silent.  More than wonder filled his heart.  Presently he
+said, as if speaking to himself:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is this thine hour, O my martyred Stephen?  Art thou content?
+Sleepest thou the better, knowing that I have followed thy testament
+for Saul, rather than mine own oath against him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia left his communings unanswered, but when he put his hands over
+his face and laid his head in her lap, her own tears fell with his.
+Feeling presently her touch on his hair, he raised his head to take the
+hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give it to me, my love," he said, "for it hath shaped my life anew,
+pointed me to the way that even the sacred dead would have me walk, and
+the joy and the comfort of all time to come lieth in the hollow of it!
+Let me serve it, now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And thou wilt not regret the peace of En-Gadi, in the world that can
+not fail to be troublous, some time?" she asked, but with the smile of
+one who does not fear the answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I owe En-Gadi a debt," he said, "for the brethren were as father and
+mother to me when I had neither.  Its teaching and its practices are
+pure, and its peace is good for them who fear the world.  But with the
+help of Him who made thee strong and Stephen fearless, I shall not want
+pent-in walls to be happy and upright."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let Ananias teach thee, my love; let Saul show thee his heart; and
+then&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Send us back unto Alexandria, with the faith of Christ on our lips and
+the peace of His love in our hearts.  Tell me that I may go with thee,
+Lydia!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have been waiting for thee since the day we met in the Judean hills."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap38"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE REQUITAL
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+On the third day after his arrival in Jerusalem, Herod the king was in
+his privy cabinet arranging, with his own hands, the graven gems and
+articles of virtu, prizes brought from his trip to Antioch.  The door
+was dubiously opened, and Agrippa, without turning his head, knew who
+stood there, for only one in the palace had been commanded to enter the
+king's presence without announcement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Silas?" Agrippa said, contemplating the elusive tints of a jade
+goblet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man pulled at the gorgeous uniform of master of horse, that
+hung from the peasant shoulders and answered:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A friend of thy unfortunate days is without."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's brows lifted and drew toward each other in a manner
+half-amused, half-vexed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The friends of my unfortunate days are the friends of my fortunate
+days; wherefore, they would liefer be known as friends of Agrippa the
+king, than of Agrippa the bankrupt.  Give them their due and call them
+the king's companions.  And Silas?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The king would as lief forget that he ever had a misfortune."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silas looked perplexed and rubbed his forehead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But who is it that stands without?" Agrippa continued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Essene."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!  Marsyas?  By the Nymphae&mdash;beshrew me!  By the beard of Balaam,
+I shall be glad to see him!  Fetch him hither!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silas nodded in lieu of a bow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord, there is one with him; shall she enter also?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The alabarch's daughter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay!  The little Athene!  Terpsichore's best!  Not so; though, by
+Bacch&mdash;Balaam! she would be a fit jewel for this place.  It shall be an
+audience hour.  Go, summon the queen, and have the Essene and his
+priestess come to us in our hall!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The master of horse backed away, but, catching Agrippa's smiling eye,
+turned his back, remembering his privilege, and hurried out, as if he
+expected an arrow between his shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The king shut down the lid of the shittim-wood chest upon the priceless
+trifles still unpacked, locked it, and said the while to himself:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Essene hath heard of the Pharisee Saul's apostasy and hath come to
+demand his punishment of me.  Behold me grant it, with kingly gravity.
+It will attach the extremists to me all the more, for I hear the
+Sicarii are wanting the heretic's blood!  And he fetches the little
+Lysimachus with him!  Aha!  En-Gadi hath lost&mdash;that which it never had,
+in truth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at his hands and at his garments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, it will be just as well if the lady sees me looking my best!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He slammed the door of his cabinet behind him, locked it and hurried
+away in the direction of the royal wardrobe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In an hour he ascended the dais in robes of purple velvet with the
+Pharisee fringes in gold.  Cypros, filled with pleasurable
+anticipations, was beside him in the garments that Mariamne had worn.
+The king cast an eye over the carpeting, the canopy and the gorgeous
+dressing of his throne and said to Cypros:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perpol! the place reeks with the smell of newness!  But be not
+conscious of it!  Perchance none will guess that the hands of the
+upholsterers are still warm on the fabric."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The genuflexions of the series of attendants at the archway and beyond
+marked the coming of Marsyas and Lydia.  A Jewish chamberlain within
+the hall bent to the pavement and announced to the king that his
+visitors approached.  Agrippa relaxed even more comfortably in his
+throne and let his scepter fall into his lap.  But Cypros, more
+conscious of her debt to those who visited her now than of her state,
+smiled and moved forward and looked down the long chamber for the first
+glimpse of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it was not the Marsyas and the Lydia she had expected to see.  Even
+to one of her unready perceptions, the change upon the two was
+strangely marked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They came side by side, both in the simple white garments of the
+ceremonially clean, but Marsyas' head was uncovered and Lydia's locks
+were wholly unbound, after the custom of Jewish brides.  Within a few
+paces of the throne-dais they stopped.  With all her former grace,
+Lydia sank to her knees, but Marsyas, after the oriental salaam, stood
+beside her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cypros, with her eyes shining, and after an eager glance at her lord,
+arose and stepped to the edge of the dais.  Then Agrippa got up, with
+his purple trailing effectively, and came down from his high seat, and
+approached his guests.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the one pain of mine exaltation," he said as he extended his
+arms to Marsyas, "that mine old loves believe that they must approach
+me now with humility."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yet they no less expect that thou wilt raise them," Marsyas said,
+returning the king's embrace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa lifted Lydia to her feet and kissed her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There, by my kingdom!" he exclaimed.  "I rejoice at thy wedding for
+the privilege it gives me!  May joy be thy portion, and peace and
+abundance and years be multiplied unto you both!  Evoe! as the heathen
+say!  But for your sanctified atmosphere, I would have the trumpeters
+blow you a fan-fare!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He handed Lydia to Cypros, who waited almost tearfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go, let the queen congratulate thee that thou hast wedded an upright
+man in the beginning and saved thyself of the pain of making him
+one&mdash;as she had to do!  Come up," he continued to Marsyas, "and sit at
+our feet.  And tell us of yourselves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With his arm over Marsyas' shoulder, he went back to his dais, and
+sitting, had Marsyas take the guest's chair at his side, while Cypros
+bestowed Lydia on a velvet cushion at her feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So much, so long my story, that I falter at its beginning, as one
+beginning a day's journey at sunset," said Marsyas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou needest but to essay a beginning; let me lead thee," Agrippa
+observed.  "Let me satisfy the questions in thee, ere I be entertained.
+First, of Flaccus.  I sent messengers to Cæsar from Antioch detailing
+the high offenses of the proconsul, hinting treason against the
+government of the emperor and other charges which excite Caligula most,
+and ere I departed I had from Cæsar's own hand the tidings that a
+centurion had been despatched to Alexandria to arrest Flaccus and bring
+him to Rome for trial.  And the further news, which will raise thee,
+sweet Lydia, to calm content.  The Jews are to be restored their
+rights, the prisoners freed, and better times assured to thy people."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lydia clasped her hands, and her eyes filled with relief.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And my father?" she asked in a low voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Especially commended to Cæsar's favor!  The black days for the
+Alexandrian Jews are over, unless Caligula force upon them his pet
+madness that he is a god and amenable to worship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mad, at last!" Marsyas exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never otherwise," Agrippa answered.  "I hear that he has proclaimed
+Junia to be Athor, and hath set up a white cow in a temple to be
+propitiated in the wanton's name!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas looked at the downcast lashes of Lydia and loved her for the
+silence she kept.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will she&mdash;be&mdash;empress?" Cypros faltered, in womanly fear of some
+unknown evil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa laughed and dropped his hand meaningly on Marsyas' arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If she should be, here is Marsyas yet to protect me!" he said.  But
+Marsyas did not smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!" Agrippa cried; "still an Essene?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Marsyas, "but the Lord forfend that the woman should ever
+become Augusta!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never fear!  She is too poor.  Caligula, like any other mortal god,
+would prefer a dowry with his consort!  And that, by
+Janus&mdash;ah&mdash;er&mdash;Jacob! brings me up to somewhat relative to our old
+fortune-seeking friend, Classicus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," Marsyas protested with a show of his old-time spirit, "I shall
+not agree that Classicus sought Lydia for her riches alone!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The unhappiest remark, the crudest accusation thou didst ever force me
+to defend!" Agrippa exclaimed, glowering at Marsyas.  "Now, how shall I
+convince thy sweet bride that I had not meant that any man could love
+her less than her dowry!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Lydia smiled, first at Marsyas and then at the king, and said: "Let
+us hear of Classicus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The king clapped his hands, and an attendant bowed to the floor in the
+archway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bring hither the letter from Alexandria, which my scribe answereth,"
+Agrippa said.  In a moment a package was put into the king's hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He unfolded it carefully.  "It is fragile," he said, "reed
+paper&mdash;papyrus, of his own curing, and written with a quill.  Evil days
+for Classicus; but observe, he hath not forgotten the latest fashion in
+folding it.  Listen:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"To the Most High and Gracious Prince, Herod Agrippa, King of Judea,
+from his servant and subject, Justin Classicus, the Alexandrian,
+greeting:
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"That thou hast come unto thine own, that thou hast triumphed and the
+day of fulfillment hath dawned, that the Jews of the hallowed soil of
+Canaan have again a king from among them, I give thee congratulations
+and God-speed, and offer thanks to the God of our fathers.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Would to that same God who hath magnified thee, that the sway of thy
+scepter extended unto us, here, in Alexandria.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Our misfortunes are beyond words.  Particularly am I most unfortunate.
+Because of my friendliness to the alabarch, and subsequent turning upon
+Flaccus in thine own extremity, I am reduced to the utmost poverty,
+having neither food nor raiment beyond that which a faithful freedman
+supplies me out of his own little store.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Since mine own people are imprisoned within a fourth of their
+territory, nor one permitted to come forth upon pain of dreadful death,
+I can not hope for help from them, much less from the Gentiles, who
+take particular delight in my humiliation.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"In thee I have hope.  I pray thee number me among thy helpless ones
+and give me of thy bounty something to do to clothe and feed me, and
+sufficiently gentle that I may not be proscribed among my kind&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa broke off and laughed aloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why read more?  Is it not enough?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Enough," Marsyas said slowly.  "But by thy leave, lord, we would know
+what thou wilt say to him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A just demand; for thou and not I didst suffer at his hands.  I shall
+tell him that I laid the matter before thee and that thou&mdash;-"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, then, lord," Marsyas broke in earnestly, "if thou carest in all
+earnestness for my suggestion, pray let me make it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I believe that I anticipated it and commanded the answer so to be
+written."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a little regretful silence, and Agrippa leaned toward Marsyas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What abideth there, Marsyas?" he asked, touching the young man's
+forehead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a pause, Marsyas raised his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The full length of mine own story leadeth up to the answer," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, then, speak!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Asking permission of Cypros with her eyes, Lydia arose from her place
+on her cushion, and came to Marsyas' side.  He put his arm about her
+and held her hand, and so she stood while he told his story.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa and Cypros listened with ordinary interest until he began to
+tell of his ride across the desert in pursuit of Saul.  Then Agrippa's
+excitement-loving instincts stirred, and he sat up and contemplated
+Marsyas with arrested attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the sighting of the Pharisee far down the road beyond Caucabe, the
+king's eyes sparkled; when Marsyas rode upon the party at the pool,
+Agrippa's hand on the arm of his throne had clenched.  At Marsyas'
+dismounting and approach, the king muttered under his breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But at that instant," the narrator went on, showing the effects of his
+own story, "a light, such as never before descended upon the earth and
+will not come again until the Prince of Light cometh, stood among us;
+at which we all fell to the ground as though stricken by a thunderbolt!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's brows knitted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"While we lay, thus unable to move or cry out, Saul spoke and said unto
+the Presence: 'Who art Thou, Lord!' but we heard no answer.  And again
+Saul spoke, as if he had been answered, saying: 'Lord, what is it that
+Thou wouldst have me to do?'  And yet there was silence.  But when we
+took courage and arose, Saul lay on the ground, helpless, blind and
+bereft of speech!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's face showed impatience and astonishment.  This, from the lips
+of so sane a Jew as Marsyas!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We took him up," Marsyas continued, after a moment's reflection, "and
+led him unto Damascus, and to Judas, the Pharisee, who dwelleth in
+Straight Street.  And there Saul lay for three days.  Throughout that
+time, I sought for Lydia, and at the end of the third day, I found her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He touched his lips to Lydia's hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Under the same roof with her I found Saul of Tarsus, broken and
+supplicating, changed, heart and soul, as was I.  But he was not in
+ignorance of the fount of our transfiguration as I was.  From Lydia's
+lips, I learned that he had been visited by the Lord; but from Saul, I
+learned its meaning.  If there is change upon my face, lord, I have
+told thee whence came it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's eyes were no longer on Marsyas; he had turned his head and
+was looking at Cypros, as if curious to see if so impossible a tale
+would find credence in the mind of the simple queen.  She looked
+disturbed and awe-struck, and Agrippa's nostrils fluttered with a
+soundless laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Quantum mutatus ab illo!</I>" he said, turning to Marsyas.  "That I can
+swear under a dread oath.  And perchance, were I an Essene and more
+than an adopted Pharisee, I could have been visited and borne witness
+to miracles, also.  But thou'lt remember, Marsyas, that this Saul
+consented unto the death of thy Stephen?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember, lord; neither hath he forgotten!" answered Marsyas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And that through him, great numbers of innocent people fled Judea,
+among them one Marsyas, that this same Saul might not have their lives;
+that he pursued thee even unto thy refuge, put thy sweet bride in
+jeopardy, stained the whole world with persecution, and made an end by
+bringing up in heresy, after he had begun a journey to Damascus with
+the avowed purpose of extending his persecutions&mdash;even unto the death
+of thy Lydia!  Thou hast not forgotten these things?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are not to be forgotten!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And on a certain night, while yet Stephen was unburied, thou camest
+upon this Saul of Tarsus in Bezetha, and swore to accomplish vengeance
+upon him; and that same night in the cubiculum in the Prætorium thou
+didst make me swear to help thee to that revenge, if he should stumble
+in the Law!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas took his arm from about Lydia and arose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am here, O King," he said, "to crave the fulfilment of that oath."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa smiled, in spite of the serene gravity on Marsyas' face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ask thy boon, Marsyas," he answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas knelt at the king's footstool, and put up his hands as
+supplicants do before a throne.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou hast remembered thine oath unto me, my King; thou hast published
+thyself as ready to fulfil thy promise, and hast yielded unto me the
+choice of the manner of my requital!  Thus assured and believing I make
+my prayer.  Lift not thy hand against Saul of Tarsus!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's brows dropped suddenly; his face was no less displeased than
+startled.  He had meant to have a jest at Marsyas' expense, to try the
+young man's claim to a change in heart, to bring to the surface human
+nature through its envelope of religion; but he had not looked for this
+thing!  To behold so strange a perversion of the ancient spirit in a
+man like Marsyas, and to submit to its demands against his own
+inclinations weighed heavily on Agrippa's patience.  Saul's lapse into
+apostasy gave him an opportunity to attach to him the loyalty of that
+fierce party in Judea, which were better propitiated than fought&mdash;the
+Sicarii, anarchists, who would demand the putting away of the heretic.
+Marsyas had asked him to sacrifice a potent piece of state-craft.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He glanced at Cypros, and saw resentfully that she was urging him with
+her eyes to submit.  Marsyas' face began to show an expression that
+compelled him, while it irritated the more.  The young man wore the
+face of one who does not expect defeat, denies it so confidently that
+it hesitates to exist.  Agrippa shifted in his throne, frowned more,
+wavered, and finally said shortly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As Cæsar forgot me to mine own safety, I will forget Saul!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas' hands dropped softly on the king's, a token of brotherhood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Death intervened," he whispered, "to save thee from Cæsar!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa started and drew his hands away with a prescient terror in the
+movement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not pursue the man," he said; "I will not search for him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou hast kept thy word, lord," Marsyas said, "and I go hence carrying
+trust in one more fellow man in my heart.  May my God supply all thy
+need according to His riches in glory, by Jesus Christ!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa's eyes which had all this time rested in fascination on
+Marsyas' face, flashed now with understanding.  Marsyas was a Nazarene!
+The admission reassured him; set aside the astonishment at the young
+man's unusual behavior; and lessened the fear he had felt in the
+suggestion that drew a parallel between Cæsar's end and his own, to
+come.  But Lydia was now kneeling before him, with glistening eyes, to
+kiss his hand, and Cypros was speaking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But thou gatherest peril yet about thee, Marsyas," she insisted.  "Is
+the hazardous life, then, so inviting that thou hadst liefer be wrong
+than be safe?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, lady; peace is no sweeter to my brethren, the Essenes, than it is
+to me.  So I have put out my hand and possessed it.  Think of us,
+henceforth, as the children of peace, not peril."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It hath consumed two years to establish it," he said conclusively,
+"and not until the last moment is it revealed that thou art a dreamer,
+Marsyas.  Thou hast been an Essene, which is too strait an ambition to
+be practicable; thou didst cherish a love for a man, so deep that its
+bereavement engendered a hate that no man should feel, unless a woman
+were won from him or a fortune destroyed; thou wast urged by it into
+extreme acts&mdash;into selling thyself, into following me to the end of the
+world, into putting thyself between me and death&mdash;that I might help
+thee satisfy that hate!  And now, the hour fallen, a new fancy hath
+engulfed thee, heart, head and soul&mdash;which bids thee forget thy rancor,
+defend thine enemy, and live in perpetual peril of destruction!  Thou
+art a dreamer&mdash;though thy front be Jovian and thy steps like Mars!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas laid his hand on Lydia's head, as she still knelt beside him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In substance, I so accused her once, and Stephen.  Perhaps, if thou
+followest me insomuch, my King, thou wilt walk even as I have
+walked&mdash;into the light at last!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippa made a motion of dissent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I doubt, now, that thou couldst safely govern that pretty little city
+I had meant to make thee prefect over, here in Judea," he declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou hast said!  For me there is a new earth, and a new Law, and I go
+hence to Alexandria to begin a new life, which will make me a lover of
+all mankind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, sweet Lydia!" Herod exclaimed, once more restored to himself.
+"Thou shouldst demand that he be less indiscriminate with his loves!
+But put off thy travel a space, and let us celebrate thy marriage with
+festivity!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art most kind to us, King Agrippa," Lydia answered.  "But my
+father is alone and uncomforted in Alexandria; even thou canst not tell
+me of a surety that evil hath not befallen him ere thy punishment of
+Flaccus could intervene.  My heart is consumed with impatience and
+suspense.  We can not tarry, though thy hospitality be most
+grateful&mdash;to us&mdash;who have found the world of late an untender place!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So, since they would not be stayed, Agrippa summoned two stalwart
+palace servants to go with them, and calling his treasurer, ordered him
+to give into the hands of the servants six talents, five of which he
+owed to Lysimachus for Cypros, and one as a marriage largess.  And when
+Marsyas and Lydia had kissed the hands of the royal pair, they went out
+and found, at the palace wall, a camel which should bear them in a
+white howdah to Ptolemais.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marsyas lifted Lydia and set her under the canopy, but, before he went
+up himself, he saw borne past him, in a chair, a rabbi.  He was a great
+man, grave, calm and preoccupied.  Three students of the College
+attended him reverently.  Marsyas caught his eye, and between the two
+passed a flash that was both understanding and congratulatory.  But
+they saluted each other gravely, and Eleazer passed on to his own place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before they departed Herod sent out a chamberlain, who bowed low and
+handed a wax tablet to Marsyas, on which was written:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"Since Classicus would be in Alexandria to harass thee, and thy wits
+are meshed in love and religion, I have bidden my scribe write him to
+come hither, where I can kill him conveniently, if he need it.  If thou
+have any enemies here in Jerusalem thou hast forgotten to bless, thou
+canst perhaps repair the misfortune by naming thy sons after them.
+</P>
+
+<P STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"My love goes with thee&mdash;mine and the queen's,
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="font-size: 85%">
+"HEROD."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+So, with their faces alight with content and love and hopefulness,
+Marsyas and Lydia took up the long journey unto Alexandria.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Saul of Tarsus, by Elizabeth Miller
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Saul of Tarsus, by Elizabeth Miller
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Saul of Tarsus
+       A Tale of the Early Christians
+
+Author: Elizabeth Miller
+
+Illustrator: Andre Castaigne
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2011 [EBook #37862]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAUL OF TARSUS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "The seed of his teaching has spread abroad" _Page 4_]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SAUL OF TARSUS
+
+_A TALE OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS_
+
+
+_By_
+
+ELIZABETH MILLER
+
+_Author of_ The Yoke
+
+
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+
+ANDRE CASTAIGNE
+
+
+
+
+INDIANAPOLIS
+
+THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT 1906
+
+THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+Chapter
+
+       I  Saul of Tarsus
+      II  A Prudent Exception
+     III  The First Martyr
+      IV  The Bankrupt
+       V  Agrippa in Repertoire
+      VI  Marsyas Assumes a Charge
+     VII  The Bondman of Hate
+    VIII  An Alexandrian Characteristic
+      IX  "--As an Army With Banners"
+       X  Flaccus Works a Complexity
+      XI  The House of Defense
+     XII  "Scattering the Flock"
+    XIII  A Trust Fulfilled
+     XIV  For a Woman's Sake
+      XV  The False Balance
+     XVI  A Matter Handled Wisely
+    XVII  A Word in Season
+   XVIII  The Ransom
+     XIX  The Deliverance
+      XX  The Feast of Flora
+     XXI  The Fining Fire
+    XXII  "In the Cloak of Two Colors"
+   XXIII  A Letter and a Loss
+    XXIV  The Digged Pit
+     XXV  The Speaking of Eutychus
+    XXVI  The Arm Made Bare
+   XXVII  The Proconsul's Deliberations
+  XXVIII  The Strange Woman
+    XXIX  In Extremis
+     XXX  The Eremite in Scarlet, and the Bankrupt in Purple
+    XXXI  The Dregs of the Cup of Trembling
+   XXXII  Sanctuary
+  XXXIII  The Dregs of the Cup of Fury
+   XXXIV  Captives of the Mighty
+    XXXV  The Approach of the Day of Visitation
+   XXXVI  On the Damascus Road
+  XXXVII  In the House of Ananias
+ XXXVIII  The Requital
+
+
+
+
+In Memory of
+
+My Soldier Brother
+
+Ralph Miller
+
+Lieutenant Sixth Cavalry
+
+U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+SAUL OF TARSUS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SAUL OF TARSUS
+
+On a certain day in March of the year 36 A.D., a Levite, one of the
+Shoterim or Temple lictors, came down from Moriah, into the vale of
+Gihon, and entered the portal of the great college, builded in
+Jerusalem for the instruction of rabbis and doctors of Law in Judea.
+
+With foot as rapid and as noiseless as that of a fox among the tombs,
+the Levite crossed the threshold into the great gloom of the interior.
+This way and that he turned his head, watchful, furtive, catching every
+obscure corner in the range of his glance.
+
+He saw that three men sat within, two together, one a little apart from
+the others.  From this to that one, the alert gaze slipped until it
+lighted upon a small, bowed shape in white garments.  Then the Levite
+smiled, his lips moved and shaped a word of satisfaction, but no sound
+issued.  Silently he flitted into an aisle which would lead him upon
+the two, and suddenly appeared before them.
+
+The small bent figure made a nervous start, but the Levite bowed and
+rubbed his hands.
+
+"Greeting, Rabbi Saul; God's peace attend thee.  Be greeted, Rabbi
+Eleazar; peace to thee!"
+
+Rabbi Eleazar raised a great head and looked with an unfavorable eye at
+the Levite; in it was to be read strong dislike of the Levite's
+stealthy manner.
+
+"Greeting, Joel," he replied in a voice quite in keeping with his
+splendid bulk, "peace to thee.  Yet take it not amiss if I suggest that
+since there is no warning in thy footfall or thy garments, thou
+shouldst be belled!"
+
+The other had dropped back in his seat, and the Levite bowed again to
+him.
+
+"I pray thy pardon, Rabbi Saul, but I came as I was sent--in haste."
+
+"It is nothing, Joel," Saul answered.  "Give us news of the High
+Priest's health."
+
+"He continues in health, God be thanked, but his spirit was sorely
+tried--" He stopped abruptly to look, as if in question, at the man
+sitting apart in the shadows.
+
+"Who is that?" he asked suspiciously.
+
+"A pupil," was Eleazar's impatient reply.  The Levite looked again,
+but, the twilight thwarting him, he hitched a slant shoulder and,
+passing to one of the windows, drew aside its heavy hanging.
+Instantly, a great golden beam shot into the cold chamber and
+illuminated it gloriously.  Saul threw his hand over his eyes to shut
+out the blinding radiance.  But the pupil, helped at his reading by the
+admitted light, straightened himself, glanced up a moment, and turned
+to his scroll without a word.
+
+"A stranger," Joel whispered, coming back to the rabbis.
+
+"What burden of mystery dost thou conceal, Joel?" Eleazar exclaimed.
+"Yonder man is an Essene; look about; the stones will take tongue and
+betray thee, sooner than he."
+
+"Let me be sure, let me be sure!" Joel insisted stubbornly.
+
+As if obedient to Eleazar, he cast an eye about the chamber.
+
+The light which came in at the west was straight from the spring sun,
+moted and warm with benevolence.  That which entered at the east was
+only a quivering reflection from the marble walls and golden gates of
+the Temple.  The chamber was immense, shadowy and draughty, the floor
+of stone, the walls of Hermon's rock, relieved by massive arcades
+supported on pilasters, and friezes of such images as were hieratically
+approved.  The ceiling was so lost in height and cold dusk that its
+structure could not be defined.  At the end opposite the doors was the
+lectern of ivory and ebony, embellished with symbolical intaglios and
+inlaid with gold.  Beside it stood the reader's chair, across which the
+rug had been dropped as he had put it off his knees.  Before the
+lectern, across and down the great chamber, were ranges of carven
+benches, among which were lamps of bronze, darkened and green about the
+reliefs and corrugations on the bowls, depending from chains or set
+about on tripods.
+
+But besides the three already noted, the Levite saw and expected to see
+no others.  Eleazar regarded his ostentatious inspection of the room
+with disgust.
+
+"Thou hast a burden on thy soul, Joel," Saul urged mildly.  "Let us
+bear it with thee."
+
+The Levite came close and bent over the rabbis.
+
+"Question your souls, brethren," he said.  "Hath Judea more to lose
+than it hath lost?" he asked in a lowered tone.
+
+"Its identity," Eleazar responded shortly.
+
+But the Levite looked expectantly at Saul.
+
+"Its faith," Saul suggested quietly.
+
+The Levite nodded eagerly.
+
+"Its faith," Saul continued, as if speaking to himself, "and after that
+there is nothing more.  Yea, restore unto it its kings and its
+dominions, yet withhold the faith and there is no Judea.  Desolate it
+until the land is sown in salt and the people bound to the mills of the
+oppressor, so but the faith abide, Judea is Judea, glorified!"
+
+"What then, O Rabbi," the Levite persisted, "if the land be sown in
+salt and the people bound to the mills of the oppressor, if the faith
+be abandoned--what then?"
+
+"God can not perish," Eleazar put in.  "Fear not; it can not come to
+pass."
+
+"Nay, but evil can enter the souls of men and point them after false
+prophets so that God is forgotten," the Levite retorted.  His lean
+figure bent at the hips and he thrust his face forward with triumph of
+prophecy on it.  Saul looked at him.
+
+"What hast thou to tell, Joel?" he asked with command in his voice.
+The Levite accepted the order as he had worked toward it--with energy.
+
+"Listen, then," he began in a whisper.  "Dost thou remember Him whom
+they crucified at Golgotha, a Passover, four years ago?"
+
+Eleazar nodded, but Saul made no sign.
+
+"Know ye that they killed the plant after it had ripened," the Levite
+hastened on.  "The seed of His teaching hath spread abroad and wherever
+it lodgeth it hath taken root and multiplied.  Wherefore, there is a
+multitude of offspring from the single stem."
+
+Saul stood up.  He did not gain much in stature by rising, but the
+temper of the man towered gigantic over the impatience of Eleazar and
+the craft of the Levite.
+
+"What accusation is this that thou levelest at Judea?" he demanded.
+
+"A truth!" Joel replied.
+
+"That Israel hath a blasphemer among them, which hath been spared,
+concealed and not put away?" questioned Saul.
+
+"Dare ye?" the Levite cried.
+
+"Dare ye not!" Saul answered sternly.  "It is the Law!"
+
+The Levite came toward him.  "Go thou unto the High Priest Jonathan,"
+he whispered evilly; "he hath work for thee to do!"
+
+Eleazar doubled his huge hand and whirled his head away.  There was
+tense silence for a moment.
+
+"Is there a specific transgression discovered?" Saul demanded.
+
+The Levite weighed his answer before he gave it.
+
+"Rumor hath it," he began, "that certain of the sect are in the city
+preaching--"
+
+"Rumor!" Saul exclaimed.  "Hast rested on the testimony of rumor?"
+
+"Can ye track pestilence?" he asked craftily.
+
+"By the sick!" was the retort.  "Go on!"
+
+"It is the High Priest's vow to attack it," Joel declared.  "He hath no
+other thought.  It is said that one of the disputants, who yesterday
+troubled them in the Cilician synagogue with an alien doctrine,
+preached the Nazarene's heresy."
+
+"In the Cilician--in mine own synagogue!" Saul repeated, in amazement.
+
+"In thine, in the Libertine, the Cyrenian and the Alexandrian."
+
+"And they suffered him?" Saul persisted with growing earnestness.
+
+"They did not understand him, then; he is but a new-comer from Galilee."
+
+"And I was not there; I was not there!" Saul exclaimed regretfully.
+"What is he called?"
+
+"Stephen."
+
+There was a sound from the direction of the silent pupil.  They looked
+that way to see that he had dropped his scroll and had sprung to his
+feet.  The Levite dropped his head between his shoulders and
+scrutinized him sharply.  But the young man had fixed his eyes upon
+Saul, as if waiting for his answer.
+
+"Stephen of Galilee," the Levite added, watching the young man.  "A
+Hellenist; and he wrapped his blasphemy so subtly in philosophy that
+none detected it until after much thought."
+
+The young man turned his face toward the speaker and a glimmer of anger
+showed in his black eyes.
+
+"It is bold blasphemy which ventures into a synagogue," Saul said half
+to himself.
+
+"Ah! thou pointest to the sign of peril," the Levite resumed.
+"Boldness is the banner of strength; strength is the fruit of numbers;
+and numbers of apostates will be the ruin of Judea and the forgetting
+of God!"
+
+Saul caught up his scrip which lay beside him, but Eleazar continued to
+gaze at the beam of light penetrating the chamber.
+
+"Wherefore the High Priest is troubled, and, laying aside all his
+private ambitions, henceforward he will devote himself to the
+preservation of the faith," the Levite continued.
+
+"Which means," Eleazar interrupted, "the persecution of the apostate."
+
+The Levite spread out his hands and lifted his shoulders.  The Rabbi
+Eleazar forged too far ahead.
+
+"It is our duty, Eleazar," Saul said, "to discover if this Galilean
+preaches heresy.  Let us go to the synagogue."
+
+Eleazar arose, a towering man, broad, heavy and slow, but his rising
+was as the rising of opposition.
+
+"I am enlisted in the teaching of the Law, not in the suppression of
+heresy," he said bluntly.  "Furthermore, my work here is not yet
+complete.  Wilt thou excuse me, my brother?"
+
+"Let me not keep thee from thy duty," Saul answered courteously.
+
+"Joel!  Come with me," Eleazar commanded, and together the two
+disappeared into the interior of the college.
+
+Then the young man who had held his place came out of the shadows into
+the broad beam of the sun, which fell now over Saul.
+
+"Peace to thee, Saul," he said; "peace and greeting."  The voice, in
+contrast to the tones of the men who had lately discussed, was very
+calm and level, restrained by cultivation, yet one which is never
+characteristic of an undecided nature.
+
+"Thou, Marsyas!" Saul exclaimed in sudden recognition.  He extended his
+hands to meet the other's in a greeting that was more affectionate than
+conventional.  The young man with sudden impulsiveness raised the hands
+and pressed them to his breast.
+
+"Saul!  Saul!" he repeated with a quiver of emotion in his voice.
+
+"And none hath supplanted me in thy loves, Marsyas?" Saul smiled.  "Art
+thou come hither for instruction?  Am I to have thee by me now in
+Jerusalem?"
+
+The glow of warmth in the rabbi's manner did not contribute its
+confidence to the young man.  He seemed not less troubled than moved.
+With searching eyes, he looked down from his superior height into
+Saul's face.  As the two stood together, physical extremes could not
+have been more perfect.
+
+The rabbi was not well-formed, and his frame had a note of feebleness
+in its make-up in spite of its youth and flesh.  The face was pale, the
+eyes so deep-set as to appear sunken, the hair, thin, curling and
+lightly silvered, the beard, short, full and touched with the same
+early frost.  Though no recent alien blood ran in his veins, his
+features were only moderately characteristic of the sons of Jacob.  He
+was not erect, and the stoop in his shoulders was more extreme than the
+mere relaxation from rigidity, yet less pronounced than actual
+curvature.  The veins on the backs of his hands stood up from the
+refined whiteness of the flesh, and when his head turned, the great
+artery in his throat could be seen irregularly beating.  It was the
+physique of a man not only weak but sapped by a subtle infirmity.
+
+He wore the head-dress and the voluminous white robes of a rabbi,
+girded with the blue and white cord of his calling.  But his class as a
+Pharisee was marked by the heavy undulating fringes at the hem of his
+garment, and by the little case of calf-skin framing a parchment
+lettered in Hebrew which was bound across his forehead.  Herein, by
+fringe, phylactery and the traditional colors, he published his
+submission to the minutiae of the Law.
+
+In so much the rabbi could have had twenty counterparts over Judea, but
+his aggressive nature stamped him with an individuality which has had
+no equal in all time.  Over his countenance was a fine assumption of
+humility curiously inconsistent with a consciousness of excellence
+which made an atmosphere about him that could be felt.  Yet, holding
+first place over these conflicting attributes was the stamp of
+tremendous mental power, and a heart-whole sweetness that was
+irresistible.  The union of these four characteristics was to produce a
+man that would hold fast to theory, though all fact arise and shouted
+it down; who would maintain form, though the spirit had in horror long
+since fled the shape.  Thus, inflexibly fixed in his convictions, he
+was unlimited in his capacity for maintaining them.  In short, he was a
+leader of men, a zealot, a formalist and an inquisitor--one of great
+mentality dogmatized, of great spirit prejudiced, of immense
+capabilities perverted.
+
+Such was Saul of Tarsus.
+
+But the other was a Jew of blood so pure, of type so pronounced, that
+the man of mixed races before him appeared wholly foreign.  His line
+had descended from the persistent love of Jacob for Rachel, through the
+tents of them that slew the Midianitish women in the wilderness,
+through the households of Esdras and the camps of Judas Maccabaeus.
+
+He was above average height, and built ruggedly, as were Judah the
+lion, and Jacob who wrestled with the angel.  One of in-door habit, he
+was fair on the forehead, under the soft young beard and the shining
+black curls at his temples.  But his cheeks were crimson, his eyes
+intensely black and sparkling, his teeth, glittering ranges of shaded
+ivory.  And the bold strength of his profile and the brilliance of his
+color seemed finished by the deep cleft distinctly discernible.
+
+On his face was written an attribute common among men of a time of
+Messianic hopes and crises.  Asceticism with its blank purity of brow
+set him apart from the sordid souls in his walk.  Yet about him there
+seemed to be an atmosphere surcharged with physical radiations, with
+human electricity that fairly sparkled in its strength.
+
+Even Saul, his long-time friend, on this occasion of sudden meeting,
+remarked this equal power of body and spirit.  The Pharisee glanced at
+the young man's garments,--simple robes without fringes, without gaud,
+and white as the snows of Hermon.
+
+"Strange," the Pharisee said after his peculiar manner of talking with
+himself, "strange that thou shouldst elect to be an Essene."  A little
+proud surprise appeared on Marsyas' face.
+
+"I can not be anything else," the young man answered.
+
+"Thou hast not ventured.  But, nevertheless, thou wilt be noted in the
+college.  The Essenes are very few these days in Jerusalem; En-Gadi
+receives them all.  And thou art a doctor of Laws--a master Essene.
+How long wilt thou study here?"
+
+"Five years, Rabbi."
+
+Yet the young man was at least twenty-five years of age.  What course
+of instruction was it which carried a man into middle life before it
+was finished?  What but the tremendous complexities of the Mosaic and
+the Oral Law.  But these things had been taught the young man in the
+forecourt of the little synagogue in Nazareth where he was born.  So,
+because his learning extended beyond the reach of the provincial
+Essenic philosopher who had taught him in his youth, the young man had
+quitted the little hill town in Galilee to come to the feet of the
+master Essene in the great college of Jerusalem.
+
+To be an Essene was to live a celibate under the regime of community
+laws, under a common roof, at a common board; to be bodily and
+spiritually spotless, to believe in the resurrection of the soul, the
+brotherhood of man, and the frailty and the incontinence of women; to
+accept no hospitality from one not an Essene and to own no possessions
+apart from the common ownership of the order.  But to be an Essenic
+doctor was to be the most ascetic scholar and the most scholarly
+ascetic in the world, at that time.
+
+But Marsyas had no thought on Saul's contemplation of him.
+
+"I heard the talk of the Levite," he said.  "Because it concerns me
+much, I could not shut mine ears against it.  I, too, have heard the
+creed of the Nazarenes."
+
+"How, Marsyas?  Harkened unto the heretics?"
+
+"I have heard their creed," he persisted in his calm way.  "It differs
+little from the teachings of mine own order, the Essenes, except that
+they believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and the receptiveness
+of the Gentile."
+
+"And thou callest that a little difference?"
+
+"Not so great that one going astray after the Nazarenes could not be
+satisfied with the Essenes, if he were obliged to give up his apostasy.
+I seek a remedy."
+
+"Moses supplied the remedy," Saul averred with meaning.
+
+"The Essenes are not inflicters of punishment," was the even reply.
+
+The Pharisee made a conciliatory gesture.  "It is then only a
+discussion of the practices of my class and of thine."
+
+But Marsyas was not satisfied.
+
+"Thou knowest Stephen?" he asked after a pause.
+
+"Stephen of Galilee?  Only by report."
+
+"Perchance, then, thou knowest Galilee," the Essene resumed after a
+short pause.  "Galilee that sitteth between Phoenicia the menace and
+Samaria the pollution, and is not soiled; that standeth between the
+Middle Sea, the power, and the Jordan, the subject, and is not humbled.
+She is Israel's brawn, not easily governed of the mind which is
+enthroned Jerusalem.
+
+"We are rustics in Galilee, tillers of the soil, mountaineers and
+fishers, simple rugged folk who live in the present, expecting
+miracles, seeing signs, discovering prophets and wonders.  We are
+patriots, bound and hooped against an alien, but bursting wide with
+whatever chanceth to ferment within us.  Let there but arise a Galilean
+who hath a gift or a grudge or a devil, and  proclaim himself anointed,
+and he can gather unto himself a following that would assail Caesar's
+stronghold, did he say the word."
+
+He paused and seemed to recall what he had said.
+
+"Yet, we are good Jews," he added hastily, "faithful followers of the
+Law and such as Israel might select to die singly for Israel's sake.
+No Galilean is ashamed of himself except when he permits himself to be
+led so far into folly that he can not turn back."
+
+The Pharisee foresaw intuitively the young man's climax.
+
+"The Law does not remit punishment for blasphemy, even if a soul turn
+back from its folly," he observed.
+
+Marsyas' face became grave and he gazed at the place on the wall where
+quivered the reflection from the splendors of the Temple.
+
+"Stephen is my friend," he said earnestly, "a simple soul, generous,
+fervid, and a true lover of God."
+
+"If he be such, he is safe," Saul replied.
+
+The young man fingered the scarf that girded him.
+
+"The brothers at En-Gadi would receive him," he said.
+
+"What need of him to retire from the world if he be a good Jew?" Saul
+persisted.
+
+Again the young man hesitated.  Saul was driving him into a declaration
+that he would have led forth gradually.  Then he came to the Pharisee
+and laid a persuading band on his arm.
+
+"Go not to the synagogue," he entreated.  "Wait a little!"
+
+"Wait in the Lord's business?" Saul asked mildly.
+
+"Be not hastier than the chastening of the Lord; if He bears with
+Stephen, so canst thou a little longer.  Give love its chance with
+Stephen before vengeance undoes him wholly!"
+
+"Marsyas," Saul protested in a tone of kindly remonstrance, "thou dost
+convict him by thy very concern."
+
+"No!" the young Essene declared, pressing upon the Pharisee in
+passionate earnestness.  "I am only troubled for him.  Let me go first
+and understand him, for it seems that there is doubt in the hearts of
+his accusers, and after that--"
+
+"Thine eye shall not pity him," Saul repeated in warning.
+
+"Saul!  Saul!  He is my beloved friend!"
+
+"Moses prepared us for such a sorrow as apostasy among those whom we
+love.  What says the Lawgiver--'thy friend, which is as thine own soul,
+thy hand shall be the first upon him to put him to death!'"
+
+The lifted hands of the young Essene dropped as if they had been struck
+down.
+
+"Death!" he repeated, retreating a step.  "Wilt thou kill him?"
+
+"I am more thy friend, Marsyas," the Pharisee went on, "because I am
+zealous for the Law.  The heresy is infectious and thou art no more
+safe from it than any other man.  And I would rather sit in judgment
+over Stephen, whom I do not know, than over thee, who art dear to me as
+a brother."
+
+The young man drew near again.
+
+"Dear as a brother!" he said.  "Stephen is that to me.  Even now didst
+thou ask if any had supplanted thee in my loves.  No; yet my loves have
+broadened, so that I can take another into my heart.  The Lord God be
+merciful unto me, that I may not be driven to choose one, for defense
+against the other!  Even as ye both love me, love one another!  Saul!
+Thou wast my earlier friend!  I can no more endure Stephen's peril than
+I can uproot thee from my heart!"
+
+Saul flinched before the concealed intimation in the words.  A wave of
+pallor succeeded by hardness swept over his face, and Marsyas,
+observing the change, seized the Tarsian's hands between his own.
+
+"Wait until I have seen him," he besought, "and if there be any taint
+in his fidelity to the faith, I shall stop at no sacrifice to save him.
+He is, if at all, only momentarily drawn aside, and as the Lord God
+daily forgives us our sins, let us forgive a brother--"
+
+Saul tried to draw away, but the young Essene's imploring hands held
+his in a desperate clasp.
+
+"I will give up mine instruction," he swept on.  "I will retire into
+En-Gadi and take him with me!  I will give over everything and become
+one of their husbandmen; I will have no aim for myself, but for
+Stephen!  And if I fail I will take sentence with him!  Wait!  Wait!
+Let me return to Nazareth and get my patrimony!  I will come then and
+take him at once to En-Gadi!  Saul!"
+
+But Saul threw off the beseeching hands and stepped back from the young
+man.  The two gazed at each other, the Pharisee to discover a crisis in
+the Essene's look; the Essene to see immovability in the Pharisee.
+
+Then the distress in Marsyas' face changed swiftly, and an ember burned
+in his black eyes.  He straightened himself and stretched out a hand.
+
+"I have spoken!" he said.  Turning purposefully away, he went back to
+his place and took up his scroll.  For a moment he held it, his eyes on
+the pavement.  Slowly his fingers unclosed and the scroll
+dropped--dropped as if he had done with it.
+
+Catching up his white mantle, he walked swiftly out of the chamber and
+Saul looked after him, yearning, wistful and sad.
+
+Joel came out of the interior of the building.
+
+"I will go with thee to the synagogue," he offered.
+
+The Pharisee looked at him with cold dislike in his eyes, and,
+inclining his head, led the way out.
+
+At the threshold of the porch he halted.  In the street opposite two
+young men were walking slowly.  One was slight, young, graceful and
+simply clad in a Jewish smock.  The other was Marsyas, the Essene, who
+went with an arm over the shoulders of the first, and, bending, seemed
+to speak with passionate earnestness to his companion.  The faces of
+the two young men thus side by side showed the same spiritual mode of
+living, and youthful purity of heart.  But the expression of the
+slighter one was less ascetic than happy, less rigorous than confident.
+
+As Marsyas spoke, the other smiled; and his smile was an illumination,
+not entirely earthly.
+
+Joel seized Saul's arm, and held it while the two approached,
+unconscious of the watchers in the shadow of the porch.
+
+"That is he," he whispered avidly.  "That is he!  Stephen, the
+apostate!"
+
+Stephen turned his head casually, and, catching the Pharisee's eye,
+returned the gaze with a little friendly questioning; then he raised
+his face to Marsyas and so they passed.
+
+The pallor on Saul's face deepened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A PRUDENT EXCEPTION
+
+After he had separated from Stephen, Marsyas went to the house of a
+resident Essene with whom he made his home, to be fed, to be washed, to
+offer supplication and to announce his decision to go on a journey.  At
+the threshold of his host's house he put aside his sandals and let
+himself in with a murmured formula.  In a little time he came forth
+with a wallet flung over his shoulder and took the streets toward
+Gennath Gate.  It was not written in the laws of his order that he
+should make greater preparation for a journey.  He had already
+acquainted himself with the abiding-places of Essenes in villages
+between Jerusalem and Nazareth and, assured of their hospitality and
+the provision of the Essene's God, he knew that he would fare well to
+the hill town of Galilee.
+
+So he passed through the city by the walk of the purified, garments
+well in hand lest they touch women or the wayside dust, meeting the eye
+of no man, proud of his humility, punctilious in his simplicity, and
+wearing unrest under his shell of calm.  He had an unobstructed path, a
+path ceremonially clean.  He had but to hesitate on the edge of a
+congestion, and the first gowned and bearded Jew that observed him
+signed his companions and the way was opened.  For the Essenes were the
+best of men, the truly holy men of Israel.
+
+He went down between the fronts of featureless houses, through the
+golden haze of sun and dust that overhung the narrow, stony mule-ways,
+until the distant dream towers of Mariamne, of Phasaelus and of Hippicus
+became imminent, brooding shapes of blackened masonry, and the wall cut
+off the mule-ways and the great shady arch of the gate let in a glimpse
+of the country without.  On one hand was the Praetorium, the Roman
+garrison encamped in the upper palace of Herod the Great; on the other,
+the houses of the Sadducees, the Jewish aristocrats, covered the ridge
+of Akra.  Marsyas came upon an obstruction.  At a gate opening into the
+street, camels knelt, servants of diverse nationality but of one livery
+clustered round them, several unoccupied Jewish traveling chairs in the
+hands of bearers stood near.  In the center of the considerable crowd,
+a number of Sadducees, priests of high order and Pharisees in garments
+characteristic of their several classes were taking ceremonious
+farewell of a man already seated in a howdah.  No one took notice of
+the Essene, who stood waiting with assumed patience until he should be
+given room.
+
+Presently the camel-drivers cried to their beasts which arose with a
+lurch, priests and Sadducees hurried into their chairs, the servants
+fell into rank, the crowd shifted and ordered itself and a procession
+trailed out alongside the swaying camels toward Gennath Gate.  A
+distinguished party was taking leave under escort.
+
+Marsyas repressed the impatient word that arose to his lips and
+followed after the deliberate, moving blockade.
+
+The rank of the departing strangers did not encourage the city rabble
+to follow, and as the escort kept close to the head of the procession
+the hindmost camel was directly before Marsyas and the occupant of the
+howdah in his view.  Over head and shoulders the full skirts of a vitta
+fell, erasing outline, and, contrasting the stature with that of the
+attending servant, he concluded that the small traveler was a child.
+
+Under the dripping shade and chill of the ancient Gate they passed and
+out into the road worn into a trench through the rock and dry gray
+earth and on to the oval pool which supplied Hippicus, where a halt for
+a final farewell was made.  Again Marsyas was delayed, and for a much
+longer time.  He might have climbed out of the sunken roadway and
+passed around the obstruction, but the banks above were lined with
+clamoring mendicants, women and lepers, and he could not escape
+ceremonial defilement that might more seriously delay his journey.
+
+Meanwhile the courtly leave-taking progressed with dignified sloth.
+Gradually Sadducee, priest and Pharisee moved one by one from the
+departing aristocrat.  At the hindmost camel the Pharisees stopped not
+at all, but saluting without looking at the traveler, the priests
+merely raised their hands in blessing; but the Sadducees to a man
+salaamed profoundly, and passed on if they were old, or lingered
+uncertainly if they were young.
+
+A little flicker of enlightenment showed in the young Essene's
+brilliant eyes, an angry tension in his lips straightened their curve
+and he drew himself up indignantly.  The young aristocrats tarried and
+laughed his precious time away with a woman!  That was the traveler in
+the last howdah!  Twice and thrice the time they had spent speeding the
+rest of the party they consumed bidding the woman farewell, and every
+moment carried danger nearer to Stephen.
+
+Then an old voice, refined and delicate as the note of an ancient lyre,
+lifted in laughing protest from the front, the young men laughed,
+responding, but moved away to their chairs, the camel swung out into a
+rapid walk, and crying farewells the party separated.
+
+With abating irritation Marsyas moved after them.  At the intersection
+of the first road, he would pass these travelers and hasten on.
+
+A breeze from the hills cut off the smell of the city with a full
+stream of country freshness.  Marsyas lifted his head and drew in a
+long breath that was almost a sigh.  His first trouble weighed heavily
+upon him and its triple nature of distress, heart-hurt and
+apprehension, sensations so new and so near to nature as to be at wide
+variance with anything Essenic, moved him into a mood essentially
+human.  Then an exhalation from aft the fragrant spring-flowered groves
+stole into the pure air about him, bewildering, sweet, and through it,
+as harmoniously as if the perfume had taken tone, a distant hill bird
+sent a single stave of liquid notes.  The small figure in the howdah at
+that moment turned and looked back, and Marsyas for the first time in
+his life gazed straight into the eyes of a beautiful girl.
+
+Spring-fragrance, bird-song and flower-face were harmony too perfect
+for Essenism to discountenance.  Without the slightest discomposure,
+and absolutely unconscious of what he was doing, Marsyas gazed and
+listened until the vitta fell hastily over the face, the bird flew away
+and the garden incense died.
+
+He passed just then the intersecting road, but he continued after the
+last camel.  He walked after that through many drifts of fragrance, and
+many hill birds sang, but he knew without looking that the flower face
+was not turned back toward him again.
+
+He halted for the night at a little village and sought the hospitality
+of an Essene hermit that lived on the outskirts.  But in the night,
+terror for Stephen, of that unknown kind which is conviction without
+evidence and irrefutable, seized him.  He endured until the early
+watches of the morning and took the road to Nazareth while the stars
+still shone.
+
+He had forgotten his fellow wayfarers of the previous afternoon until
+their camels, speeding like the wind, overtook him beyond Mt. Ephraim.
+In a vapor of flying scarves he caught again a glimpse of the flower
+face turned his way.
+
+Then for the first time in his life he reviled his poverty that forced
+him to walk when the life of the much-beloved depended upon despatch.
+Nazareth, clinging like a wasps' nest under the eaves of its chalky
+hills, was many leagues ahead, and the sun must set and rise again
+before he could climb up its sun-white streets.
+
+His hope was not strong.  His plan had won such little respect from him
+that he had not ventured to propose it to Stephen.  It was extreme
+sacrifice for him to make, a sacrifice lifelong in effect, and in that
+he based his single faith in its success.  Stephen loved him and would
+not persist in the fatal apostasy, if he knew that his friend, the
+Essene, was to deny himself ambition and fame for Stephen's sake.
+
+He would get his patrimony of the old master Essene who held it in
+trust for him, formally give over his instruction, bind himself to the
+perpetual life of husbandry and seclusion, and then tell Stephen what
+he had done and why he had done it.
+
+Everything else but the appeal to Stephen's love for him had failed,
+and he had shrunk from forcing that trial.
+
+But Saul had meant to go to the Synagogue at once; there were
+innumerable chances that he was already too late.
+
+At noon he came upon the party of travelers again.  A fringed tent had
+been pitched under a cluster of cedars and the slaves were putting away
+the last of the meal.  He saw now as he hurried by that there was a
+spare and elegant old man, in magistrate's robes, reclining with
+singular grace on a pallet of rugs before the lifted side of the tent.
+The girl sat near.  He noted also that the master and the slaves fell
+silent as he approached and looked at him with interest.
+
+But he sped on, forgetting that it was the noon and that he was hungry,
+heated and weary, and remembering only that the time and the distance
+were deadly long.
+
+There was the soft pad-pad of a camel-hoof behind him and a servant of
+the aristocrat that he had passed drew up at his side.  With a light
+leap the man dropped from the beast's neck and bowed low.  The ease of
+his salaam and the purity of his speech were strong evidences of
+training among the loftiest classes of the time.  The attitude asked
+permission to address the Essene.
+
+Marsyas signed him to speak.
+
+"I pray thee accept my master's apologies," the man said, "for
+interrupting thy journey.  He bids me say that he is a stranger and
+unfamiliar with the land.  We have found no water for the meal.  Wilt
+thou direct us to a pool?"
+
+Marsyas checked his impatience.
+
+"Save that I am in great haste I would tarry to direct him.  But let
+him send hence into the country to the westward, half a league to the
+hill of the flat summit.  There is a grove by a well of sweet water."
+
+"Nay, the country is as obscure to us as the whereabouts of the pool,"
+the servant protested.  "We are Alexandrians and as good as lost in
+these hills.  If thou wilt speak to my master, he will understand
+better than his foolish servant."
+
+Irritation forced its way up through the Essenic calm.  The servant
+salaamed again.
+
+"The Essenes are noted even in Alexandria for their charity," he said
+deftly.  Marsyas turned with him and went back to the fringed tent.
+
+The old aristocrat still lounged gracefully, as no thirsty man does, on
+his pallet of rugs, but the girl had drawn farther away and her eyes
+were veiled.
+
+"I perceived by thy garments that thou art an Essene," the old man
+said, "and therefore a safe guide in this land of few milestones."
+
+Marsyas thanked him and waited restlessly on the inquiry.
+
+"We have not found a well since mid-morning and I crave fresh drink.
+The water we bear is brackish."
+
+"Bid thy servants go westward without deviation for less than half a
+league, until they come unto a hill with a flat summit, which can be
+seen afar off.  They will find there a grove with a well."
+
+"And none is nearer?" the old man asked idly.
+
+"There is none nearer."
+
+"My servants were bred to the desert; they are ill mountaineers.  Thou
+wilt show them the way?"
+
+"They can not lose the way," Marsyas protested; "it is the flock's well
+and all the hill paths lead to it.  Think not ill of me, that I can not
+go, for I am in haste."
+
+The old man smiled a little.
+
+"An Essene, and he will not stop to give an old man water?"
+
+Marsyas frowned resentfully, but turned to the servant at hand.
+
+"Get thy fellows and the water-skins and follow!"
+
+He turned off the Roman road and struck into the hills to the west.
+The servitors of the Alexandrian caught up amphoras and hastened after
+him.
+
+In less than an hour he reappeared before the man under the fringed
+tent.
+
+"Thy servants are returned.  Peace and farewell."
+
+"Nay, but it is the noon.  Wilt thou not tarry and rest?"
+
+"I go," Marsyas said resolutely, "to save a life."
+
+"Ah, then I did wrong to delay thee!  I remember that Essenes are
+physicians."
+
+"We can not cure the wicked of their evil intent, so I haste to save
+one threatened with another's malice.  My friend is in peril.  I must
+go unto Nazareth and return unto Jerusalem, before I can save him.  And
+even now I may be too late!"
+
+The magistrate searched the young man's face and then the
+half-incredulous curiosity passed out of his manner.
+
+"Pardon mine idle wasting of thy precious minutes," he said soberly.
+"Go, and the Lord speed thee!"
+
+Marsyas bowed low, and keeping his eyes fixed on the gray earth, lest
+they stray in search of the flower face, he turned again toward
+Nazareth.  He heard a very soft, very hurried and almost imperious
+whisper, as he moved away, but he knew that it was not for him to hear,
+and he did not tarry.  But a word from the magistrate brought him up.
+
+"Stay!  It is not customary for any outside of thine order to offer an
+Essene assistance, since we would spare thee the pain of refusal.
+But--it hath been suggested that thy haste may permit thee to waive thy
+scruples and accept help from me--as it hath been suggested--I filched
+precious time from thee.  Thou canst ride with us, if thou wilt, and
+take my daughter's camel.  She will come with me."
+
+The brilliant eyes no longer obeyed the restraint which would keep them
+from the flower face.  He turned to the girl, shyly withdrawn under the
+shade of the fringed tent, and knew by the lowered eyes and the warmer
+flush mantling the cheek that it was she that had made these
+suggestions.
+
+Twenty reasons why he should accept the magistrate's offer arose to
+combat the single stern admonition of Custom.  He was not yet under the
+Essenic vow to accept hospitality from none but Essenes, though he had
+lived in its observance all his life; he could not reach Nazareth under
+a day's journey and these swift beasts could carry him into the village
+by midnight.  And Stephen's life depended on it.
+
+"We depart even now," the magistrate added, "and I promise thee no
+further delay."
+
+Ancient usage accused the young man on account of the woman, but by
+this time she had arisen and passed out of his sight, as if in good
+faith that he should not be troubled by her presence.
+
+"Thou yieldest me invaluable aid," he said in a lowered tone, "and
+since I am not an elected Essene, but a ward of the brotherhood and a
+postulant, I am free and most glad to have thy help.  Be thou blessed."
+
+The magistrate acknowledged the young man's acceptance by a wave of a
+withered white hand and the slaves made the camels ready to proceed.
+
+At midnight, the rocking camels sped without apparent weariness up the
+uneven streets of Nazareth, white under the stars.  At the lewen of the
+single khan, the drivers drew up and Marsyas alighted to go forward and
+thank his host, but the magistrate slept, even while his servants
+lifted him down from the howdah.  As he turned away, regretfully, he
+confronted the veiled girl, almost childlike in stature under the
+protection of her tall handmaiden.  She dropped her head modestly and
+moved aside to let him pass, but he hesitated, and stopped.  Few indeed
+had been the words he had addressed to women in his lifetime, and now
+his speech was more than ever unready.
+
+"Thy father sleeps, yet I would not depart with my thanks unsaid.  Be
+thou the messenger and give him my gratitude when he waketh."
+
+"It shall be my pleasure," she answered softly, "and may thy hopes come
+to pass.  Farewell."
+
+"Thou hast my thanks.  The peace of the Lord God attend thee.
+Farewell."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FIRST MARTYR
+
+Mid-March in Judea was the querulous age of the young year.  It was a
+time of a tempered sun and intervals of long rains and chill winds.
+Under such persuasion, the rounded hills which upbore and encompassed
+Jerusalem took on a coat green as emerald and thick as civet-fur.
+Above it the leaning cedars, newly-tipped with verdure, spread their
+peculiar flat crowns like ancient hands extended in benediction over
+the soil.  Shoals of wild flowers, or rather flowers so long in
+fellowship with the fields of Palestine as to become domesticated, were
+scarlet and gold in shallows of green.  Almond orchards snowed in the
+valleys and every wrinkle and crevice in the hills trickled with clear
+cold water.  The winds whimpered and had the snows of Lebanon yet in
+mind; the days were not long and the sun shone across vales filled with
+undulating vapors, smoky and illusory.
+
+The shade was not comfortable and within doors those apartments which
+denied entrance to the sun had to be made tenantable by braziers.
+Loiterers, wayfarers and outcasts betook themselves to protected angles
+and sat blinking and comatose in the benevolent warmth of the sun.
+
+It was late afternoon and without the cedar hedge of Gethsemane, where
+the ancient green wall cut off the streaming wind, was a group sitting
+close together on the earth.
+
+One, much covered in garments barbarously striped, and who bestirred
+long meager limbs now and then, was an Arab.  Next to him a Jewish
+husbandman from Bethesda squatted awkwardly, the length of his coarse
+smock troubling him, while his hide sandals had been put off his hard
+brown feet.  His neighbor was a Damascene, and two or three others sat
+about two who were employed in the center of this racial miscellany.
+
+One of these was a Greek, the ruin of a Greek, not yet thirty and
+bearing, in spite of the disfigurement of degradation, solitary
+evidences of blood and grace.  Opposite him sat a Roman, in a scarlet
+tunic.
+
+The two were playing dice, but the end of the game was in sight, for
+the neat pile of sesterces beside the Roman was growing and the Greek
+had staked his last on the next throw.
+
+Presently the Greek took the tesserae and threw them.  The Roman glanced
+at the numbers up and smiled a little.  The Greek scowled.
+
+"The old defeat," he muttered.  "Fortune perches on the standards of
+Rome even in a game of dice.  Oh, well, we have had our day!"
+
+The Roman stowed away the sesterces in a wallet and hung it again
+inside his tunic.
+
+"Yes, you have had your day," he replied.  "Marathon, Thermopylae and
+Plataea--in my philosophy you can afford to lose a game of dice to a
+wolf-suckled Roman!"
+
+The Greek sat still with his chin upon his breast, and the Roman,
+getting upon his feet, scrutinized the sluggish group of on-lookers.
+
+His interest was not idle curiosity in the men.  Such as they were to
+be seen cumbering the markets and streets of Jerusalem by day or by
+night throughout the year.  They were types of that which the world
+calls the rabble--at once a strength and a destruction, a creature or a
+master, as the inclination of its manipulators is or as the call of the
+situation may be.  Individually, it has a mind; collectively, it has
+not; at all times it is a thing of great potentialities overworked, and
+of great needs habitually ignored.  That the man in scarlet should scan
+each one of these, as one appraises another's worth in drachmae, was a
+natural proceeding, old as the impulse in the shrewd to prey upon the
+unwary.  Out of this or that one, perhaps he could turn an odd denarius
+at another game of dice.
+
+But when he looked reflectively at the west, where the broad brow of
+the hills was outlined against a great radiance, he calculated on the
+hour of remaining daylight and the distance from that point to another
+in Bezetha far across Jerusalem, and felt of his wallet.
+
+It was bulky enough for one day's winnings, and entirely too bulky to
+be lost to some of the criminals or vagrants that would walk the night.
+With a motion of his hand he saluted the defeated Greek and the gaping
+group which sat in its place and watched him, and turned down the Mount
+toward Jerusalem.
+
+To a casual observer it would appear that he was a Roman.  He wore the
+short garments characteristic of the race, was smooth-shaven, and
+displayed idolatrous images on his belt, and, in disregard of Judean
+custom, uncovered his head.  But his features under analysis were
+Arabic, modified, not by the solidity of Rome but by the grace of the
+classic Jew.
+
+He was built on long, narrow lines, spare as a spear stuck in the sand
+before a dowar, but Judean flesh rounded his angles and reduced the
+Arabian brownness of complexion.  He was strikingly handsome and tall;
+not imposing but elegant, modeled for symmetry of his type, not for
+ideality, for refinement, not for strength.  His hands were delicate
+almost to frailty, his feet slender and daintily shod.  Never a Roman
+walked so lightly, never a Jew so jauntily.
+
+His presence was captivating.  Naivete or impudence, carelessness or
+recklessness, gravity or mockery were ever uncertain in their
+delineation on his face, and one gazed trying to decide and gazing was
+undone.  Never did he reveal the perspective of a single avenue in his
+intricate and indirect disposition.  He forwent the human respect that
+is given to the straight-forward man, for the excited interest which
+the populace pays to the elusive nature.
+
+It was hard to name his years.  He was too well-knit to be young, too
+supple to be old.  The only undisputed evidence that he was past
+middle-age was not in his person but behind the affected mood in his
+soft black eyes.  There was another nature, literally in ambush!
+
+He had reached the gentler slopes of the Mount, when a young man
+dressed wholly in white approached from the north.  The wayfarer walked
+hesitatingly, his eyes roving over the towered walls of the City of
+David.  There were other wayfarers on Olivet besides the man in white
+and the man in scarlet.  There were rustics and traveling Sadducees, in
+chairs borne by liveried servants, Pharisees with staff and scrip,
+marketers, shepherds, soldiers on leave and slaves on errands, men,
+women and children of every class or calling which might have affairs
+without the walls of Jerusalem.  But each turned his steps in one
+direction, for the night was not distant and Jerusalem would shelter
+them all.
+
+The hill was busy, but many took time to observe the one in white.  The
+men he met glanced critically at his fine figure and passed; the women
+looked up at him from under their wimples, and down again, quickly;
+some of the children lagged and gazed wistfully at his face as if they
+wanted his notice.  Even the man in scarlet, attracted by the wholesome
+presence of the comely young man, studied him carelessly.  He was a
+little surprised when the youth stopped before him.
+
+"Wilt thou tell me, brother, how I may reach the Gate of Hanaleel from
+this spot?" he asked.  His manner was anxious and hurried, his eyes
+troubled.
+
+"Thou, a son of Israel, and a stranger in the city of thy fathers?" the
+other commented mildly.
+
+"The Essenes are rare visitors to Jerusalem," was the reply.
+
+"Ah!" the other said to himself, "the bleached craven of En-Gadi.  Dost
+thou come from the community on the Dead Sea?" he asked aloud.
+
+"I journey thither," the Essene answered patiently.  "I come from
+Galilee."
+
+The man in scarlet looked a little startled and put his slender hand up
+to his cheek so that a finger lay along the lips.  "Now, may thy haste
+deaden thy powers of recognition, O white brother," he hoped in his
+heart, "else thou seest a familiar face in me."
+
+He lifted the other arm and pointed toward the wall of the city.
+
+"Any of these gates will lead thee within," he said.
+
+"Doubtless, but once within any but the one I seek, I am more lost than
+I am here.  Wilt thou direct me?"
+
+The man in scarlet motioned toward a splendid mass of masonry rising
+many cubits above the wall toward the north.  "There," he said.  "Go
+hence over the Bridge of the Red Heifer and follow along the roadway on
+the other side of Kedron."
+
+As the man in white bowed his thanks, his elbow struck against an
+obstruction which yielded hastily.  The two looked, to see the Greek
+who had been defeated at dice make off up the hill.  The Essene caught
+at his pilgrim wallet which hung at his side and found it open.
+
+"Ha! a thief!" the man in scarlet cried.  "Did he rob thee?"
+
+His quick eyes dropped to the wallet.  There were many small round
+cylinders wrapped in linen within, evidently stacks of coin of various
+sizes from the little denarius to the large drachma; a handful of loose
+gold and several rolls of parchment which might have been bills of
+exchange.  The Essene frowned and closed the mouth of the purse.
+
+"A trifle is gone," he said.  "He was discovered in time."
+
+"If thou carryest this to the Temple, friend," the older man urged,
+"get it there to-night, else thou walkest in danger continually."
+
+"I give thee thanks; I shall be watchful; peace to thee,"--and the
+young man walked swiftly away.
+
+"Wary as the eyes of Juno!" the man in scarlet said to himself.
+"Essenes never make offering at the Temple; that treasure goes into the
+common fund of the order.  Now, what a shame that the unsated maw of
+the Essenic treasury should swallow that and hold it uselessly when I
+need gold so much!  Would that I had been born a good thief!"
+
+He sauntered after the young Essene and idly kept him in sight.
+
+"He walks like a legionary and talks like a patrician, but doubtless he
+hath the spirit of an ass, or he would not have let that knave of a
+Greek make off with so much as a lepton.  I wonder if I should not seek
+out the thief and win his pilferings from him."
+
+The Essene in the distance, just before he reached the Bridge of the
+Red Heifer, unslung his wallet and resettled the strap over his
+shoulder, but the purse did not reappear at his side.  He had concealed
+it within his gown.
+
+"I wish he were not in such uncommon haste; I might persuade him to
+loan it me.  Money-lending is second nature to a Jew.  There must be
+several thousand drachmae in that wallet--enough to take me to
+Alexandria.  I wonder if he sped so all the way from--_Hercle!_  What
+an aristocrat!"--noting the Essene draw aside his robes from contact
+with the unclean mob at the opposite end of the causeway.
+
+"What! do they resent it?" he exclaimed, lifting himself on tiptoe to
+watch the young man, who seemed suddenly pressed upon and swallowed up
+by rapidly assembling numbers.
+
+Distant shouts arose, the Sheep Gate choked suddenly with a mass,
+Kedron's banks, the tombs of Tophet and the rubbish heaps there yielded
+up clambering, running people.  The hurry was directed along the brook
+outside the wall; stragglers closed up and the whole, numbering
+hundreds, flung itself toward the north.
+
+The man in scarlet, moved by amazement and a half-confessed interest in
+the man he had seen disappear, ran down the Mount and after the crowd.
+
+But a glance ahead now showed him that the Essene had not called forth
+this demonstration.  The gate next beyond the heavy shape of Hanaleel
+was discharging a struggling mass that instantly expanded in the open
+into a great party-colored ring, dozens deep.  The flying body the man
+in scarlet believed to encompass the young Essene swept up to the
+circle and melted into it.
+
+Meanwhile, around him came running eagerly the travelers, the
+marketers, shepherds, soldiers and slaves, and behind, the loiterers,
+who had watched him defeat the Greek.  Focalizing at the Bridge of the
+Red Heifer which spanned Kedron at a leap, the mob caught and
+precipitated him into its heart.  Rushed toward the road on the
+opposite side, he seized a corner of the parapet, and, holding fast,
+let the mass stream by him.
+
+When the rush trailed out, thinned and ceased altogether, he leisurely
+drew near the huge compact circle and stood on its outskirts.  But he
+could hear and see nothing but the crowd about him.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, touching a man in front of him.  The man shook
+his head and stood fruitlessly on tiptoe.
+
+Presently unseen authority in the hollow ring pressed the crowd back.
+In the ferment and resistance, he caught, through a zigzag path of
+daylight between many kerchiefed heads, a glimpse of a segment of the
+center.  A young man stood there.  About his forehead was bound the
+phylactery of a Pharisee.  At his feet was a tumbled heap of white
+outer garments.  Then the breach closed up.
+
+"A sacrifice?" the man in scarlet asked himself.  But such a deduction
+would not answer for the behavior of the crowd.  Its temper was
+ferocious.  They howled, they spat, they shook arms and clenched hands
+above their heads and forward over their neighbors' shoulders; they
+cursed in Greek and Aramic; they twisted their faces into furious
+grimaces; they pressed forward and were driven back and the foremost
+rank which knew wherefore it raged was not more violent than the
+rearmost which was perfectly in the dark.
+
+It was typically the voice of the Beast in man.  Some circumstance,
+unknown to the greater body, had waived restraint.  Therefore the
+wolves of Perea could have come down from the bone-whited wadies of the
+wilderness and said to them with truth: "We be of one blood, ye and we!"
+
+Each felt the support of numbers, the momentum of unanimity, the
+incentive of relaxed order, and the original cause, however heinous,
+was forgotten in the joy of the reversion to primordial savagery.
+Their quiet fellow stood on the outskirts and listened to the yelp of
+the jackal in man.  Before him was a wall of variously clad backs and
+upstretched heads, beside him rows of raving men in profile, with
+strained eyes, open mouths and working beards; and one of them was the
+man who had shown, when asked, that he did not understand this
+demonstration.
+
+The man in scarlet finally shrugged his shoulders.  He had suddenly
+evolved an explanation--the blood of a fellow man.  He turned away, not
+because he had revolted--he had seen too many spectacles in the Circus
+in Rome--but because he was disinclined to stand till he had learned
+the particulars of the uproar.  A gnarly hummock, white, harsh and dry,
+as if it were a heap of disintegrated ashes, rose several rods away on
+the brink of Kedron.  He mounted it and sat.  Yes; he would wait, also,
+till he saw the Essene again, who, he was sure, had been buried in the
+ring.  It would be unkind to himself to permit a chance for a loan to
+pass untried.
+
+The tumult continued many minutes before he noticed abatement in the
+forward ranks.  Movement which had been general throughout the interval
+increased at times, but the mob showed no signs of dispersing.
+
+The western slope of Olivet was now in its own shadow, its ravines
+already purpling with night.  Only the glory on the summit of Moriah
+blazed with undiminished fire, as the gold of the gates gave back the
+gold of the sunset.
+
+Presently a number of men, dressed alike in priestly robes, hurried
+back through Hanaleel into the city.  Hardly had they disappeared
+before the gate gave up a number of radiant shapes in a column, which
+broke suddenly and flung itself upon the great raving circle.  The
+flash of armor and the glitter of swords were suddenly interjected into
+a demoralized eddy of stampeded hundreds.  Another sort of clamor
+arose, no less voluminous, no less fervid, but it was a howl of panic
+and protest against the methods of Vitellius' legionaries sent to
+disperse a crowd.
+
+A solid core of fugitives drove through the gate beside Hanaleel and
+the Sheep Gate; fragments, detachments and individuals rolled down the
+banks into Kedron; screaming, tumbling, falling bodies fled north and
+south by the roadway and wherever there was a gate or a niche or a
+crevice it received fugitives who appeared no more.  Dust arose and
+obscured everything but the flash of arms and armor which rived through
+it like lightning in a cloud.  The uproar began to subside, and
+presently the laughter and jests of the soldiers mounted above the
+protest.  Fainter and fainter the cries grew, fewer the sounds of
+flying feet, and at last, strong, harsh and biting as the clang of a
+sledge upon metal, the command of the centurion to fall in settled even
+the shouts of the soldiers.
+
+There was the even, musical ring of whetting armor as the column filed
+back through Hanaleel, and silence.  The man in scarlet, who had sat on
+his ash-heap and smiled throughout the dispersing of the mob, a royal
+creature enthroned and entertained by the discomfiture of the mass,
+suddenly realized that the obscurity, which he had expected to lift,
+was the shadow of night.  He arose and, dusting off his scarlet skirt,
+moved out into the road.
+
+At that moment, a figure moving nearer the wall passed him, walking
+swiftly.  It was the Essene.
+
+"Ho! a discreet youth! a cautious youth!" the man in scarlet said to
+himself; "profiting by experience, he waited in safety somewhere until
+this light-fingered rabble was dispersed.  That must be a fat purse, a
+fat purse!  And I am looking for such!"
+
+He quickened his pace to overtake the young man and in his interest
+forgot the late riot.  Suddenly the young Essene stopped as if he had
+been commanded.  The man in scarlet brought up and looked.
+
+Before them was an immense trampled dusty ring.  In the falling
+twilight, he saw several huddled shapes, in attitudes of suffering and
+sorrow, kneeling together in its center over something which was
+stretched on the sand.
+
+A strangling gasp attracted the older man's attention once more to the
+Essene.  His figure seemed to shrink, his cheeks fell in.  Swiftly
+about his lips crawled the gray pallor of one physically sick from
+shock to the senses.  His eyes flared wide and the next instant he flew
+at the mourning cluster about the prostrate shape in the ring.  One or
+two fell back under his hand, and he leaned over and looked.
+
+A cry, heartrending in its agony, broke from his lips.  He dropped to
+his knees and fell forward with his face in the dust.  A murmur of
+compassion arose from the little group around him, and the man in
+scarlet lifted his shoulders and turned his back on the blighting
+spectacle of the young man's anguish.
+
+He walked hurriedly out of the falling night on the Mount, through
+Hanaleel, into the lights and noise of the City of David.  Soldiers on
+the point of closing the great gate paused to let him through.
+
+"Comrade," he said to one, "what did they out yonder?"
+
+"They stoned a Nazarene named Stephen," was the reply.
+
+[Illustration: "They stoned a Nazarene named Stephen"]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BANKRUPT
+
+Somewhat subdued, the man in scarlet walked through the night in the
+City of David.  After his first sensations he was discomfited.
+
+"Now this is what comes of the irregular barbarity in Judean
+executions," he ruminated.  "In Rome this Nazarene would have been
+despatched in order and his body borne away to the puticuli and no
+opportunity given for that painful scene outside.  Doubtless I should
+have convinced the young man and borrowed his gold of him, by this
+time.  Certainly, Fortune is a haughty jade when once offended.  But I
+shall be fortunate again; by all the gods, Jewish or Gentile, I will
+compel her smiles!
+
+"It would be my luck never to see him again; he will probably linger
+only to see this dead man buried, and go on to En-Gadi, as he said he
+would.  It would hardly be seemly to approach him about his gold, in
+his unhappiness, or I would waylay him, yet.  A pest on the zealots!
+Why did they not hold off this stoning for a day?"
+
+Moodily occupied by his thoughts, he passed unconscious of the careless
+people about him.  The huge tower of Antonia set on the brink of Mount
+Moriah frowned blackly over the street and in its shadow the idle life
+of the night laughed and reveled and sauntered.  The woman of the city
+was there, the Roman soldier in armor, the alien that bowed to Brahm or
+Bel, the son of the slow Nile, of the Orontes and of the yellow Tiber.
+It was not the resort of the lowest classes, but of those that were at
+variance with the spirit of the city, or the times and their
+philosophies.  Light streamed from open doorways, the wail of lyres and
+the jingle of castanets resounded within and without.  Now and then
+belated carters, driving slow donkeys, would plod through the
+revelry--a note of relentless duty which would not be forgotten.
+Again, humbler folk would retreat into wagon-ways or hug the walls to
+permit the passage of a Sadducee and his retinue, or a decurion and his
+squad--rank and power asserting their inexorable prerogative.
+
+Presently there approached the click of hoofs upon flagging.  A
+soldier, passing through a broad shaft of light from a booth, stopped
+short, drew himself up and swung his short sword at present.  Up the
+street, from lip to lip of every arms-bearing man, ran his abrupt call
+to attention.
+
+A body of legionaries appeared suddenly in the ray of light--brassy
+shapes in burnished armor, picked for stature and bearing.  Not even
+the plunge into blackness again broke the precision and confidence of
+that tread before which the world had fled as did now the mule-riders
+and the pedestrians of Jerusalem.
+
+After them, the beam of light projected two horsemen into sudden view.
+There was the rattle and ring of saluting soldiers by the way.  The
+radiance showed up a typical Roman in the armor of a general, but in
+deference to Israelitish prejudice against images, the eagle was
+removed from his helmet, the bosses of Titan heads from breastplate and
+harness.  This was Vitellius, Proconsul of Syria and the shrewdest
+general on Caesar's list.  By his side rode Herrenius Capito, Caesar's
+debt-collector, a thin-faced Roman in civilian dress, and with the
+ashes of age sprinkled on his hair.
+
+The man in scarlet took one glance at the gray old countenance frowning
+under the sudden light of the lamp and slid into the obscurity of an
+open alley at hand.  He did not emerge till the hoof-beats had died
+away.
+
+"So thou comest in search of me, sweet Capito," he muttered, "and I am
+penniless.  But it is comforting to know that thou hast no more hope of
+getting the three hundred thousand drachmae which I owe to Caesar, than I
+have of paying it!"
+
+After a little silence, he said further to himself, with added regret:
+
+"Now, had I that young Essene's gold, Capito would not find me in
+Jerusalem!  O Alexandria!  I must reach thee, though I turn dolphin and
+swim!"
+
+He continued on his way to the north wall, where he found exit
+presently into Bezetha, the unwalled suburb of Jerusalem.  Here the
+houses were comparatively new, less historic, less pretentious than
+those in the old city.  Here were inns in plenty, relaxed order and a
+general absence of the racial characteristics and the influence of
+religion.  The middle classes of Jerusalem dwelt here.
+
+It was dark, poorly paved, and the man in scarlet laid his hand on his
+purse under his tunic and walked with circumspection toward a khan.  It
+was no surprise to him to hear the sounds of struggle and outcry.  He
+stopped to catch the direction of the conflict that he might avoid it.
+It came out of a street so narrow, in a district so squalid, that
+happiness seemed to have fled the spot.  If ever the wealthy entered
+the place, it was to seek out human beings hungry enough to sell
+themselves as slaves.
+
+The commotion centered before a hovel, a tragedy in sounds, ghastly
+because the night made it unembodied.  The man in scarlet located it as
+out of his path and would have continued but for the insistent screams
+of a woman in the struggle.  Harsh shouts attempted to cry her down,
+but desperation lent her strength and the suburb shuddered with her mad
+cries.
+
+The man in scarlet lagged, shook his shoulders as if to throw off the
+influence of the appeal and finally stopped.  At that moment several
+torches of pitch, lighted at once, threw a smoky light over the scene.
+The passage was obstructed by a group of men uniformly dressed, and
+several spectators attracted by the commotion.  Assured that this was
+arrest and not violence, the curiosity of the man in scarlet drew him
+that way.  At a nearer view, he saw that the aggressors were Shoterim
+or Temple lictors, under command of a Pharisee wearing the habiliments
+of a rabbi.  The man in scarlet identified him as the referee in the
+center of the ring about the stoning.  The sudden lighting of the
+torches convinced him that the attack had its inception in secret.
+
+In the center of the fight was a middle-aged woman clinging desperately
+about the bodies of a young man and a young woman.  It was the efforts
+of the Shoterim to tear her away and her resistance that had made the
+arrest violent.
+
+Shouts and revilings told the man in scarlet the meaning of the
+disturbance.  The ferrets of the High Priest, Jonathan, had discovered
+a house of Nazarenes and were taking them.
+
+"More ill-timed zeal!" he muttered to himself.  "Or let me be exact:
+more bloody politics!"
+
+He had turned to leave when a figure in white, directed from the city,
+drove past him and through to the center of the crowd, with the
+irresistible force of a hurled stone.  Spectators fell to the right and
+left before it and the man in scarlet drawing in a breath of amazement
+turned to see what the light had to disclose.
+
+It was the young Essene, hardly recognizable for the distortion of
+deadly hate and passion on his face.  There were dark stains on his
+garments and dust on his black hair.  Every drop of blood had left his
+cheeks, but his eyes blazed with a light that was not good to see.
+
+He went straight at the Pharisee.  His grasp fell upon Saul's shoulder,
+drove in and seized upon its sinews.  The startled Tarsian turned and
+the young Essene with bent head gazed grimly down at him.  An
+interested silence fell over both captor and captive.  The blaze in the
+young man's eyes reddened and flickered.
+
+"I have been seeking thee, Saul of Tarsus," he said in a voice of
+deadly silkiness.  "Thou hast been most zealous for the Law in
+Stephen's case.  Look to it that thou fail not in the Law, for I shall
+profit by thy precept!  And even as Stephen fell, so shalt thou fall;
+even as Stephen came unto death, so shalt thou come!  Mark me, and
+remember!"
+
+The words were menace made audible; it was more than a threat: it was
+prophecy and doom.
+
+A tingle of admiration ran over the man in scarlet.  He who could leave
+the bier of a murdered friend to visit vengeance on the head of the
+murderer was no weakling.
+
+"A Roman, by the gods!" he exclaimed to himself.  "A noble adversary! a
+man, by Bacchus!"
+
+A threatening murmur arose from the spectators.  But there was no
+responsive fury kindled in Saul's eyes.  Instead he looked at Marsyas
+with unutterable sorrow on his face.  Presently his shoulders lifted
+with a sigh.
+
+"The city festereth with Nazarenes as a wound with thorns," he said to
+himself; aloud he called, "Joel."
+
+The Levite materialized out of obscurity and bowed jerkily.
+
+"Bear witness to this young man's behavior.  Lictors, take him.  We
+shall hold him for examination as a Nazarene and an apostate."
+
+Marsyas started and his hand dropped.  Plainly, he had not expected to
+be accused of apostasy.  But the old mood asserted itself.
+
+"This for thy slander of Stephen in the college," he said with
+premonitory calm when the Levite approached him, and struck with
+terrific force.  The Levite's body shot backward and dropped heavily on
+the earth.  The rest of the lictors precipitated themselves upon the
+young man, and, in desperation and in fury, the one man and the numbers
+fought.
+
+Meanwhile the man in scarlet thought fast.  His Roman love of defiance
+and war had roused in him a most compelling respect for the young
+Essene, but cupidity put forth swift and convincing argument even
+beyond the indorsement of admiration.  If the Shoterim took the young
+man in ward, he would be executed and the treasure come into the hands
+of the state for disposition.  In view of the fact that Herrenius
+Capito had traced the bankrupt to Jerusalem, Jerusalem was no longer
+tenantable for the bankrupt.  He had to have money to escape to
+Alexandria and the Essene was too profitable a chance to be lost to the
+murdering hands of fanatics.
+
+Excited and bent only on preventing the arrest, the man sprang into the
+crowd and forced his way to the Essene's side.  But the next instant he
+also was sent reeling by a blow delivered by Marsyas in his blind
+resolution not to be taken without difficulty.  Before the bankrupt
+could recover, the united force of spectators and lictors flung itself
+upon Marsyas.
+
+Steadying himself, the man in scarlet urged his bruised brain to think.
+Half of his life for a ruse! for nothing but a ruse could save the
+young man, now.
+
+Then, with a half-suppressed cry of eagerness, the bankrupt took to his
+heels and ran toward the city as only an Arab trained in Roman gymnasia
+could run.
+
+The sentry at the gate passed him and he entered on the marble
+pavements of the streets for the finest exhibition of speed he had
+shown since he had carried off the laurel in Rome.  He knew the city as
+a hare knows its runways.  He cut through private passages, circled
+watchful constabulary, eluded congestions, and took the quick slopes of
+Jerusalem's hills as though the deep lungs of a youth supplied him.
+
+When the broad, marble-paved street, which let in some glimpse of the
+starry sky upon the passer, opened between the rich residences of the
+Sadducees, the white luster of many burning torches lighted an area on
+a distant slope at its head.  The running man sped on, taking the rise
+of Mount Zion without slackening, until he rushed upon a sentry
+obscured under the brooding shadow of a heavy wall.
+
+"Halt!"  The challenge of the sentry brought him up.
+
+"Without the password, comrade," he panted.  "Call the officer of the
+guard.  And by our common quarrels in Rome do thou haste, for if I see
+not Vitellius and Herrenius Capito this instant I expire!"
+
+The cry of the sentry passed from post to post until the centurion of
+the guard emerged from a small gate.
+
+"One cometh without the countersign," the sentry said.
+
+"A visitor for Vitellius and Herrenius Capito," the bankrupt explained.
+
+"The general and his guest have retired," was the blunt reply.
+
+"Hip! but thou art the same glib liar thou always wast, Aulus," the
+bankrupt laughed.  "Take me into the light, and slap me with thy sword
+if I am frank beyond the privileges of mine acquaintance with thee!"
+
+The gate-keeper, in response to a short word from the dubious Aulus,
+let down the chains with a rattle and a small side portal swung in,
+revealing an interior of semi-dusk.
+
+The centurion conducted his visitor within.  Torches stuck in sconces
+high up in the walls lighted a quadrangle of tessellated pavement,
+terminating distantly in banks of marble stairs of such breadth and
+stature that their limits were lost in the unilluminated night.
+
+After a quick glance, the centurion started and slapped his helmet in
+salute to the bankrupt.  The other responded with a skill and grace
+that could not have been assumed for the moment.  The dexterity of the
+camp was written in the movement.
+
+"I am expected of Capito," the bankrupt said, which was true only in a
+very limited sense.
+
+"I know, and do thou follow.  Thou shalt see him.  Were he dead and
+inurned he would arise to thee."
+
+The man in scarlet smiled a little grimly and followed his conductor
+out of the light up the marble heights of stairs duly set with
+sentinels, to a porch that even the Royal Colonnade of the Temple could
+not shame.  A huge cresset with a jeweled hood, depending from a
+groining so high that its light was feeble, showed dimly the giant
+compound arch of the portal.  An orderly, a veritable pygmy within the
+outline of the dark entrance, appeared and saluted.
+
+"A visitor for the proconsul and his guest," the centurion said,
+passing the man in scarlet to the orderly.
+
+He was led through a valve groaning on its granite hinges into the
+vestibule of Herod the Great's palace.
+
+It was a lofty hall, nobly vaulted, lined with costly Indian onyx and
+florid with pagan friezes, arabesques and frescoes.  Yet, though its
+jeweled lamps were dark and cold, its fountains still, its hangings and
+its carpets gone, its bloody genius held despotic sway from a shadowy
+throne, over the note of brute force which the Roman garrison had
+infused into it.
+
+At the far end was a small carven table at which two Romans sat, a lamp
+and a crater of wine at their elbows, the tesserae of a dice-game
+between them.
+
+Without waiting for the orderly to speak, the man in scarlet stepped
+forward.
+
+"Greeting, Vitellius.  Capito, I salute you," he said.  His voice was
+that of a composed man speaking with equals.
+
+Vitellius turned his head toward the speaker; Capito drew up his lids
+and his lower jaw relaxed.  Slowly then both men got upon their feet.
+
+"By the bats of Hades--" Vitellius began.
+
+"By the nymphs of Delphi!" Capito's aged falsetto broke in.  "It is the
+Herod himself!"
+
+"Herod Agrippa!" Vitellius exclaimed.
+
+"From the faces of you," Agrippa declared, "I might have been the shade
+of my grandsire.  But I have been hunting you.  I need help.  And as
+thou hopest to return three hundred thousand drachmae to Caesar from my
+purse, do thou aid me in urging Vitellius to yield it, Capito."
+
+"Help," Capito repeated.
+
+"What manner of help?" Vitellius demanded, fixing Agrippa with a
+suspicious eye.
+
+"Arrest me an Essene from the hands of Jonathan."
+
+"Jonathan!" the proconsul exclaimed darkly.
+
+"The High Priest, the Nasi, thy sweet and valued friend!" the Agrippa
+explained with amiable provoke.  "He has arrested an Essene on a
+trifling charge of apostasy and he is my voucher before the Essenic
+brotherhood for a loan to repay Caesar.  I left him in the hands of the
+Shoterim, in Bezetha.  If he be not speedily rescued, they will stone
+him without the walls to-morrow and my debt to Caesar--" he drew up his
+shoulders and spread out his hands in a gesture highly Jewish.
+
+Capito frowned and Vitellius glowered under his grizzled brow at
+Agrippa.
+
+"It is one to me," Agrippa continued coolly, as he noted signs of
+dissent in the contemplation.  "I am just as happy and as like to
+escape Caesar's displeasure by failing to pay it, as thou wilt be,
+Capito, if thou failest to collect it."
+
+Capito nervously fingered the tesserae at his hand.
+
+"Meanwhile," added the Herod, perching himself on the edge of the
+table, "the youth proceeds to Jonathan's stronghold."
+
+Vitellius looked at Caesar's debt-collector.  "Dost thou see anything
+more in this than appears on the face of it?" he asked.
+
+Capito scratched his white head.  He had learned to look for ulterior
+motives in every move of this slippery Herod, but he was too little
+informed in the matter to see more than the surface.
+
+"We--can look into it, first," he opined.
+
+"Jonathan will not await your pleasure," Agrippa put in.  "He is
+hurried now with the responsibility of executing enough blasphemers to
+save himself popular favor.  The Sanhedrim may sit to-morrow, the
+prisoner come for trial and be executed--even more expeditiously
+because the Nasi expects thee to interfere, Vitellius."
+
+The proconsul bit through an expletive.  Jonathan was a thorn in his
+side.
+
+"What is it you wish me to do?" he demanded.
+
+"Arrest me this youth.  The claim of the proconsul's charge will take
+precedence over the hieratic."
+
+"But he has not offended--"
+
+"Save the protest; he has; he struck me, a Roman citizen.  But draw up
+the warrant, good Vitellius, and send a centurion after the young man.
+Thou canst make no error by so doing and thou canst save Capito the
+favor of his emperor."
+
+Vitellius summoned a clerk and while the warrant for Marsyas' arrest
+was written, despatched an orderly for an officer.  One of the
+contubernalis to Vitellius, or one of the sons of a noble family
+serving his apprenticeship in warfare, appeared.
+
+"Take four," Vitellius said grimly, in compliance with Herod's demand,
+when the young centurion approached, "and go with this man.  Arrest by
+superior claim the High Priest's prisoner, who shall be pointed out.
+Fetch him and this man back to me!"
+
+The young centurion saluted and Agrippa assented with a nod.
+
+"Thanks," he added nonchalantly.  "Come, brother," he said to the young
+officer, "if we be late it may take the whole machinery of Rome to undo
+the work of Jonathan."
+
+Agrippa and the Roman legionaries passed out of the Praetorium and
+turned directly up the slanting street toward the palace of Jonathan,
+which stood a little above the camp.
+
+The Herod had lost little time and the progress of the arresting party
+toward the stronghold would not have been rapid with the resistance of
+Marsyas and the friends of the Nazarenes to retard the movement.  After
+a quick walk of a short distance, the Roman group came upon the
+Temple's emissaries, entering from an intersecting street.
+
+Saul and Joel walked a little ahead of the broken-spirited prisoners
+who were centered in a group of armed lictors and a hooting escort of
+half a hundred vagrants.  The flaring torch-light shone down on bowed
+heads and disordered garments, and showed fugitive glints of manacles
+and knives.
+
+Among them, unbroken and silent, was Marsyas, heavily shackled.  He was
+marked with blows, but several besides the Levite Joel staggered as
+they walked, and Agrippa, lifting himself on tiptoe to point out his
+prisoner to the centurion, eyed the young man with approval.
+
+The officer nodded abruptly and broke through the crowd.  The light
+dropping on his shining armor instantly displayed his authority to halt
+the group.  His command to stop elicited almost precipitate obedience.
+The hooting vagrants scattered.
+
+The centurion laid his hand on Marsyas' shoulder.
+
+"Thou art a prisoner of the proconsul," he said.
+
+The halt and the dismayed silence caught Saul's attention.  He turned
+back and pushed his way into the center of the circle.
+
+"Unhand him," he said to the centurion.  "He is wanted of the
+Sanhedrim."
+
+The young officer smiled derisively and thrust off the hold of the
+apprehensive lictors.  The four made way through the crowd and the
+officer passed Marsyas into their hands.
+
+"Make my excuses to the Sanhedrim," the officer said sarcastically.
+The Pharisee glanced over the Roman's party.  Then he stepped without
+ostentation in the centurion's way--a weak, small figure in fringes and
+phylactery, living up to his nature as he fronted brassy Rome.
+
+"Show me thy warrant," he said quietly.
+
+The centurion drew forth the parchment and flourished it.  Saul took it
+with a murmured courtesy, and, holding it near a torch, read it
+carefully.  Then he passed it back.
+
+"After the proconsul hath done with this young man," he observed, "the
+Sanhedrim will claim him.  Say this much to the proconsul.  We shall
+wait.  Peace!"
+
+He motioned his party to proceed and the crowd moved on, leaving
+Marsyas in the hands of new captors.
+
+"Back to the Praetorium," the centurion said to Agrippa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+AGRIPPA IN REPERTOIRE
+
+On the way two dark figures emerged from the shadows and halted to let
+the soldiers pass.  Agrippa peered at them intently through the gloom,
+and raising his arm made a peculiar gesture.  Both figures approached
+immediately.
+
+"Do thou fetch my civilian's dress, Silas, to the gate of the Praetorium
+to-morrow, early, and my umber toga broidered with silver.  And thou,
+Eutychus, prepare our belongings so thou canst carry them and bring
+them also that we may proceed at once to En-Gadi.  I remain at the
+Praetorium to-night.  Be gone and fail not!"
+
+The two men bowed and disappeared.
+
+When the party reentered the gates of the camp, Herod's vestibule was
+dark.  The prisoner and Agrippa were led to the barracks and turned
+into a cubiculum, or sleeping-chamber.  One of the four was manacled to
+Marsyas and the bolts shot upon them.
+
+The soldier immediately stretched himself on the straw and, bidding the
+others hold their peace, fell asleep promptly.
+
+After a long time, when the sounds from the pallet assured Agrippa that
+the soldier could not be easily aroused, he arose and came over to the
+side of the young Essene.
+
+The torch-light for the officer of the guard, flaring on the wall
+without, shone through the high ventilation niche in the cell and cast
+a faint illumination over the dusky interior.  Under the half-light the
+face of Marsyas looked fallen and lifeless,--his dark hair in disorder
+on his forehead, his shadowed eyes and slight black beard making for
+the increase of pallor by contrast.  Agrippa looked at him a moment
+before the young man had noticed his approach.
+
+"The medicine for thy hurts, young brother," he said to himself, "is
+only one--the comforting arms of a woman.  I have had experience; I
+know!  But if thou art an Essene that comfort is denied thee.  Now, I
+wonder what demon-ridden Jew it was who first thought of an order of
+celibates!"
+
+He drew closer and the somber eyes of the young man lighted upon him.
+
+"So thou dost not sleep," Agrippa said in Hebrew.  Marsyas' face showed
+a little surprise at the choice of tongue, but he answered in the same
+language.
+
+"Why am I here?" he asked.
+
+"Better here than there," Agrippa responded under his breath,
+indicating the direction of Jonathan's stronghold.
+
+"Listen," he continued, "and may Morpheus plug this soldier's ears if
+he knows our fathers' ancient tongue.  Canst see my face, brother?"
+
+Marsyas signed his assent.
+
+"Thou sayest thou art a Galilean," Agrippa pursued.  "Look now and see
+if thou discoverest aught familiar in me."
+
+Marsyas raised himself on an elbow and gazed into the Herod's face.
+Finally he said slowly:
+
+"I have seen thee in Tiberias--in power--as--as prefect!  Thou art
+Herod Agrippa!"
+
+There was silence; the Essene's eyes filled with question and the Herod
+gave him time to think.
+
+"I had thee arrested," Agrippa resumed when he believed that Marsyas'
+ideas had reached the point of asking what the Herod had to do with
+him.  "To-morrow thou wilt be fined for striking me and turned
+loose--to Jonathan--unless thou art helped to escape."
+
+"I understand," said Marsyas with growing light, but without enthusiasm.
+
+"Thou seest I am virtually a prisoner here.  I became so, to save thee
+from Jonathan."
+
+"For me!  Thou becamest a prisoner to save me?" Marsyas repeated,
+astounded.
+
+"Because I need thee as much as thou needest me," was the frank
+admission.
+
+"What can I do for thee that thou shouldst need me?" Marsyas asked
+softly, but still wondering.
+
+"Hast--hast thou ever lacked friends so wholly that thou wast willing
+to purchase one?" Agrippa asked.
+
+"I am thy grateful servant; yet I am an Essene, poor, persecuted,
+homeless, hungry and heartbroken.  What wilt thou have of me?"
+
+In that was more earnestness than blandishment, more appeal than
+offering.  The young man published his helplessness and asked after the
+other's use of him.  Agrippa was silent; after a pause Marsyas put out
+his hand and lifting the hem of the pagan tunic pressed it to his lips.
+The act could not fail to reach to the innermost of the Herod's heart.
+His head dropped suddenly into his hands, and the young Essene's touch
+rested lightly on his shoulder.
+
+Finally Agrippa raised his head.
+
+"Dost thou know my history, brother?" he asked.
+
+"From the lips of others, yes; but let me hear thee."
+
+"Thou art a just youth; nothing so outrages a slandered man as to pen
+his defense within his lips.  Hear me, then.  To be a Herod once meant
+to be beloved by the Caesars.  In my early childhood, after the death of
+my young father, I was taken to Rome by my mother and reared among
+princes and the sons of consuls.  Best of all my friends was Drusus,
+Caesar's gallant son, and we studied together, raced and gambled and
+feasted together, loved and hated--and fought together, and never was
+there a difference between us except in purse!
+
+"While he lived, I lived as he lived, but when he died his sire drove
+me out of Rome because I had been the living Drusus' shadow and it
+stung the father that the shadow should live while the sweet substance
+perished.
+
+"When Drusus died my living died with him, and when I took ship at
+Puteoli for Palestine I owed three hundred thousand drachmae to Caesar
+and forty tradesmen barked about my heels.
+
+"I had a ruined castle in Idumea.  I forgot that I owned it till I was
+in actual want of shelter.  Thither I went.  But I was a young man,
+hopeless, and young hopelessness is harder than the hopelessness of
+age.  I should have put an end to myself, but Cypros, my princess,
+prevented me by the gentle force of her love and devotion.
+
+"She could not have balked me more thoroughly had she tied me hand and
+foot.  I railed, but while I railed she wrote and sent a messenger, and
+in a little time an answer came.  It was from my brother-in-law, Herod
+Antipas, who is tetrarch of Galilee.  Cypros had besought him to help
+us.  He wrote courteously, or else his scribe, for it is hard to
+reconcile that letter with the man I met, and begged me come and be his
+prefect over Tiberias.  I went."
+
+The prince paused and when he went on thereafter it seemed as if his
+account were expurgated.
+
+"At Tyre before an hundred nobles assembled at a feast he twitted me
+with my poverty and boasted his charity.  I tore off the prefect's
+badge and flung it in his face.  And that same night I took the road to
+Antioch, my princess with me, a babe on either arm.
+
+"The proconsul of Antioch took us in, but there was treachery against
+me afoot in his household, and I lost his friendship through it.  His
+was my last refuge under roof of mine own rank.  I heard recently that
+Alexander Lysimachus, Alabarch of Alexandria, was in Jerusalem,
+presenting a Gate to the Temple, and sending my wife and children to
+Ptolemais, I hastened hither to get a loan of him.  But he had departed
+some days before I came.  So here am I as a player of dice to win me
+money enough to take me back to Ptolemais.  But Herrenius Capito,
+Caesar's debt-collector, hath found me out."
+
+He looked down at Marsyas' interested face.
+
+"Let me be truthful," he corrected.  "I found him.  I could have flown
+him successfully, but for thy close straits.  All that would save thee
+would be the interference of Rome, and I could command it at sacrifice."
+
+Public version of Agrippa's story had enlarged much on certain phases
+of his adventures which he had curtailed, and these minutiae had not
+been to Herod's credit.  Yet, though Marsyas knew of these things, his
+heart stirred with great pity.  His was that large nature which turns
+to the unfortunate whether or not his misfortune be merited.  It seemed
+to him that the prince's fall had been too hapless for comment.  But
+the word here and there, which suggested the prince's intercession in
+his behalf, stirred him.
+
+"How shall I make back to thee thy effort in my behalf?" he asked
+earnestly.  "Thou sayest that thou needest me; what can I do?"
+
+"First let me know of thyself."
+
+Marsyas relinquished his thought on Agrippa to turn painfully to his
+own story.
+
+"I am Marsyas, son of Matthew, of Nazareth.  He was a zealot who fought
+beside Judas of Galilee.  I was born after his death, and at my birth
+my mother died, and being the last of their line, I am, and have been
+all my life alone.  I was taken in mine infancy by the Essenic master
+of the school in Nazareth and reared to be an Essene.  But I developed
+a certain aptness for learning and in later youth a certain aptness for
+teaching, and my master by the consent of the order, whose ward I was,
+designed me for the scholar-class of Essenes, which do not reside in
+En-Gadi but without in the world.  The vows of the order were not laid
+upon me; they are reserved for the sober and understanding years when
+my instruction should be completed."
+
+Agrippa frowned.  "Art thou not a member of the brotherhood, then?" he
+asked.
+
+"No, I am a neophyte, a postulant."
+
+The Herod ran his fingers though his hair, and Marsyas went on.
+
+"I had two friends, both older than I.  One was Saul of Tarsus; one,
+Stephen of Galilee.  Neither knew the other.  Stephen was born an
+Hellenist, and until the coming of his Prophet, a good Jew.  But when
+Jesus arose in Nazareth, Stephen followed Him, and, after the Nazarene
+was put away, he remained here in Jerusalem.  When I came hither to
+complete mine instruction in the college, I found the synagogue aroused
+against him.
+
+"Chief among the zealous in behalf of the Law is Saul of Tarsus.  Him I
+most feared, when the rumors of Stephen's apostasy spread abroad.  An
+evil messenger finally set Saul upon Stephen, and I pleaded with him to
+spare Stephen, until I could win him back to the faith.  But Saul would
+not hear me.
+
+"I meant to give over mine ambition to become a scholar and take
+Stephen into the refuge of En-Gadi--"
+
+He stopped for control and continued presently with difficulty.
+
+"But when I returned from Nazareth, whither I had gone to get my
+patrimony which the Essene master held in ward, his enemies stoned him
+before mine eyes!"
+
+Stephen's death and not his own peril was the climax of his story and
+he ceased because his heart began to shrink under its pain.
+
+"And this Saul of Tarsus, whom I heard you threaten over in Bezetha,
+mistaking your natural grief and hunger for vengeance as signs of
+apostasy, would stone you also," Agrippa remarked, filling in the rest
+of the narrative from surmise.  Marsyas assented; it hurt him as much
+to think on Saul as it did to remember that Stephen was dead.
+
+"It was doubtless his intent."
+
+"Implacable enough to be Caesar!  And thou art not a member of the
+Essenic order--only a neophyte.  That is disconcerting.  Hast thou any
+influence with the brethren?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+Perplexity sat dark on the Herod's brow.  Marsyas, with his eyes on the
+prince's face, observed it.
+
+"Can I not help thee?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"I thought once that thou couldst; but thou sayest that thou hast no
+power with the Essenes.  Now, I do not know."
+
+"What is it thou wouldst have had me do?"
+
+"I have said that I owe three hundred thousand drachmae to Caesar.
+Unless I discharge it, under the Roman law I can be required to become
+the slave of my creditor.  That I might secure intercession in thy
+behalf, I had to promise Capito and Vitellius that thou couldst help me
+to repay this sum."
+
+"I!" Marsyas cried, sitting up.
+
+The legionary stirred and Agrippa laid a warning finger on his lip.
+The two sat silent until the sleeper fell again into total
+unconsciousness.
+
+"Three hundred thousand drachmae!" Marsyas repeated.  "I, to get that!"
+
+"I knew that the Essenic brotherhood have a common treasury and that
+they are believed to be rich.  I thought that thou couldst persuade
+them to lend me the sum."
+
+Marsyas shook his head.  "They are poor, poor!  Their fund is not
+contributed in great bulk, and the little they own must be expended in
+hospitality and in maintaining themselves.  Their treasury would be
+enriched by the little I bring."
+
+"O Fortune!" Agrippa groaned aloud.  "I am undone and so art thou!"
+
+Marsyas lapsed into thought, while the Herod looked at the solid door
+that stood between him and liberty.  He had set the subject aside as
+profitless and was a little irritated when Marsyas spoke again.
+
+"What hopes hast thou in Alexandria?"
+
+"The alabarch, Alexander Lysimachus, is my friend.  He is rich; I could
+borrow of him."
+
+"Take thou my gold and go thither," Marsyas offered at once.
+
+"It is not so easy as it sounds, for the sound of it is most generous
+and kindly.  How am I to get out of Capito's clutches, here?"
+
+Marsyas gazed straight at Agrippa with the set eyes of one plunged into
+deep speculation.  Then he leaned toward the prince.
+
+"Will this gold in all truth help thee to borrow more in Alexandria?"
+
+"I know it!"
+
+"And then what?"
+
+"To Rome!  To imperial favor!  To suzerainty over Judea!"
+
+Marsyas laid hold on the prince's arm.
+
+"Thou art a Herod," he said intensely.  "Ambition natively should be
+the very breath of thy nostrils.  Yet swear to me that thou wilt
+aspire--aye, even desperately as thy grandsire!  Swear to me that thou
+wilt not be content to be less than a king!"
+
+At another time, Agrippa might have found amusement in the young man's
+earnestness, but the cause was now his own.
+
+"Thou tongue of my desires!" he exclaimed.  "I have sworn!  Being a
+Herod, mine oaths are not idle.  I have sworn!"
+
+"Then, let us bargain together," Marsyas said rapidly.  "I have told
+thee my story: thou heardest my vow to-night!  For my fealty, yield me
+thy word!  As I help thee into power, help me to revenge!  Promise!"
+
+"Promise!  By the beard of Abraham, I will conquer or kill anything
+thou markest; yield thee my last crust, and carry thee upon my back, so
+thou help me to Alexandria!"
+
+"Swear it!"
+
+Agrippa raised his right hand and swore.
+
+The legionary roused and growled at the two to be quiet.  Marsyas fell
+back on the straw and lay still.  Agrippa made signs and urged for more
+discussion, but the Essene, masterful in his silence, refused to speak.
+Presently the Herod lay down and slept from sheer inability to engage
+his mind to profit otherwise.
+
+A little after dawn the following morning, the Essene and the Herod
+were conducted into the vestibule of Herod the Great, for a hearing
+before Vitellius and Herrenius Capito.  But Marsyas' offense against a
+Roman citizen was held in abeyance; it was Agrippa's debt to Caesar
+which engaged the attention of the judges.
+
+Vitellius was in a precarious temper and Capito looked as grim as
+querulous old age may.  Agrippa's nonchalance was only a surface air
+overlaying doubts and no little trepidation.  But Marsyas, white and
+sternly intent, was the most resolute of the four.
+
+Capito stirred in his chair and prepared to speak, but Vitellius cut in
+with a point-blank demand on the young Essene.
+
+"Dost thou know this man?" he asked, indicating Agrippa.
+
+"I do, lord," Marsyas answered, turning his somber eyes on the legate.
+
+"He owes three hundred thousand drachmae to Caesar; he says that thou
+canst help him pay it; is it so?"
+
+"It is, lord."
+
+Agrippa's eyes were perfectly steady; it would not do to show amazement
+now.
+
+"How?" was the next demand flung at the Essene.
+
+"I can place him in the way of certain wealth," was the assured reply.
+
+"How?"
+
+"The noble Roman's pardon, but there are certain things an Essene may
+not divulge."
+
+Agrippa's well-bred brows lifted.  Was this evader and collected
+schemer the innocent Essene he had met on the slopes of Olivet the
+previous evening?
+
+"Answer!  Dost thou promise to provide the Herod with three hundred
+thousand drachmae which shall be paid unto Caesar's treasury?"
+
+"I promise to place the prince where he will provide himself with three
+hundred thousand drachmae.  If he pay it not unto Caesar, the fault shall
+be his, not mine."
+
+"Will the Essenes do it?"
+
+"It shall be done," Marsyas replied, his composure unshaken by the
+menace implied in the questioning.
+
+"Capito, what thinkest thou?" Vitellius demanded.
+
+The old collector shuffled his slippered feet, and his antique treble
+took on an argumentative tone.
+
+"Caesar wants his money, not a slave; I want the emperor's commendation,
+not his blame.  But let us bind this young Jew to this."
+
+Vitellius motioned to an orderly.  "Send hither a notary; and let us
+take down this Jew's promise.  Now, Herod, speak up.  There are no
+rules of an order to bind you.  Where shall you get this money?"
+
+"Of two sources," Agrippa declared, unblushing.  "From the young man
+himself and from the Essenes."
+
+"If you had so many moneyers, why have you not paid your debt long ago?"
+
+"I had not the indorsement of this young Essenic doctor to validate my
+note, O Vitellius," the Herod responded with equanimity.
+
+The two Romans frowned; the clerk finished his transcription.
+
+"Sign!" Vitellius ordered Marsyas threateningly.
+
+Marsyas calmly wrote his name in Greek under the voucher.  After him
+Agrippa signed the document.
+
+"Now, listen," Vitellius began conclusively.  "I believe neither of
+you.  But for the fact that Caesar would be burdened with a useless
+chattel I should let Capito foreclose upon you, Agrippa.  But there is
+a chance that this rigid youth may be telling the truth; if he is
+not--" the legate closed his thin lips and let the menace of his hard
+eyes complete the sentence.  Marsyas contemplated him, unmoved,
+undismayed, no less inflexible and determined.
+
+"The punishment for his offense against you, Agrippa, is remitted.  Get
+you gone.  Capito!  Follow them!"
+
+Totally undisturbed by this sudden entanglement in a supposedly clear
+skein, Agrippa waved his hand and smiled.
+
+"Many thanks, Vitellius," he said.  "Would I could get my debts paid if
+only to deserve thy respect once more.  But thy hospitality must be a
+little longer strained.  The wolves of Jonathan wait without to lay
+hands on this young man.  He must be passed the gates in disguise.  I
+provided for that last night.  Admit my servants, I pray thee."
+
+"Have your way, Herod, and fortune go with you, curse you for a winsome
+knave," Vitellius growled.
+
+Agrippa laughed, but there was no laughter in his eyes.
+
+The two were led through a second hall instinct with barbaric
+splendors, to a small apartment where they were presently attended by
+two servants.
+
+One was a slow, stolid Jew of middle-age, with stubbornness and honesty
+the chief characteristics of his face.  The other would have won more
+interest from the casual observer.  He was young, well-formed, but of
+uncertain nationality.  His head was like a cocoanut set on its smaller
+end, and covered with thick, stiff, lusterless black hair, cut close
+and growing in a rounded point on his forehead.  One eye was smaller
+than the other and the lid drooped.  The fault might have given him a
+roguish look but for the ill-natured cut of his mouth.  Both wore the
+brown garments of the serving-class.
+
+When Agrippa and Marsyas stood up from the ministrations of these two,
+they were fit figures for a procession of patricians on the Palatine
+Hill.  Marsyas' soiled white garments had been put off for a tunic and
+mantle of fine umber wool, embroidered with silver.  A tallith of silk
+of the same color was bound with a silver cord about his forehead.
+Agrippa's garments were only a short white tunic of extraordinary
+fineness belted with woven gold, and a toga of white, edged with
+purple.  But the prince examined Marsyas with an interested eye.
+
+"By Kypris!" he said aloud, "and thou art to entomb thyself in En-Gadi!"
+
+But Marsyas did not understand.
+
+Capito awaited them when they emerged, and announced himself ready to
+proceed.  Procedure was to be an elaborate thing.  A squad of soldiery
+had been detailed as escort, and stood prepared in marching order; the
+collector's personal array of apparitors was assembled; his baggage
+sent forth to his pack-horses,--himself, duly arrayed after the fashion
+of a conventional old Roman afraid of color.
+
+Agrippa placed himself beside the collector with an equanimity that was
+almost disconcerting.  The old man signed his apparitors to proceed and
+followed with his two virtual prisoners.
+
+Through the envelope of grief and rancor, the grave difficulties of his
+predicament reached Marsyas.  Unless he could be rid of the
+surveillance of Capito, both he and the Herod were in sore straits.
+But Agrippa's amiable temper presaged something, and Marsyas merged the
+new distress with the burden of misery which bowed him.
+
+They passed out of the simpler portions of the royal house into the
+state wing and emerged in the great audience-chamber.
+
+It would have been impossible for a scion of that bloody house to pass
+for the first time in years through that royal chamber without comment
+upon it.  Agrippa after crossing the threshold slackened his step and
+his eyes took on the luster of retrospection.
+
+"I remember it," he said in a preoccupied way, "but only as a dream.  I
+went this way when my father and mother fared hence to Rome!"
+
+Capito lagged also, and Marsyas and the men following slackened their
+steps, until by the time the center of the vast hall was reached they
+paused as if by one accord.
+
+The hall was an octagonal, faced half its height, or to the floor of
+its galleries, in banded agate from the Indies; from that point upward
+the lining was marble panels and frescoes, alternating.  The galleries
+were supported by a series of interlaced oriental arches, rich with
+tracery and filigree.  With these main features as groundwork, the
+barbaric fancy of Herod the Great threw off all restraint and reveled
+in magnitude, richness and display.  He did not permit Greece, the
+_arbiter elegantarium_, to govern his building or his garnishment.  He
+harkened to the Arab in him and made a bacchanal of color; he
+remembered his one-time poverty and debased the hauteur of gold to the
+humility of wood and clay and stone.  He imaged Life in all its forms
+and crowded it into mosaics on his pavement, subjected it in the
+decoration of his scented wood couches, tables, taborets, weighted it
+with the cornices of his ceilings, the rails of his balustrades, the
+basins of his fountains--until he seemed to shake his scepter as despot
+over all the beast kind.  He was a hunter, a warrior and a statesman;
+the instincts of all three had their representation in this, his high
+place.  He was a voluptuary, a tyrant, and a shedder of blood; his
+audience-chamber told it of him.  Thus, though he had crumbled to ashes
+forty years before, and the efforts of the world to forget him had
+almost succeeded, he left a portrait behind him that would endure as
+long as his palace stood.
+
+The light of the Judean sun came in a harlequinade of twenty colors,
+but, where it fell and was reproduced, Nature had mastered the
+kaleidoscope and made it a glory.  The immense space, peopled with
+graven images, yet animated with ghostly swaying of hangings, had its
+own shifting currents of air, drafts that were streaming winds, cool
+and scented with the aromatic woods of the furniture.  The portals were
+closed, and there was no sound.  Sun, wind and silence ennobled Herod's
+mistakes.
+
+The four stood longer than they knew.  Then Agrippa made a little
+sound, a sudden in-taking of the breath.
+
+"See!" he whispered, laying a hand on Capito's shoulder and pointing
+with the other.  "That statue!"
+
+Following his indication, their eyes rested on the sculptured figure of
+a woman, cut from Parian marble.  It was a drowsy image, the head
+fallen upon a hand, the lids drooping, the relaxation of all the
+muscles giving softness and pliability to the pose.  So perfect was the
+work that the marble promised to be yielding to the touch.  Some
+imitator of Phidias had achieved his masterpiece in this.  Indeed, at
+first glance there was startlement for the four.  A warm human flush
+had mantled the stone, and Marsyas' brows drew together, but he could
+not obey the old Essenic teaching and drop his eyes.
+
+"A statue?" Capito asked, uncertainly taking his withered chin between
+thumb and forefinger.
+
+"A statue," Agrippa assured him.  "The illumination is from the
+batement light above.  Come nearer!"
+
+He led them to the angle in which the image stood, not more than three
+paces from the wall.
+
+"It is my grandsire's queen, Mariamne," he continued softly, for
+ordinary tones awakened ghostly echoes in the haunted hall.
+
+"Murdered Mariamne!" the old man whispered with sudden intensity.
+
+"He loved her, and killed her in the fury of his love.  They said that
+the king was wont to come in the morning when the sun stood there,
+drive out the attendants so that none might hear, and cling about this
+fair marble's knees in such agony of passion and remorse and grief that
+life would desert him.  They would come in time to find him there,
+stretched on the pavement, cold and inert, to all purposes dead!  And
+it was said that these groins here above held echoes of his awful grief
+after he had been borne away."
+
+Capito shivered.
+
+"What punishment!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Punishment!  They who curse Herod's memory could not, if they had
+their will, visit such torture upon him as he invented for himself!"
+
+But Capito was lost now in contemplation of the statue.
+
+"She was beautiful," he said after a silence.
+
+"Didst ever see her?" Agrippa asked eagerly.  The collector's back was
+turned to the prince, that he might have the advantageous view, and he
+answered with rapt eyes.
+
+"Once; through an open gate which led into her own garden.  So I saw
+her in the lightest of vestments, for the day was warm and half of her
+beauty usually hidden was unveiled."
+
+"Well for thee my grandsire never knew," Agrippa put in, leaning
+against one of the cestophori which guarded a blank panel in the wall.
+
+"He never knew; but I would have died before I would give over the
+memory of it.  She was slight, willowy, with the eyes of an Attic
+antelope, yet braver and more commanding than any woman-eye that ever
+bewitched me.  Her mouth--Praxiteles would have turned from Lais' lips
+to hers."
+
+Agrippa's hand slid down the side of the cestophorus and fumbled a
+little within the edge of the molding.
+
+"Her hair was loose," the old man went on, "the sole drapery of her
+bosom--a very cloud of night loomed into filaments--"
+
+An inert, moldy breath reached Marsyas.  He turned his head.  The panel
+between the cestophori was gone and a square of darkness yawned its
+miasma into the hall.
+
+The prince made a lightning movement; noiselessly the two servants
+dived into the blackness; Marsyas followed; after him, the prince.
+
+An eclipsing wall began to slide between them and the hail they had
+left.
+
+"Her arms were languidly lifted--arms that for whiteness shamed this
+marble--" the old man was saying as the panel glided back into place
+and shut them in darkness.
+
+"Ow!" Agrippa whispered in delight, "he tells that story better every
+year!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MARSYAS ASSUMES A CHARGE
+
+Agrippa crowded past the three that had preceded him into the black
+passage and, whispering a command to follow, led on.  They kept track
+of him by the sound of his shoes on the stone, but the absolute
+darkness and the unfamiliar path made their steps uncertain and slow.
+Frequently the sure footfall before them receded and in fear of losing
+their guide they stumbled forward in nervous haste.
+
+Presently the darkness about them lifted; the sensation was not that
+light had entered in, but that the darkness had simply failed in
+strength.  There was a perceptible increase in temperature and the
+atmosphere, changing from a chill, became muggy and oppressive.
+Marsyas, drawing in a full breath in search of freshness, told himself
+that this was the original air of chaos, penned in at the hour of
+creation.
+
+The floor under his feet became irregular, the instinctive realization
+that a roof was imminent overhead, passed, and, when the darkness
+became sufficiently feeble, they discovered that they were following
+through an immense chamber.  Light came in through air-holes in the
+rock above.
+
+Agrippa spoke aloud.
+
+"This is a quarry-chamber.  It was also my grandsire's secret
+stronghold, trial-chamber and tomb where many of his private grudges
+were satisfied.  But there are no evidences, now.  The place was open
+to the hill-jackals, by another passage which, if my memory has not
+failed me, shall lead us out."
+
+One of the servitors, whose teeth had been chattering, made a
+shuddering sound.  Agrippa laughed.
+
+"Thou, Eutychus?" he said.  "Comfort thee; the jackals have ceased to
+haunt the place since their hunger was last satisfied, thirty years
+ago."
+
+An irregular spot of blackness in one of the walls swallowed up the
+prince as he spoke.  Eutychus halted at the edge and drew back with a
+whimper.  But the second servitor, who had not spoken since Marsyas had
+first seen him, muttered contemptuously some inarticulate word and
+pushed Eutychus into the blackness.  Marsyas followed.
+
+Thereafter it was only time which ensued.  Sound, sight and, except for
+the stone under their feet, feeling were defeated.  They moved
+interminably.  Once or twice Eutychus became hysterical from the
+depression, but the stolid servitor smote him and bundled him on.
+Ahead a light laugh floated back to them in appreciation of the humor
+in Eutychus' predicament.
+
+In time a yellow star with ragged points appeared ahead of them, high
+above the level upon which they had been walking.  Eutychus trembled
+before it, but Agrippa quickened his steps.
+
+"What a memory I have," he observed cheerfully.  "Any other than myself
+would have been hopelessly entangled in these galleries and perished
+miserably some days hence."
+
+The star enlarged, lost substantiality and presently Eutychus with a
+gasp of joy faltered that it was daylight.  Several minutes later they
+emerged through an open tomb into high noon over Judea.
+
+Before their blinded vision, the green hills swimming in sunlight
+upheaved between them and all points of the horizon.  The City of David
+was nowhere to be seen; the sun stood directly in the zenith.  Marsyas
+was lost; but the prince smiled in immense satisfaction and, seeking a
+grassy spot, sat down and breathed deeply.  Presently he motioned to
+the others to sit.  Marsyas came close to him; the others remained at a
+respectful distance.
+
+For a long time no one spoke.
+
+At last Agrippa fell to inspecting his delicate hands and his garments
+for marks of the long journey under the earth, and the embroidered
+shoes for evidences of contact with jagged rock.  Satisfied that he was
+clean and intact, he laughed a little.
+
+"By the hat of Hermes, this was noble apparel to wear through the
+bowels of the earth.  _Eheu_!  I was at my best, and not so much as a
+she-bat saw me!"
+
+Eutychus, entirely recovered, chuckled, and a grin overspread the face
+of Silas; but Marsyas was plunged in his own reflections.
+
+"This is the country-side west of Jerusalem," Agrippa resumed
+presently, for the young Essene's information.  "Yonder," pointing
+north, "the road runs which shall lead us hence.  We are an hour's
+journey by daylight above ground, from the Tower of Hippicus.  But we
+are not beyond the zone of danger yet."
+
+Marsyas did not answer.  Reaction had set up within him against the
+foreign interest which had engaged his attention since sunrise.  He had
+thought of himself and had been concerned for Agrippa; he had planned
+and had achieved ends.  Entanglements straightened, immediate danger
+passed, the cloud of his sorrow embraced him wholly.  He did not want
+to see that Canaan was beautiful, indeed a land of milk and honey.  The
+wind laden with spring sweets struck a chill in his soul; the singing
+birds hurt him with a pain greater than he could endure.  His heart was
+bruised, his every sensation sore and weighted with a numb
+consciousness that a dread thing had happened and that it was useless
+to pray and hope now.  The presence of others was an obstacle, vaguely
+realized, that kept him from yielding to his desire to lie down on his
+face and hate everything and give himself up to whatever chose to
+befall him.  Agrippa's hand, presently laid on his shoulder, irritated
+him.  He had to restrain himself to keep from shaking it off.  But the
+prince spoke, and his words were helpful.
+
+"Marsyas, I know thy pain.  I, too, had a beloved friend foully
+murdered, and the agony of helplessness against the power that did him
+to death sowed ashes on my heart.  But the time of the Lord God, slow
+as it approaches, fell at last.  The only bitterness in my cup of
+fierce triumph was that it was another, and not I, who accomplished, at
+the end, the undoing of the murderer."
+
+"The Lord God forfend any such misfortune from me!" was the bitter
+rejoinder.  "Vengeance can not be vengeance, if it fall from any hand
+but mine!"
+
+"Thou speakest truly: be thy requital sweeter than mine!"
+
+It was good to find the reflection of his own hurt in another's
+experience.  It did not lessen his pain; but it gave him expression and
+the assurance of sympathy.  Agrippa continued in his pleasant voice.
+
+"This persecution will cease ere long.  It is only Jonathan's device to
+make him noted as one zealous for the faith.  He is much disliked.  It
+is reproach enough for a High Priest to be popular with the Sadducees:
+it is well-nigh unforgivable to be set up by Rome; it is an
+insurmountable obstacle to be other than eligible, Levitically; but
+this man hath been wholly undone by these and an offensive personality.
+Wherefore the people hate him with a fervor which Vitellius must
+respect.  But Jonathan fancies that if he can make him a name as a
+defender of the faith, the rabble will applaud, and thou and I and
+Vitellius and the discerning Jews will achieve no more against him than
+flies whining about a wall!  What folly!  How oft we believe a thing to
+be so, because we wish it to be so!  Vitellius does not see how the
+stoning of blasphemers indorses a man whom he dislikes.  So Jonathan's
+time is short and the persecution will cease with him.  His minion will
+be discountenanced with the master, and thine opportunity is made.  Be
+of hope; thy day is not distant."
+
+But Marsyas' brow blackened.
+
+"A noble reflection!" he exclaimed passionately, "and one that should
+soothe the Tarsian's dreams!  Binding and stoning and killing in his
+zeal for an usurper of the robes of Aaron!  Shedding sweet blood--doing
+irreparable deeds to serve a vain end, to further a useless attempt--a
+thing to be given over to-morrow!  O thou God of wrath!  If it be not
+sin to pray it, let him stumble speedily in the Law!"
+
+Meanwhile Agrippa observed the sun, and after a little silence that his
+return to spirits seem not to grate upon the young Essene's distress,
+arose briskly.
+
+"Up! up!" he said.  "It is not at variance with Vitellius' extreme
+methods to empty the whole Praetorium into the hills in search of us.
+Up, fellows!  To Ptolemais!"
+
+Marsyas arose with the others, but he hesitated and glanced down at the
+fine garments that covered him.  He remembered that he had not brought
+his soiled Essenic robes with him.  He unslung his wallet and extended
+it to Agrippa.
+
+"Take it, and forget not that I shall ask payment from the strength of
+that high place to which this may help thee!  The vengeful spirit is
+not of choice a patient thing!  I shall wait--but to achieve mine ends.
+God prosper thee!  If thy servants will lend me each a garment thou
+shalt have back thy dress once more and I will depart."
+
+"Whither?" asked Agrippa without taking the purse.
+
+"To En-Gadi, for the present."
+
+"But the brotherhood will then be guilty of befriending thee and thou
+art a living example of that which befalls him who befriends one of
+Saul's marked creatures."
+
+"So I am become as a pestilence," Marsyas said grimly.  It was another
+count against the Pharisee.
+
+"Thou art much beset.  Doubt not that Vitellius will seek for thee in
+En-Gadi, and it were better for thee and for the brotherhood that thou
+be not found.  Thou must leave Judea, for the arm of the Sanhedrim is
+long."
+
+To leave Judea meant to be banished among the Gentiles, to step out of
+four whitewashed walls into unknown turmoil; to leave the pleasures of
+solitude, the peoples of parchment, the events of old history, the
+ambitions of the soul and go forth amid arrogant heathen godlessness to
+meet precarious fortunes.  The whole course of his life had been
+entirely reversed in a few hours.  Resolute and strong as the Essene
+was, his face contracted painfully.
+
+Agrippa laid a hand on his arm.
+
+"Remember, it is our faith that this persecution will cease and then
+thou canst return to thy study in safety," he said as gently as if he
+were speaking to a child.  But in that moment, Marsyas told himself
+that there would be no returning to his old peace.
+
+"Come with me," Agrippa continued.  "I will afford thee protection and
+thou shalt provide me with funds."
+
+He paused and, taking Marsyas' arm, led him down to a little meandering
+vale, sweet with blossoming herbs.
+
+"Look," he said, pointing back toward the east.
+
+The hills stood aside in a long, full-breasted series, and revealed
+through a narrow, green-walled aisle a distant view of Jerusalem, white
+and majestic on her heights.  The morning blue that encroaches upon the
+noon in early spring softened the spectacle with a tender atmosphere;
+distance glorified its splendors, and the light upon it was other than
+daylight--it was a nimbus, the ineffable crown.
+
+Thus seen it was no longer the city of subjection, filled with wrongs
+and griefs and hopelessness.  It was the Holy City, upright with the
+godliness of David, lawful in the government of Solomon; sacred with
+the presence of the Shekinah in the Holy of Holies.  Here, Sheba might
+have stood first to be shown the glories of Solomon; here, Alexander
+might have drawn up his Macedonian quadriga to behold what excellence
+he was next to conquer.  Marsyas felt emotion seize him, the mighty
+welling of tears in their springs.
+
+"Behold it!" Agrippa said.  "We go forth beaten and ashamed, but thou
+shalt return to it justified; I shall return to it crowned.  Believe in
+that as thou believest in Jehovah!"
+
+He drew the young Essene away and signed to the servitors.
+
+In the days that followed, Agrippa tactfully and little by little won
+Marsyas out of his brooding.  Delicately, he sounded the young man's
+nature and discovered the channel into which his sorrowful thoughts
+could be diverted.  Stirring incidents of the Herod's own astounding
+history, graphic accounts of great pageants, of contests of famous
+athletae, or of gorgeous cities, vivaciously told, engaged Marsyas'
+attention in spite of himself.  Gradually his sharpened interest began
+to choose for itself.  Expectancy of things to come communicated by
+Agrippa presently possessed Marsyas.
+
+All this was a new and inviting experience for the young Essene, as
+well as an alleviation.  He had lived a placid, passionless life with
+the old Essenic master and centered his broad loves on one or two.
+Evil happenings had wrenched these from him and his affections wandered
+and wavered, lost only for an hour.  By the time the journey to
+Ptolemais was ended, Agrippa had stepped into his own place in the
+heart of the bereaved young man.
+
+Ptolemais was built for solidity and strength.  Its houses were
+defenses, its public buildings were fortifications; its mole, harbor
+front and wall the most unassailable on the Asiatic seaboard.  From the
+plains of Esdraelon in their dip toward the sea, the city was seen, set
+broadside to the waves, stanch, regular, square and bulky--embodied
+defiance for ever uttered to whatever sea-faring nation turned its
+triremes into her roadsteads.
+
+In a narrow street near the southernmost limits of the city, Agrippa
+stopped.  A house of a single story stood before them, its roof barely
+higher than its door; a heavy wall before it, a narrow gate in that.
+
+"Enter," said the prince to Marsyas, "into the unctuous hospitalities
+of Agrippa's palace."
+
+He unlatched the gate, and, leading his companion across a small court,
+knocked at the door, which after a little wait swung open.
+
+An uncommonly pretty waiting-woman stepped aside to let them enter.
+Marsyas put off his sandals and followed the prince into a small recess
+cut off by curtains from the interior of the house.  A bronze lamp was
+in a niche in the wall and a taboret stood in the corner.  No other
+furniture was visible.
+
+The prince dismissed the two servitors and they passed behind the
+curtains, Eutychus stumbling as he went, because his eyes were engaged
+in attempting to attract the attention of the pretty waiting-woman, who
+seemed quite oblivious of his glances.
+
+"Send hither your mistress, Drumah," Agrippa said to her.  She bowed
+and departed and presently one of the curtains lifted and a woman
+hastened into the apartment.
+
+With a low cry of joy she ran to the prince and flung herself on his
+breast.
+
+"Oh, that thou shouldst come and none to watch for thee!" she
+exclaimed.  "That thou shouldst enter thy house and none but thy
+hireling to meet thee!"
+
+He laughed lightly and kissed her.
+
+"I have brought also a guest, Cypros," he said.  For the first time her
+eyes lighted on Marsyas and blushing she drew away from her husband.
+
+"I pray thy pardon," she murmured.
+
+The light from the day without shone full on her through a lattice, and
+since his journey to Nazareth Marsyas had learned to look on women with
+an interested eye.
+
+She was small, but her figure showed the perfect outlines of the
+matron, and the Jewish dress, bound about the hips with a broad scarf,
+let no single grace lose itself under drapery.  But it was the face
+that held the young Essene's attention.  There, too, was the blood of
+the Herod, for Agrippa had married his cousin, but its attributes were
+refined almost to ethereal extremes.  Flesh could not have been whiter
+nor coloring more delicate.  The effect rendered was an impression of
+exquisite frailty, produced as much by the pathos in the over-large
+black eyes and the serious cut of the tender mouth as by the
+transparency of the exceedingly small hand which lay on her breast as
+if to still a fluttering heart.  Her beauty was not aided by strength
+of character or intellectuality; it was distinctly the simple,
+defenseless, appealing type which is an invincible conqueror of men.
+
+"This is Marsyas of Nazareth, an Essene in distress, yet not so
+unfortunate that he is not willing to help us.  What comfort canst thou
+offer him from thy housekeeping?"
+
+The Essenes were the holy men of Israel; the large eyes filled with
+deference and she bowed.
+
+"Welcome in God's name.  My lord has bread and a roof-tree.  I pray
+thee share them freely with us."
+
+Marsyas' formality so serviceable among the women of Nazareth suddenly
+seemed infelicitous here, but it was all he had for response to this
+different personage.
+
+"The blessing of God be with thee; I give thee thanks."
+
+She summoned the pretty waiting-woman.
+
+"Let my lord and his guest be given food and drink; set wine and such
+meats as we have, and let the children come and greet their father."
+
+The prince thrust the curtains aside and, motioning to Marsyas', waited
+until his princess and the young man had passed within.
+
+The apartment was a second recess larger than the first, shut in by
+hangings of sackcloth and furnished with rough seats and tables of
+unoiled cedar.  It was a cheerless room, fit for the humblest man in
+Ptolemais, but the unconquered Herod and his lovely princess ennobled
+it.
+
+There was a scarf of damask thrown over one of the tables and two or
+three pieces of magnificent plate sat upon it.
+
+"That," said Agrippa, pointing to the silver, "hath been my moneyer for
+years.  I have lived a month on a flagon."
+
+Cypros sighed, but three pretty children, a boy and two girls, rushed
+in from the rear of the house and engaged the prince's attention.
+
+Meanwhile, the attractive servant entered with plates for the table and
+Eutychus followed with a platter of food.  As she passed the young
+Essene she tripped on an unevenness in the floor and would have fallen,
+but Marsyas, with a quick movement, more instinctive than gallant,
+threw out a hand and stayed her.
+
+She thanked him composedly and went about her work, but Marsyas,
+chancing to raise his eyes to Eutychus' face, caught a look from the
+servitor that was livid with hate.  Shocked and astonished, Marsyas
+turned his back and wondered how he had crossed the creature.
+
+Agrippa sat at the table, and, with Cypros at his left, bade Marsyas
+sit beside him.  The children were carried protesting away.
+
+The prince filled a goblet of silver with a pale wine, slightly
+effervescent and exhaling a bouquet peculiarly subtle and penetrating.
+He raised the frosty cup between his fingers--drink, drinker and cup of
+a type--and looked at the strip of sky visible through the lattice.
+
+"This to the gods," he said, "or whatever power hath fortune to give,
+and a heart to be won of libation.  I yield you my soul for a laurel!"
+
+The princess leaned her forehead against his arm and whispered:
+
+"It is wicked--forbidden!"
+
+"I poured but one glass: I make the prayer; I have not asked thee or
+our young friend to pray it with me.  But my devices are exhausted.  I
+make appeal now, haphazard, for I grope!"
+
+"And didst thou fail in Jerusalem?"
+
+"As I have failed from Rome to Idumea."
+
+She drew in a little sobbing breath and hid her eyes against his
+sleeve.  Marsyas sat silent.  This first evidence of despair on the
+prince's part was most unwelcome.  His own fortunes were too much
+entangled with Agrippa's for him to contemplate their fall.  He felt
+the prince's eyes upon him.  The silver cup had been refilled and was
+extended to him.
+
+Marsyas took it.
+
+"This to success," he said, "not fortune!"
+
+Cypros stirred.  "Success is so deliberate!" she sighed.
+
+Marsyas made no answer; would it be long before he should have his
+bitter wish?
+
+"Thou seest Judea," Agrippa began, "thou heardest me aspire to it and
+thou didst abet me in mine ambition.  But learn, for thy own comfort,
+Marsyas, the vagabond to whom thou hast attached thyself doth not grasp
+after another man's portion.  Judea is mine!  And Rome must yield me
+mine inheritance!"  The prince's eyes glowed with youth's ambition.
+
+Marsyas listened intently.
+
+"A Herod's word is in disrepute," the prince continued.  "Hence I am
+limited to action to prove myself.  But look thou here, Marsyas.  Judea
+is pillaged: so am I.  Judea is despised: so am I!  Judea weltereth in
+her own blood: am I not sprung from a murdered sire, who was son of a
+murdered mother--each dead by the same hand of father and husband?
+Dear Lord, I am an offspring of the shambles, mother-marked with
+wounds!"
+
+He shuddered and drew his hand across his forehead.
+
+"Having thus suffered the same miseries which are Judea's, is it not
+natural that I should relieve her when I, myself, am relieved?  I
+should rule Judea as Judea would rule herself--"
+
+He broke off with a gesture of impatience.
+
+"How I hate the blatant vower of vows!  Help me to mine opportunity,
+Marsyas."
+
+As between Rome and Herod the Great as sovereign, there was no choice.
+Though the Asmonean Slave, as the Jewish patriots named the capable
+fiend, gave Judea the most brilliant reign since the glories of Solomon
+and the most monstrous since Ahab, the nominal independence offered by
+his administration was absolutely submerged and lost in the terror of
+his absolutism and the devilish genius in him for oppression.
+
+Herod and Abaddon were names synonymous in Judea, and the mildness of
+his sons or their inefficiency had not been able to set the reproach
+aside.  No able Herod had arisen since the founder of the house,
+except, as Marsyas hopefully believed, this man before him.  Herod
+Agrippa was the son of Aristobolus, who was murdered in his youth
+before his capabilities developed.  The Herods, Philip and Antipas, had
+been mild because they were incapable.  The recurrence of mental
+strength in the blood was an untried contingency.  All this came to
+Marsyas, now, suggested by the implied self-defense in the prince's
+words, and for a moment he wavered between concern for his people and
+anxiety for his own cause.  Agrippa and Cypros watched him.
+
+"Thou art a just youth," the prince went on in the winning voice that
+had already made its conquest over the Essene.  "I can not prove myself
+until I am given trial, and judgment without trial is an abomination
+even unto the tyrant Rome!"
+
+"I have not judged, lord," Marsyas protested.
+
+"And thou wilt not until I have shown myself unworthy of thy
+confidence.  Thou hast even now bespoken God's favor for me--be then,
+His instrument!  Thou art the first ray of light in a decade of
+darkness that has enveloped me and mine!"
+
+Marsyas put out his hand to the prince.  The peril in the Herod blood,
+in his calculations, had dropped out of sight.
+
+"What dost thou say to me, my prince?" he said.  "How is it that thou
+beseechest me--me, the suppliant, praying thy help for mine own ends?
+But hear me!  Thou aspirest to that place of which I have no knowledge,
+among peoples whose paths I never cross, into the calling of the great!
+Yet, though most unequipped to yield thee support, I am thy substance.
+Use me!  Thou knowest my price."
+
+Agrippa smiled.
+
+"Though I die owing even mine embalmer, I shall pay thee that debt.  I
+have said.  And now to the process.  What money hast thou?"
+
+Agrippa was silent and Marsyas, watching his face, waited.
+
+"I need," the prince said slowly, "twenty thousand."
+
+Marsyas got upon his feet, and for a moment there was silence.
+
+"I will get it for thee," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE BONDMAN OF HATE
+
+In a city like Ptolemais, where many pagans lived extravagantly and
+many Jews lived thriftily, there were, as naturally follows, many
+money-lenders among the sons of Abraham.
+
+"Seek them all," was Agrippa's charge, "but Peter, the usurer.  Him,
+thou hadst better avoid."
+
+The young Essene laid aside the prince's dress, with its embroidery of
+precious metal, and, getting into a simpler garment affected by the
+stewards to men of rank, went out into the city to borrow twenty
+thousand drachmae.
+
+He did not get the twenty thousand drachmae, but he found, instead, that
+Herod Agrippa was the most notorious bankrupt in the world.  Being a
+Jew and by heritage thrifty, the discovery shook him in his respect for
+the prince, but at the same time a resolution shaped itself in him
+against the usurers.  But, on a certain day, he returned to the little
+house in the suburbs of the city to report that he had been placidly
+refused by every money-lending Jew or Gentile, except Peter, in the
+seaport.
+
+But he delivered his tidings unmoved.
+
+"Be of hope," he said to Cypros, whose head drooped at the news; "there
+are many untried ways."
+
+He went again into the city, and visited the khans.  There might be
+new-comers who were money-lenders in other cities.
+
+There were such as guests in Ptolemais, but from their lips he learned
+that Agrippa was black-listed from the Adriatic to the Euphrates; but
+Marsyas did not return to the house in the suburbs that night.  The
+weight of his obligation was too heavy to endure the added burden which
+the sight of Agrippa's suspense had become.
+
+He went to the rabbis of Ptolemais; they told him that they were not
+money-lenders.  He applied to the prefect of the city, who laughed at
+him.  Hoping that the name of Agrippa as a bankrupt had not penetrated
+into the fields he journeyed into the country-side of Syria and tried
+an oil-merchant, a rustic, rich and unlettered.  But the oil-merchant
+came up to Ptolemais and made inquiry, shrugged his shoulders, glowered
+at Marsyas and went back to his groves.
+
+An Egyptian seller of purple landed at Ptolemais from Alexandria.  The
+name of the city of hope attracted Marsyas and he met the merchant at
+the wharves.  But the seller of purple had been to Rome and the topmost
+name on his list of debtors was Herod Agrippa.
+
+At the end of three days, Marsyas returned to the house in the suburbs
+to assure the prince that he had not deserted and went again on his
+search.
+
+His invariable failures began to teach him a certain shrewdness.  He
+discovered early that Essenic frankness would not serve his ends.  He
+found that men were approachable through certain channels; that it was
+better to speak advisedly than frankly; to lay plans, rather than to
+wait on events; to use devices rather than persuasion.  These things
+admitted, he discovered that he had unconsciously subordinated them to
+his use.  Though momentarily alarmed, he did not hate himself as he
+should.  On the other hand, it was pleasurable to lay siege to men and
+try them at their own scheming.
+
+At night in a dutiful effort to cleanse himself of the day's
+accumulation of worldliness, he went to the open proseuchae, where in
+the dark of the great out-of-doors, he was least likely to be noticed,
+to comfort himself with stolen worship, stolen profit from the Law.
+But the Law was not tender to those who lived as Stephen lived, and
+died as Stephen died.  Not in all that great and holy scroll which the
+Reader read was there compassion for the blasphemer.  Also, he heard of
+the great plague of persecution which Saul had loosed upon the
+Nazarenes in Jerusalem and how the Pharisee had become a mighty man
+before the Council, and an awe and a terror to the congregation.  So he
+came away from the proseuchae, not only unhelped but harmed, embittered,
+enraged, alienated from his faith, and hungering for vengeance.
+
+By day, he walked through the commercial districts of Ptolemais and
+pushed his almost hopeless search with an energy that did not flag at
+continued failure.  He knew that if he obtained the twenty thousand
+drachmae, he bound Agrippa the surer to his oath of allegiance to the
+cause against Saul.  Despair, therefore, was a banished and forbidden
+thing.
+
+His plans, however, had been tried and proved fruitless.  Typically a
+soldier of fortune, he was relying upon the exigencies of chance.
+
+Ptolemais was a normal town, with large interest and pleasures, and the
+fair day was too fleeting for one to stop and take heed of another.
+Passers pushed and hurried him when he came upon those more busy than
+he.  Sailors, bronzed as Tatars, were probably the sole loiterers
+besides the inevitable oriental feature, the sidewalk mendicant.
+
+So it was that on a certain day when Marsyas overtook a lectica in the
+street, the old man within complained aloud and had no audience, except
+his plodding bearers, or the attention of a glance, or a slackened step
+now and again among the citizens.
+
+"They rob me!" he was crying when Marsyas came up with him.
+
+The young man turned quickly; the declaration was alarming.  His eyes
+encountered the face of Peter, the usurer, a stout, gray old Jew, in
+the apparel of a Sadducee.
+
+Seeing that he had won the young man's notice the old usurer seized the
+opportunity to enlarge.
+
+"They ruin me!" he cried.
+
+Marsyas bowed gravely.  "Thy pardon, sir," he said.  "May I be of
+service?"
+
+"They sap my life!" the old man continued more violently, as if the
+young man's question had excited him.  "They take, and demand more;
+they waste, and must be replenished!  I drop into the grave and there
+will be nothing left to buy a tomb to receive me!"
+
+The words were directed to Marsyas, and the young man having halted
+could not go on without awkwardness.
+
+"I pray thee," he urged, "tell me who plagues thee thus."
+
+"The tradesmen!  Because I am wealthy, they augment their hire; because
+I must buy, they increase their price; they hold necessities out of my
+reach!  It is a conspiracy between them because I am of lowly birth,
+and I go from one to another and find no relief!  Behold!"  He shook
+out a shawl which had been folded across his knees.  "I must have it to
+protect me against the cold.  It is inferior; it is scant; yet it cost
+me fifteen pieces of silver!"
+
+Marsyas glanced at the mantle; even with his little knowledge of
+fabrics it appeared not worth its price.
+
+"Thou hast servants, good sir, and camels," he said, drawn into
+suggestion in spite of himself.  "Do I overstep my privilege to suggest
+that thou mayest send to Anthedon or to Caesarea and buy in other
+cities?"
+
+"But the hire--the hire!  And how should I know that the knavery does
+not extend to Anthedon and Caesarea?"
+
+"Then," said Marsyas, "establish thine own booths here and undersell
+the robbers."
+
+There was silence; the small eyes of the old man narrowed and ignited.
+
+"A just punishment," he muttered.  "A proper punishment!"
+
+"Or this," Marsyas continued, interested in his own conspiracy.  "Thou
+sayest they oppress thee because thou art a lowly man!  They are
+foolish.  Display them thy power and punish them.  Thou art a great
+usurer; powerful families here are in thy debt.  How strong a hand thou
+holdest over them!  What canst thou not compel them to do!  Nay, good
+sir; to me, it seemeth thou hast the whip-hand over these tradesmen!"
+
+The old man rubbed his hands.  "An engaging picture," he said.  "But
+unless I haste, they will ruin me yet!"
+
+Marsyas shook his head.  "Not if the tales of thy famous wealth be
+true."
+
+The lectica had moved along beside him and he waited now to be
+dismissed; but, contrary to custom of that rank which is privileged to
+command, the old man waited for Marsyas to take his leave.
+
+"Methinks," he began, "I have seen thee--"
+
+"Doubtless," Marsyas interrupted hastily.  "I am a steward here in
+Ptolemais.  But I have an errand here, good sir; by thy leave, I shall
+depart."
+
+The old man made a motion of assent, but he followed the young Essene
+with a thoughtful eye.
+
+"If I am to know the world's way," Marsyas said to himself, "I can use
+it, if need be."
+
+He did not visit another usurer, but on the following day went to those
+places likely to be the haunts of Peter.  When, presently, he
+discovered the old man near a fountain, Marsyas did not attempt to
+catch his eye.  But one of Peter's servants touched him on the arm and
+told him that the master beckoned, and he hastened to the old man's
+side.
+
+"Who is thy master?" Peter asked.
+
+Marsyas winced, but restrained a declaration of his free-born state.
+
+"A Roman citizen who is preparing to return to Italy."
+
+"A Roman!" Peter repeated.  "But thou art a Jew, or the blood of the
+race in thee lies."
+
+"A Jew without taint of other blood in all the line."
+
+"Art satisfied with thy service--serving a Roman?" was the demand.
+
+"None has a better lord!" replied Marsyas quietly, but with an inward
+delight in leading the old man on.
+
+"But it should be more lawful for thee to serve a Jew," Peter declared.
+"A Roman's slave, a slave for ever; a Jew's slave, a slave but six
+years--"
+
+Marsyas could rest no longer under the intimation of bondage.
+
+"Good sir, I am not a slave."
+
+"Ho! a hireling."
+
+"No; a free man, unattached and serving for love."
+
+Peter scratched his head.  "For love only?  Then why not come and be my
+steward for wages?"
+
+"Thou canst not pay my price," he said with meaning.
+
+The old man lifted his withered chin.
+
+"Thy price!" he repeated haughtily.  "And pray, sirrah, what is thy
+price?"
+
+A figurative answer to add to his first sententious remark was on
+Marsyas' lips, but he halted suddenly, and a little pallor came into
+his face.
+
+"On another day, I shall tell thee," he said after a silence, and the
+old man impatiently dismissed him.
+
+Marsyas turned away from the heart of the city and went straight to the
+house in the suburbs.
+
+He found Agrippa stretched on a couch where the air entered through the
+west lattice, and the place otherwise solitary.  The princess and the
+children with the servants had gone into the city.
+
+Marsyas came uncalled to Agrippa's side, and the prince noted the
+change on the young man's face.  He looked expectant.
+
+"My lord," Marsyas said, "thou didst say to me several days ago that
+thou didst hate a vower of vows.  Yet no man is chafed by a vow except
+him who finds it hard to keep.  Wherefore, I pray thee, for the
+prospering of the cause and mine, assure me once more of thy good
+intent toward Judea."
+
+The Herod raised his fine brows.
+
+"How now, Marsyas?  Has the knowledge that I am a Herod been slandering
+me to you?"
+
+"Nay, my lord; thou hast won me; and I shall not stop at sacrifice for
+thy cause, which is mine."
+
+"What canst thou do, my Marsyas?"
+
+"Get thee money."
+
+"I give thee my word, Marsyas.  It has been sorely battered dodging
+debts, yet it is still intact enough to contain mine honor.  I give
+thee my word."
+
+Marsyas lingered with an averted face, which Agrippa tried in vain to
+understand.  He added nothing to emphasize his avowal; perhaps he
+realized at that moment, more keenly than ever afterward, how much a
+man wants to be believed.
+
+Presently the young man spoke in another tone.
+
+"Who is this Peter, that I may not ask him for a loan?"
+
+"I owe him a talent already," Agrippa answered with a lazy smile,
+"which he advanced to me while he was yet my mother's slave."
+
+"Then thou knowest him!  How--how is he favored in disposition?"
+
+"How is Peter favored?  Are slaves favored?  Nay, they are tempered
+like asses, cattle and apes--like beasts.  Wherefore, this Peter is
+voracious, balky, amiable enough if thou yieldest him provender--not
+bad, but, like any donkey, could be better."
+
+Marsyas' eyes fell again; it seemed that he hesitated at his next
+question, as though upon its answer turned a matter of great moment.
+
+"Art thou in all truth assured that this Alexandrian will lend thee
+money?" he asked presently, beset by the possibility of doubt.
+
+Agrippa laughed outright.  "Jove, but this questioning hath a familiar
+ring!  Surely thou wast sired of a money-lender, Marsyas, else his
+inquiries would not arise so naturally to thy lips!  Will the
+Alexandrian lend?  Of a surety!  And even if not, then will my mother's
+friend, the noble Antonia, Caesar's sister-in-law.  If Caesar had not
+been so precipitate and hastened me out of Rome, I should have borrowed
+the sum of her ten years ago.  I have not borrowed of the Alexandrian
+ere this because I had not the money to carry me thither."
+
+After a pause, Agrippa anticipated a further question and continued.
+
+"The Alexandrian is Alexander Lysimachus, the noblest Jew a generation
+hath produced.  Even Rome, that hath such little use for our blood,
+waives its ancient judgment against Lysimachus.  He is alabarch of the
+Jews in Alexandria, able as a Roman, just as a Jew, refined as a Greek,
+versatile as an Alexandrian.  I saw him four years ago, here, in
+Jerusalem, when he brought his wife's remains to bury them on sacred
+soil.  He had with him two sons, one a man, grown, with his father's
+genius, but without his father's soul; the other a handsome lad of
+undeveloped character, and a daughter, a veritable sprite for beauty,
+and a sibyl for wits.  I was afraid of her; I, a Herod and a married
+man, turning forty, was afraid of her!  But get me the twenty thousand
+drachmae, Marsyas, and thou shall see her--_Hercle_--a thousand pardons!
+I forgot that thou art an Essene!"
+
+Marsyas stood silent once more, and Agrippa waited.
+
+"And yet one other thing, my lord," the Essene said finally.  "I serve
+thee no less for love, because I serve thee also for a purpose.  Thou
+wilt not forget to serve me, when thou comest to thine own?"
+
+"I give thee again my much misused word, Marsyas.  Believe me, thou
+hast forced more truths out of me than any ever achieved before.
+Cypros will make thee her inquisitor when next she suspects me of
+warmth toward a maiden!"
+
+Marsyas lifted the prince's hand and pressed it to his lips.  Without
+further word, he went out of the chamber and returned to the city.
+
+He sought out the counting-room of Peter the usurer, and found within a
+commotion and a gathered crowd.  The old man himself stood in a
+steward's place behind a grating of bronze, with lists and coffers
+about him.  Without stood a brown woman, in a strange dress
+sufficiently rough to establish her state of servitude, and she bore in
+her hands a sheep-skin bag that seemed to be filled with coins.
+
+About her was a group of men of nationalities so diverse and so
+evidently perplexed that Marsyas immediately surmised that they had
+been summoned as interpreters for a stranger whom they could not
+understand.
+
+The brown woman was passive: the usurer behind his grating in such a
+state of great excitement and anxiety that moisture stood out on his
+wrinkled forehead.  His eyes were on the sheep-skin bag; evidently the
+brown woman was bringing him money, and his fear that the treasure
+would escape made the old man desperate.
+
+"Have ye forgotten your mother-tongues?" he fumed at the polyglot
+assembly, "or are ye base-born Syrians boasting a nationality that ye
+can not prove?  Hold!  Let her not go forth, good citizens; doubtless
+she hath come from a foreign debtor to repay me!  Close the doors
+without!"
+
+Marsyas pressed through the crowd to the grating, and the old man
+discovered him.
+
+"Hither, hither, my friend," he exclaimed.  "See if thou canst tell
+what manner of stranger we have here."
+
+The young Essene had been examining the woman; with a quick glance,
+now, he inspected her face.  Dark the complexion, the eyes olive-green
+as chrysolite, mysterious and hypnotic; the features regular as an
+Egyptian's, but stronger and more beautiful; the physique refined, yet
+hardy.  The mystic air of the Ganges breathed from her scented shawl.
+The young man's training in languages was not overtaxed.
+
+"What is thy will?" he asked in the tongue of the Brahmins.
+
+"To exchange Hindu money for Roman coin," was the instant reply.
+
+Marsyas turned to Peter.
+
+"This is an Indian woman," he explained.  "She wishes to exchange coin
+of her country for Roman money."
+
+"Good!" the old man cried, rubbing his hands.  "We shall oblige her.
+Foreign coins are so much bullion; yet, we pay only its face value, in
+Roman moneys!  Good!  I shall melt it, and deliver it to the Roman
+mint!  Good!  But--but how shall I know one of these outlandish coins
+from another?"
+
+"I can tell you," Marsyas answered.
+
+The assembled group drifted out of the counting-room and the usurer,
+sighing his delight, opened a gate and bade Marsyas and the Hindu woman
+come into the apartment behind the screen.  There the exchange was
+made, and the old usurer, trusting to the Hindu's ignorance of the
+language, permitted no moment to pass without comment on his profit.
+
+Presently, Marsyas turned to the woman.
+
+"You lose money by this traffic," he said deliberately.
+
+"Rest thee, brother," was the calm reply, "I know it.  Yet I must have
+Roman coin to carry me to Egypt."
+
+Marsyas glanced at her apparel.  In spite of its humble appearance, it
+was the owner of this treasure, that dwelt within it.
+
+The exchange was made, amounting to something over twenty thousand
+drachmae.  Marsyas, with wistful eyes, saw her put the treasure away in
+the sheepskin bag.  He arose as she arose, and the two were conducted
+out by Peter.
+
+Without, it had grown dark.  The woman had made no effort to hide the
+nature of her burden.  She made an almost haughty gesture of farewell
+to Marsyas.
+
+"I shall serve thee, perchance, one day," she said and passed out.
+
+Marsyas followed her.  At the threshold, he wavered and stepping into
+the street stopped.
+
+She made a small, frail, dusky apparition, under the black shadows of
+the bulky buildings of Ptolemais--a profitable victim for some
+light-footed highwayman, less sorely in need of money than he.  But she
+evidently felt no fear.
+
+Then, he turned and went back into the counting-room.
+
+Peter was behind his grating.
+
+"Who and what art thou?" the usurer demanded, with no little admiration
+in his tone.
+
+"I am," Marsyas answered, "a doctor of Laws, a master of languages, a
+doctor of medicines, a scholar of the College at Jerusalem, a postulant
+Essene."
+
+The reply was intentionally full.
+
+"And a steward for love, only!"
+
+"Only for a time.  When I can repay thee a debt long standing, I shall
+cease to serve at all."
+
+The usurer's eyes brightened.  "A debt," he repeated softly.  "Is this
+my fortunate day?  Which of the bankrupts who owe me has been
+replenished?"
+
+"Not yet, the one of whom I speak," Marsyas replied.  "Hast thou heard
+of Herod Agrippa?"
+
+"Herod Agrippa!  Evil day that he borrowed a talent of me, never to
+return it!"
+
+"Perchance, some day--"
+
+"Never!  Whosoever lends him money pitches it into the sea!"
+
+"Yet the sea hath given up its treasure, at times.  But let me trouble
+thee with a question.  What price did the costliest slave in thy
+knowledge command?"
+
+"What price?  A slave?  In Rome?  Nay, then, let me think.  A Georgian
+female captive of much beauty was sold to Sejanus once for six hundred
+thousand drachmae--"
+
+"I speak of serving-men," Marsyas interrupted.
+
+"Nay, then: Caesar owns a physician worth eighty thousand drachmae."
+
+"Hath he cured any in Caesar's house of poisoning; can he speak many
+languages; is he also a doctor of Laws and a good Jew?"
+
+The usurer shook his head.
+
+"What price, then, should I he worth to Caesar?" Marsyas demanded.
+
+"Sell not thyself to Caesar," Peter cried, flinging up his hands.  "It
+is forbidden!"
+
+"I shall not sell myself," Marsyas said.  "I have come only to find how
+to value my services."
+
+"Whom dost thou serve?" the old man demanded.  Marsyas was not ready to
+disclose his identity.
+
+"A Roman.  Peace and the continuance of good fortune be thine."
+
+He bowed and passed out of the counting-room.
+
+The usurer stood a moment, then summoned his servants, and, getting
+himself into street dress, hastened to follow the young man.  Marsyas
+turned his steps toward the house in the suburbs.
+
+There were several torches about the painted gate in the wall and the
+light shone on a group alighting from a curricle.  Cypros and her
+children had returned from the city, and Agrippa had come forth to
+receive them.  Marsyas joined the group and Peter's lectica was borne
+up to the circle of radiance under the torches.  The old man's eyes
+filled with wrath when he recognized Agrippa.  He stood up and surveyed
+him with scorn.
+
+"A Roman!" he scoffed.  "A Roman, only to add the vices of the race to
+the meanness of a Herod!  Back to my house, slaves!  We have taken
+profitless pains!"
+
+Agrippa's anger leaped into his face and Marsyas pursued and overtook
+the litter.
+
+"Thy pardon, sir," he began.
+
+"I have a right to attach thee for the talent thy master owes me,"
+Peter stormed.
+
+"Peace, good sir!  I am not a slave."
+
+Peter chewed his mustache impotently, but the young Essene dropped his
+Greek and spoke in Hebrew, the language of the synagogue, the true
+badge of Judaism.
+
+"Perchance we may bargain together.  Wouldst have me for hire?"
+
+Peter smoldered in sulky silence.
+
+"I can not serve longer without compensation," Marsyas pursued.
+
+"What sum in hire?" Peter demanded.
+
+"Twenty thousand drachmae--"
+
+Peter blazed, but Marsyas stopped his invective with a motion.
+
+"Nay, peace!  I have not finished.  Twenty thousand drachmae in loan to
+Agrippa, and I will serve thee gratis till he redeems me by paying the
+principal and the talent he owes."
+
+The usurer, with a snort, abruptly ordered the slaves to proceed.
+
+The next day, Marsyas, loitering on purpose near the usurer's, was
+approached by a servant and sent into the presence of Peter.
+
+"Hath the bankrupt any hopes?" the money-lender demanded without
+preliminary.
+
+"He goes to Alexandria, for money, and thence to imperial favor in
+Rome.  There is Antonia who will aid him, as thou knowest.  Unless thou
+helpest him to reach either of these two places, he is of a surety
+bankrupt; wherefore he can never pay thee the talent or even the
+interest."
+
+Peter dismissed him moodily and Marsyas returned to the prince.  But
+the next day Peter appeared at Agrippa's door and was conducted to the
+prince's presence, where Cypros sat with him and Marsyas waited.  The
+old man made no greeting.
+
+"Thou knowest me, Agrippa," he began at once.  "For thy mother's sake,
+whose happy slave I was, I will take thine Essene at his terms, less
+the interest on the twenty thousand drachmae."
+
+"My Essene at his terms," Agrippa repeated in perplexity.  But Marsyas,
+with a movement of command, broke in.
+
+"The bargain is at first hand between thee and me, good sir," he said
+to Peter.  "The second contract shall be between the prince and myself.
+Bring the money here at sunset and the writings shall be ready for
+thee."
+
+"Twenty thousand drachmae, less mine interest on the sum," Peter
+insisted.
+
+"Less thine interest," Marsyas assented, and Peter went out.
+
+Agrippa got upon his feet and gazed gravely at Marsyas.
+
+"What is this?" he asked.
+
+"I have bound thee to my cause," the young man answered.
+
+"How?  Nay, answer me, Marsyas.  What hast thou done?" the prince
+urged, impelled by affection as well as wonder.
+
+"I have bought my revenge, and have paid for it with a season of
+bondage."
+
+"Hast thou given thyself in hostage for us?" Cypros cried, springing up.
+
+Marsyas, without reply, moved to leave the room.  But Agrippa planted
+himself in the young man's way, and Cypros in tears slipped down on her
+knees at his side, and, raising his hand, kissed it.
+
+"We shall not forget," she whispered to him.
+
+"I shall not know peace till I have redeemed thee," Agrippa declared
+with misted eyes.
+
+Great haste to get away from the overwhelmed pair seized the Essene.
+Trembling he shook off their hold and hurried out into the air.
+
+He had to quiet a great amazement in him at the thing he had planned
+for so many days to do.  After a long agitated tramp in search of
+composure, he began to see more clearly the results of his extreme act.
+He had fixed himself within reach of Vitellius and the Sanhedrim:
+unless the ill fortune of the luckless prince improved, he had bound
+himself to servitude for a lifetime.
+
+But he drew his hand across his troubled forehead and smiled grimly.
+He had made his first decisive step against Saul!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+AN ALEXANDRIAN CHARACTERISTIC
+
+Nothing but prescience could have inspired Alexander, the young
+Macedonian conqueror, to decide to plant a city on the sandy peninsula
+which lay hot, flat, low and unproductive between the glassy waters of
+Lake Mareotis and the tumble of the Mediterranean.
+
+For a century previous, a straggling Egyptian village, called Rhacotis,
+eked out a precarious existence by fisheries; the port was filled with
+shoals or clogged with water-growth, and the voluptuous fertility of
+the Nile margin followed the slow sweep of the great river into the sea
+twelve miles farther to the east.  No other port along the coast
+presented a more unattractive appearance.  But Alexander, having no
+more worlds to conquer, turned his opposition upon adverse conditions.
+
+So he struck his spear into the sand, and there arose at the blow a
+city having the spirit of its founder--great, splendid, contentious,
+contradictory, impetuous and finally self-destructive through its
+excesses.
+
+He enlarged and embellished Rhacotis, which lay to the west of the new
+city and left it to the tenantry of the Egyptians, poor remnants of
+that haughty race which had been aristocrats of the world before Troy.
+In its center arose that solemn triumph of Pharaonic architecture, the
+Serapeum.
+
+But it was they who approached from the south, with the sand of the
+Libyan desert in their locks, who saw noble Alexandria.  Between them
+and the city was first the strength of its fortifications, prodigious
+lengths of wall, beautiful with citadels and towers.  Within was the
+Brucheum, with the splendor of the Library, for the Alexandrian spirit
+of contentiousness sharpened and forced the intellect of her
+disputants, till her learning was the most faultless of the time and
+its house a fit shape for its contents.  After the Library the pillared
+facade of the Court of Justice; next the unparalleled Museum, and,
+interspersed between, were the glories of four hundred theaters, four
+thousand palaces, four thousand baths.  Against the intense blue of the
+rainless Egyptian sky were imprinted the sun-white towers, pillars,
+arches and statues of the most comely city ever builded in Africa.
+Memphis, lost and buried in the sand, and Thebes, an echoing nave of
+roofless columns, were never so instinct with glory as Egypt's splendid
+recrudescence on the coast of the Middle Sea.
+
+To the northeast, there was abatement of pagan grandeur.  Here were
+quaint solid masses of Syriac architecture, with gowned and bearded
+dwellers and a general air of oriental decorum and religious rigor
+which did not mark the other quarters of the city.  In this spot the
+Jews of the Diaspora had been planted, had multiplied and strengthened
+until there were forty thousand in the district.
+
+Those turning the beaks of their galleys into the Alexandrian roadstead
+saw first the Pharos, a mist-embraced and phantom tower, rising out of
+the waves; after it, the Lochias, wading out into the sea that the
+palaces of the Ptolemies might hold in mortmain their double empire of
+land and water; on the other hand the trisected Heptistadium; between,
+the acreage of docking and out of the amphitheatrical sweep of the
+great city behind, standing huge, white and majestic, the grandest
+Jewish structure, next to Herod's Temple, that the world has ever
+known--the Synagogue.
+
+The Jews of Alexandria; as a class of peculiar and emphatic
+characteristics, a class toward which consideration was due in
+deference to its numbers, its wealth and its sensitiveness, were
+necessarily the object of particular provision.  Therefore, that they
+might be intelligently handled as to their prejudices, they were
+provided with a special governor from among their own--an alabarch;
+permitted to erect their own sanctuaries and to practise the customs of
+race and the rites of religion in so far as they did not interfere with
+the government's interests.
+
+Thus much their privileges; their oppressions were another story.
+
+Peopled by three of the most aggressive nations on the globe, the
+Greek, the Roman and the Jew, Alexandria seemed likewise to attract
+representatives of every country that had a son to fare beyond its
+borders.  Drift from the dry lands of all the world was brought down
+and beached at the great seaport.  It ranged in type from the
+fair-haired Norseman to the sinewy Mede on the east, from the Gaul on
+the west to the huge Ethiopian with sooty shining face who came from
+the mysterious and ancient land south of the First Cataract.
+
+It followed that such a heterogeneous mass did not effect union and
+amity.  That was a spiritual fusion which had to await a perfect
+conception of liberty and the brotherhood of man.  The racial mixture
+in Alexandria was, therefore, a prematurity, subject to disorder.
+
+So long as a Jew may have his life, his faith and his chance at
+bread-winning, he does not call himself abused.  These things the Roman
+state yielded the Jew in Alexandria.  But he was haughty, refined,
+rich, religious, exclusive, intelligent and otherwise obnoxious to the
+Alexandrians, and, being also a non-combatant, the Jew was the common
+victim of each and all of the mongrel races which peopled the city.
+
+The common port of entry was an interesting spot.  The prodigious
+stretches of wharf were fronted by packs of fleets, ranging in class
+from the visiting warrior trireme from Ravenna or Misenum, to the squat
+and blackened dhow from up the Nile or the lateen-sailed fishing-smack
+from Algeria to the papyrus punt of home waters.  Its population was
+the waste of society, fishers, porters, vagabonds, criminals, ruffian
+sea-faring men, dockmen, laborers of all sorts, men, women and
+children--the pariahs even of the rabble and typically the Voice of
+Revilement.
+
+Agrippa, landing with his party, attracted no more attention than any
+other new-comer would have done, until Silas gravely inquired the way
+into the Regio Judaeorum.
+
+"Jupiter strike you!" roared the man whom the sober Silas had
+addressed.  "Do I look like a barbarian Jew that I should know anything
+about the Regio Judaeorum!"
+
+His words, purposely loud, did not fail to excite the interest he meant
+they should.
+
+"Regio Judaeorum!" cried a woman under foot, filling her basket with
+fish entrails.  "What say you, Gesius?  Who, these?  Look,
+Alexandrians, what tinsel and airs are hunting the Regio Judaeorum!"
+
+"Purple, by my head!" the man exclaimed.  "Roman citizens with the bent
+nose of Jerusalem!"
+
+"Agrippa, or I am a landsman!" a sailor shouted.  "Fugitive from
+debtors, or I am a pirate!"
+
+"Jews!" another woman screamed; "coming to collect usury!"
+
+A howl of rage, threatening and lawless, greeted this cry, out of which
+rose the sailor's voice with a shout of laughter.
+
+"Usury!  Ha, ha!  He has not a denarius on him that is not borrowed!"
+
+The Jewish prince had lived a life of diverse fortune, but never until
+then had he been the object of popular scorn.  A surprise was aroused
+in him as great as his indignation; he stood transfixed with emotion.
+Cypros, thoroughly terrified, came out from among her servants and
+clung to his arm.  On her the eyes of the fishwives alighted.
+
+[Illustration: Cypros, thoroughly terrified, clung to his arm (missing
+from book)]
+
+"Look!  Look!" they cried.  "Sparing us our husbands by hiding her
+beauty!  The rag over her face!  Bah! for a plaster of mud!"
+
+"Fish-scales will serve as well," another cried, snatching up a handful
+and throwing it at the princess.
+
+"Have mine, too, Bassia!  Thou art a better thrower than I!" a third
+shouted, handing up her basket.
+
+"Be sure of your aim, Bassia!"
+
+The uproar became general.
+
+"A handful for the simpering hand-maid, too!"
+
+"Don't miss the she-Herod!"
+
+"Fall to, wives; don't leave it all to Bassia!"
+
+"'Way for the proconsul!"--a distant roar came up from the water's edge.
+
+"Bilge-water in my jar, there, mate; it will mix their perfumes!"
+
+"'Way for the proconsul!" the distant roar insisted.
+
+"Don't soil the proconsul, women!"
+
+"'Ware, Bassia!  The proconsul is coming!"
+
+"Perpol! he will not see!  He is the best Jew-baiter in all Alexandria!
+Sure aim, O Phoebus of the bow!"
+
+"'Way for the proconsul!"
+
+"Pluto take the legionaries; here they come!"
+
+"One more pitch at them, though Caesar were coming!"
+
+"No privileges exclusive for thyself, Bassia!  _Habet_!  More scales!"
+
+"Scales; shells; water!  Scales; sh--"
+
+"Fish-heads!  _Habet_!"
+
+"Entrails--"
+
+"'Way for the proconsul!"
+
+"Directly, comrades!  Shells, water!"
+
+"Ow!  You hit a soldier!"
+
+"Bad aim, Bassia!"
+
+"The legionaries!  Scatter!"
+
+The centurion at the head of a column now appeared, with his brasses
+dripping with dirty water, threw up his sword and shouted.  The column
+flung itself out of line and went into the mob with pilum butt or point
+as the spirit urged.
+
+Pell-mell, tumbling, screaming, scrambling, the wharf-litter fled,
+parting in two bodies as it passed Agrippa's demoralized group, one
+half plunging off the masonry on the sands or into the water, the other
+scattering out over the great expanse of dock.  The soldiers pressed
+after, and, following in the space they had cleared, came a chariot, a
+legate in full armor driving, his charioteer crouching on his haunches
+in the rear of the car.
+
+His apparitors brought up against Agrippa's party.  They did not
+hesitate at the rank of the strangers; it was part of the blockade.
+Eutychus took to his heels and Silas went down under a blow from a
+reversed javelin.  Agrippa, besmirched with the missiles of his late
+assailants and blazing with fury, breasted the soldiers and cursed them
+fervently.  Two of them sprang upon him, and Cypros, screaming wildly,
+threw off her veil and seized the foremost legionary.
+
+The legate pulled up his horses and looked at the struggle.  Cypros'
+bared face was presented to him.  With a cry of astonishment, he threw
+down the lines and leaped from the chariot.
+
+"Back, comrades!" he shouted, running toward them.  "Touch her not!
+Unhand the man!  Ho!  Domitius, call off your tigers!"
+
+"How now, Flaccus!" Agrippa raged.  "Is this how you receive Roman
+citizens in Alexandria?"
+
+The legate stopped short and his face blackened.
+
+"Agrippa, by the furies!  I knew the lady, but--" with a motion of his
+hand he seemed to put off his temper and to recover himself.  "Tut,
+tut!  Herod, you will not waste good serviceable wrath on an
+Alexandrian uproar when you have lived among them a space.  They are no
+more to be curbed than the Nile overflow, and are as natural to the
+place.  But curse them, they shall answer for this!  Welcome to
+Alexandria!  Beshrew me, but the sight of your lady's face makes me
+young again!  Come, come; bear me no ill will.  Be our guest, Herod,
+and we shall make back to you for all this mob's inhospitality.  Ah, my
+lady, what say you?  Urge my pardon for old time's sake!"
+
+He turned his face, which filled with more sincerity toward Cypros than
+was visible in his voluble cordiality to Agrippa.  Cypros, supported by
+the trembling Drumah, put her hand to her forehead and tried to smile
+bravely.
+
+"But thou hast saved us, noble Flaccus; why should we bear thee ill
+will?  Blessed be thou for thy timely coming, else we had been killed!"
+
+Agrippa, still smoldering, with Silas at his feet, alternately brushing
+the prince's dress and rubbing his bruises, took the word from Cypros.
+
+"What do Roman citizens, arriving in Alexandria, and no proconsul to
+meet them?  Perchance Rome's sundry long missing citizens have been
+lost here!" intimated Agrippa.
+
+"Ho, no!  They never kill except under provocation.  Yet I shall have a
+word with the wharf-master and the praetor.  But come, have my chariot,
+lady.  Apparitor," addressing one of his guards, "send hither
+conveyance for my guests!"
+
+"Thy pardon and thanks, Flaccus," Agrippa objected shortly, "we are
+expected by the alabarch."
+
+"Then, by the Horae, he should have been here to meet you.  Forget him
+for his discourtesy and come with me.  Beseech your husband, sweet
+lady; you were my confederate in the old days."
+
+She smiled, in a pleased way.  "But we did not inform the alabarch when
+we expected to arrive," she answered.  "He hath not failed us."
+
+"And perchance," Agrippa broke in, "it might disturb Alexandria again
+to know that the proconsul had entertained Jews!"
+
+"Still furious!" Flaccus cried jocosely.  "Oh, where is that elastic
+temper which made thee famous in youth, Herod?  But here are our
+curricles; at least thou wilt permit me to conduct thy party to the
+alabarch's."
+
+It was the bluff courtesy of a man who assumes polish for necessity's
+sake, and suddenly envelopes himself with it, momentarily for a
+purpose.  Agrippa, looking up from under his brows, glanced critically
+at the proconsul's face for some light on his unwonted amiability, but,
+failing to discover it, submitted with better grace to the Roman's
+offers.
+
+The proconsul was near Agrippa's age, and on his face and figure was
+the stamp of unalloyed Roman blood.  He was of average height, but so
+solidly built as to appear short.  His head was round and covered with
+close, black curls; his brows were straight thick lines which met over
+his nose, and his beardless face was molded with strong muscles on the
+purple cheek and chin.  He was powerful in neck and arm and leg, and
+prominent in chest and under-jaw.  Yet the brute force that published
+itself in all his atmosphere was dominated by intellect and giant
+capabilities.
+
+He was Flaccus Avillus, Proconsul of Egypt, finishing now his fourth
+year as viceroy over the Nile valley.  One of the few who stood in the
+wintry favor of Tiberius, the imperial misanthrope of Capri, his was
+the weightiest portfolio in all colonial affairs; his state little less
+than Caesar's.
+
+Wherever he walked, industry, pleasure and humankind, low or lofty,
+stood still to do him honor.  So, when he headed a procession of
+curricles and chariots up from the wharves of Alexandria, he did not go
+unseen.  Many of the late disturbers watched with strained eyes and
+gaping mouths and saw him turn his horses into the street which was the
+first in the Regio Judaeorum, and not a few stared at one another and
+babbled, or pointed taut or shaking fingers at the prodigy.  Flaccus,
+the most notorious persecutor of the Jews among the long list of
+Egyptian governors, was visiting the Regio Judaeorum escorting Jews!
+
+The sight created no less wonder and astonishment under the eaves of
+the Jewish houses, and throughout their narrow passages, but there was
+no demonstration.  Each retired quietly to his family, or to his
+neighbor, and gravely asked what new trickery was this.
+
+But Agrippa's party, following their conductor, proceeded through the
+less densely settled portion of the quarter into a district where the
+streets opened up into a stately avenue, lined by the palaces of the
+aristocratic Jews of Alexandria.
+
+Before one, not in the least different from half a dozen surrounding
+it, their guide halted.  The residence was square, with an unbroken
+front, except for a porch, the single attribute characteristic of
+Egypt, and the window arches and parapet relieved the somber masonry
+with checkered stone.  The flight of steps leading up to the porch was
+of white marble.
+
+One of the proconsul's apparitors knocked and stiffly announced his
+mission to the Jewish porter that answered.  Immediately the master of
+the house came forth, followed by a number of servants to take charge
+of the prince's effects.
+
+The master of the house, Alexander Lysimachus, alabarch of Alexandria,
+was a Jew by feature and by dress, but sufficiently Romanized in
+disposition to propitiate Rome.  He wore a cloak, richly embroidered,
+over a long white under-robe; and the magisterial tarboosh, with a
+bandeau of gold braid, was set down over his fine white hair.  His
+figure was lean and aged, a little bent, but every motion was as steady
+as that of a young man, and his air had that certain ease and grace
+which mark the courtier.
+
+His first quick glance sought Flaccus, for the visit was without
+precedent and highly significant.  But there was neither hauteur nor
+suspicion in his manner.  The bluff countenance of the proconsul showed
+a little expectancy, but there was even less to be seen on the Jew's
+face that should betray his interpretation of the visit.  The
+magistrates bowed, each after his own manner of salutation--the Jew
+with oriental grace, the Roman with an offhand upward jerk of his head
+and a gesture of his mailed hand.
+
+"Behold your guests, Lysimachus," Flaccus said, "or what is left of
+them after an encounter with the rabble at the wharf.  You should have
+been there to meet them."
+
+"So I should, had I been forewarned," the alabarch explained, the
+peculiar music of the Jewish intonation showing in mellow contrast to
+the Roman's blunt voice.  "What!  Is this how the accursed vermin have
+used you!"
+
+He put out his old waxen hands to the prince and searched his face.
+
+"O thou son of Berenice!" he said softly.  "Welcome to the worshiping
+hearts of Jews, once more."
+
+"Thanks," replied Agrippa, embracing the old man.  "My latest adventure
+with Gentiles has well-nigh persuaded me to remain there!"
+
+"God grant it; God grant it!  And thy princess?"
+
+Cypros had uncovered her face and was reaching him her hands.
+
+"Mariamne!" he exclaimed in a startled way.  "Mariamne, as I live!"
+
+Flaccus, who had fixed his eyes on Cypros the instant her veil was
+lifted, started.
+
+"Mariamne!  The murdered Mariamne!" he repeated.
+
+"Ah, sir!" the alabarch protested, smiling.  "Thou wast not born then.
+But I knew her: as a young man I knew her!  But enter, enter!  Pray
+favor us with thy presence at supper, noble Flaccus.  It shall be an
+evening of festivity."
+
+He led them through a hall so dimly lighted as to appear dark after the
+daylight without, and into one of the noble chambers characteristic of
+the opulent Orient.  The whole interior was lined with yellow marble,
+and the polish of the pavement was mirror-like.  The lattice of the
+windows, the lamps, the coffers of the alabarch's records, the layers
+for the palms and plantain, the clawed feet of the great divan were all
+of hammered brass.  The drapery at arch and casement, the cushions and
+covering of the divan were white and yellow silk, and, besides a
+sprawling tiger skin on the floor, the alabarch's chair of authority,
+and a table of white wood, there was no other furniture.
+
+The alabarch gave Flaccus his magistrate's chair, and, seating his two
+noble guests and their children, clapped his hands in summons.
+
+A brown woman, with eyes like chrysolite and the lithe movements of a
+panther, was instantly at his elbow.
+
+The alabarch spoke to her in a strange tongue, and the servant
+disappeared.
+
+"I send for my daughter," he explained to his guests.  "The
+waiting-woman does not understand our tongue.  My daughter--the only
+one I have, and unmarried!"
+
+"I remember her," Agrippa said with a smile.
+
+At that moment in the archway leading into the interior of the house a
+girl appeared.  She lifted her eyes to her father's face, and between
+them passed the mute evidence of dependence and vital attachment.
+
+She wore the classic Greek chiton of white wool without relief of color
+or ornament, a garb which, by its simplicity, intensified the first
+impression that it was a child that stood in the archway.  She was a
+little below average height, with almost infantile shortening of curves
+in her pretty, stanch outlines.  But the suppleness of waist and the
+exquisite modeling of throat and wrist were signs that proved her to be
+of mature years.
+
+Her hair was of that intermediate tint of yellow-brown which in adult
+years would be dark.  It fell in girlish freedom, rough with curls, a
+little below her shoulders.  There was a boyishness in the noble
+breadth of her forehead, full of front, serene almost to seriousness,
+and marked by delicate black brows too level to be ideally feminine.
+Her eyes were not prominent but finely set under the shading brow,
+large of iris, like a child's, and fair brown in color.  In their
+scrutiny was not only the wisdom of years but the penetration of a
+sage.  Though her tips were not full they were perfectly cut, and
+redder than the heart of any pomegranate that grew in the alabarch's
+garden.
+
+But it was not these certain signs of strength which engaged Agrippa.
+Beyond the single glance to note how much the girl had developed in
+four years he gave his attention to certain physical characteristics
+which called upon his long experience with women to catalogue.
+
+As she stood in the archway, the prince had let his glance slip down to
+her feet, shod in white sandals, and her ankles laced about with white
+ribbon.  One small foot upbore her weight, the other unconsciously, but
+most daintily, poised on a toe.  She swayed once with indescribable
+lightness, but afterward stood balanced with such preparedness of young
+sinew that at a motion she could have moved in any direction.  Foremost
+in summing these things, Agrippa observed that she was wholly
+unconscious of how she stood.
+
+"Terpsichore!" he said to himself, "or else the goddess hath withdrawn
+the gift of dancing from the earth!"
+
+"Enter, Lydia, and know the proconsul, the noble Flaccus," the alabarch
+said.  The girl raised her eyes to the proconsul's face and salaamed
+with enchanting grace.  Flaccus checked a fatherly smile.  He would
+wait before he patronized a girl-child of uncertain age.
+
+"And this," the alabarch went on, "thou wilt remember as our prince,
+Herod Agrippa."
+
+"Alas! sweet Lydia," Agrippa said, fixing soft eyes upon her.  "Must I
+be introduced?  Am I in four years forgotten?"
+
+"No, good my lord," she answered in a voice that was mellow with the
+music of womanhood--a voice that almost startled with its abated
+strength and richness, since the illusion of her youth was hard to
+shake off, "thou art identified by thy sweet lady!"
+
+Agrippa stroked his smooth chin and Flaccus shot an amused glance at
+him.  Meanwhile the girl had opened her arms to Cypros.  The children,
+one by one, greeted her.  The alabarch went on.
+
+"My sons are no longer with us," he said.  "They are abroad in the
+world, preparing themselves to be greater men than their father.  But
+go, be refreshed; it shall be an evening of rejoicing.  Lydia, be my
+right hand and give my guests comfort."
+
+He bowed the Herod and his family out of the chamber and they followed
+the girl to various apartments for rest and change of raiment.
+
+The alabarch turned to the proconsul.
+
+"If thou wilt follow me, sir--"
+
+"No; I thank thee; I shall return to my house and prepare for thy
+hospitality.  But tell me this: what does Agrippa here?"
+
+"He comes to borrow money, I believe."
+
+"Of you?"
+
+"Doubtless."
+
+"Put him off until you have consulted me.  He is not a safe borrower."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"--AS AN ARMY WITH BANNERS!"
+
+Agrippa emerged at sunset from his apartment and descended to the first
+floor of the alabarch's mansion.  The hall was vacant and each of the
+chambers opening off it was silent, so he wandered through the whole
+length of the corridor, composedly as a master in his own house.  No
+one did he see until he reached the end of the hall, when there
+appeared suddenly, as if materialized out of the gloom, the brown
+serving-woman.  The olive-green of her immense eyes glittered in the
+light of a reed taper she bore.  She stepped aside to let him pass and
+proceeded to light the lamps.
+
+Agrippa stopped to look at her, simply because she was lithe and
+unusual, but she continued without heeding him.  On one of the
+lamp-bowls the palm-oil had run over and the reed ignited it; but with
+her bare hand the woman damped it and went her way with a running flame
+flickering out on the back of her hand.
+
+"Perpol!" the prince exclaimed to himself as he rambled on.  "No wonder
+the phenix comes to Egypt to be born."
+
+At the end of a corridor he passed through an open door into a
+colonnade fronting a court-garden of extraordinary beauty.  It was
+carpeted with sod, interlined with walks of white stone which led at
+every divergence to a classic Roman exedra.  The awning which usually
+sheltered the inclosure from the sun had been rolled up and the cooling
+sky bent loftily over it.  The inert summer airs were heavy with the
+scent of lotus, red lilies and spice roses which were massed in an oval
+bed in the center.
+
+At that moment he caught sight of an indolent figure, half sitting,
+half lying in one of the sections of the exedra.
+
+He knew at first glance that it was not the alabarch's daughter, and,
+remembering that his last glance in the mirror after his servant had
+done with him had shown him at his best, he moved without hesitation
+toward the unknown.
+
+As he approached she raised her eyes and coolly scrutinized him.  Her
+face, thus lifted for inspection, showed him a woman in the later
+twenties, and of that type which since the beginning could look men
+between the eyes.  She was a Roman, but never in all the Empire were
+other eyes so black and luminous, or hair so glossy, or cheek so
+radiant.  Her face was an elongated oval, topping a long round neck,
+which broadened at the base into a sudden and exaggerated slope of
+marble-white shoulders.  The low sweep of the bosom, the girdle just
+beneath it, shortening the lithe waist, the slender hips, the long lazy
+limbs completed a perfect type, distinct and unlimited in its powers.
+
+For a fraction of a second the two contemplated each other; perhaps
+only long enough for each to confess to himself that he had met his
+like.  Then Agrippa came and sat down beside her, and she did not stir
+from her careless posture.  So many, many of the kind had each met and
+known that they could not be strangers.
+
+"The alabarch should turn his prospective son-in-law into his garden if
+he would speed the marrying of his daughter," the prince observed.
+
+"He hath the daughter, the garden, and the notion to dispose of her,"
+she answered, "but it is the son-in-law that is wanting."
+
+"But in my long experience with womankind," he replied, "it would not
+seem improbable to believe that it is the lady and not the lover that
+makes the witchery of the garden a wasted thing.  I have heard of
+unwilling maids."
+
+"Unwilling in directions," she replied with a smile, "and under certain
+influences.  For if there were any to withstand my conviction, I am
+ready to wager that there never lived a woman before whom all the world
+of men could pass without making her choice."
+
+"And perchance," he said promptly, "if there were any to withstand my
+conviction, I would wager that there never lived a man before whom the
+world of women could pass without making his choice,--again and again!"
+
+"Which declaration," she responded evenly, "publishes thee a married
+man; the single gallant declares only for one."
+
+"O deft reasoning! it establishes thee a Roman.  What dost thou here,
+in Alexandria where there is no court, no games, no senators, no
+Caesar--naught but riots and Jews?"
+
+"Jews," she said, scanning a rounded arm to see if its rest on the back
+of the exedra had left a mark on it, "Jews are red-lipped, and eyed
+like heifers.  Sometimes brawn and force weary us in Rome; wherefore we
+go into Egypt or the East to seek silky and subtle devilishness."
+
+Agrippa moved along the exedra and looked into her eyes.  He saw there
+that peculiar expression which he had expected to find.  It was a set
+questioning, one that runs the scale from appeal to demand--the asking
+eye, the sign of continual consciousness of the woman-self and her
+charms.
+
+"Why make the effort?  Only tell us of the East that you want us and
+the East will come to you."
+
+"What?  Oriental love-philters, simitars, poisoning, silks and
+mysticism in the shadow of the Fora and within sound of the
+Senate-chamber?  No, my friend; we must hear the lapping of the Nile or
+the flow of the Abana, behold camels and priests, and the far level
+line of the desert, while we languish on bronze bosoms and breathe
+musks from oriental lips."
+
+"It is not then the Jews," he objected.  "They are a temperate, a
+passionless lot, that carry the Torah like hair-balances in their
+hearts to discover if any deed they do weighs according to the Law.
+No, Jews are a straight people.  Thou speakest of the--Arab!"
+
+She turned her eyes toward him and measured his length, surveyed his
+slender hands, and glanced at the warm brown of his complexion.
+
+"So?" she asked with meaning.  "An Arab?"
+
+He continued to smile at her.
+
+"And every Jew is thus minded?" she asked, observing later the
+unmistakable signs of Jewish blood in his profile.
+
+"Unless he is tinctured with the lawlessness of Arabia."
+
+"Ah!"  She moved her fan idly and looked up at the sky.
+
+"It is then, of a truth, the Arab, we seek," she added presently.  "The
+Arab that knows no manners but his fathers' manners; who eats, drinks,
+loves, hates and conquers after his own fashion."
+
+"Without having seen Jerusalem, or Rome?" he asked.
+
+"Rome!" she repeated, looking at him again.  "Yes, without having seen
+Rome or Jerusalem or Alexandria."
+
+Agrippa tilted his head thoughtfully.
+
+"Then, it is good only for a time--for as long as the surfeit of
+civilization lasts--which lasts no longer the moment one realizes the
+Arab is not devoted to the bath and that he counts his women among his
+cattle!"
+
+She laughed outright.  "I remember thou didst indorse him not a moment
+since!  Wherefore the change?"
+
+"Refinement in all things!  To get it into an Arab, he has to be
+modified by alien blood."
+
+"A truce!  I am in Alexandria; her poetic wickedness has not been
+entirely exhausted.  I--meet new, desirable things--daily!"
+
+Her fan was between them as she spoke and he took the stick of it just
+above where she held it and was putting it aside when the proconsul,
+resplendent in a tunic of white and purple, appeared in the colonnade.
+Beside him was Cypros in her Jewish matron's dress.
+
+Agrippa put the fan out of the way and made his answer.
+
+"Forget not that the East, whether Arab or Alexandrian, is
+intense--once won.  It might harass thee, if thou weariest of it,
+before it wearies of thee--even to the extreme of pursuing thee to
+Rome."
+
+The proconsul and the princess approached.  The deep-set eyes of the
+Roman wore a peculiarly satisfied look.
+
+"Men seek for stray cattle in the fields of sweet grass, look for lost
+jewels in the wallets of thieves, and missing Herods in the company of
+beautiful women," he observed.
+
+"It is good to have an established reputation, whether we be cattle or
+jewels or Herods," Agrippa laughed; "for, thou seest, we are disjointed
+and unsettled, seeing Flaccus now enduring a Jew, again attending a
+lady.
+
+"Again," said the beauty, "we mark the work of circumstances, which led
+us into difference just now, O thou disputatious."
+
+"Well said, Junia," the proconsul declared; "some ladies would make
+gallants out of the fiends!  Know ye all one another?" the proconsul
+continued.
+
+"Except my lovely neighbor," Agrippa replied.
+
+"The Lady Junia, daughter of Euodus, who with her father hath been
+transplanted here from Rome."
+
+In the colonnade Lydia, the daughter, appeared and beside her a man, by
+certain of the more obvious signs, of middle-age.  But when he drew
+closer the more obvious gave way to the indisputable testimony of
+smooth elastic skin, long lashes and strong, white, unworn teeth that
+the man was not yet thirty.  He was a little above medium height,
+spare, yet well-built except for a slight lift in the shoulders,
+beardless, colorless, with straight dark hair, bound with a classic
+fillet.  His general lack of tone brought into noticeable prominence
+the amiability and luster of his fine brown eyes.
+
+That he was a Jew was apparent no less by dress than by feature.  His
+Jewish garments differed only in color and texture from those worn by
+his fathers in Judea.  The outer gown was of light green scantly shot
+with points of gold.
+
+The pair walked slowly as if unconscious of the presence of others, and
+the attitude of the man, bending to look into Lydia's face as she
+walked, was clearly more attentive than ordinary courtesy demanded.
+
+"Approacheth Justin Classicus," said Flaccus.  "In that garment he
+looks much like a chameleon that has strayed across an Attic meadow in
+spring."
+
+"Behold, already the witchery of the garden!" Agrippa said softly to
+Junia.
+
+"This," added the proconsul, introducing the new-comer, "is Justin
+Classicus, the latest fashion in philosophers, the most popular Jew in
+Alexandria."
+
+Classicus bowed, glanced at Junia and again at Agrippa, and made a
+place for Lydia on the exedra, so that he might sit on a taboret at her
+feet.
+
+"What news, good sir," Agrippa asked, "among the schools over the
+world?"
+
+"News?" Classicus repeated.  "Nothing.  Philo is silent; Petronius is
+mersed in affairs in Bithynia; Rome's gone a-frolicking, scholars and
+all, to Capri."
+
+"Alas!" said Flaccus; "nothing happens now but scandal; even the
+ancient miracles of divine visitations, phenixes, comets and monsters
+have ceased."
+
+"But you say nothing of religion," said Classicus.  "Yet possibly it
+follows, now, in order."
+
+"After monsters, phenixes and the rest," put in Agrippa.
+
+"What is it?" Flaccus asked.
+
+"Perchance thou hast heard," Classicus responded.  "It issues out of
+Judea, which adds to its interest, since we are accustomed to nothing
+but sobriety from Palestine."
+
+"What is it?" Flaccus insisted.
+
+"A new Messiah!"
+
+"Oh," Agrippa cried wearily, "a new Messiah!  How many in the past
+generation, Cypros?  Ten, twenty, a hundred?  Alas!  Classicus, that
+thou shouldst serve up as new something which every Jew hath expected
+and discovered and rejected for the last three thousand years."
+
+"O happy race!" Junia exclaimed; "which hath something to which to look
+forward!  But what is a Messiah?"
+
+"A god," said Agrippa.
+
+"The anointed king," Cypros corrected hastily, "of godly origin that
+shall restore the Jews to dominion over the world!"
+
+"_Mirabile dictu!_" Junia cried.
+
+"Olympian Jove!" Flaccus exclaimed, smiting his muscular leg.  "What a
+task, what an ambition, what an achievement!  I behold Caesar's dudgeon.
+Go on, Classicus; though it be old to thy remarkable race, used to
+aspiring to the scope of Olympus, let us hear, who have never wished to
+be more than Caesar!"
+
+"It is not so much of the Messiah," Classicus responded, smiling, "as
+his--school, if it may be so called.  One of the followers appeared at
+the Library some time ago, perchance as long as three years ago--an
+Egyptian of the upper classes, much traveled, and told such a
+remarkable tale of the Messiah's birth and death that he instantly lost
+caste for truthfulness."
+
+"Alas!" Lydia exclaimed in a tone of disappointment.  "Why will they
+insist that the Messiah must be a miraculous creature, demeanored like
+the pagan gods and proceeding through the uproar of tumbling satrapies
+to the high place of Supreme Necromancer of the Universe!"
+
+"Sweet Lydia!" Agrippa protested.  "Roman hard-headedness hath turned
+thee against our traditions!"
+
+"But the Egyptian did not picture such a man," Classicus said very
+gently.  "He went to the other extreme, so far that his hearers had to
+contemplate an image of a carpenter's son, elected to a leadership over
+a horde of slaves and outcasts and visionary aristocrats; who taught a
+doctrine of submission, poverty and love, and who finally was crucified
+for blasphemy during a popular uproar."
+
+"It hath the recommendation of being different!" Lydia declared
+frankly.  "Tell me more."
+
+"There is no more."
+
+"What!  Is it dead?" she insisted.  "Dead as all the others?  Then it
+is different only in its inception."
+
+"No," said Agrippa thoughtfully; "it is not dead, but dying hard.  The
+Sanhedrim is punishing its followers in Jerusalem at present.  Thou
+rememberest, Cypros; Marsyas was charged with the apostasy."
+
+"So material as to engage the Sanhedrim?" Lydia pursued.
+
+"We hear," responded Classicus, "that Jerusalem and even Judea are
+unsafe for them, and numbers have appeared in the city of late--"
+
+"Among us?" Lydia asked.
+
+"No; in Rhacotis," replied Classicus; whereupon Flaccus raised an
+inquiring eye.
+
+"Is that the sect that the prefect has been warned to observe?" he
+demanded.
+
+"Doubtless; it seems that their foremost fault is rebellion against
+authority," Classicus made answer.  "So much for their doctrine of
+submission."
+
+"Tell us that," Lydia urged.
+
+"Apostasy," Agrippa answered for Classicus, "flagrant apostasy; for the
+Sanhedrim came out of the hall of judgment to stone an offender, for
+the first time in seven years.  I saw the execution; in fact, in a way
+I was brought close to the circumstances by a friend of the apostate
+who was attached to my household."
+
+"Is he with thee?" Flaccus asked pointedly.
+
+"No, we left him in Ptolemais.  But the note of their presence in
+Alexandria must have been sounded early, directly they arrived, for I
+departed from Jerusalem the day following the first movement against
+the sect, and thence to Ptolemais and Alexandria with ordinary
+despatch."
+
+"They did not announce themselves," Flaccus replied.  "Vitellius
+announced them.  He wants an Essene who is believed to be among them."
+
+Agrippa raised his head and looked straight at Flaccus.  He remembered
+that he had betrayed Marsyas' refuge.  Cypros drew in a breath of alarm.
+
+"That was simply done, Flaccus," Agrippa remarked coolly.
+
+The princess laid her hand on the ruddy flesh of the proconsul's arm.
+
+"We have been frank with thee, my lord," she said, "and thou art a
+noble Roman--therefore a safe guardian of our unguarded words."
+
+The others maintained a wondering silence.  Flaccus smiled.
+
+"Vitellius hath bidden me to look for him, adding with certain fervid
+embellishments that he hath sought everywhere but in Egypt and Hades.
+Vitellius is no diplomat.  Whistling finds the lost hound sooner than
+search."
+
+"But thou wilt not find him, noble Flaccus," Cypros besought in a
+lowered tone.  "Yield us thy promise that thou wilt not betray him!"
+
+"My promise, lady!  Indeed, I gave it in my heart a moment since.  Hear
+it now.  Alexandria is subject to thee.  Let him come and be our ward."
+
+"I shall depend on that," Agrippa said decidedly.  "For I shall
+despatch a servant for the man, the instant I can so do!"
+
+"And yet," Cypros insisted, still distressed, "if Vitellius requires
+him at thy hands, how shalt thou avoid giving him up?"
+
+Flaccus smiled at her with softened eyes.
+
+"O gentle lady, the day the young man should arrive, I shall set the
+prefect on the Nazarenes in Rhacotis.  If he be not found, none without
+this trustworthy circle shall have cause to believe that I am not in
+all conscience striving to help a brother proconsul run down a
+fugitive."
+
+"A shrewd strategy," Lydia said dryly, "but one rather costly for the
+Nazarenes."
+
+"The Nazarenes!  Who wastes tears over them?  Thine own straight people
+condemn them, lady."
+
+"An exhilarating recreation, indeed," she repeated as if to herself,
+"for the prefect, the rabble Alexandrians and the Nazarenes!  O seekers
+of esthetic sport, that will be a rare occasion!  Yield me thy promise,
+my Lord Agrippa, that thou wilt tell us the day the young man arrives!"
+
+Flaccus' face darkened for a moment, but at that moment the alabarch
+appeared in the colonnade.
+
+"Here comes our host," said Agrippa.  "Hast ordered the garlands,
+Lysimachus?"
+
+"The feast is prepared," Lysimachus replied, and, turning to Flaccus,
+continued: "Thou shalt see, now, good sir, how Jews feast.  In all
+thine experiences, thou hast never broken bread with a Jew."
+
+"Not so!" Flaccus retorted, "for I was present at the Lady Cypros'
+wedding-feast!"
+
+"Ho!  Flaccus remembering a wedding-feast!" Agrippa laughed, as he
+arose, taking Junia's hand.  "Mars, cherishing a confection!"
+
+"Perchance," Cypros ventured, pleased and coloring, "if Mars'
+confections were more plentiful and the noble Flaccus' wedding-feasts
+less rare, they both might forget the one!"
+
+"Never!" Flaccus declared, "though I were Hymen himself!"
+
+As they proceeded toward the colonnade, Cypros drew closer to him.
+
+"Thou canst not know what service thou hast done us by that promise,"
+she said.  "It is more than the youth's security; it means my husband's
+success.  For in this young man, we have found Fortune itself!"
+
+The proconsul made no answer, for his gray-brown eyes flickered
+suddenly as if a candle had been moved close by them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+FLACCUS WORKS A COMPLEXITY
+
+Near sunset the following day the alabarch appeared in the porch of the
+proconsul's mansion,--an incident which would speedily have spread
+wildly over the Brucheum had not the shrewd Lysimachus come in Roman
+dress, unostentatiously and hidden by the dusk.  The slave who
+conducted the visitor to the master's presence was suspicious, but he
+did not lapse from courtesy.  If he had prejudices they had to await a
+popular uproar for expression, and popular uproars at present against
+the Jews were manifestly in disfavor with the proconsul.
+
+Flaccus received the alabarch in the great gloom of his atrium.  The
+torches had not been lighted, the cancelli admitted only dusk.  The
+shadowy shape of the proconsul, relaxed in his curule, alone and
+immovable, thus surrounded by meditative atmosphere, suddenly appealed
+to the alabarch as out of harmony with the legate's blunt nature.
+
+As the Jew drew near, he saw rolls and parcels of linen and parchment,
+petitions and memorials, scattered about on the pavement, as if the
+Roman had let them roll off his table or drop from his hand
+unconsciously.  His elbow rested on the ivory arm of his curule, his
+cheek on his clenched hand.  The undimmed gaze of the Jewish magistrate
+detected lines in the hard face that he had never seen before.
+
+But Flaccus stirred and drew himself up to attention.
+
+"Come up, Lysimachus," he said.  "There is a chair here, for thee."
+
+The alabarch advanced and dropped into the seat that Flaccus had
+indicated.
+
+"This," he observed, nodding toward the dark torch at the proconsul's
+side, "would lead me to believe thou art inventing rhymes."
+
+"Or conspiracies.  Plots and poetry demand the same exciting dusk.
+Well, has the Herod sued?"
+
+"Not he, but his lady."
+
+"His lady!  By Hecate, the mystery is solved.  Thus it is that he hath
+been able to borrow every usurer poor from Rome to Damascus!"
+
+"He wins upon her virtue; but withhold thy interpretation of my words
+until I show thee what they mean.  She is beautiful and virtuous; a
+Herod and married--a conjunction of circumstances in these days so rare
+as to be out of nature--therefore, phenomenal.  So we toss our yellow
+gold into her lap in recognition of the entertainment she hath
+afforded--being unusual."
+
+"Virtuous; that means, faithful to the man she married.  No woman is
+faithful except she loves her love.  A just procession in the order of
+the Furies' reign.  The warm of heart, unrewarded; the unworthy,
+anointed and worshiped."
+
+"This melancholy twilight hath made thee morbid, Avillus.  You Romans
+take womankind too seriously."
+
+"When womankind or a kind of woman can drain the world's purse,
+methinks she is a serious matter.  What sum does she want?"
+
+"Three hundred thousand drachmae."
+
+"O Midas; give her the touch!  Let all her possessions be gold!  Didst
+advance it to her?"
+
+"If thou wilt remember, it was thy command that I consult thee, first."
+
+"Temperate Jew!  To remember a consular suggestion, while a lovely
+woman, and a Herod at that, besought thee for the contents of thy
+purse.  Oh, thou art an old, old man, Lysimachus!"
+
+The alabarch laughed and frowned the next moment.
+
+"Beshrew the jest!  Men who make light of virtue deserve incontinent
+wives.  And there is this one thing apparent, which should make me
+serious.  The Herod is absolutely penniless, and I can not turn that
+tender woman and her babes out of doors to take the roads of Egypt."
+
+"Rest thee in that small matter.  Thou and I can spare her sesterces
+enough to ship her back to Judea."
+
+Lysimachus was silent for a moment.
+
+"She would not be satisfied," he said at last.  "She wants three
+talents, though she never had afterward a crust of bread.  It seems
+that they permitted a free-born man to pawn himself for that sum in
+Ptolemais and accepted the money from him!"
+
+"Shade of Herod!" the proconsul exclaimed.
+
+"It seems also that the man is in peril of the authorities, having
+placed himself in jeopardy to save Agrippa from Herrenius Capito, who
+had run Agrippa to earth for a debt he owes to Caesar--"
+
+"O, that is the way of it!  I know of that man!  Well, then, perchance
+it is not so much because she loves her husband as because the debt to
+the pawned one chafes.  I hear that he is young and comely."
+
+"Forget the slanderous jest, Flaccus; I am ashamed of it.  What shall I
+do in this matter?"
+
+"Lend her three talents."
+
+"She would buy the man's freedom, but what then?  She would still be
+here in Alexandria as penniless as ever."
+
+"The consular suggestion, it seems, only held thee a moment in
+abeyance," the proconsul said slyly.  "She will get the three hundred
+thousand drachmae, yet!"
+
+"She will not," the alabarch declared, "First, because I have it not;
+next, because I am not eager to pay a Herod's debts."
+
+"Or, chiefly, because thou shouldst never see it again."
+
+The alabarch tapped the pavement with his foot and looked away.  The
+attitude was confession to a belief in the proconsul's convictions.
+
+"What sum couldst thou lend by pinching thyself?" Flaccus asked
+presently.
+
+"Two hundred thousand drachmae--but not to a Herod.  I could lose five
+talents without ruin."
+
+"Give her five talents, then; give it--do not slander a gift by calling
+it a loan."
+
+"What!  Toss an alms to a Herod?  They would throw it in my face!"
+
+"Jupiter! but they are haughty!"
+
+The alabarch made no answer and Flaccus looked out at the night
+dropping over his garden.
+
+"Why not hold the lady in hostage, here, for five talents?" he asked
+after a while.
+
+The alabarch looked startled; it was Roman extremes, a trifle too
+brutal for him to dress in diplomacy.  He demurred.
+
+"Not brutal, Lysimachus," Flaccus said earnestly.  "Herod can not use
+her well; it will be a respite from her long wandering and poverty.
+Thou canst say to her that the five talents are all thou canst afford.
+Tell her that it will do no more than beach them penniless in Italy;
+that thou hast a crust for Agrippa--will she starve him by eating half
+of it, herself?"
+
+Flaccus laughed at his own words, but perplexity came into the
+alabarch's face.
+
+"But why?" he asked.
+
+"Why?  Is it not plain to you?  Keep her so that Agrippa will in honor
+have to redeem her if ever he become possessed of five talents!"
+
+Now the alabarch laughed.  "I am not so sure.  Is it native in a Herod
+to love his wife so well?  It would be a bad mortgage for me to
+foreclose--one cast-off female whose chief uses are for tears!"
+
+"No, by Venus!  She is too comely to play Dido.  But try my plan,
+Alexander.  It is well worth the experiment."
+
+The alabarch arose and stepped down from the rostrum.  "It--it is--" he
+hesitated.  "But then, I should have them on my hands, under any
+circumstances."
+
+He took a few more steps, and paused for thought.
+
+"Well enough," he said finally, "we shall see."
+
+With a motion of farewell to the proconsul, he passed out and
+disappeared.
+
+Flaccus dropped back into his curule, and lapsed again into gloomy
+meditation.  The night fell and obscured him.  He seemed to be waiting,
+but not with marked impatience.
+
+Again the atriensis bowed before him.
+
+"A lady who says she was summoned," he said.
+
+"Let her enter.  And bid the lampadary light the torch, yonder, not
+here--and only one."
+
+The atriensis disappeared, and presently a slave with a burning reed
+set fire to the wick in one of the brass bowls by the arch into the
+vestibule, and Junia appeared.
+
+"Hither, and sit beside me, Junia," Flaccus called to her.
+
+He drew the chair closer, which the alabarch had occupied, and Junia,
+dropping off her mantle and vitta, sat down in it.
+
+"What a despot one's living is!" she exclaimed.  "But for the fact I
+owe my meat and wine to thy favor, thou shouldst have come to me,
+to-night, not I to thee!"
+
+"I came often enough at thy beck, Junia!  It were time I was visited!"
+
+"Thou ill-timed tyrant!  I am expected at a feast to-night, and my
+young gallant doubtless waits and wonders, at my house."
+
+"Let him wait!  I was his predecessor, and his better.  Methinks thou
+hast reduced thy standard of lovers of late."
+
+"No longer the man but the substance," she answered.  "In the old days
+it was muscle and front; now it is purse and position."
+
+"The first was love; the second calculation.  Why wilt thou marry this
+obscure young Alexandrian--whoever he be?"
+
+"To be assured of a living--to cast off the hand thou hast had upon me,
+thus long."
+
+He leaned nearer that he might look into her face.
+
+"So!" he exclaimed.  "Does it chafe, in truth?"
+
+She laughed.  "No," she said.  "Why should I prefer the provision of
+one man above another's?  Young Obscurity's authority over me, his
+wife, would be no less tyrannical than Flaccus'--my one-time dear."
+
+Flaccus took her hand and run his palm over her small knuckles.
+
+"_Eheu!_" he said.  "I shall not be happy to see thee wedded--"
+
+"Nor shall I; like the fabulous maiden who weeps on the eve of her
+marriage, I shall in good earnest heave a sigh over the days of my
+freedom.  Alas! the mind grows old young, that learns the fullness of
+life early.  There are as many ashes on my heart as there are in this
+bulging temple of thine, Avillus."
+
+"Dost thou love this--boy?  Beshrew him, let him have no name!"
+
+"How?  Dost thou love the usurer that lends thee money, Flaccus?"
+
+"What dost thou love, at all?" he asked.
+
+"Sundry old memories; perchance the image of a consul, less portly,
+less purple, less stiff--and less imposing!"
+
+"Pluto! am I like that?" he demanded.
+
+"To one that was thy dear in younger days.  To one who does not
+remember the sprightlier man, thou couldst be less charming."
+
+"Younger?  Now, how much younger?  Six years at most!  Thou hast not
+changed in that time; why should I?"
+
+"O Avillus; between the stage of the sun at noon and the previous hour,
+there is no appreciable change.  But mark the difference an hour makes
+at sunset.  But why this inquisition?  Has Eros pierced thee in a new
+spot?"
+
+"Pierced me twenty years ago and his arrow sticketh yet in the wound it
+made!"
+
+"What!  Spitted on an arrow during all those days thou didst love me?"
+
+"But Eros has arrows and arrows, of many kinds, and two diverse barbs
+may with all consistency find lodgment at once in a heart.  But of
+myself we may speak later; at present, I am moved to labor with thee
+for thine own welfare.  Why wilt thou marry this boy, for his purse,
+when there are men in pain for thy favor?"
+
+She studied him a moment.  "I can not take thee back, Flaccus; love's
+ashes can not be refired though the breath of Eros himself blew upon
+them."
+
+"Impetuous conclusion; hast thou forgotten the twenty-year-old wound
+which I confessed just now?  I am this moment only an arbiter for my
+better--my betters--"
+
+"I shall keep the twenty-year-old barb in mind," she said.  "Methinks
+it is that which pricks thee into activity for me."
+
+"A wiser surmise than the first.  But curb thy frivolous spirit; I am
+weighted with the business of the great.  What dost thou here, O
+divinity, away from Rome and the arms of Caesar?"
+
+"Dost thou forget that we were invited away, because of my father's
+unfortunate preference of Sejanus, during the days of Sejanus'
+greatness?"
+
+"O Venus, can not the ban be lifted?  Behold,"--stretching out his
+muscular arm, "Flaccus is a strong man."
+
+"Even then, is Tiberius thy better in comeliness?  Perchance he would
+not please me."
+
+"I speak, now, to thy sordid self; but if thy maiden love of grace
+still lives in thee, there shall another serve thee.  Have I not said I
+indorse two?"
+
+"Two!"
+
+"Two.  Of Caesar first.  His part in the bargain is really the smaller
+thing.  Thou, who couldst dint Flaccus' heart in Flaccus' stonier days,
+who upset Caligula's domestic peace, put gray hairs in Macro's
+forelock--all these in their doughty prime, methinks my poor doting
+ancient in Capri will fall like a city with a thousand breaches in its
+wall."
+
+"Oh, doubtless," she admitted; "but what of myself?  If thine impurpled
+countenance--for all it is as firm as cocoanut flesh--if thine
+impurpled countenance does not suit my Epicurean tastes, how shall I
+content myself with the toothless love-making of a mumbling Boeotian?"
+
+"Thou canst comfort thyself with a comely bankrupt on the gold of the
+toothless one."
+
+"It is complicated; too much duplication and detail," she objected.
+
+"Thou hast done it before," he declared.  "Thou art right expert."
+
+She laughed and leaned back in her chair.
+
+"Name me the comely one," she commanded.
+
+"Agrippa."  There was silence, in which she lifted her lowered eyes
+very slowly and faced him.  Amusement made small lines about her eyes,
+and in her face was worldly wisdom mingled with a sort of friendliness.
+
+"And now," she said in a quiet tone, "for the twenty-year-old wound.
+Is it the Lady Herod?"
+
+His gaze dropped; emotion put out the half-humor which had enlivened
+his face.  Presently he scowled.
+
+"I have twitched the barb," she opined; "the wound is sore."
+
+"Sore!" he brought out between clenched teeth.  "Sore!  I tell thee,
+that though it is twenty years since I stood and saw her bound to him
+by the flamens, I have not ceased day or night to suffer!"
+
+Junia looked at him with frank amazement on her face; the proconsul was
+declaring, with passion, a thing which she could not believe possible.
+Such love as she knew, by the carefulest tendance, would have burnt out
+and resolved into cold ashes in half that time.  That it should endure
+years, suffer discouragement, bridge distances and surmount obstacles,
+all uncherished and unrequited, was fiction, pure and simple.  Yet to
+reconcile this conviction with the honest suffering of the bluff man at
+her side was a task she could not attempt.
+
+"Flaccus, I never pained thee so," she murmured.  "Perchance the Jewess
+dropped madness from a philter in thy wine.  And for simple cruelty,
+too, for she is fond of her graceful Arab."
+
+The proconsul raised his head and looked at her with such speechless
+ferocity, that she shrank away from him, remembering former
+experiences.  But he dropped his head into his hands and did nothing.
+
+She watched him for a moment then ventured discreetly:
+
+"Is it thy wish to win him from her, or her from him?"
+
+"Both!" he answered.  "The one accomplished, the other follows!"  With
+a sudden accession of emotion, he laid his short, powerful fingers
+about her smooth wrist and bent over her.
+
+"Help me, Junia!" he besought.  "Weigh what I offer against the portion
+of any Alexandrian.  By the lips of Lysimachus, the richest man in the
+city, I know how little even he may waste--two hundred thousand
+drachmae--the cost of a single necklace Caesar might put about thy
+throat.  I never failed Tiberius; his esteem of me is great.  I have
+only to ask and the decree of banishment, or the sentence against thy
+father, shall be lifted.  Thou shalt return in honor to Rome; thy
+father shall be one of Caesar's ministers, and thou shalt take thy place
+among the first of the patricians.  And Tiberius lays no bond of
+fidelity upon his ladies.  I saw thee, last night!  I saw thee run
+thine eyes along the Herod's sleek length--curse him, it was that which
+undid me!  I saw thy fancy incline toward him.  It will be a new and
+pleasant game for thee, Junia--a game in which thou art skilled--but it
+is my life--my very life to me!"
+
+She frowned at the jewels on her fingers.  There was no reason why she
+should not lend herself to Flaccus' schemes when her enlistment in his
+cause assured to her the realization of the highest ambitions of her
+kind.  But enough of the creature impulse toward perversity, admitting
+that his gain would be as great as hers, restrained her.  She was
+uncomfortable, uncertain, peevish.  Meanwhile, the proconsul's
+gray-brown eyes, large, intense, demanded of her.
+
+"Wait!" she fretted at last.  "Thou art hasty!  And perchance thou dost
+only make place for this mysterious fugitive for whom she was so
+solicitous last night!"
+
+He remembered his own jest with the alabarch, and added thereto the
+impatient surmise of this penetrative woman.  Could such a thing be
+possible?  He sprang to his feet, all the intensity of his emotion
+concentrated in a spasm of fury and menace.
+
+"Let him come!" he said between his teeth.  "Let him come!"
+
+She worked her hand loose from him.
+
+"Wait," she repeated.  "Thou hast built gigantically on no foundation.
+Let something happen.  And if I am pleased to follow thy plans, I may;
+but be assured if I am not, I will not.  My debt to thee is less than
+thy demands, Avillus."
+
+She arose and put on her mantle, while he stood watching her every
+movement.
+
+"I shall wait," he said presently, "only a little time."
+
+She made a motion of impatience and withdrew from the atrium.
+
+He stood motionless for a long time; then he called his atriensis.
+
+"Send hither the chief apparitor," he said.
+
+The captain of the proconsul's personal guard appeared and saluted.
+Flaccus, in the meantime, had searched through the documents on the
+floor and by the dim light identified one.
+
+"Take this," he said, handing the apparitor the parchment, "and make
+search for the man herein described.  Seek him in Ptolemais, wherever a
+Nazarene warren hides, in Jerusalem, in Alexandria--meet every incoming
+ship, spend the half of my fortune, wear out my army--but find him, or
+lose thy life!"
+
+The chief apparitor looked unflinching into the proconsul's gray-brown
+eyes.
+
+"I hear," he said.
+
+The proconsul waved his hand and the soldier withdrew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE HOUSE OF DEFENSE
+
+Meanwhile Marsyas lay on his straw pallet at the house of Peter, the
+usurer, in Ptolemais, night after night and made calculation.
+
+By fair winds, Agrippa should reach Alexandria in so many days.
+Allowing time to begin and complete the negotiations for a loan, so
+many more days should elapse.  Then the same number with a few allowed
+for foul weather would be required to return to Ptolemais.  About such
+a day, so many weeks hence, he told himself he should be ransomed.
+
+Six weeks is a long time for a free man to be enslaved.  He sighed and
+turned again on his pallet and trusted in the God who does not forget
+prayers.
+
+It was a strange, sordid biding of time for Marsyas.  The man he served
+was the first of the kind he had ever known.  The ascetic refinement of
+the white old Essene, the simple purity of Stephen, the polished rigor
+of the Pharisee Saul, the naive sophistication of the Romanized Herod
+had constituted his social horizon, and he had come to believe that the
+world's manner was either cultured or simple.
+
+But he went into the usurer's counting-room to meet the borrowing
+world, to be amazed and shocked and finally to fortify himself to
+control it.
+
+It was not to change his nature; it was to develop latent powers in him
+that were the fruit of long generations of Judaism.  At night his
+fingers were soiled by contact with the coins, the counting-room had
+become noisome with the day's heat and the unhappy humanity that had
+come and gone through the busy hours.  But he summed up, not what he
+had sacrificed in soul-sweetness and optimism, for that was a loss he
+did not realize, but his triumphs in achieving whatever he had been
+bidden to do, in his mastery of men and things and in the thoroughness
+of his workmanship.  However loudly his mind declared that he was out
+of place, he felt no great repugnance to his duty.
+
+After the newness of his experience wore off, as it did in a very short
+time, the days began to go with wearing deliberation, as all days go
+that are counted impatiently.  His sorrow and his wrongs were his only
+companions; as his anxiety for his liberty and Agrippa's success
+increased, his healthy indifference to his unwholesome atmosphere began
+to decline rapidly, his resentment against his oppression to grow.  The
+six weeks ebbed out and passed.  His anxiety flowed into his bitterness
+and his bitterness into his anxiety until they were one.  Troubled
+about his liberty, he clenched his teeth and thought on Saul; thinking
+of his impotent position against the powerful Pharisee, he watched the
+harbor from the counting-room and trembled whenever a sail crossed it.
+
+Inactivity became eventually unbearable, for an unemployed moment was a
+miserable moment.  He could not devise a way to liberty, nor further
+aid his one ally into power, so he turned to his own resources against
+Saul.
+
+Continuing cautiously to visit the proseuchae by night, he learned
+something, which he heard casually at the time, but which eventually
+developed into a matter of importance.  He heard that the Nazarenes
+were flying from Jerusalem in great numbers, scattering in bodies from
+Damascus to Alexandria, and from Jerusalem to Rome.  The rabbis of
+Ptolemais were concerned to discover that there was a community hiding
+in the city, because they feared the evils of a persecution,
+established in Ptolemais, as much as the influence of the apostasy upon
+the faithful.
+
+When Marsyas admitted casually to himself, after he had heard the
+tidings, that the apostasy must have numbers of followers, he was
+carried in his thinking to the realization that numbers meant strength
+and strength meant resistance.  Why, then, should not these people turn
+on the Pharisee?  Here, in a twinkling, he believed that he had
+discovered abettors, allies whom he could instantly enlist in his own
+cause.
+
+But before he could deduce resolution from this electrifying admission,
+events began to mark his days.
+
+Late one afternoon, after the time for his ransoming was out, a man
+approached the opening in the grating.  The shadows in the
+badly-lighted chamber made client and steward and all the appointments
+in the dingy counting-room imperfect shapes to the eye.  The new-comer
+leaned down to the opening and peered at Marsyas as he pushed a fibula
+of gold through the opening.
+
+"I am in need," the man said.  "Canst thou not give me the value of
+this in money?"
+
+The voice was resonant and strangely familiar to Marsyas.  In the gloom
+the great lifted shoulders of the man, bending from his height, brought
+back on a sudden the chamber in the college at Jerusalem.  The young
+Essene came closer to the grating and looked at the applicant.
+
+There was a mutual start of recognition; in Marsyas perhaps the chill
+that a fugitive feels who finds himself detected.  The man was the
+Rabbi Eleazar.
+
+"Thou!  Here, with them?" the rabbi exclaimed in a suppressed whisper.
+
+"I am here, Rabbi," Marsyas replied, "but alone."
+
+Eleazar looked at him, but the examination under the difficulty of the
+gloom was not satisfactory; besides, there was the stir of others who
+had come in behind him and were able to listen.  Marsyas swept the
+fibula into one of the coin-baskets and passed a handful of silver to
+the rabbi.
+
+"Meet me without at the end of the first watch to-night," the rabbi
+added, as he thanked Marsyas.  "Do not fear me, for I am also a victim
+of thine enemy."
+
+Marsyas saluted him, and the rabbi disappeared.  A figure in armor
+stepped up to the place where Eleazar had stood.  He was helmeted and
+greaved and had a line of purple about the hem of his short tunic.  He
+applied for a loan and yielded as indorsement the favor of Caesar and
+the family name of Aulus.  Marsyas withdrew hastily into the
+overhanging shadow of the grating, received the officer's note, counted
+out the gold and drew in a free breath when another stepped into his
+place.  It was Vitellius' legionary.
+
+"Am I run to earth?" Marsyas asked himself.
+
+At the end of the first watch that night he prepared to follow
+Eleazar's suggestion, if only to discover what to expect.  That he was
+not filled with confidence nor resigned to suffer what might befall him
+was evident by his slipping a knife into his belt when he made himself
+ready.
+
+He went out into the unlighted street and looked about him for Eleazar.
+The tall figure of the rabbi emerged from the darkness a moment after
+Marsyas appeared and approached the young man.
+
+"Have no fear," the rabbi said.  "We are common victims of the same
+unjust suspicion; let us not be suspicious of each other."
+
+"Thy words are fair, Rabbi, but I do not know thee.  Whom I most
+trusted hath failed me of late; it must follow then that I am not sure
+of strangers.  Tell me first thy business with me."
+
+"I am Eleazar, the rabbi, who sat with Saul in the college that day
+when Joel, the Levite, came with news of Stephen of Galilee."
+
+"I know that; also that thou knowest that Saul oppresses me.  Thou art
+a rabbi and zealous for the Law.  Art thou sent for me on Saul's
+mission?"
+
+"No, brother."
+
+"Or the proconsul's?"
+
+"I know nothing of the proconsul; I am here, driven from Jerusalem by
+Saul who charged me with apostasy because I would not aid him in his
+oppression."
+
+For a moment Marsyas was dumb with amazement.
+
+"He is mad!" he cried when speech came to him.
+
+"Is it madness when he persecutes others, but villainy when he
+oppresses thee?" Eleazar demanded.
+
+"I pray thy pardon," Marsyas said quickly, "if I seem to miscall his
+work.  It might follow in reason that he should accuse me, but
+thou--thou a rabbi, accepted before the Law and clean-skirted before
+all Judea--that he should accuse thee of apostasy seems to be the work
+of no sane man."
+
+"But it is!  He layeth plans keen as Joshua's who warred under God's
+banner, and he striketh with the strength of an army.  Unless he is
+stayed he will devastate to the end!"
+
+Marsyas came close and laid a hand on the rabbi's shoulder.
+
+"What of Stephen?" he asked with stiffened lips.  "How did it come to
+pass?"
+
+For a moment there was silence, and then the rabbi drew up and shook
+himself.
+
+"It will not help thee, young brother," he said, with an impatience
+which was only fortification against feeling.  "It is ill enough to
+take a blasphemer and deliver him up to punishment; ask no more, for it
+wrenches me to think of it."
+
+Marsyas stood frozen; he did not want to hear more, after the rabbi had
+spoken, but when the reviving current of life stirred in his veins, it
+was turned to a fever for vengeance.  Now!  Not to wait for safety, or
+for circumstances or for men or things.  It seemed that he should not
+eat or sleep till his work was done.
+
+Eleazar, seeking to turn the current of the young man's thoughts, which
+he believed, being unable to see his face, must be sorrowfully
+retrospective, asked presently:
+
+"Art thou here with--them?"
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"The Nazarenes."
+
+Marsyas seized the rabbi's shoulder with a fresh grasp.
+
+"Where are they?" he demanded.
+
+"Dost thou--in truth, dost thou not know?" he demanded.
+
+"Accused though I am, I am a good Jew, Rabbi.  Never until now have I
+wished to know where they house themselves.  But even were it the
+powers of darkness which alone could help me, now, I should not
+hesitate!  Where are these apostates?"
+
+"Here, in Ptolemais.  What wilt thou have of them, Marsyas?"
+
+"Were not heathen and idolaters instruments for the Lord's work?  Have
+not even the beasts of the fields served His ends?"
+
+"What dost thou meditate?"
+
+"Saul's undoing!"  Eleazar heard him thoughtfully and answered after a
+silence.
+
+"So be it, then; if thou choosest that spirit, it must serve.  Thou
+hast a dead friend to avenge and I, the guiltless oppressed to justify.
+So the one end, the prevention of Saul's work, be attained, what matter
+if the spirit be mine or thine!"
+
+"Well enough; the means, then!  Where are these Nazarenes?"
+
+"They--they meet on the water-front, nightly, since the oppression hath
+been instituted against them," Eleazar answered reluctantly, as if he
+doubted the propriety of betraying a knowledge of the apostates' habits.
+
+"Nightly!" Marsyas repeated.  "So then to-night!  Where is the place?
+We will go there!"
+
+Eleazar stood undecided and debated with himself.  But the pressure of
+the young man's impelling firmness assumed material force against him
+and he yielded doubtfully.
+
+"Come, then," he said, and his hesitation melted in the face of the
+other's decision.
+
+Marsyas put himself at the rabbi's side and together they tramped
+through the dark streets toward the poorer districts of Ptolemais,
+along the harbor.  It was poor indeed; the houses were the smallest in
+the city, low, square boxes of sun-dried earth little higher than a
+man's head and mere stalls for space and comfort.  Each, however, had a
+numerous tenantry, and wherever doors were opened the two men saw
+within, now Jews, now Greeks or Romans.  Although uproar and disorder
+common in the lower walks of the city went on in the environments, the
+particular passage Marsyas and the rabbi walked was quiet though not
+deserted.  But it was a veritable black well, that maintained a swift
+slope for many rods and indicated the proximity to the water.
+
+"How found you them, in this hole?" Marsyas asked, astonished, in spite
+of his intent thoughts, at the black labyrinth.
+
+"I, too, was in hiding for my life's sake," Eleazar answered.
+
+The brooding cornices of the houses, visible against the strip of
+starry sky, rounded suddenly and closed in upon the passage.  Marsyas
+saw that they were nearing a blind end, when a door opened in the
+cul-de-sac, disclosing several other men preceding Marsyas and the
+rabbi.
+
+"Haste!" Eleazar whispered, and, seizing Marsyas' hand, ran so that
+they reached the lighted doorway before it closed again.
+
+They entered with the others, and the bolts were shot behind them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+SCATTERING THE FLOCK
+
+They were in a single large chamber, rough, barren and barn-like.  The
+gray drapery of cob-webs was sown with chaff; there was the fresh smell
+of grain with the mustiness of dust contending for prominence; the
+floor was dry packed earth that had not tasted rain for a century.
+High above the few resin torches burning on the walls, huge cedar beams
+traversed the ceiling which was tight, that no moisture nor the
+consuming rays of the sun should enter.  It was an abandoned grain
+house, builded just without the reach of the highest storm-wave on the
+water-front.
+
+There were two or three benches, but not seating capacity for the
+number gathered there.  So the youths, women and children sat on the
+earth along the walls and left the benches to the older men of the
+assembly.
+
+Marsyas glanced at the gathering.  He saw there not one, but many
+races, however Jewish in predominance.  In most of the number he found
+a common expression, which made him think.  It was a certain
+delineation of fortitude, a brave patience that does not forswear
+persistence, however seriously the heart fears.  In others, there were
+curiosity and expectation; in still others, apprehension and suspicion.
+These, he noted, seemed not to wear that look of uplift; intuitively,
+he knew them to be investigators, more or less convinced, at the
+moment.  Others, he saw, came with bundles of belongings as if prepared
+for a journey.
+
+Eleazar selected a place by the door and signing to Marsyas that he
+would sit and await the young Essene's will, dropped down on the packed
+earth, and, drawing up his powerful limbs, clasped his arms around
+them.  The torch above his head threw the shadow of his projecting
+kerchief over his face and hid his features.
+
+There was space between him and the next sitter, a young woman wearing
+the dress of a Jewish matron.  She glanced uneasily at the huge
+stranger and drew closer to a man of her own age, on the other side.
+Marsyas, seized with a new interest, sat down between the rabbi and the
+woman.
+
+At the farther end of the building a man arose.  He had a pilgrim's
+scrip at his side; he put away a staff as he gained his feet, and the
+heightened color of the brown on his cheek-bones and his nose showed
+that he had but recently come from a long journey.
+
+He raised his arms over the assembly, and each of those gathered there
+bowed his head and clasped his hands.
+
+"O patient Bearer of the Cross," he prayed, "let us not faint thus
+soon--we who are driven on!  Let Thy footsteps be illumined that we may
+go Thy way, even though they lead unto Calvary!  Teach us Thy
+submission, quicken us with Thy love, clothe us with Thy charity, that
+they who oppress us may see that submission is stronger than rebellion,
+that love is more enduring than hate, that charity is broad enough for
+our enemies.  And if it be Thy will that we should love the spoiler of
+Thy Church and the destroyer of Thy saints, teach us then to love that
+enemy!"
+
+This of a surety was not what Marsyas had expected to hear.
+Undoubtedly the praying man spoke of Saul.  The prayer continued.
+
+"Lo, Thou hast tarried thus long away from us, and evil already
+gathereth thick about Thy people.  In those days, when we asked and
+were answered, voice unto voice, we did not grope.  Now, O Lord, we ask
+and there answers but the speech of faith left in us, and that in
+grievous hours--doth not bid the cup to pass from us!"
+
+Marsyas' chin sank on his breast; somehow the faltering sentences fell
+on some keenly sensitive spot in his soul, for in spirit he winced, and
+listened intently, in spite of himself.
+
+"Yet, judge us not as wavering, O Lord; we but miss Thee from our side,
+who loved Thee, O Christ!"
+
+The sentence ceased suddenly at the edge of a break in the voice.  It
+seemed that human sorrow had broken in on an inspiration, and the sound
+of a sob arose here and there from the bowed circle of Nazarenes.
+
+Marsyas suddenly saw the dark trampled space without Hanaleel, the
+falling night, the still figure of Stephen stretched on the sand, the
+three humble mourners who of all Jerusalem were not afraid to sorrow
+for him, and the young Essene choked back a cry to the praying man,
+
+"I know thy pain, brother!"
+
+For that instant bond of sorrow it did not matter that, according to
+Marsyas' lights, the praying man blasphemed and besought another than
+the one Lord God as divinity.  The Nazarene had loved a friend and lost
+him from his side; the voice had ceased and, in place of the warm
+content, only agony and emptiness abode in the heart.
+
+"Show us Thy will; let us see and we shall follow; above all things
+quicken our ears that Thy loved voice may still be sweet in them across
+the boundaries of Death and through the darkness which embraceth our
+heads.  Lo, Thou art with us alway even unto the end, we believe, we
+believe!"
+
+There was too much human suffering, self-examination and beseeching in
+the prayer for it to help any who heard it.  It was not like Stephen's
+prayers, which had seized upon Marsyas' spirit because of their
+unshaken confidence and beatification, and had terrified him, as
+assaults upon his steadfastness.  In those moments, he had been afraid
+of the Nazarene heresy; now, he was stirred to pity for the heretics.
+The sensation added to his resolution against Saul.
+
+Another voice roused him, by reason of its difference from that of the
+first speaker.  It was not loud, but it carried and penetrated every
+dusty corner of the great space, with the strength and evenness of a
+sounded horn.  The temper as well as the quality was different; it was
+triumphant, eager, glad.
+
+"It is the hour of fulfilment, beloved; the accomplishment of the
+prophecy, for by persecution shall we who are witnesses to the truth be
+scattered into all the world that the gospel may come unto every
+creature.  The flesh in us which crieth out and feareth death shall be
+the instrument whereby fleeing to save ourselves we shall go quickened
+into distant lands and testify.  Wherefore let not any soul lament this
+day nor denounce the circumstance which sendeth him into strange places
+and unto the Gentile.  Ye were not charged to save your flesh but to
+save your souls.  And whosoever saveth his soul hath Christ in his
+bosom and Christ on his tongue; wherefore the Redeemer is not dead and
+buried, nor even passed from among you, but living and preaching
+numerously, by many tongues.  Doubt not ye shall have your Gethsemane
+and your Calvary, yet likewise ye shall arise from the dead and enter
+into Paradise.  The oppressor shall persecute, the rod hang over you,
+the Cross be set up, but though ye go forth unweaponed ye shall level
+walls and throw down tyrants by the power of love; ye shall conduct
+peace and mercy through the flights ye make from oppression, and Life
+everlasting shall begin where your hour is accomplished and ye die.
+
+"If there be any among you who are timid in flesh that say in their
+souls, 'Let us find a secure place and live secretly and in godliness
+away from the abominations of the wicked,' verily I say unto such, if
+the world were precious enough unto the Son of God that He suffered
+death to save it, it is not too evil for the habitation of them who
+were in sin and ransomed by His sacrifice.
+
+"If there be those among you given to wrath and vengeance who shall
+say, 'Let us fall upon the oppressor and put him to death,' verily I
+say unto such if the Son of God, who was despised and rejected of men,
+who raised the dead and cleansed lepers, directed not His powers to
+punishment and havoc, how shall ye, who are but lately lifted out of
+sin and damnation?
+
+"Ye are ministers of peace and love and humility.  Go forth and testify
+to these things in His name, and I who stand before you, elected of Him
+whom ye follow to speak His word, I say unto you that if ye testify
+faithfully, no persecutor shall triumph over you, no power shall
+overthrow you, no evil shall prevail against your souls!"
+
+This was not the spirit Marsyas would select to aid him in his
+punishment of Saul; it was an alien doctrine opposed to nature; but he
+did not doubt the preacher's sincerity.  His utterances were not
+strange to the ears that had listened with such fear to Stephen.  But
+it seemed that one in the assembly was not satisfied.
+
+"Yet the saints perish by the persecutor," the man spoke.  "Behold
+Stephen is martyred already in Jesus' name."
+
+Marsyas' eyes sought out the speaker; he was one of the unconvinced who
+sat apart and had become perplexed.
+
+"O my brother, when was it said unto thee by the teachers of Christ
+that death is the end?  I saw Christ on the cross; on the third day I
+saw Him living in the council of the apostles.  The powers of evil
+pursued Him only to the tomb; there began the dominion of God, and He
+ascended unto Heaven and to eternal life.  Believest thou this?  Thy
+face sayeth me 'yea'; is it not written that they who believe on Him
+shall share each and all of His blessings?  Wherefore, though Stephen
+died, he liveth triumphant over his enemies; so shall ye, who are
+faithful unto the end."
+
+"But--but," the man objected, troubled, "is the Church to perish, thus,
+one by one?  If we die in this generation, who shall gather the harvest
+of the Lord?"
+
+"'Whoso would save his life shall lose it,' said the Master.  Is it
+part of faith to fear that evil will triumph?  Wilt thou hold off Life
+eternal that thou mayest bide a little longer in such insecurity as
+this life?  And I tell thee that the fear of the adversary is awakened,
+and the strength of his forces is aroused.  We measure by his rage
+against the elect his fear of Christ prevailing.  No man leadeth forth
+an army with banners against that which is weak and which he fears not.
+Jesus, on whom thou believest, said, 'I have overcome the world.'  Know
+then that the Church can not perish; that the persecutor rageth
+futilely; that the oppressor fighteth against the Lord.  Doubt no
+longer, lest thy doubt become a fear that an enemy shall overthrow God!"
+
+The young man who sat by the woman at Marsyas' side spoke next.
+
+"I am submissive, Rabbi; yet, how far shall we fly?  I am the
+bridegroom of Cana at whose marriage the Lamb was.  When He changed
+water into wine He turned my heart into wondering, and from wondering
+into belief.  But the sentence of wandering hath driven me out of Cana,
+out of Galilee, out of Judea into Syria.  How far shall we flee, Rabbi?"
+
+"We, too, are driven," many broke in at once.  "Few here are citizens
+of Ptolemais; we have left our homes and have fled far.  How long must
+we go on?"
+
+"As far as God's creatures fare; as far as the Word hath not
+penetrated," was the answer.
+
+The faces of many fell, tears stood in the eyes of others, and still
+others murmured wearily.  The sun-browned pilgrim who had prayed and
+who had leaned with a shoulder and his head against the wall, while the
+teacher spoke, raised himself.
+
+"My heart goeth out in pity for you," he said sorrowfully.  "Behind you
+the consuming fire, before you the overwhelming sea.  I am newly come
+from Jerusalem; I know what awaits you if ye fly not.  Even the Gentile
+can not be worse than he who breathes out threatenings and slaughter
+against you, in the name of the Law.  Fare forth; the world can not be
+worse; it may be kindlier."
+
+Marsyas observed this man; in him was more promising material for his
+work than in the preacher.  But the preacher looked over the
+congregation, by this time bowed and filled with distress.
+
+"It is your Gethsemane," he said, turning the pilgrim's declaration
+into comfort, "but He sleepeth not while ye pray."
+
+Marsyas looked over the congregation and saw here and there strong
+faces and bold, to whom the ordinance of submission must have been a
+bitter ordinance.  He arose.
+
+"I behold that this is a council, in which men may speak," he said.  "I
+take unto myself the privilege, as one akin to you in suffering if not
+in faith."
+
+His voice commanded by its Essenic calmness.  Every eye turned toward
+him.  They saw the habiliments of a slave covering the stature and
+dignity of a doctor of Laws.  The preacher looked interested, and the
+congregation stirred toward the young man.
+
+"By the words of your teacher," he continued, "I see that ye are
+summoned here to be banished.  I see your reluctance; I know your
+sorrow, for I, too, have been driven on, even by your enemy."
+
+"Who art thou, young friend?" the preacher asked.
+
+"I am an Essene."
+
+"An Essene!" many repeated, stirred into wonder at knowledge of the new
+apostleship.
+
+"As was John the Baptist!" one declared.
+
+"Nay, then;" a voice rose out of the comment, "thou shalt be kin to us
+in faith so thou acceptest Jesus of Nazareth."
+
+"Let us lay aside the discussion of doctrine, in which we can not
+agree," the young man went on, "and unite in our cause against Saul of
+Tarsus."
+
+The kindly eyes of the preacher became paternal as he gazed at the
+hardness growing in the young man's face.
+
+"Our cause," he said gently, "is not Saul of Tarsus, but Jesus Christ."
+
+"Are ye sincere in your boast that ye will not defend yourselves?"
+Marsyas demanded.
+
+"What need, young brother?  God defends us."
+
+"Well enough; but what of the persecutor?"
+
+"God will overtake him."
+
+"When?  When he hath desolated Israel, stained the holy judgment hall
+with tortured perjury, slandered the Jews before the world as slayers
+of the innocent?  Your talk is all of the life hereafter; I, too,
+expect to live again; yet I am here to come and go at God's will, not
+Saul's!  Even ye, in all your infatuation, will not call Saul's work
+God's work!  I will not be driven and desolated by Abaddon!"
+
+He did not wait for the preacher, who seemed prepared to speak.
+
+"I was the friend of Stephen, of whom ye spoke with love to-night.
+Saul consented unto his death in spite of my prayers for him, and
+before I could save him.  When I rebuked Saul for his bloody zeal he
+denounced me as an apostate and set the Shoterim upon me so that I am
+obliged to flee for my life.  For mine own wrongs I do not care, but
+the blood of Stephen cries out to me, the spectacle of his death rises
+to me in my dreams, and the infamy of it fills my hours with anguish.
+Ye say he was one of your saints, a martyr in the name of your Prophet,
+a teacher and a power in your church.  Ye claim that ye loved him.  Yet
+ye make timid preparation to flee before the oppressor who brought him
+low, and lift no hand to avenge his death!  Are ye men?  Have ye loves
+and hearts?  Do ye miss him--"
+
+The pilgrim pressed his palms together and looked at the young man with
+passionate grief in his eyes.  Marsyas turned his words to him.
+
+"Was ever his touch laid upon you, warm with life and tender with good
+will?  Did ever his eyes bless you with their light?  Can ye take it
+idly that his hands grasp the dust and the tomb hath hidden his smile?"
+
+The pilgrim covered his face with his hands.
+
+"These be things that philosophy can not return to me!" Marsyas drove
+on.  "I can not pray Stephen back to my side; I can not hope till his
+voice returns to my ear; I can not flee till I find him!  And by the
+holy and the pure who have gone down into the grave before him, I know
+that ye can not!  Is it no matter to you that his memory is held in
+scorn?  Are ye not stabbed with doubts that he died in vain--even ye
+who believe thus firmly that he was right?  And I, being a Jew and an
+upholder of the Law, can I be content, knowing he was cut off in
+heresy?"
+
+The congregation began to move as he went on; men rose from sitting to
+their knees, as if prepared to spring to their feet.  The preacher
+circled the room with a glance, but the eyes of the people were upon
+the young man.
+
+"Your Prophet and my Stephen!  And ye fly!  There are certain of you
+that are strong men, and Stephen was as delicate as a child.  There is
+blood and temper and strength and numbers of you, but Stephen went
+forth alone--and died!  Where were ye?  What of yourselves, now?  Are
+ye afraid of the weakling Pharisee?"
+
+There was a low murmur and men sprang to their feet, with flashing eyes
+and clenched hands.  The pilgrim flung up his head and drew in his
+breath till it hissed over his bared teeth.  Eleazar stood up by the
+young Essene and gazed straight at the preacher, as if holding himself
+in check until the leader declared himself.  But the preacher put up
+his hands and hurried into the center of the building.
+
+"Peace, children!" he said kindly but firmly.  His hands lifted higher
+as the stature of his authority seemed to tower over the people.  In
+the sudden silence those that had stood up sank down again, the pilgrim
+lowered his head and only Marsyas and the rabbi at his side seemed to
+resist the quieting influence of the pastor.  The extended palms
+dropped and the Nazarene looked at the young Essene.
+
+"Vengeance is mine and I will repay, saith the Lord.  Eye for an eye
+and tooth for a tooth is of the old Law and is passed away!"
+
+"There, O strange pastor of a human flock, our ways part.  I am a Jew,
+thou a Nazarene--our laws differ.  Yet if, as ye preach, the God of
+Moses is also the God of your Prophet, ye are delivered sentences and
+punishments for evil-doing.  Wherefore, if ye evade them, ye evade a
+divine command!"
+
+"We do not punish; we correct.  Punishment is God's portion."
+
+"Are ye not instruments?" the young man persisted.
+
+The preacher did not answer at once; his eyes searched Marsyas' face
+for some expression by which he might select his line of argument.
+
+"Bethink thee, young brother," he said finally.  "How would Stephen
+answer thee in this?"
+
+Marsyas' demanding eyes wavered and fell; his lips parted and closed
+again; he frowned.
+
+"Whom then wouldst thou please in this vengeance?  Not Stephen!  Then
+wilt thou comfort thyself with bloody work, while the tomb stands
+between thee and Stephen's restraining hands?"
+
+Marsyas threw up his head defiantly, shaking off the influence of the
+argument.
+
+"Do ye in all truth follow the doctrine that bids you suffer without
+requital?" he demanded, even while feeling that his logic was impotent.
+
+"God directs all things; if it be His will that we shall suffer or
+escape, God's will be done!"
+
+"It is cowardly!" Marsyas declared with flashing eyes.
+
+The preacher came closer.  "I believe that thou art determined and
+sincere.  Suppose Saul fell into thy hands, as an evil-doer, and the
+Law was ready for his blood, and God bade thee withhold thy hand.
+Would it be easy?"
+
+"No, by my soul!"
+
+"Look then at me and answer.  Is it easy for me, who hath suffered
+exactly thy sorrows, to stand still and wait on God?"
+
+Marsyas looked at the preacher.  He was tall, spare and old, his hair
+and his beard were so white that they shone in the torch-light, and his
+face was so thin and colorless that he seemed already to have put off
+the flesh.  But his eyes glowed with fire and youth.  Here of a surety
+was no weakness to call into account.
+
+"No," he answered again.
+
+"Then, O my son, which of us is truly subject to the Lord?"
+
+"Ye crucify yourselves to an unnatural doctrine!  It is not human to
+bow to it!"
+
+"When thou canst do as we strive to do, my son, thou shall know that it
+is divine."
+
+Marsyas looked at Eleazar, and the rabbi, who had his eyes fastened on
+the preacher, spoke for the first time.
+
+"That is sweet humility, while ye are oppressed," he said, in a voice
+almost prophetic.  "But will ye remember it, when ye come into power?"
+
+Power!  Had any of that congregation a hope for power?  The word
+startled them.  They looked at the rabbi's garments, clothing a huge
+frame, the strength of the Law typified, and wondered at his words.
+Even the preacher had no ready answer.  The intimation of the Nazarenes
+in power on the lips of an expounder of the Law was not conducive to
+instant comment.
+
+"So ye were in the Jews' place, what would ye do?" he asked again.
+Marsyas looked at the rabbi in surprise, but meanwhile the preacher
+answered.
+
+"Christ's doctrine suffereth no change for rank or power."
+
+"Watch; forget it not!"  Eleazar turned to Marsyas.  "I have seen, my
+brother," he said.  "This is not the method.  Let us wait; our time
+will come."
+
+Contented to go, Marsyas turned with the rabbi and together they passed
+through the gathering to the door.  But before they went out, Marsyas
+spoke again to the silent congregation.
+
+"Rest ye," he said, "we are not informers."  They went forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A TRUST FULFILLED
+
+Marsyas came forth moodily convinced by Eleazar's words.  No; it was
+not the method.  Revenge would have to come through another medium than
+the Nazarenes.  Stephen had told him before that the privilege of
+taking vengeance had been removed from the followers of Jesus of
+Nazareth.  At that time Marsyas had not believed it of the whole sect;
+but now he was not too much irritated to be convinced.
+
+"Is there any doctrine too mad to get it followers?" he said.
+
+"O brother," Eleazar said, with his chin on his breast, "it is a period
+of change.  The world wearies of its manner from time to time.  Surfeit
+of good is not less common than surfeit of evil, but it is deadlier.
+Men tire of their gods as they do of their women, and thou, being an
+eremite and unfamiliar, may not know that death is much more desirable
+than enforced toleration of satiety."
+
+Marsyas heard; satiety was only a word to him and the rabbi's
+earnestness carried no conviction for him.
+
+"It is the time for change; rest under old usages is no longer
+possible.  But Israel hath endured a long, long time in one habit."
+
+"Give me thy meaning, Rabbi."
+
+"Thou and I are good Jews, Marsyas, yet I can not say that of a surety
+of any other man in Judea.  I have come from Jerusalem, David's City,
+the rock of Israel, but the hosts of schism possess it from the Ophlas
+to the uttermost limits of Bezetha!"
+
+"Rabbi!"
+
+"I have seen; I have seen.  Saul hath set for himself a task of
+emptying the sea.  In Jerusalem they come singing to torture and death,
+but armies of them go fleeing into the rest of Judea and all the world.
+And, hear me, thou true son of Israel, the pastor of the apostates we
+heard this night declared at least one truth.  The Pharisee hath
+diffused an influence; he hath scattered a pestilence."
+
+Because it was a new charge against Saul, Marsyas accepted it.
+
+"Is there no help against him?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Marsyas, there stirreth a dread fear in me that he is the instrument
+of the time.  If not he, then another would have been called by the
+spirit of change--"
+
+"There is no such extenuation in me!" Marsyas broke in.
+
+"Might promises no allegiance to its ministers," the rabbi replied.
+
+Marsyas recalled his history for evidence to corroborate this hope that
+Saul's calamitous work might recoil upon him.  From Prometheus to
+Augustus, the declaration was sustained.  He lost sight of the rabbi's
+actual concern.  Saul covered his horizon; he could not know that
+Eleazar looked upon the Pharisee as only a detail in an immense stretch
+of grave possibilities.
+
+The young man made no reply.  A hope had been snatched from him that
+night before his sense could grasp its reality, but the disappointment
+had not weakened his intent.  His hope, for the moment centered upon
+the Nazarenes, turned again upon Agrippa.  He did not permit himself to
+speculate on the prince's possible failure.
+
+At an intersecting street they parted, without further plan than that
+they should meet again.
+
+But the next morning when Marsyas came with little spirit into the
+sunless counting-room, his first visitor was Agrippa's lugubrious old
+courier, Silas.
+
+With a cry, Marsyas wrenched open the wicket and seized the old man's
+shoulders.
+
+"Dost thou bring good or evil news?" he cried, unable to wait on the
+slow servant's deliberate speech.
+
+"Perchance either, or both," the courier answered, fumbling in the
+wallet for his written instructions.  "Perchance that which thou
+already knowest, and that which may be news.  At least, I fetch thee a
+ransom."
+
+"God reward thee for thy fidelity," Marsyas replied, "and forget thy
+sloth!  Here, let me help thee to thy message."
+
+He put away the servant's inflexible fingers and wrested the parchment
+from the wallet.  It was wrapped in silk and sealed with wax.  It was
+directed to Marsyas.  He ripped it open hastily and read:
+
+
+"To Marsyas, the Essene, to whom Cypros the Herod would owe a greater
+debt, greeting and these:
+
+"It hath come to us here in Alexandria that Vitellius pursues thee with
+a mind to punish thee for helping my lord away from his difficulty in
+Judea.  The legate hath sent couriers broadcast over the Empire to seek
+thee out, but the noble Flaccus, Proconsul of Egypt, though forewarned
+and required to deliver thee up, hath promised thee asylum in
+Alexandria.  Wherefore, if it please God that thou art preserved until
+my servant Silas reaches thee, do thou return to this city, secretly
+and with all speed.
+
+"That thou care for thyself and that thy despatch be assured, I add
+further that there is much thou canst do for me.  Delay not if the same
+good heart which suffered for us in Ptolemais still beats within thee.
+
+"Thy friend,
+    "CYPROS."
+
+
+Within were three notes of a talent each, signed by Alexander
+Lysimachus, the Alabarch of Alexandria.  Six weeks before, they would
+have been mere strips of parchment to Marsyas; to-day, with the
+commercial knowledge of a steward, Caesar's gold would not have
+commanded more respect in him.  But he crushed them in his hand and
+turned his face, suddenly grown pale and tense, toward the east and
+Jerusalem.  They meant the beginning of the destruction of Saul!
+
+Presently he signed to Silas to follow and led the way to old Peter,
+who sipped his wine in his sleeping apartment.  On the way, they met a
+slave whom Marsyas despatched to the khan for Eleazar.
+
+"But," objected Peter, with the querulousness of an old man, after the
+first flush of satisfaction over the return of his three talents, "I
+took thee in hostage, young man, because I wanted thy service as
+steward, not because I wished to please Agrippa."
+
+"But I have summoned my better to take my place," Marsyas assured him.
+"Thou shall not be without an able steward, who will serve thee for
+hire."
+
+And thus it was arranged when Eleazar arrived, that the rabbi should
+take Marsyas' place as steward and Peter, grumbling, but no less
+mollified, put on his cloak and repaired to the authorities to make the
+young Essene's manumission a matter of record.
+
+By sunset all the negotiations were completed and Marsyas, with Silas,
+passed out into the twilight and proceeded toward the mole.
+
+As they went, others were going; the freighter which was the first to
+sail for Alexandria bade fair to be crowded with passengers.  Curious
+that so many wished to depart, Marsyas looked critically at the people
+as they moved toward the water-front.  He saw that many of them had
+been with him in the Nazarene meeting the night before.  They were
+obeying the command to move on.
+
+Suddenly one of them, a young man in advance of two, old enough to be
+his parents, stopped and pointed with an outstretched arm.
+
+Marsyas glanced in the direction the youth indicated.
+
+The lower slopes of the immense western sky over the placid sea were
+delicate with the pale shades of a clear, cold, spring sunset.  The
+point where the sun had sunk, alone glowed with a sparkling, golden
+brilliance.  And set against that, far out in the bay, was a frail dark
+mast, crossed by a faint yard--a fragile crucifix sunk in a glory!
+
+The elder man did not speak; the younger looked at the thing he had
+discovered, but as Marsyas hurried in agitation by the woman, he heard
+her speak softly:
+
+"But it is bright--beyond!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+FOB A WOMAN'S SAKE
+
+The sails of the freighter had fallen slack in the breathless shelter
+of the Alexandrian harbor.  It was night, and only by daylight could
+the seamen pull the vessel by oar through the devious, perilous lanes
+between the fleets and navies packed in the greatest port in the world.
+The freighter would lie to until morning.  The passengers would land in
+boats.
+
+Its anchor rumbled down and plunged into a sea of stars.
+
+It had been a ship of silence, manned by barefoot, cowed slaves,
+captained by a surly, weather-beaten Roman and freighted with a
+strange, sorrowful company.  Now that the journey was at an end, there
+were no shouts, no noisy haste, no excited preparation.  When the wash
+of the disturbed bay settled over the anchor and the reflected stars
+grew steady again, there was silence.
+
+Marsyas stood in the bow and looked ashore.  Over the whole arc of the
+southern heavens, he saw long, beaded strands of infinitesimal points
+of fire, tangles, cross-hatchings, eddies and jottings of light--the
+lamps of Alexandria.  Right and left of him and embracing much of the
+bay, the confusion of stars swept, culminating in the towering flame
+surmounting the Pharos to the east, and failing in featureless
+obscurity to the west.  It might have been a congress of fireflies
+tranced in space.  But there came across the waters, not appreciable
+sound, but the mysterious telepathic communication of animate life.
+Marsyas sensed the heart-beat of the great invisible city under the
+_ignes fatui_ swung in the purple night.
+
+He did not contemplate it calmly.  The mystery of impending destiny was
+written over it all.
+
+The silent company of Nazarenes was put ashore an hour later at the
+wharf of the Egyptian suburb, Rhacotis, and together Silas and Marsyas
+passed up through the easternmost limits of the settlement toward the
+Regio Judaeorum.
+
+They had not progressed beyond sight of their former traveling
+companions, before the cluster of Nazarenes seemed to huddle and
+recoil, and presently turn back and flee over their tracks.
+
+As they rushed down upon the two Jews, the body seemed to have
+increased greatly in number.  The accessions were men, women and
+children; some were very old, all apparently very poor, so that the one
+small, female figure, in fine white garments showing under a coarse
+mantle, was conspicuous among the rough dark habits.
+
+Marsyas had time to note this one out of the many when the flying
+company rushed about him; after it a body of city constabulary, at the
+heels of which followed a howling mob of rabid Alexandrians.  In an
+instant, Marsyas and Silas were in the thick of the tumult.  The
+fugitives, demoralized by the attack of the constabulary, rushed hither
+and thither; the mob closed in upon them and a moving battle raged in
+the night on the square.
+
+Events followed too swiftly for Marsyas to grasp them as they happened.
+He had a heated sensation that he defended himself, defended others,
+struck gallantly, received blows, snatched up a small figure in white
+from the attack of a vindictive assailant, and then the running fight
+swept by and away in dust.
+
+He came to himself, panting and enraged, under a lamp, with a girl in
+his arms.  Confronting him with a stone in his hand was Eutychus,
+petrified with amazement and apprehension.  At one side, groaning and
+bent double with kicks and blows, was Silas.  At the other, a silent,
+brown woman peered at the insensible girl.  Up the street receded the
+sounds of riot.
+
+Marsyas permitted his angry gaze to fall from Eutychus' face to the
+stone the servitor held.  The fingers unclosed and the missile dropped.
+Then Marsyas looked down at the girl in his arms.  He drew in a full
+breath.  The hill bird in the broken wilds of Judea whistled again; the
+incense from the blooming orchards breathed about him, and the flower
+face that had looked back at him from the howdah rested now, white and
+peaceful against his breast.  Her long lashes lay on her cheeks, the
+pretty disorder of her yellow-brown curls was tossed over his arm.  He
+was strangely untroubled for all that.
+
+The brown woman watched him from the gloom.
+
+Silas meanwhile had straightened himself and was gazing with
+stupefaction at the insensible face on the Essene's breast.
+
+"It--it--" he began, stammering before the rush of recognition and
+astonishment.  "It is the alabarch's daughter--hither, fellow!" to
+Eutychus; "see this face!  See whom thou wast pursuing."
+
+Eutychus looked and fell immediately into a panic.
+
+"I did not know her!" he cried.  "By my soul, I did not know her!  I
+was only visiting vengeance on the apostates, with the people!  How
+should I expect to find her here!"
+
+Marsyas broke in on his avowal.
+
+"Do we go now to her father's house?" he asked of Silas.
+
+"Even now!"
+
+"Lead on, then.  Eutychus!  Follow!"
+
+Silas looked at the brown woman in the shadows, who beckoned and,
+turning, took roundabout and deserted passages toward the Jewish
+quarter, so that the extraordinary party proceeded unseen to the house
+of the alabarch.  Once or twice, Eutychus attempted to press up beside
+Marsyas and excuse himself, but he was bidden to be silent.  Then, on
+missing the charioteer's footfall, Marsyas turned to see him slipping
+away.  Immediately Silas was despatched to bring him back; and so,
+placed between the two, he was dragged on to the house he had attempted
+to injure.
+
+Remembering Eleazar's statement concerning the breadth of the schism,
+Marsyas was prepared to discover the alabarch a Nazarene.
+
+"O Israel! after triumph over the oppression of the mighty, is this
+your overthrow?" he said bitterly to himself.
+
+Long before he reached the alabarch's house, the figure in his arms
+stirred and made a little questioning sound.  But against her manifest
+wish, the promptings of his Essenic training and the admission that she
+had been overtaken among apostates, something in him locked his arms
+about her and brought a single word to his lips.  The gentleness of his
+voice surprised him.
+
+"Peace," he said, and she lay still.
+
+After he had said it, a sudden rage against Eutychus seized him.  The
+charioteer's part in the pursuit of the fugitive apostates assumed a
+brutality and an enormity many times greater than it had originally
+seemed.  He took savage pleasure in anticipating turning over the
+culprit to Agrippa for justice.
+
+He was led presently into a dark porch and admitted into a hall.  The
+startled porter glanced at him, and, seeing Lydia in the stranger's
+arms, the serving-man cried out.  The brown woman answered with a
+guttural sentence or two, and by the time Marsyas, following the lead
+of the agitated porter, entered a beautiful chamber, people were
+running in from brilliantly-lighted apartments beyond.
+
+The spare and elegant old figure in the embroidered robes and cap of a
+Jewish magistrate hurried toward him with terror written on his face.
+
+"Lydia!  What hath befallen thee?  Is she dead?" he cried.
+
+Back of him came a rush of people.  Foremost was Herod Agrippa; behind
+him, Cypros.  With the growing group, Marsyas ceased to note the
+details of their identity and remarked at random that one was a man who
+wore a fillet and that the other was a woman and beautiful.
+
+The number of servants increasing, the babble of questions and
+exclamations creating a great confusion, none who made answer was
+heard.  But Marsyas looked at the master of the house.  He saw this
+time, not the magistrate's alarm, but his character, his nationality,
+his religion.  In that aristocratic old countenance there was nothing
+of the Nazarene.  Marsyas let his eyes fall on the face against his
+breast.  By the brighter light, he saw now that which he had not seen
+under the smoky street-torch.  In the folds of her white dress,
+beautiful and rich enough for a feast, reposed a small cedar cross,
+depending from a scarlet cord.
+
+The young Jew with the fillet about his forehead sprang forward to take
+Lydia from Marsyas' arms.  But with the instinctive feeling that none
+must see but himself, he disengaged one hand and stopped the Jew with a
+motion.
+
+"I will put her down," he said calmly.
+
+Classicus drew himself up to his full height, but Marsyas had already
+turned toward the divan.  With a quick movement, he slipped the
+crucifix from about the girl's neck and thrust it into his tunic.
+
+Out of the babble about him he learned that the girl had supposedly
+gone to attend a maiden gathering in the Regio Judaeorum with the brown
+woman as an attendant.  Catching with relief at this bit of foundation
+for a story, he stood up prepared to tell anything but the truth.
+
+Meantime, attendants and a house physician bent over the girl with wine
+and restoratives, and the company's attention was directed toward her
+recovery.  Presently she put aside her waiting-women and sat up.
+
+Marsyas glanced from her to the brown woman, who hovered on the
+outskirts.  The handmaiden's great, mysterious, olive-green eyes were
+fixed upon him, half in appeal, half in command.  Before he could
+understand the look the Jew in the fillet turned upon him.
+
+"Come, we are learning nothing," he said in a voice that silenced the
+group.  "Thou," indicating Marsyas with an imperious motion, "seemest
+to show the marks of experience.  Tell us what happened."
+
+Marsyas' mind went through prodigious calculation.  If he frankly told
+the truth, he betrayed the girl to much misery and peril.  If he
+evaded, Eutychus, wishing to justify himself and to escape punishment,
+might wreck a fabrication by a word.  But the young man made no
+appreciable hesitation in answering.  He caught the charioteer's eye
+and held it fixedly while he spoke.
+
+"I know little," he said.  "From the ship we came up a certain street,
+where we met tumult between fugitives and pursuers.  So disorderly the
+crowd and so extensive its violence that whosoever met it on the street
+was instantly caught in its center and mistreated as much as the
+guiltiest one.  Thus I and Prince Agrippa's servant were caught; thus,
+the lady.
+
+"We defended ourselves and should have escaped scathless, but that we
+stayed to save the lady from the rioters.  This done we came hither.
+That is all."
+
+"Who were the fugitives?" the Jew in the fillet demanded.
+
+The thick lips of Eutychus parted and he drew in breath, but the lower
+lids of the black eyes fixed upon him lifted a little and he subsided.
+
+"Sir, one does not stop to identify passing strangers when one fights
+for his life," Marsyas explained calmly.
+
+Eutychus lost his air of trepidation, and his taut figure relaxed.
+
+"Where was it?" the beautiful woman asked of the charioteer.
+
+Marsyas answered directly.
+
+"Lady, one does not locate himself in the midst of turbulence."
+
+Lysimachus came closer to Marsyas.
+
+"Who art thou?" he asked.  "I met thee once, it seems."
+
+"That," Agrippa broke in, "by every act he hath done since I knew him,
+is the most generous of Jews, Marsyas, an Essene, by his permission, my
+friend and companion.  Know him, Alexander; it is a profitable
+acquaintance."
+
+Marsyas flushed under the prince's praise, and Cypros, drawing closer,
+took his arm and pressed her cheek against it.
+
+"Thrice welcome to my house," the alabarch said with emotion.  "Blessed
+be thy coming and thy going; may safety be thy shadow!"
+
+Marsyas, coloring more under the comment, thanked the alabarch and cast
+a beseeching look at the prince.  The prince smiled.
+
+"Let us supplement blessings with raiment and thanks with wine," he
+said to the alabarch.  "This is an Essene to whom uncleanliness is as
+great a crime as a love affair."
+
+"Thou recallest me to my duty," the alabarch returned, at once.
+"Stephanos,"--signing to a servitor,--"thou wilt take this young man to
+the room which hath been prepared for him and give him comfort.  If he
+hath any hurts, the physician will wait on him.  Remember, brother, I
+am at thy command."
+
+With these words, he bowed to Marsyas, who inclined his head to the
+company and followed Stephanos.
+
+But at the arch leading into the corridor, there was a low word at his
+hand.  Lydia, with the rough mantle dropped from her, stood there in
+her rich white garments.
+
+"I owe thee my life," she said, in a little more than a whisper.  "Aye,
+even more--a greater debt which I can not make clear to thee now."
+
+He looked down into her lifted eyes, pleading for pity and forgiveness.
+
+"I made thee traffic with the truth," they said.  "Thou who art an
+Essene and a holy man!"
+
+Something happened in Marsyas; a quickening rush of rare emotion swept
+over him.  He took her small hand and held it, until, shyly and
+reluctantly, she drew it away.
+
+He went then through broad halls, flooded with lights from costly
+lamps, past whispering fountains and motionless potted plants, through
+arches relieved by silken draperies which adorned without screening, up
+a broad flight of stairs to his own chamber.
+
+This was all very beautiful and restful with its occasional whiffs of
+incense, or the musical drip of the waterfall or the soft murmur of
+distant voices.  His lot had fallen in splendid places, he told
+himself, and, though opposed, by teaching, to the difference men make
+in each other, he was glad that he was not to live as a manumitted
+slave under the roof of the alabarch's house.
+
+As he stepped into the chamber which Stephanos told him was his own,
+Drumah appeared.  Startled at first sight of a man bearing marks of
+ill-usage, she stopped and cried out as she recognized him.
+
+"I am not hurt, Drumah," he said, to quiet the rush of questions on her
+lips.  "I was caught in a riot.  It is nothing."
+
+"But I see marks on thy face," she persisted, coming near him; "and thy
+garments have bloodstains on them.  Thou dost not know that thou art
+hurt.  O Stephanos," she cried to the servitor, "fetch balsam and
+volatile ointment.  Eutychus, art thou there?  Run to the culina and
+get wine!  Where is the physician?"
+
+The charioteer, who had appeared in the upper story for the express
+purpose of seeking Drumah to tell the details of the day's excitement,
+stopped short and scowled.
+
+"I thank thee," Marsyas said to her.  "I am not in need of assistance.
+The physician is with the master's daughter.  I can care for myself.
+Pray, do not give thyself trouble."
+
+He stepped into the apartment and dropped the curtain upon himself and
+Stephanos.
+
+He had given himself up to the servitor's attentions, when it occurred
+to him that he had let slip a chance to deliver a telling and a
+much-needed warning to Eutychus.  The more he considered his neglect,
+the more serious it seemed.  At last he hurried his attendant, and,
+getting into fresh garments, descended again to the first floor.  He
+despatched Stephanos in search of Eutychus and stopped by the newel to
+await the charioteer's coming.
+
+As he stood, the brown waiting-woman came to him, gliding like a sand
+column across the desert.  Coming quite close to him, she dropped on
+her knees at his side and touched her forehead to the ground.
+
+"I am a Brahmin," she said in Hindu, "and I owe thee a debt.  I shall
+not forget!"
+
+Rising, she flitted away.
+
+Marsyas looked after her in amazement.  It was the same slave-woman
+whom he had helped at Peter the usurer's.
+
+Cypros, with her head drooping, a delicate forefinger on her chin, came
+slowly and sorrowfully into the hall.  As Marsyas looked at her, she
+seemed to him to be half-woman, half-child.  But when she saw him, her
+face lighted, her eyes glowed.  With extended hands she came toward him.
+
+"Nay, nay," she said, seeing that thanks were on his lips.  "Do not
+shame me with thy thanks, Marsyas, for I had a selfish use in releasing
+thee."
+
+"But I know, nevertheless, that I should have had freedom at thy hands
+though I never saw thee again."
+
+"Oh, be not so filled with confidence and sweet believing, else I fear
+for myself," she said earnestly.  "Nay, if I were wholly unselfish, I
+should come to thee, this hour of thy honor, to bring thee praise.  Yet
+I come with mine own interest, to charge thee anew!"
+
+"Command me; thou hast purchased me!"
+
+"Not so; but thou hast purchased my husband, with the extreme of thy
+sacrifice for his sake!"
+
+"Lady, I did that thing for myself--for mine own ends!"
+
+"Nevertheless, it was my husband who profited.  Thou must learn that
+much hath transpired here in Alexandria.  The alabarch had not the
+three hundred thousand drachmae to lend--"
+
+Marsyas' forehead contracted; was not his work against Saul of Tarsus
+progressing?
+
+"--but he gave my lord in all readiness five talents, with which we
+ransomed thee.  It was all the good alabarch could afford, but it is
+not enough for me and my babes.  Wherefore Agrippa goes to Rome without
+us.  There, infallibly he will obtain money from Antonia, discharge his
+debt to Caesar and settle Vitellius' vengeful search after thee.  There,
+he shall be restored to favor with Caesar and come into possession of
+his kingdom!"
+
+"How thou liftest my bitter heart!" Marsyas exclaimed.  "Go yet further
+and say that, thereafter, I shall have my requital, my hunger after
+vengeance satisfied!"
+
+"All that shall be," she said with gravity, "on one condition!"
+
+"What?" he besought earnestly.
+
+"That he who hath Agrippa's welfare deepest in his heart shall ever be
+near my lord to protect him against himself!"
+
+"O lady, even thou canst not wish thy husband successful with greater
+yearning than I!"
+
+"So I do believe!  But hear me.  Thou seest my husband; thou knowest
+that he plans only for the moment, risks too much, is over-confident
+and too little cautious!  In the beginning he believes that he is
+right, and thereafter and on to the end he acts, chooses friends, and
+makes enemies as his conviction directs him.  Thus he ruined himself
+thrice over from Rome to Idumea.  None but one so eager for his success
+as I, but abler than I, can govern him!  And thou must be his keeper,
+Marsyas!"
+
+"Thou yieldest me a welcome charge, lady," he said quickly.  "Thou
+knowest that I would not have him fail; wherefore, I yield thee my
+word!"
+
+"Be thou blessed!  Yet there is more!"
+
+In spite of her preparation, her face flushed, and she hesitated.  Then
+as if forcing herself to speak, she said:
+
+"Thou--thou wilt keep my lord's love for me, Marsyas?"
+
+"I do not understand," he said kindly.
+
+"Thou didst not say such a thing when my lord asked thee for twenty
+thousand drachmae.  Thou didst get the drachmae; keep now my husband's
+love for me.  As thou didst offer thyself for his purse, offer thyself
+for his soul--if need be!"
+
+He frowned at the pavement and then at her.  He had evolved enough from
+her words to believe that her call aimed at his spiritual welfare and
+he remembered that he was an Essene.
+
+"Be his companion," she hurried on, "be more; be his comrade, his
+abettor, even; sacrifice much; thy prejudices, even some of thy
+spotlessness, but make thyself desirable to him.  Then thou canst
+control him.  Promise, Marsyas!  Oh, thy hope to overthrow Saul is not
+dearer to thee than this thing is to me!  Promise!"
+
+"Be comforted," he said hurriedly, for there were steps approaching
+from the inner room.  "I shall do all that I can.  More than that, one
+less than an angel can not promise!"
+
+She, too, heard the footsteps and passed up the stairs.
+
+Looking up from his disturbed contemplation of the pavement, Marsyas
+saw Classicus in the arch leading into the hall.  If the young Essene
+had been a cestophorus upholding the ceiling, the philosopher's gaze
+could not have been more indifferent.  He passed on and disappeared
+into the vestibule.
+
+Hardly had he passed, before the dark end of the corridor leading in
+from the garden gave up the stealthy figure of Eutychus, running, bent,
+purposeful and a-tiptoe, to overtake Classicus.  Evidently he had not
+seen Marsyas, for he passed without faltering and disappeared the way
+Classicus had taken.
+
+Instantly and as silently Marsyas followed.
+
+At the porch, the alabarch bade his guests good night, and when Marsyas
+brought up, he found Classicus just departing and Eutychus nowhere to
+be seen.  Surmising that there was a humbler exit for the servants, out
+of which the charioteer had taken himself, Marsyas passed out directly
+after the philosopher.
+
+His surmises were not wrong, for the instant Classicus planted foot on
+the earth without, Eutychus came out of the darkness and bowed.
+
+"Good my lord," he began, "the story truly told is this--" but his
+words babbled off into stammers and inarticulate sound, for Marsyas,
+large in the gloom, stood over him.
+
+"Thy master hath need of thee, Eutychus," he said in a soft voice.  The
+charioteer gulped and slid back into the door that had given him exit.
+
+"Peace to thee, sir," the Essene said to Classicus, and bowing,
+returned into the house.
+
+"The truth of the story is this," said Classicus as he stepped into his
+chair and was borne away, "the Essene is no Essene!"
+
+At the farther end of the corridor within, Marsyas saw Eutychus
+lurking.  Silent and swift the young Essene went after him.  The
+charioteer, fearing for cause, fled and Marsyas followed.
+
+Agrippa, on the point of ascending to his chamber, saw them flit
+noiselessly into the dusk.  His wonder was awakened.  Drumah, with a
+laver under her arm, was emerging from the kitchens when she caught a
+glimpse of them.  The prince stepped down and followed; Drumah slipped
+after.
+
+At the door leading into the colonnade of the garden, Marsyas seized
+Eutychus.
+
+"Thou insufferable coward!" he brought out.  "Thou blight and peril
+under a hospitable roof!  I know what thou wouldst have said to the
+master's guest!"
+
+Eutychus paled and struggled to free himself, but Marsyas forced him
+against the wall and pinned him there.
+
+"If so much as a word escape thee, concerning the alabarch's daughter,
+if by a quiver of thy lashes thou dost betray aught that thou knowest
+to any living being, or dead post, or empty space, I shall kill thee
+and feed the eels of the sea with thy carcass!"
+
+Fixing the charioteer with a menacing eye he held him until he was sure
+his words had conveyed their full meaning.
+
+"I have spoken!" he added.  Then he threw the man aside and turned to
+go back to his room.  But in his path, though happily out of earshot of
+his low-spoken words, stood Agrippa; behind him, Drumah.  Not a little
+disturbed, Marsyas stopped.  Eutychus saw the prince and expected
+partizanship.
+
+"Seest thou how thy servant is used by this vagrant?" he demanded.
+
+But Agrippa laid his hand on Marsyas' arm.
+
+"I do not know thy provocation," he said, "but I know it was just.  Go
+back!  It is not enough.  Teach him to respect thy strength.  Thou hast
+merely made him dangerous!"
+
+But Marsyas begged Agrippa's permission to go on and the prince, still
+declaring that the Essene had made a mistake, turned and went with him.
+
+Drumah, with her head in the air, passed Eutychus without casting a
+look upon him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE FALSE BALANCE
+
+Marsyas did not sleep the sleep of a man worn with exertion and
+excitement.  Instead he lay far into the night with his wide eyes fixed
+on the soft gloom above him.  He had many diverse thoughts, none wholly
+contented, many most unhappy.
+
+The instance of apostasy under the roof troubled him; not as apostasy
+should trouble one of the faithful, but as an impending calamity.  He
+had strange, terrifying, commingling pictures of Stephen's dark locks
+in the dust of the stoning-place, and the pretty disorder of
+yellow-brown curls thrown over his arm.  His purpose against Saul of
+Tarsus seemed to magnify in importance, by each succeeding momentous
+event.  He remembered Cypros' charge and bound himself to keep it,
+again and again through the dark troubled hours.  It was a long way yet
+until he could triumph over the powerful Pharisee, and the stretches of
+misfortune that could ensue, in the time, were things he drove out of
+his thoughts.
+
+When at last he fell asleep, he dreamed that he stood on Olivet and
+watched Saul and Lydia seeking for him in the trampled space without
+Hanaleel, while a crucifix, instead of the moon, arose in the east.
+
+The old Essenic habit was strong in Marsyas.  In spite of his long
+wakefulness, the dark red color in the east which announced the sunrise
+yet an hour to come was as a call in his ear.
+
+He arose while yet the night was heavy in the halls of the alabarch's
+house and the whisper of the sand lifting before the sea-wind was the
+only sound in the Alexandrian streets.
+
+The stairway was intensely quiet and he hesitated to descend.  But at
+the end of the upper corridor a slight dilution in the gloom showed him
+a loft let into the ceiling.  He went that way and came upon another
+stairway leading up and out into the open.  He mounted it and found
+himself on the roof of the house.
+
+At the rear was a double row of columns, roofed, and hung with matting
+which inclosed an airy pavilion where the dwellers of the alabarch's
+house could flee from the heat closer the earth.  It was furnished with
+antique Egyptian furniture, taborets of acacia, seated with pigskin, a
+diphros and divan, built of spongy palm-wood, but seasoned and hardened
+by great age, and grotesquely carved by old hands, dead a century.
+
+The young man entered and, seating himself, awaited the day and the
+arousing of the alabarch's household.
+
+The Jewish housetops toward the east made an angular sea, broken by
+parapets and summer-houses in relief against the red sky, and the
+pavements in gloom.  Strips of darker vapor meandering among them
+showed the course of passages leading with many detours into the great
+open, where was builded the Synagogue of Alexandria.  It was of
+tremendous dimensions, yet so majestically proportioned as to attain
+grace, that most difficult thing to reconcile with great size.  The
+type of architecture was Egypto-Grecian,--repose and refinement,
+antiquity and civilization conjoined to make a sanctuary that was a
+citadel.  Here, the forty thousand Jews of Alexandria could gather, nor
+one rub shoulder against his neighbor.  Marsyas looked with no little
+pride at the triumph of the God of Israel in this stronghold of
+paganism.  What a reproach it must be to them that had departed from
+the rigor of the Law!
+
+He became conscious of the little cross.  He drew it forth from its
+hiding-place and looked at it.  It was made of red cedar, slightly
+elaborated, and the cord passed through a small copper eyelet at the
+head.  To his unfamiliar eye, it was a dread image, at once a
+suggestion of suffering and retributive justice.  He had not seen one
+since his last talk with Stephen.
+
+The acute wrench the reflection gave him now incorporated a fear for
+Lydia.  Saul of Tarsus should not lay her fair head low!  He braced his
+fingers against the head and foot of the emblem to break it, when
+suddenly a bewildering reluctance seized his hand.  At the moment of
+destruction, his hand was stayed.  Stephen had loved it and died for
+its sake, and Lydia--
+
+His resolution dissolved; slowly and unreadily he put the crucifix back
+in his bosom, over his heart.
+
+At that moment, a little figure, on the brink of the housetop, was
+projected against the glowing sky.  It was firmly knit and outlined
+like an infant love.  The apparition brought, besides startlement, a
+prescient significance that made his heart beat.  Synagogue and
+Alexandria dropped out of sight.  He saw only the rosy heavens with a
+beautiful girl marked on them.
+
+He arose, and the new-comer turned toward him and approached.  And
+Marsyas watching her, in a breathless, half-guilty moment, told himself
+that never before had the fall of a woman's foot been a caress to the
+earth.
+
+He saw that she carried over her arm a many-folded length of silk, in
+the half-dusk, like a silvery mist, very sheeny and firm.  Here and
+there he discovered flame-colored streaks in it.  One of the
+morning-touched vapors in the east, pulled down and folded over the
+girl's arm, would have looked like it.  At the threshold of the
+summer-house, she let the arm fall which carried it, dropped the many
+folds and with a sudden uplift and deft circle of her hand, partly
+cocooned herself in the silken vapor.  Her eyes, lifted in the
+movement, fell on Marsyas.  With a little start, she unfurled the
+wrapping and doubled it over her arm.
+
+"I pray thy pardon," he said, with a sincerity beyond the formality of
+his words.  "I am an intruder.  But--the Essenes do not keep their beds
+long."
+
+"Neither do all Alexandrians," she said, recovering herself.  "Thou art
+welcome, for I would speak with thee."
+
+She put up one of the mattings by a pull at a cord, and sat down on a
+taboret.  She laid the silk across her lap and folded her hands upon it.
+
+"I pray thee, be seated.  I have not said all that I would say
+concerning last night.  Art thou well--unhurt?"
+
+The morning lay faintly on her face and he saw that she was paler and
+sadder of eye than was natural for one so young and so round of cheek.
+He was touched, and his answer was a tender surprise to him.
+
+"Thou seest me," he said, making a motion with his hands, "but thou--I
+would there were less of last night in thy face!"
+
+"I am well," she said, as her eyes fell.  "For that I give thee thanks,
+and for the security of my fame among my friends--and--the sacrifice
+thou madest to preserve it!"
+
+She meant his evasions that had kept the true story of her rescue
+secret.  He was glad she touched so readily upon the subject.  It gave
+him opportunity to relieve his soul of part of its burden.
+
+"I was glad," he assured her.  "Now, that thou art still safe, I pray
+thee, lady, preserve thyself.  None in all the world is so able to
+understand thy peril as I!"
+
+She looked at him, remembering that Agrippa had told them that he had
+been accused of apostasy.
+
+"Are--are these--thy people?" she asked in a whisper.
+
+"No; but dost thou remember why I went with such haste to Nazareth?" he
+asked.
+
+"To save a life, thou saidst."
+
+"Even so, I failed."
+
+She caught her breath and her eyes grew large with sympathy.
+
+"I failed," he continued.  "I went to save a friend who had gone astray
+after the Nazarene Prophet.  But they stoned him before mine eyes."
+
+Her lips moved with a compassionate word, more plainly expressed in all
+her atmosphere.
+
+"They cast me out of Judea," he went on, "because I was his friend.
+Wherefore I have tasted the death and have died not; I have suffered
+for their sin, yet sinned not!"
+
+He had never told more of his story than that, but her eyes, filled
+with interest, fixed upon him, urged him to go on.  Believing that he
+might deliver her if he told more, he proceeded, but the sense of
+relief, the lifting of his load that followed upon the course of his
+narrative were results that he had not expected in confiding to this
+understanding woman.  At first he felt a little of the embarrassment
+that attends the unfolding of a personal history, but ere long the
+fair-brown eyes urged him, with their sympathy, and consoled him with
+their comprehension.  He left the outline and plunged into detail, and
+when he had made an end, the glory of the Egyptian sunshine was
+flooding Alexandria.
+
+At the end of the story, Lydia's eyes fell slowly, and the interest
+that had enlivened her face relaxed into pensiveness.  She was
+oppressed and sorrowful, almost ready to be directed by this man of
+many sorrows.
+
+But he leaned toward her.
+
+"Henceforth, therefore," he said, "I am not a man of peace, but one
+burdened with rancor and vengeful intent.  I go not into En-Gadi, but
+into the evil world to use the world's evil to work evil.  I am
+despoiled and blighted and without hope.  Is that the inheritance which
+thou wouldst leave to them who love thee?"
+
+She drew away from him, half alarmed.
+
+"I--I am not a Nazarene," she faltered.
+
+"Do not go to them, then!" he urged eagerly.  "Do not listen to their
+teachings; for whosoever listens must die!"
+
+"I went yesterday for a different cause," she said finally, "but
+before, of interest."
+
+"But thou art a faithful daughter of Abraham; be not led of any cause.
+Remember yesterday!"
+
+"Yesterday?" she repeated quietly.  "Why yesterday?  Only the faith of
+the oppressed was different.  We of Israel's faith in Alexandria know
+many of yesterday's like, and worse!"
+
+"Suffer, then, the sufferings of the righteous!  Be not cut off for a
+folly!"
+
+She fell silent again, and smoothed the silk on her lap.
+
+"Justin Classicus told me of them," she began finally, "and their very
+difference from other philosophies, new or old, the simple history of
+their Prophet attracted me.  I sought them out, and learned that an
+Egyptian merchant who traded in Syria had passed through Jerusalem at
+the time of the Nazarene Prophet's sojourn in the city, and had become
+converted to His teaching.  He returned to Egypt and planted the seed
+of the sect in Rhacotis.  And of power and attraction, he gathered unto
+him men of his like.  Finally he carried his teaching into the
+lecture-rooms of the Library and all Alexandria heard of the Nazarenes.
+Reduced in its frenzy, his faith had a burning and unconsumed heart to
+it.  Many searched and many accepted it.  I went once--with my
+handmaiden--and heard his preaching.  And I saw in it a remedy for the
+sick world."
+
+Marsyas looked away toward the Synagogue, glittering purely against the
+dark blue waters of the bay.  He felt a recurrence of the old chill
+that possessed him, when he had failed to shake Stephen in his
+apostasy.  But she went on.
+
+"Since there is but one God there can be but one religion.  I do not
+expect a new godhead, but a new interpretation of the ancient one.
+Bethink thee; all the world was not Rome, in the days of Abraham or
+Moses or Solomon or David.  This is the hour of the supremacy of one
+will, one race.  Man does not fear God so much when he does not respect
+his neighbor at all.  Therefore, Rome, being autocrat of the earth, is
+an atheist.  She hath set up her mace and called it God.  There is no
+hope against Rome unless we hurl another Rome against it.  That we can
+not do, for there is only one world.  Sheol will not prevail against
+Rome, for Rome is Sheol.  Only Heaven is left and Heaven does not
+proceed against nations with an army and banners.  There is only one
+untried power in the list of forces, and the Nazarene hath it in His
+creed."
+
+Marsyas knew what it was; Stephen was full of it.
+
+"It is a difficult vision to summon," she continued, "but it may fall
+that a dove and not an eagle shall sit on the standards of Rome and
+that the dominion of God and not of Caesar shall prevail on the
+Capitoline Hill."
+
+She paused, and Marsyas, waiting until he might speak, put out his hand
+to her.
+
+"I heard another building such fair structures of his fancy and his
+hopes," he said, with pain on his face.  "Even though they were
+realized to-morrow, he can not see it; I, being broken of heart, could
+not rejoice.  And Lydia--for they call thee by that name--I can not see
+another in the dust of the stoning-place!"
+
+Her face flushed and paled and he let his hand drop on hers, by way of
+apology.
+
+"Then, thou wilt give over the companionship of these people?" he
+persisted gently.  She hesitated, and finally said in a halting voice:
+
+"I--went--I knew that--by thy leave, sir, thou camest to them as a
+peril.  Thou wast expected of the authorities, being doubly charged
+with apostasy and an offense against Rome, and they were permitted to
+go thither, by the legate, even by this household, in search of thee,
+when I and all under this roof knew that thou wast not among them.
+I--went to give them--warning--"
+
+"Then, the call hath been obeyed," he said kindly.  "Shut thy hearing
+against another.  I thank thee, for the Nazarenes.  Thou art good and
+wise and most generous--too rare a woman for Israel to surrender."
+
+She arose, for sounds were coming up the well of the stair, which told
+of the awakening of the alabarch's household.  She wrapped the silk in
+a closer roll and let the folds of her full habit fall over it.  After
+a little hesitation, she extended her hand to him, and he took it.
+
+Under its touch, he felt that his hour of mastery had passed.  The
+gentle, thankful pressure had put him under her command.
+
+When she disappeared into the well of the stairs, Marsyas, glancing
+about him, saw on the housetop next to him Justin Classicus.  The
+philosopher was choicely clad in a synthesis to cover him completely
+from the chill of the morning air, while yet the warmth of his bath was
+upon him.  His locks were anointed, his fillet in place.  Even in
+undress, he was elegant.  He rested in a cathedra, and contemplated his
+neighbor as distantly as he had the night before.
+
+Not until after he had broken his fast with the alabarch and his
+daughter and returned again to the housetop did he see any other of the
+magistrate's guests.  Junia's litter brought up at the alabarch's
+porch, and presently Agrippa came up on the housetop.
+
+"How now?" he exclaimed, seeing Marsyas.  "Is it the air or the sense
+of superiority over the sluggard that invites thee up at unsunned
+hours?"
+
+"Both," Marsyas replied, giving up the diphros to the prince, "and the
+further urging of an old unsettled grudge.  My lord, when dost thou
+proceed to Rome?"
+
+"Shortly; after the Feast of Flora, which is to be celebrated soon."
+
+"Nay; I pray thee, let it be directly," Marsyas urged; "for my
+bitterness unspent bids fair to rise in my throat and choke me!"
+
+"_Proh pudor_!  Cherishing a pulseless rancor with all fervor, when
+thou art here, in arm's reach and in high favor with that which should
+make back to thee all thou hast ever lost in the world!  Oh, what a
+placid vegetable of an Essene thou art,--in all save hate!"
+
+"I am to go to Rome with thee, my lord."
+
+"Of a surety!  My wife sees in thee a kind of talisman which will
+insure me favor with emperors and usurers, ward off the influence of
+beautiful women and give me success at dice!"
+
+Marsyas glanced away from Agrippa and his face settled into
+uncompromising lines.  Agrippa continued.
+
+"Nay, thou goest to see that I make no misstep toward getting a
+kingdom.  Welcome!  Be thou hawk-eyed vigilance itself.  But my
+pleasure might be more perfect did I know that thine and our lady's
+determination to crown me were less selfish!"
+
+"Thou shalt not complain of more than selfishness in me," Marsyas
+answered calmly.  "But by my dearest hope, thou shalt live a different
+life than that which hath ruined thee of late.  I know that thou canst
+win a kingdom by a word; but thou shalt not lose it by a smile.  For,
+by the Lord God that made us, thou shalt not fail!"
+
+Agrippa turned half angrily upon the young Essene, but the imperfectly
+formulated retort died on his lips.  He met in the resolute eyes fixed
+upon him command and mastery.  Words could not have delivered such a
+certainty of control.  In that moment of silent contemplation the
+contest for future supremacy was decided.  Agrippa frowned, looked away
+and smiled foolishly.
+
+"Perpol!  Did I ever think to lose patience with a man for swearing to
+make me a king?  But mend thy manner, Marsyas.  Thou'lt never please
+the ladies if thou goest wooing with this rattle and clang of
+siege-engines!"
+
+Junia appeared on the housetop.  She came with lagging steps and sank
+upon the divan, gazing with sleepy eyes at Marsyas.
+
+"I emancipated myself," she said, "from the study of new stitches, the
+neighbor's dress and the fashion in perfumes.  A pest on your rustic
+habit of early rising!  Here we are aroused in the unlovely hours of
+the raw dawn to achieve business, ere the sun bakes us into stupidity
+at midday!"
+
+"A needless sacrifice to these Egyptians," Agrippa declared.  "They are
+all salamanders.  I saw a serving-woman in this house pick up a flame
+on her bare palm and carry it off as one would bear a vase."
+
+"Vasti?  Nay, but she comes from India; fled from servitude to the
+Brahmin priesthood to take service with the man who had pitied her
+once."
+
+"The alabarch?"
+
+"Even so.  He bought the gold and onyx plates that he put on the Temple
+gates, in India, where he saw her and pitied her.  So, she fled her
+owner and sought the world over till she found the alabarch to enslave
+herself anew."
+
+"So!  Small wonder, then, she is annealed like an amphora.  Yet I had
+believed she was a bayadere."
+
+"A bayadere?" Junia repeated.
+
+"A Brahmin dancer, having the peculiarities of an Egyptian almah, a
+Greek hetaera, and a Pythian priestess, all fused in one.  But now that
+she hath repented, she is rigidly upright and a relentless pursuer of
+evil-doers."
+
+"Alas!" sighed Junia, still watching Marsyas, "is it not enough to grow
+old without having to become virtuous?"
+
+Agrippa lifted his eyes to her face, and the look was sufficient
+comment.  But Marsyas had been plunged in his own thoughts and did not
+hear.
+
+"What is the Feast of Flora?" he asked.
+
+The Roman woman smiled and answered.
+
+"A popular expression of the world's joy over the summer.  That was its
+original motive, but it has been conventionalized into a feast formally
+celebrating the reign of Flora.  It was pastoral, but the poor cities
+walled away from the wheat and the pastures adopted it, in very hunger
+for the feel of the earth.  It falls in the spring under the
+revivifying influence of awakening life and the loosed spirit of the
+populace grows boisterous.  We become a city of rustics and hoidens.
+Pleasure is the purpose and love the largess of the occasion."
+
+Agrippa smiled absently.  These two remarks of diverse character were
+tentative.  She was sounding Marsyas' nature.
+
+"I shall not sail till it is done," Agrippa declared.
+
+"A rare diversion to tempt a man from his ambitions," the young Essene
+retorted quickly.  Junia had made her sounding.  She persisted in her
+latter role.
+
+"It is," she averred.  "Flora is elected among the beautiful girls of
+the theaters; she typifies universal love; she runs, leaving a trail of
+yellow roses behind her, which lead the multitude on to the delight she
+means to take for herself--and that is all.  It is merely a pretty
+feast, but the world is made of many well-meaning though blundering
+natures; and the revel does not always reach the high mark of
+refinement at its highest."
+
+Agrippa's eyes on the Roman woman expressed intensest amusement and
+admiration, though they lost nothing of their cool self-possession.
+
+"My lord," Marsyas observed coldly, "there are as choice evils in Rome."
+
+Junia laughed.
+
+"Evil!  Tut, tut!  How monstrous serious the little world takes itself!
+How great is its problems, how towering its philosophies, how bad its
+badness!  See us wrinkle our little old brows and smile agedly over the
+creature impulses of children and forget that the gods sit on the brink
+of Olympus and smile at us.  How we deplore the Feast of Flora--and out
+upon us!  None--save perchance thyself, good sir, and thy rigid
+order--but goes reveling after pleasure and chooses a love or casts a
+stone at an offender--and soberly calls it a crisis or a principle!
+Philosophy!  Discovering the obvious!  Badness!  Only nature, more or
+less emphatic!  All a matter of meat and drink, shelter and apparel and
+the recreation of ourselves!  Everything else is merely an attribute of
+the simple essentials.  Is it not so, good sir?"
+
+Marsyas shook his head.  For the first time in his life he had heard
+the world forgiven and the sound of it was good.  He could not help
+remembering Lydia's words, in contrast.  But he was not convinced.
+
+"It is not from the place of the gods that we feel, do and believe," he
+said.  "The child's difficulties are heavy to it; it can not imagine
+them to be greater.  So if thy reasoning hold, lady, perhaps the higher
+God smiles at the rage of Jove and the threats of Mars and the loves
+and pains of Venus.  But Jove and Mars and Venus do not smile at them;
+nor does the child at his fallen sand-house or his ruined bauble.  It
+is therefore a serious world for worldlings."
+
+Junia lifted her white arms, and, dropping her head back between them
+against the divan, smiled up at the roof of the pavilion.
+
+"I thought thee to be large and far-seeing," she said.  "But go follow
+Flora, and thou shall either be driven mad with astonishment, or
+persuaded to look upon the world henceforward with mine eyes!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A MATTER HANDLED WISELY
+
+Flaccus Avillus, Proconsul of Egypt, held audience in his atrium.  He
+received a commission of three from the Jews of Alexandria.  One was
+Alexander Lysimachus, who came with a civil petition; the other two
+were despatched from the congregation with a hieratic memorial.
+
+The three were stately and deliberate in manner, handsome even for
+their years, and as courtly as Jews can be when they bring up their
+native grace to the highest standard of culture.  They were bearded,
+gowned in linen, covered with tarbooshes, and as they walked their
+indoor sandals made no sound upon the polished pavement of the atrium.
+
+One wore on his left arm a phylactery, the last clinging to the old
+formality which had separated his fathers' class in Judea from the
+others, as a Pharisee.  The second was an Alexandrian Sadducee.  The
+third had over his shoulders the cloak of a magistrate.
+
+Flaccus did not rise from his curule as they approached, but he
+returned their greetings with better grace than they had formerly
+expected of a Roman governor.
+
+"Be greeted," he said bluntly.  "And sit; ye are elderly men!"
+
+Lysimachus took the nearest chair and the others retired a little way
+to an indoor exedra.
+
+Flaccus thrust away parchments and writings to let his elbow rest on
+his table, ordered the bearers of the fasces to withdraw to a less
+conspicuous position, and looked at Lysimachus.
+
+"Thou lookest grave, Alexander," he said.  "Art thou commissioned with
+a perplexity?"
+
+The alabarch, being a magistrate and therefore recognized by Rome
+before the synagogue, answered readily.
+
+"Not so much perplexed, good sir, as troubled.  I come with a petition,
+not in writing, but nevertheless most urgent."
+
+"Let me hear it," Flaccus said.
+
+"Nay, then; thou knowest that a certain celebration of the Gentiles in
+this city is approaching.  It is a feast of much magnitude and of much
+lawlessness.  Thou knowest the temper of the city toward my people, and
+after three days of drunkenness, Alexandria will love the Jew no more,
+but much less.  Thou rememberest, as I and my people remember with
+mourning, that last year, the excited multitude, that followed Flora's
+trail of yellow roses through the Regio Judaeorum, fell upon the Jews by
+the way and slaughtered and sacked as if it had been warfare instead of
+festivity.  It was a new diversion for the multitude, and one like to
+be repeated.  But we, who are led to believe by thy recent good will
+that thou dost not cherish Rome's ancient prejudice against our race,
+come unto thee and hopefully beseech thee to forbid the Flora to lead
+her rioters upon our peaceful community."
+
+"I have already warned the praetor," Flaccus responded, "that Flora is
+not to run through the Regio Judaeorum this year."
+
+"The praetor dare not disobey thee," Lysimachus said, with a tone of
+finality in his voice.
+
+Flaccus smiled grimly.
+
+"Nor Flora," he added.
+
+"Thou hast our people's gratitude and allegiance; mine own thankfulness
+and blessings," Lysimachus responded heartily.
+
+Flaccus waved his hand, and glanced at the other two, sitting aside.
+
+"And ye?" he said.  "Are ye but a portion of the alabarch's commission?"
+
+"Nay, good sir," the Sadducee answered, "we come upon a mission for the
+congregation."
+
+Lysimachus arose, but the Sadducee turned to him with a bow.
+
+"Pray thee, sir, it concerns thee as well.  Wilt thou abide longer and
+hear us?"
+
+The alabarch inclined his head and sat down.  Flaccus signified that he
+was ready to hear them.
+
+"Thou didst ask our brother, the alabarch, if he were commissioned with
+a perplexity," the Sadducee continued.  "Not he, but we come perplexed.
+Were we Jews in Judea, the method would be laid down to us by Law.  But
+in Alexandria we have grown away from the method, while yet we have the
+same object to achieve."
+
+"We lose in guidance what we gain in freedom," the Pharisee added.
+
+"In Judea," the Sadducee continued, "they are still bound by the usages
+of the Mosaic Law.  An offender against the Law is stoned.  We do not
+stone in Alexandria; yet we have the offender, and suffer the offense.
+What, then, shall we do to cleanse our skirt and yet offer no violence
+to our advanced thinking?"
+
+"Give me thy meaning," the proconsul said impatiently.
+
+"Perchance it hath come to thee that there is a sect known as the
+Nazarenes, followers of Jesus of Nazareth, which are spreading like a
+pestilence on the wind over the world.  So full of them is Judea, even
+David's City, that the Sanhedrim, in alliance with the Roman legate, is
+proceeding against them with extreme punishment."
+
+"I have heard," Flaccus assented.
+
+"But the numbers have grown so great and so far-reaching that the
+Sanhedrim hath achieved little more than to drive them abroad into the
+world."
+
+"So the legate informs me," Flaccus added.
+
+"Perchance then thou knowest that Alexandria hath its share."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Even the Regio Judaeorum."
+
+"Strange," Lysimachus broke in.  "Strange, if they be such
+law-breakers, as they are reputed to be, that they have not been
+brought before me for rebellion and violence, ere this!"
+
+The Pharisee put his plump white hands together.
+
+"Thou touchest upon the perplexity, brother," he said, addressing
+himself to Lysimachus.  "We are warned by the scribe of Saul of Tarsus,
+who leadeth the war against the heretics, that they are invidious
+workers of sedition; whisperers of false doctrines and pretenders of
+love and humility.  They do not persuade the rich man nor the powerful
+man nor the learned man.  They labor among the poor and the despised
+and the ignorant.  Saul, himself, though first to be awakened to the
+peril of the heresy, did not dream how immense an evil he had attacked
+until he found the half of Jerusalem fleeing from him.  Wherefore,
+brother, we may be built upon the sliding sands of an evil doctrine;
+the whole Regio Judaeorum may be going astray after this apostasy ere
+the powers know it."
+
+Lysimachus stroked his white beard and looked incredulous.
+
+"The Jews of Alexandria will not tolerate a persecution," he said
+emphatically.
+
+"So thou dost grasp the perplexity wholly," the Sadducee said.  "What
+shall we do?" he turned to the proconsul.
+
+"I am to advise, then?" Flaccus asked indifferently.
+
+"Thou wilt not suffer them to lead our men-servants and our
+maid-servants and our artisans into heresy?" the Pharisee asked.
+
+"We do not persecute in Alexandria, thou saidst," Flaccus observed.
+
+"No," declared Lysimachus.  "If all the Regio Judaeorum were as we
+three, the apostates might come and go, strive their best and die of
+their own misdeeds, unincreased in number or in goods.  But the
+clamoring voice of the mass--nay, even Caesar hath harkened to it!
+Those that have not followed the Nazarenes demand that they be cut off
+from us.  But we can not kill, and not even death daunts a Nazarene.
+Commend thyself, Flaccus, that thou didst call my brothers' mission a
+perplexity."
+
+"So you have come formally to me with your people's plaint and expect
+me to solve a question that you yourselves can not solve," Flaccus
+said.  "_Poena_!  But you are a helpless lot!  I shall pen the heretics
+in Rhacotis forthwith, and command them neither to visit nor to be
+visited!  Is it enough?"
+
+The three Jews arose.
+
+"It is wisdom," said the Sadducee.
+
+"It will serve," the Pharisee observed.
+
+"I shall ferret them out," Lysimachus said.
+
+"Thanks," the three observed at once.  "Peace to all this house."
+
+Flaccus waved his hand and the three passed out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A WORD IN SEASON
+
+The summer waxed over Egypt.  The Delta, back from the yellow plain
+which fronted the sea, was in full flower of the wheat.  The happy
+fellahs lay under the shade of dom-palms and drowsed the morning in and
+the sunset out, for there was nothing to do since Rannu of the Harvests
+had laid her beneficent hand upon the fields.  Across the
+Mediterranean, nearer the snows, the wheat flowered later and the Feast
+of Flora held in celebration of the blossoming fields would arrive with
+the new moon.  Egypt could have given her celebration in honor of Flora
+weeks earlier, but she preferred to wait for Rome.
+
+These were not uneventful days in the alabarch's house, for Cypros,
+with Drumah at her feet, fashioned with her own hands Agrippa's
+wardrobe and prepared for his departure, while the prince idled about
+the alabarch's garden, apparently oblivious to the call of his need to
+go to Rome, in his enjoyment of Junia's fellowship.  And Marsyas, daily
+more grave, gazed at him askance and furthered the plans for the trip,
+tirelessly.
+
+His patience might have continued unworn, but for a single incident.
+
+Late one night, when oppressed by the crowding of his unhappy thoughts,
+he arose from his bed to walk the streets in search of composure, and,
+descending into the darkness of the alabarch's house, he heard the
+doors swing in softly.  Expecting robbers, or at least a servant
+returning by stealth from a night's revel, he stepped down into the
+gloom and waited till the intruder should pass.
+
+Softly the unknown approached and laid hand on the stair-rail to
+ascend.  At the second step the figure was between him and the window
+lighting the stairs.  Against the lesser darkness and the stars
+without, he saw Lydia's outlines etched.  Noiselessly, she passed up
+and out of hearing.
+
+In his soul, he knew that she had been to the Nazarenes!
+
+"To-morrow," he said grimly to himself, "I prepare the prince's ship!
+There passes a stiff-necked sacrifice to Saul of Tarsus, unless I can
+bring him low!"
+
+The next morning, Justin Classicus received a letter, by a merchant
+ship from Syria.  He retired into his chamber and read it:
+
+
+"O Brother," it said, "that dwelleth among the heathen, this from thy
+friend who envieth thy banishment:
+
+"I delayed opening thy letter three days, believing it to come from him
+who lined my threadbare purse while in Alexandria, asking usury, long
+since due, but at the end of that time, I received his letter of a
+surety.  So I made haste to open thy slandered missive, and greater
+haste to answer it by way of propitiation.
+
+"I read much of thy letter with astonishment, some of it with rancor,
+some with congratulation.  By Abraham's beard, it is almost as good to
+be fortunate as it is to be single; wherefore in answer to thine only
+question, I say that I am neither.  Thus, am I led up to comment on the
+facts thou offerest me.
+
+"I remember the little Lysimachus, a bit of Ephesian ivory-work, that I
+augured would go unmarried, seeing that she was so hindered with
+brains.  But naught so good as a dowry to offset the embarrassment of
+sense in a woman.  Prosper, my Classicus!  For if thou art the same
+elegant paganized son of Abraham thou wast in thine old days, thy debts
+are as many as thy usurers are scarce.  Half a million drachmae; demand
+no less a dowry than that, my Classicus!
+
+"But here, below, thou writest that which hath cut my limbs from under
+me and set me heavily and helpless on the carpet!  A manumitted slave,
+a cumbrous yokel of an Essene, hath given thee troublous nights,
+because the lady's eyes soften in his presence!  Thou scented son of
+Daphne; Athene's darling; Venus' latest joy!  To let a Phidian
+colossus, with a face high-colored like a comic mask, outstrip thee!
+
+"Thou camest upon them once, the lady's hand in his!  Again, she
+stammered under his look!  And yet a third time, he wrapped a cloak
+about her, and lingered getting his arm away!  And all these things
+thou didst suffer and didst take no more revenge than to write thy
+plaint to me, eight hundred miles away!
+
+"By the philippics of Jeremiah, thou deservest a wife with a figure
+like a durra loaf, and dowered with nine sisters for thy support!
+
+"Thou opinest in a lady-like way, that he is a Nazarene!  Thou addest,
+with a flurry of spleen, that the proconsul of Egypt hateth him!  Thou
+offerest a womanish suspicion that he fled from difficulty here in
+Judea!  Now, any blind dolt could see substance in this for the
+overthrow of a rival.  Lackest thou courage, Classicus, or hast thou
+money enough to last thee till thou findest another lady?
+
+"Is it not a sufficient cause against him that he is a Nazarene?  Or
+perchance thou dost not know of them, which astonishes me more, since
+Pharaoh in the plagues was not more cumbered with flies than the earth
+is of Nazarenes.  But read herein hope, then, against thy suspected
+rival.
+
+"These heretics are persistent offenders against law and order,
+rebellious and otherwise unruly.  One Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus,
+proceedeth against them, for the Sanhedrim.  Whether he is an
+instrument of a political party or an immoderate zealot, is not for me
+to say; perchance he is both.  At any rate he rages against the
+iniquity of the apostasy as a continuing whirlwind.  He is not applying
+his methods locally, only.  He reaches into neighboring provinces, and
+it is his oath to pursue the heresy unto the end of the world and bring
+back the last to judgment.  Vitellius is assisting him in Judea, Herod
+Antipas in Galilee and Aretas in Syria.  I expect hourly to hear that
+Caesar hath lent him a strong arm, because the rebels are particularly
+rabid against Rome.
+
+"Of course, the members of the congregation are divided, but thou
+knowest that even a small number of zealous defenders of the faith can
+set a whole Synagogue by the ears.  Even so tepid a Jew as I should not
+care to rub shoulders with a Nazarene.
+
+"Do I give thee life, O languid lover?
+
+"Of thyself, I would hear more and oftener.  Await not the rising of a
+new rival to write to me.  Fear not; I shall not ask to borrow money of
+thee--until thou hast wedded the Lysimachus.
+
+"All thy friends in Jerusalem greet thee.  Be happy and be fortunate.
+Thy friend,
+
+"PHILIP OF JERUSALEM."
+
+
+At this point Classicus composedly doubled the parchment, broke it
+lengthwise and cross-wise and clapped his hands for a slave.  A Hebrew
+bondman appeared.
+
+"This for the ovens," said Classicus, handing it to him.
+
+When the servant disappeared, the philosopher descended into his house
+and was dressed for a visit.  An hour before the noon rest, he appeared
+in the garden of the alabarch.
+
+There he found Lydia and Junia, Agrippa, Cypros, the alabarch and
+Flaccus, idly discussing the day's opening of the Feast of Flora.  He
+had given and received greetings and merged his interests in the
+subject, when Marsyas appeared in the colonnade.  He had taken off the
+kerchief usually worn about the head, and carried it on his arm.  As he
+passed the spare old alabarch, the heavy purple proconsul and the
+exquisite Herod, not one of the guests there gathered but made
+successive comparisons between him and the others.  Junia gazed at him
+steadily, under half-closed lids, but Lydia followed him with a look,
+half-sorrowful, half-happy, and wholly involuntary.
+
+Cypros glanced at his flushed forehead and damp hair.
+
+"Hast thou been into the city?" she asked with sweet solicitude.
+
+"To the harbor-master," he answered, "I have been making ready thy
+lord's ship."
+
+Agrippa overheard the low answer, and turned upon him irritably.
+
+"I have said that I do not depart until after the Feast of Flora," he
+remarked.
+
+"The men of the sea do not expect fair winds before three days,"
+Marsyas replied, "wherefore we must abide until after the Feast."
+
+"But my raiment is not prepared," Agrippa protested.
+
+"Thou goest hence, my lord, to Rome, to be dressed by the masters of
+the science of raiment," Marsyas assured him.
+
+Classicus raised his head and addressed to the Essene the first remark
+since the memorable night of Marsyas' arrival in Alexandria.
+
+"What a game it is," he opined amiably, "to see thee managing this
+slippery Herod!"
+
+Agrippa flushed angrily, but Marsyas did not await the retort.
+
+"My brother's pardon," he said, "but the Herod has fine discrimination
+between cares becoming his exalted place, and the labors of a steward."
+
+Agrippa's face relaxed, but Classicus broke off the swinging end of a
+vine that reached over his shoulder and slowly pulled it to pieces.
+
+Junia sitting next to Marsyas turned to him.
+
+"So thou wilt follow Flora?" she asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?" she insisted, smiling.  "Thou must go to Rome, where Flora runs
+every day.  Wilt thou turn thy back upon Egypt's joy and see only
+Italy's?"
+
+"Is Rome so much worse than Alexandria?"
+
+"Not worse; only more pronounced.  There is more of Rome; the world
+gets its impulse there.  So much is done; so many are doing.  And, by
+the caprice of the Destinies, thou art to see Rome more than commonly
+employed."
+
+"How?" he asked.  By this time, the others were talking and the two
+spoke unheard together.
+
+"Hist!  I tell it under my breath, because the noble proconsul is
+burdened with the great responsibility of declaring the emperor's
+deathlessness, and I would not contradict him aloud.  But Tiberius is
+old, old--and Rome casts about for his successor.  But chance hath it
+that interest hath uncoupled the two eyes so that the singleness of
+sight is divided.  'Look right,' saith one; 'look left,' saith the
+other, and each looking his own way reviles his fellow and creates
+disturbance in the head.  But it behooves thee, gentle Jew, to bid
+thine eyes contemplate Tiberius, to do oriental obeisance and say as
+the Persians say; 'O King, live for ever!"
+
+"But yesterday, thou didst cast a kindly light over the world's
+hardness.  Tear it not away thus soon and frighten me with the fierce
+power against which I must shortly go and demand tribute," he protested
+lightly.
+
+She took down her arms, clasped back of her head, to look at him.
+
+"Light-hearted eremite!" she chid.  "Never a Jew but believed that all
+the happenings in the world happen in Jerusalem--that there is nothing
+else to come to pass after Jerusalem's full catalogue of possibilities
+is exhausted.  But I tell thee that, compared to Rome, Jerusalem is an
+unwatered spot in the desert where once in a century a loping jackal
+passes by to break its eventlessness."
+
+"Lady," he said with his old gravity, "Judea is a Roman province.  Is
+Rome harsher to her citizens than she is with her subjugated peoples?"
+
+"Thou art nearer the executive seat; under the eye of Power itself.
+Icarus, on his waxen wings, was unsafe enough in the daylight; but he
+was undone by soaring too close to the sun!"
+
+"What shall I do, then?" he asked.
+
+"Attach thyself to a power; get behind the buckler of another's
+strength!"
+
+"Power is not offering its protection for nothing; what have I to give
+in exchange for it?"
+
+Almost inadvertently, she let her eyes run over him, and seemed
+impelled to say the words that leaped to her lips.  But she recovered
+herself in time.
+
+"It is a generous world," she said, "and such as thou shall not go
+friendless; depend upon it!"
+
+When Marsyas glanced up, his eyes rested on Lydia's, and for a moment
+he was held in silence by the faint darkening of distress that he saw
+there.  Something wild and sweet and painful struggled in his breast
+and fell quiet so quickly that he sat with his lips parted and his gaze
+fixed until the alabarch's daughter dropped her eyes.
+
+"I heard thee speak of Rome," she said.  "After thy labor is done, wilt
+thou remain there?"
+
+"No," he answered slowly, "I return to En-Gadi."
+
+"En-Gadi," Junia repeated.  "Where is that and why shouldst thou go
+there?"
+
+"It is the city of the Essenes, a city of retreat.  It is in the Judean
+desert on the margin of the Dead Sea."
+
+"After Rome, that!" Junia cried.
+
+But Lydia said nothing and Marsyas, gazing at her in hope of
+discovering some little deprecation, some little invitation to remain
+in the world, forgot that the Roman woman had spoken.
+
+Classicus, who had been a quiet observer of the few words spoken
+between the Essene and the alabarch's daughter, drew himself up from
+his lounging attitude.
+
+"To En-Gadi?" he repeated, attracting the attention of the others, who
+had not failed to note his sudden interest in Marsyas.  "Why?"
+
+"I am an Essene fallen into misfortune; but once an Essene, an Essene
+always," Marsyas answered.
+
+"An Essene?" the philosopher observed.  Then after a little silence he
+began again.
+
+"In Alexandria, we live less rigorously than in Judea, even too little
+so, we discover at times.  Wherefore it is needful that we watch that
+no further lapse is made, which will carry us into lawlessness."
+
+"Ye are lax, yet wary that ye be not more lax?" Marsyas commented
+perfunctorily.
+
+"Even so.  From Agrippa's lips, we learn that thou hast led a
+precarious life of late; an eventful, even adventurous life: that thou
+hast been accused and hast escaped arrest.  Thou wilt pardon my
+familiarity with thine own affairs."
+
+"Go on," said Marsyas.
+
+"In Alexandria--even in Alexandria, of late, the Jews have resolved not
+to entertain heretics--"
+
+"In Alexandria, the extreme ye will risk in hospitality is one simply
+accused."
+
+"I commend thy discernment.  But we separate ourselves from the
+convicted."
+
+"So it is done in Judea.  But continue."
+
+Classicus waited for an expectant silence.
+
+"Thou carryest about thee," he said, "an emblem which none but a
+Nazarene owns."
+
+Marsyas contemplated Classicus very calmly.  He had been accused of
+apostasy before, but by one whose every impulse had root in irrational
+fanaticism.  He had not expected this Romanized Jew to become zealous
+for the faith; instead, he knew that Classicus would have pursued none
+other for suspicion, but himself.  Why?
+
+He glanced at Lydia.  Alarm and protest were written on every feature.
+Classicus saw that she was prepared to defend Marsyas and his face
+hardened.  Then the Essene understood!
+
+A flush of warm color swept over his face.
+
+Without a word he put his hand into his robes and drew forth and laid
+upon his palm the little cedar crucifix.
+
+Cypros uttered a little sound of fright; Agrippa whirled upon Marsyas
+with frank amazement on his face.  After a moment's intent
+contemplation of the Essene's face, Junia settled back into her easy
+attitude and smiled.
+
+Lydia sprang up; yet before the rush of precipitate speech reached her
+lips, there came, imperative and distinct, Marsyas' telepathic demand
+on her attention.  Tender but commanding, his dark eyes rested upon her.
+
+"Thou shall not betray thyself for me!" they said.  "Thou shalt not
+bring sorrow to thy father's heart and disaster upon thy head!  Thou
+shalt keep silence, and permit me to defend thee!  I command thee; thou
+canst do naught else but obey!"
+
+She wavered, her cheeks suffused, and her eyes fell.  When she lifted
+them again, they were flashing with tears.  A moment, and she slipped
+past her guests into the house.
+
+The alabarch broke the startled silence; he had turned almost
+wrathfully upon Classicus.
+
+"It seems," he exclaimed, "that thou hast needlessly broadened thine
+interests into matters which once did not concern thee!"
+
+"Good my father," Classicus responded, "thou hast lost two sons already
+to idolatry and false doctrines.  And thy lovely daughter, thou seest,
+is no more secure from the seductions of an attractive apostasy than
+were they!"
+
+"Well?" Marsyas asked quietly.
+
+"It is not needful to point the man of discernment to his duty,"
+Classicus returned.
+
+"Methinks," said Marsyas, rising, "that the sharp point of a pretext
+urges me out of Alexandria, as it did in Judea.  Thou hast had no
+scruples," he continued, turning to Agrippa, "thus far in accepting the
+companionship of an accused man, so I do not expect to be cast off now."
+
+"But," Agrippa protested, stammering in his surprise and perplexity,
+"acquit thyself, Marsyas.  Thou art no Nazarene!"
+
+"No charge so light to lift as this, my lord," Marsyas answered.  "Yet
+even for thy favor I will not do it!"
+
+Agrippa looked doubtful, and the alabarch exclaimed with deep regret:
+
+"What difficulty thou settest in the way of my debt to thee!  Thou, to
+whom I owe my daughter's life!"
+
+"Yet have a little faith in me," Marsyas said to him.  "And for more
+than I am given lief to recount, I am thy debtor!"
+
+He put the crucifix into the folds of his garments.
+
+"I am prepared to go to Rome, even now," he added to Agrippa.
+
+"But--I would stay until after the Feast of Flora," the prince objected
+stubbornly.
+
+Cypros was breaking in, affrightedly, when Flaccus interrupted.
+
+"Come! come!" he said, with a bluff assumption of good nature.  "Thou
+art not banished from the city, young man!  I am legate over
+Alexandria, and a conscienceless pagan, wherefore thou hast not
+offended my gods nor done aught to deserve my disfavor.  Get thee down
+to Rhacotis among thy friends--or thine enemies--till the Herod hath
+diverted himself with Flora, and go thy way to Rome!  What a tragedy
+thou makest of nothing tragic!"
+
+"O son of Mars," Marsyas said to himself, "I do not build on finding
+asylum there.  Never a pitfall but is baited with invitation!"
+
+But Cypros turned to the proconsul, her face glowing with thankfulness
+under her tears.
+
+"Is it pleasing to thee, lady?" the proconsul asked jovially.
+
+"Twice, thrice thou hast been my friend!" she cried.
+
+"I shall go," said Marsyas.  "Remember, my lord prince, these many
+things which I and others suffer add to the certainty that thou shalt
+be called to pay my debt against Saul of Tarsus, one day!  Three days
+hence, thou and I shall sail for Rome!"
+
+He saluted the company and passed out of the garden.
+
+"Perchance," said Flaccus dryly, with his peculiar aptitude for
+insinuation, "an officer should conduct him to this nest of apostates."
+
+"He will go, never fear!" Cypros declared, brushing away tears.
+
+"By Ate! the boy is spectacular," Agrippa vowed suddenly.  "He is no
+Nazarene!  I know how he came by that unholy amulet.  It is a relic of
+that young heretic friend of his, whom they stoned in Jerusalem!"
+
+But Junia found immense amusement in that surmise.  Presently, she
+laughed outright.
+
+"O Classicus, what a blunderer thou art!  Right or wrong, thou hast
+brought down the ladies' wrath, not upon the comely Essene, but upon
+thine own head for abusing him!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE RANSOM
+
+Marsyas passed up to his room to put his belongings together.  The
+sound of his movements within reached Lydia in her refuge, and, when he
+came forth, she stood in the gloom of the hall without, awaiting him.
+
+Moved with a little fear of her reproach, he went to her, with extended
+hands.
+
+"What have I done?" she whispered.
+
+"Thou hast done nothing," he said quickly.  "I blame myself for keeping
+the amulet about me, when I should have destroyed it.  But I could
+not--I have not yet; because--it is thine!"
+
+"But I kept silence--I who owned the crucifix--"
+
+"I made thee keep silence!"
+
+"But what have they said to thee; what wilt thou do?" she insisted.
+
+"I go without more obloquy than I brought hither with me; I was
+accused, before; I could stand further accusation, for thy sake!  They
+have said nothing; done nothing--I go to Rhacotis, to await the
+departure of Agrippa, who goes to Rome at the end of three days--nay;
+peace!" he broke off, as a momentous resolution gathered in her pale
+face.  "Thou wilt keep silence, else I do this thing in vain!"
+
+"I will not slander myself!" she cried.  "I am not afraid to confess my
+fault--"
+
+"But thou shall not do it!" he declared.  "The punishment for it would
+not be alone for thyself!  Choose between the quiet of thy conscience
+and the peace and pride of thy father!  Bethink thee, the inestimable
+harm thou canst do by this thing!  Be not deceived that the story of
+thy lapse would be kept under thy father's roof.  That ignoble pagan
+governor below has no care for thy sweet fame!  He would tell it; thy
+maidens would hear of it and fear thee or follow thee!  Thy father's
+government over his people would be weakened; the elders of the
+Synagogue would question him--Lydia, suffer the little hurt of
+conscience for thine own account, rather than afflict many for thy
+pride's sake!"
+
+Her small hands, white in the darkness of the corridor, were twisted
+about each other in distress.  Marsyas' pity was stirred to the deepest.
+
+"How unhappy thou hast been!" he said, touching upon her apostasy.
+"Give over thy wavering and be the true daughter of God, once more!
+Let us destroy this evil amulet!"
+
+He plucked the crucifix from his tunic and caught it between his hands
+to break it, when she sprang toward him and seized his wrists.
+
+"Do not so!" she besought, her eyes large with fright.
+
+He had forced her to defend it, and she had stood to the breach; he had
+proved the gravity of her disaffection for the faith of Abraham.
+
+"Why wilt thou endanger thyself for this social drift?" he demanded
+passionately.  "Lydia!  How canst thou turn from the faith of thy
+fathers?"
+
+"I--I am not worthy to be a Nazarene!" she answered.  "They are
+forbidden to enact a falsehood!"
+
+"Let be; I do not care for their philosophy; it is like the Law of
+Rome.--an empty armor that any knave can wear.  But I urge thee to
+behold what misery thou invitest upon thyself!  What will come of it?
+Immortal as thou art in soul, thou canst not keep alive the single
+spark of wisdom in the ashes of their folly; thou canst not save them
+against the combined vengeance of the whole world!  But thou canst be
+disgraced with them, persecuted with them, and die with them!
+Unhallowed the day that ever Classicus spoke their name to thee!
+Cursed be his words!  May the Lord treasure them up against him--!"
+
+"Hush! hush!" she whispered.
+
+He became calm with an effort.
+
+"Lydia," he began after a pause, "it is a poor intelligence that can
+not foresee as ably as the augurs.  One successful life gives
+opportunity, to all that spring from it, to be successful; a failure
+scatters the seed of misfortune through all its blood.  Choose thou for
+thyself and thou choosest for a nation which comes after thee.  I see
+thee radiant, crowned, worshiped; and if they who come up under thy
+guidance walk as thou dost walk, Lydia shall give queens unto
+principalities and rulers unto satrapies.  These be days when women of
+virtue and women of remark; women of wisdom are remembered women.  And
+thou, virtuous, wise and noble--the empresses of coming Caesars will
+assume thy name to conceal their tarnishment under a badge of luster!
+This on one hand.  On the other thou shalt flee from the stones of the
+rabble, come unto the humiliation of thy womanhood and the agony of thy
+body in the torture-cell, and die like a criminal!"
+
+She shrank away with a quivering sound and flung her hands over her
+ears.  He caught her and drew her close, until she all but rested on
+his breast.
+
+"Lydia, naught but mine extremity could make me speak thus to thee," he
+said tremulously and in a passion of appeal.  "If the words be hideous,
+let the actualities that they mean warn thee in time!"
+
+"But--thou dost not understand," she faltered, drawing away from him.
+
+"I do understand; through anguish and rancor and suffering, I have
+learned.  Must I give all to the vengeance of God, who visiteth
+apostates for their iniquity?  Lydia, depart not from the righteous
+religion, I implore thee.  Behold its great age," he went on, speaking
+rapidly and with quickened breath, "behold its history, its monuments,
+its achievements, its great exponents, its infallibility!  The rest of
+the world was an unimagined futurity when an able son of thy race was
+minister to Pharaoh and lord over the whole land of Egypt.  The godly
+kings of thy people were poets and musicians when Pindar's and Homer's
+ancestors were still Peloponnesian fauns with horns in their hair.
+Before Isis and Osiris, before Bel and Astarte, thy God was molding
+universes and hanging stars in the sky.  And lo! the sons of the
+Pharaohs are wasted weaklings, fit only for slaves; the Chaldees are
+dust in the dust of their cities; Babylonia is hunting-ground for
+jackals and the perch of bats; Rome--even Rome's greatness hath
+returned into the sinews of her hills, but there is no decadence in
+Israel, no weakness in her God!  Aid not in the perversion of her
+ancient faith--thou who art the incarnation of her queens--"
+
+He halted, but only for an instant, in which he seemed to throw off
+recurring restraint and drove on:
+
+"David did not seek for one more lovely, nor Solomon for one more wise!
+Truth, even Truth demands dear tribute when it takes a life.  For a
+mere scintillation of verity, wilt thou die?"
+
+"I--I fear not," she answered painfully.  "I--who could be affrighted
+out of telling a truth!"
+
+Not his prayer, but the Nazarene's teaching had weight with her, at
+that moment!
+
+"All thy hazard of life and fame for their vague philosophy," he cried,
+"and not one stir of pity for me!"
+
+There was a moment of complete silence; then she lifted her face.
+
+"Thou knowest better," she said, "thou, who labored in vain with
+Stephen, who loved thee!"
+
+His heart contracted; for a moment he entertained as practicable a
+resolve to stay stubbornly under the alabarch's roof until he had
+broken the determination of this sweet erring girl to destroy herself.
+He drew in his breath to speak, but the futileness of his words
+occurred to him.  Again, he had a thought of telling the alabarch
+privately of his daughter's peril, but instantly doubted that the good
+old Jew could move her.  While he debated desperately with himself, she
+drew, nearer to him.
+
+"Be not angry with me!  If thou leavest Alexandria in three days, it
+may be that I--shall not see thee again--"
+
+"So I am dismissed to know no rest until I have brought Saul of Tarsus
+low, for thy sake, as well as for Stephen's!"
+
+He knew at the next breath that he had hurt her, and repented.
+
+"I shall see thee once more," he said hurriedly, feeling that he dared
+not make retraction.  He took up the pilgrim's wallet containing his
+belongings, and put out his hand to her.  She took it, so wistfully, so
+sorrowfully, that a wave of compunction swept over him.  Bending low,
+he pressed his lips to her palm, and hastened, full of agitation, out
+of the alabarch's house.
+
+The preparations for the Feast of Flora had been brought to
+completeness.  The funds for the lavish display had come out of the
+taxes upon provinces, the flamens managed it, the patricians and the
+rich patronized it and all Alexandria, whether rich or poor, free or
+enslaved, plunged into its celebration with recklessness and relish.
+
+The dwellers of the Regio Judaeorum took no part in the celebration, but
+Marsyas saw that a spirit of interest invaded the district, even to the
+doors of the great Synagogue.  Mothers in Israel put aside the wimples
+over their faces when they met in the narrow passages or the
+market-places to talk of the recurring abomination in lowered voices
+and with sidelong glances to see if the velvet-eyed children, who clung
+to their garments, heard.  Fathers in Israel, rabbis and constabularies
+were abroad to make preparation against the local characteristic which
+tended to turn every popular gathering into a demonstration against the
+Jews.  The bloody uproar of the preceding year was fresh in the fear of
+the people, and though Lysimachus had spread abroad the promise of the
+proconsul, the Regio Judaeorum had cause to be doubtful of the favor of
+a former persecutor.
+
+But as the young man entered the Gentile portion of the city, he saw
+that, from the Lochias to the Gate of the Necropolis, Alexandria was no
+longer a city of normal life and labor but a play-ground for revel and
+lawlessness.  The two main avenues which crossed the city toward the
+four cardinal points were cleared of traffic and the marks of wheel and
+hoof were stamped out by crowds that filled the roadways.  The crowding
+glories of Alexandrian architecture which lined these noble
+highways--temples, palaces, theaters, baths, gymnasia, stadia and fora,
+high marks of both Greek and Roman society--were wreathed, pillar and
+plinth, with laurel and roses, lilies and myrtle, nelumbo and lotus.
+
+Fountains gave up perfumed water; aromatic gums in bowls set upon
+staves fumed and burned and were filling the dead airs of the
+Alexandrian calm with oriental musks; everywhere were the reedy
+shrilling of pipe, the tinkle of castanet, the mellow notes of flutes
+and the muttering of drums.  Wine was flowing like water; immense
+public feasts were in progress, at which droves of sheep and oxen were
+served to gathered multitudes, which were never full-fed except at
+Flora's bounty.  Processions were streaming along the streets, meeting
+at intersections to romp, break up in revel and end in excess.  Tens of
+thousands with one impulse, one law, frolicked, fought, drank, danced,
+sang, piped, wooed, forgot everything, grudges and all, except Flora
+and her license and bounty.  The citizens were no longer the
+descendants of Quirites, remnant of the Pharaohs or the Macedonian
+kings, but satyrs, fauns, bacchantes, nymphs, mimes and harlequins.
+
+Marsyas kept away from the crowds and went by deserted paths toward
+Rhacotis.
+
+He knew without inquiry where to find the Nazarene quarter.  It was
+marked by the strange, strained silence that hovers over houses where
+life is not secure, by poverty, by orderliness, by the patient faces of
+the humble dwellers, by the brotherly greeting that the few citizens
+gave him as he approached.  He saw many of the garrison loitering
+about, but they permitted him to pass without notice.
+
+The roar of the merrymaking without swept into the quiet passages like
+a titanic purr of satisfaction.  The young man had grown away from his
+toleration of solitude.  His Essenic training had suffered change; its
+usages, at variance with his nature, had become difficult as soon as
+the opportunity for more congenial habits had presented itself.  Only a
+few weeks before, he could voyage the giant breadth of the
+Mediterranean, excluding himself from the contaminating Nazarenes,
+without effort.  Now, he asked himself how he was to live among these
+people for three days.
+
+He found the quarter absolutely packed with people, and realized then
+how many followers of Jesus of Nazareth there were in Alexandria, and
+how thoroughly Flaccus had weeded them out of the rest of the city.
+
+He looked about him, grew impatient, and, with the ready invention of a
+man who has lived only by devices for the past many months, made up his
+mind to house himself elsewhere than in the crowded Nazarene quarter.
+
+"I will go to the ship," he said to himself.  "It is victualed and
+ready for the prince's arrival to weigh anchor.  No one but my seamen
+need know that I am there, and they will be too intent on Flora to
+speak of me abroad in the city!"
+
+He turned promptly and made his way down the quarter toward the harbor.
+Within sound of the waters lapping on the wharf piling, a soldier of
+the city garrison stepped into his way.
+
+"Back!" he said harshly.
+
+Marsyas stopped.
+
+"Why may I not pass?" he demanded.
+
+"None passes from this rebel's nest hereafter!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE DELIVERANCE
+
+There followed time for diverse and earnest meditation for Marsyas: He
+criticized himself sarcastically, for permitting himself to be so
+easily entrapped, and cast about him for means of escape.  He found by
+successive trials that the siege was perfect.  Half of Alexandria's
+garrison had been posted about the district.  The more he considered
+his predicament, the more an atmosphere of impending danger weighted
+the air of the Nazarene community.
+
+He did not seek the hospitality of the Nazarenes, because he had not
+come to the point of admitting that he was to remain among them.  At
+nightfall, while the roar of the reveling city without swept over the
+community, he hoped to find some unguarded spot in the Roman lines, but
+his hope was vain.  With his attention thus forced upon the people
+penned in with him, he began to wonder if there might not yet be some
+profit in counsel with his fellows, hemmed in for some purpose by
+Flaccus.
+
+He found the inhabitants gathered in a broad space in one of the
+streets, where at one time a statue or a fountain might have stood, but
+after a few minutes' listening, he heard only prayers and words of
+submission to the unknown peril threatening them.  Angry and
+disappointed he flung himself away from the gathering, to spend the
+night in the streets.
+
+But after the first gust of his anger, it was brought home to him very
+strongly, that these people were gifted with a new courage, the courage
+of submission--to him the most mysterious and impossible of powers.
+Led from this idle conclusion into yet deeper contemplation of the
+Nazarene character, he found himself admitting astonishing evidences in
+their favor.  He had known not a few of them.  Stephen had been
+beatified, the most exalted, yet the sweetest character that he had
+ever known.  Lydia, wavering and hesitating between Judaism and the
+faith of Jesus of Nazareth, struggled with fine points of conscience,
+and persisted, in the face of terror,--the most potent controlling
+agent, Marsyas had believed, over the spirit of womanhood.  The
+Nazarene body at Ptolemais had displayed before him a humanness in
+subjection, that, in spite of his own resolute disposition, seemed
+triumphant, after all.  They had preached peace, and had maintained it
+in the face of the most trying circumstances.  On ship-board, he had
+been shown that they were long-suffering.  About him now, while
+Alexandria rioted and reveled in excess, their order and decorum were
+highly attractive.  These were excellences that he did not willingly
+see; circumstances and environment had forced their recognition upon
+him.
+
+At a late hour, he was sought and found by their pastor, the tall old
+teacher, whom he had come to consider as a man whom, for his own
+spiritual welfare, he should shun.
+
+"Young brother," the pastor said, "thou art without shelter here, and
+imprisoned among us.  I respect thy wish to be left to thyself, yet we
+can not see thee unhoused.  I have a cell in yonder ruined wall; it is
+solitary and secluded.  Do thou take it, and I shall find shelter among
+my people."
+
+Marsyas felt his cheeks grow hot, under the cover of the night.
+
+"I thank thee," he responded, "but I am here only for a little time.  I
+am young and hardy; I will not turn thee out of thy shelter."
+
+"If thy time with us is stated, thou art fortunate.  Alexandria hath
+not set her limit upon our imprisonment.  Yet, I shall find a niche in
+the house of one of my people; be not ashamed to take my place."
+
+Without waiting for the young man to protest, the Nazarene signed him
+to follow, and led on through the dark to the place indicated--the
+remnant of an ancient house--a single standing wall of earth,
+sufficiently thick to be excavated to form a shallow cave.  There was
+room enough for a pallet of straw within, and a reed matting hung
+before the opening.  The pastor bade the young man enter, blessed him
+and disappeared.
+
+Marsyas sat down in the cramped burrow, and, resting his head on his
+hands and his elbows on his knees, said to himself, in discomfiture:
+
+"Beshrew the enemy that permits you to find no fault in him!"
+
+It was not the last time in the memorable three days of imprisonment
+that he frowned and deprecated the excellence of his hosts.
+
+He accepted their simple hospitality in moody helplessness, and spent
+his time either hovering on the outskirts of their nightly meetings, or
+vainly searching for a plan to escape.  He noted finally that they
+stinted themselves food, but gave him his usual share; water appeared
+less often and less plentiful.  The pastor was not less confident, but
+more withdrawn within himself: the elders became more grave, the
+people, oppressed and prayerful.  At times, when the gradual growth of
+distress became more apparent, Marsyas walked apart and chid himself
+for his resourcelessness.
+
+"I am another mouth to feed, among these people," he declared.  "And by
+the testimony of mine own instinct, I am not the least cause of that
+which hath thrown this siege about them!  I will get out!"
+
+He began at sunset the second day to discover the extent of the
+besieged quarter and sound every point for the strength of its
+particular blockade.  He found that the Nazarene portion of Rhacotis
+stretched from the landings of the bay inland to a series of granaries
+where Rhacotis, in its smaller days, had built receptacles for the
+wheat which the rustics brought for shipping.  To the west it ended
+against a stockade for cattle, upon which mounted sentries could
+overlook a great deal of the quarter.  To the east, the limit was a
+compact row of well-built houses, remnants of the Egyptian aristocratic
+portion in Alexander's time.  The streets intersecting the row and
+leading into pagan Rhacotis were each closed by a sentry.  After his
+investigations, Marsyas felt that here was the weakest spot in the
+siege.
+
+Central in the row was a tall structure, with ruined clay pylons, blank
+of wall and, except for supporting beams, roofless.  It had been a
+temple, but was now a dwelling, a veritable warren since the Nazarenes
+were all driven to occupy a portion which could shelter only a fifth of
+the number comfortably.
+
+Upon this structure, Marsyas' eye rested.  Either it would be closely
+watched from without or not at all.  It depended upon the features of
+the wall fronting on the street at the rear, in which the sentries were
+posted.
+
+For once he blessed a Nazarene night-gathering, when he saw family
+after family emerge from the tunnel-like doors of the temple-house and
+proceed silently toward the meeting of their brethren in the street
+below.
+
+A long time after the last emerged and disappeared into the dark,
+Marsyas crossed to the doors and knocked.  For a moment after his first
+trial, he listened lest there be an answer.  He knocked more loudly a
+second time, and, after the third, he opened the unlocked doors, and,
+putting in his head, called.  The heated interior was totally dark and
+silent.
+
+He stepped in and closed the doors behind him.  When at last his eyes
+became accustomed to the darkness, he saw that he was in a single
+immense chamber; the entire interior of the old temple was unbroken by
+partition of any kind.  Above him, he saw the crossing of great
+palm-trunks, bracing the walls, and over them the blue arch of the
+night.  At the rear, the starlight showed him the wall abutting the
+street of the sentries.  It was absolutely blank and fully thirty feet
+in height.
+
+Marsyas sighed and shook his head.  Though he made the leap in safety,
+he could not alight without noise enough to attract the whole garrison
+to the spot.  But, determined to make his investigation thorough before
+he surrendered the scheme as hopeless, he felt about the great chamber
+and stumbled on a rude ladder leaning against a side-wall.  He climbed
+it, to find that it reached to a ledge, where the deeper lower half of
+the wall was surmounted by a clerestory just half its thickness.  He
+found here rows of straw pallets where the overflow of Nazarenes took
+refuge by night.  He pulled up his ladder, set it on the ledge and
+climbed again, finding himself at the uppermost rung within reach of
+one of the palm-trunks.  He seized it, tried it for solidity and drew
+himself up on the top of the wall.
+
+Fearing detection by the sentries more than the return of the
+householders, he crept with caution to the angle at the rear, and
+looked down into the street.
+
+He located two sentries, but no nearer the back of the temple than the
+two streets opening into the other several yards away to the north and
+south.  He lay still to note the direction of their post and found
+that, in truth, they turned just under him.  At a point half-way
+between either end of their walk, they were more than two hundred paces
+apart.  But Marsyas looked down the sheer wall.  He could not possibly
+accomplish it without injury or discovery or both.
+
+With a heavy heart he retraced his steps, descended into the old temple
+and made his way toward the doors.  Before he reached them, he
+frightened himself by stumbling upon a huge light object that rolled
+away toward the entrance.  He followed cautiously, and touched it again
+while fumbling for the latch.  He felt of it, and finally, swinging the
+door open, saw by the starlight that it was a huge hamper of twisted
+palm-fiber, tall enough to contain a man and wide enough for two.  He
+set the thing aside and went out into the night.
+
+To-morrow was the last day of his confinement, but he did not expect
+liberty.  He did not doubt that the city meditated the destruction of
+the Nazarenes, nor that Flaccus would permit him to be overlooked in
+the general slaughter.  Not the least of his fears was that Lydia might
+be thrust among them at any moment, to share the fate he had striven so
+hard to avert from her.
+
+He returned to his cave in the ruined wall, and lay down on his
+matting, not to sleep, nor even to plan intelligently, but to submit to
+his distress.
+
+At high noon the third day, on the summit of the Serapeum in Egyptian
+Rhacotis, there appeared a slender figure in the burnoose of an Arab.
+
+Five hundred feet distant, in the beleaguered Nazarene settlement, a
+woman stood in her doorway to pray, that the earthen roof might not be
+between her supplication and the Master in Heaven.  She saw the
+microscopic figure on the pylon of the Temple, but daily a priest came
+there to worship the sun.  She saw the figure lift and extend its arms,
+presently, but that was part of the idolatrous ritual, she thought.
+She dropped her eyes to the crucifix in her hands and her lips moved
+slowly.
+
+At that instant, at her feet, as a thunderbolt strikes from the clouds,
+an arrow plunged half its length into the hard sand, and leaned,
+quivering strongly toward the tiny shape on the summit of the pylon.
+
+The Nazarene woman dropped her crucifix and shrieked.
+
+The slow fisher-husband appeared beside her, and, seeing the fallen
+cross, picked it up with fumbling fingers, muttering an exclamation of
+remonstrance.
+
+"Look!" the Nazarene woman cried, pointing to the half-buried bolt,
+still quivering.
+
+The fisherman gazed at it.
+
+"Whence came it?" he asked.
+
+The trembling woman shook her head and clasped and unclasped her hands.
+
+"An affront from the heathen," the man said.  "It was despatched to
+murder thee.  The Lord's hand stayed it; blessed be His name!"
+
+He plucked the arrow with an effort from the sand, and looked at it.
+
+"It is a witness of the Master's care; let us take it to the pastor,"
+he suggested.
+
+The trembling woman followed her husband as he stepped into the street
+and raised her eyes to give thanks.  She saw that the figure on the
+summit of the pylon was gone.
+
+The two found the leader of their flock, sitting outside an overcrowded
+house, bending over a half-finished basket of reeds.  Beside him was
+one complete; at the other hand were his working materials.
+
+"Greeting, children, in Christ's name," he said.
+
+"Greeting, lord; praise to God in the highest!"
+
+The Nazarene woman dropped to her knees, and her husband, extending the
+arrow in agitation, stumbled through their story.
+
+"May His name be glorified for ever," the woman murmured at the end.
+
+But the pastor took the arrow and examined it.  It was uncommon; the
+story was uncommon, and he believed that there was more than a wanton
+attempt at murder in its coming.  The bolt was tipped with a pointed
+flint, and feathered with three long, delicate papyrus cases, one dark,
+two white.  The pastor felt of one of the white feathers, and presently
+ripped it off the shaft.  It opened in his hand.  Within was lettering.
+
+After a little puzzled study of it, he shook his head and put it down.
+He loosened the other from the transparent gum and opened it.  Written
+in another hand were the following words in Greek:
+
+
+  "To the Nazarene to whom this cometh:
+  "Deliver the arrow unto the young Jew, Marsyas,
+      who dwells among you, but is not of your number."
+
+
+The pastor took up the arrow and the papyrus and arose at once.
+
+"Verily, a sending, but it is not for us.  Abide here until I deliver
+it to him that expects it."
+
+He turned toward the ruined wall where Marsyas secluded himself.
+
+The pastor knocked on the dried earth wall without the cave, and the
+matting was thrust aside.  The young Jew stood there.
+
+"I bring thee a message from without," the pastor said at once.  "Peace
+and the love of Christ enter thy heart and uphold thee."
+
+He put the arrow into the young man's hand and saluting him with the
+sign of the cross, went his way.
+
+"What blind incaution," Marsyas said, after he had stared in
+astonishment at the things delivered him.  "A message!  How does he
+know that he does not bear to me treachery against his people, and his
+undoing!"
+
+But he sat down and undid the white case.
+
+"That is Agrippa's writing!" he declared after he had read it.
+
+He took up the other.  The writing was in Sanskrit.
+
+
+"O white Brother:" it ran; "this by an arrow from the strong bow of thy
+lord Prince.  Him I compelled.  Come forth from among the Nazarenes!
+Deliver thyself, by nightfall, in the pure name of her whom thou
+lovest!  Come ere that time, if thou canst, but fail not, otherwise, to
+be in the forefront of Flora's followers!  Be prepared to possess her!
+
+"Fail not, by all the gods!
+    "Vasti, by the hand of Khosru, priest to Siva."
+
+
+Marsyas seized the writing with both hands and sprang up; reread it
+with straining eyes; walked the two steps permitted him in his cave
+over and over again; or leaned against the earthen wall to think.
+
+In the pure name of her whom he loved!  Lydia?  He felt his Essenic
+self dissolve in a flood of glad confusion, for the moment; instead of
+self-reproach, he felt more joy than he ever hoped to know in a life
+devoted to vengeance; instead of guilt, an uplift that separated him
+for an instant from even his terror for the rapture of contemplating
+Lydia.
+
+Then the grave alarm that the bayadere's letter aroused possessed him.
+A rereading filled him with consternation.  The unrevealed peril that
+he was to avert, the intimation that Lydia was endangered, the
+practically insurmountable obstacles in the way of his escape, shook
+him strongly in his self-control.  He made no plans, for desperate
+conditions did not admit of formulated action.  To pass outposts of
+half a cohort of brawny guards offered success only by a miracle, and
+the miraculous is not methodical.
+
+Presently, he burst out of his burrow and tramped through the bright
+hours of the afternoon, cursing the sun for its deadly haste to get
+under the rim of the world, and dizzy with the pressure of terror and
+anxiety.
+
+Near the softening hours of the latter part of the day, while the
+awakening revel roared louder in the distance, he stopped before the
+ancient temple.  The great hamper stood without the heavy entrance with
+three little Nazarene children tying ropes to the interstices between
+the fibers to pull it after them like a wagon.  Marsyas looked at the
+hamper, glanced with intent eyes at the front wall,--a duplicate,
+except for the entrance, of the rear one,--and then rushed away in
+search of Ananias, the pastor.
+
+He found the pastor sitting outside the house that had given him
+refuge, cutting soles for sandals from a hide that lay by his side.
+
+The Nazarene raised a face so kindly and interested that the young man
+dropped down beside him and blundered through his story, in his haste
+to lay the plan for escape before the old man.
+
+"At sunset," he hurried on, "or when the night is sufficiently heavy to
+hide us, I can be let down in the hamper by the rear wall of the old
+temple--if thou wilt bid some of thy congregation to help me!  I pray
+thee--let not thy belief deny me this help, for the life of my beloved,
+or mayhap her sweet womanhood, dependeth upon my escape!"
+
+He clasped his hands, and gazed with beseeching eyes into the pastor's
+face.  He did not permit himself to think what he would do if the old
+man denied him.
+
+"It is manifest," Ananias said, after a pause for thought, "that only
+Nazarenes are to be confined herein.  And thou, being a Jew, art here
+under false imprisonment.  We shall not be glad to have thee suffer
+with us."
+
+"Yes, yes!" Marsyas cried.  "I am falsely accused, and thou wilt avert
+an injustice--nay, by the holy death of the prophets!" he broke off,
+"if I could bear you all to refuge after me, I would do it!"
+
+"It is the spirit of Christ in thee, my son; nourish it!  Yet be not
+distressed for our sake; He who holdeth the world in the hollow of His
+hand is with us."
+
+Marsyas awaited anxiously the old man's further speech, when he lapsed
+into silence after his confident claim of divine protection.
+
+"Give us the plan, my son, and we will help thee," he said at last.
+
+Marsyas took the old man's hand and lifted it impulsively to his lips.
+
+While yet the Serapeum was crowned with pale light, but the more
+squalid streets were blackening, Marsyas, led by Ananias, came to the
+old temple-house, and briefly unfolded his plan to three stalwart young
+Gentiles, who had turned their backs upon Jove and assumed the grace of
+Jesus in their hearts.  The hamper with which the children had played
+all day was brought.  Three troll-lines, each forty feet in length and
+borrowed from the fisher Nazarenes who lived along the bay, were
+securely knotted in three slits about the rim of the basket.  Then,
+waiting only for the rapidly rising dusk, Marsyas, the three young
+Gentiles and the pastor climbed cautiously to the top of the side-wall
+of the old structure, and pulled up the hamper after them.
+
+At the angle in the rear, Marsyas, who led the way, stopped.  Below it
+was already night, and he could hear the steps of the sentries in the
+echoing passage.  He had not planned how he should pass them after his
+descent, but the houses opposite were dark and he did not look for
+interference, if he took refuge among them.
+
+He stepped into the hamper, and the three young men laid hold on the
+ropes.  The pastor spread his hands in blessing over Marsyas' head, and
+when the sound of the sentries' footsteps was faintest, the hamper,
+with little sound and at cautious speed, was let down the steep wall.
+
+It touched the sand with a grinding sound.  Marsyas leaped out, jerked
+one of the ropes in signal and the hamper sprang aloft.
+
+With a muttered blessing on the heads of the apostates, Marsyas leaped
+across the narrow street, to the shadows of the other houses.  Creeping
+from porch to porch with the sheltering shade of overhanging roofs upon
+him, he passed guard after guard, until the row finally ended and the
+open space between him and safety on the bay showed up a line of
+soldiers guarding the water-front.
+
+The distance was not great, and success thus far had made Marsyas
+strong.  With a prayer to the God of those who help themselves, he
+burst from the passage into the great open of the docking and sped
+straight for the bay.
+
+Instantly a howl went up, a pilum launched after him, shot over his
+shoulder, the rush of twenty mailed feet came in pursuit, swords,
+spears and axes flew and fell behind him, but panting and unfaltering
+he rushed straight to the edge of the wharf and dropped out of sight
+into the bay.
+
+The guards came after him, and hanging over the wharf looked down for
+him to come up.  They saw the circles of water widen and widen, grow
+stiller and stiller, and finally cease to move, but the head for which
+they looked did not rise.
+
+Meanwhile Marsyas, native of Galilee and lover of her blue sea, arose
+between sleeping boats far out into the bay.  He caught a chain and
+clung while he drew breath and rested.  Not a vessel was manned; every
+seaman, officer and passenger had gone ashore to follow Flora.
+
+Presently, he looked about and took his bearings.  There through a
+darkening lane of water, a hundred feet long, he made out the ornate
+aplustre of Agrippa's ship.
+
+He let himself down into the water again, and, swimming around to port,
+away from land, climbed by her anchor-chains and got upon deck.
+
+The ship was wholly silent and deserted.  None was there to ask why he
+came so unconventionally aboard.
+
+He went to the cabin prepared for the prince's reception, and with
+steward keys still fast to his belt let himself in and prepared to
+return to Alexandria.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE FEAST OF FLORA
+
+Marsyas had assumed pagan dress, bound a scarlet ribbon for a fillet
+about his head, and flung a scarlet cloak over his tunic, and so,
+identified with the revelers, he safely entered the city.
+
+Of the first he met on the brilliantly lighted wharves, he inquired, as
+a stranger, where he should find the night's celebration.  The citizens
+he addressed, intoxicated with revel, smote him with palm-leaves or
+thyrsi and haled him with them, as their fellow, seeking Flora.
+
+They skirted the Regio Judaeorum toward the northwest and swept him
+along toward the Serapeum.  Ever the streets opened up, more
+brilliantly lighted, more thickly crowded, more boisterously noisy;
+ever the nucleus of the crowd that had encompassed him increased and
+thickened and spread, until he was in the heart of a hurrying
+multitude.  Ever they shouted their indefinite anticipations, boasts of
+their favor with Flora, hopes that the run would be diverting, threats
+that were half-jocular, half in earnest.  And some of them, drunk with
+anarchy, made hysterical, inarticulate, yelping cries, like dogs on a
+heated trail.  And so, with their silent fellow among them, they went,
+started into an easy trot, and unhindered, like waters turning over a
+fall.
+
+The strange, half-mad revelry did not make for reassurance in Marsyas.
+His unexplained fears swept over him from time to time like a chill,
+and an unspeakable hatred for the unwieldy host about him, as well as
+the protest of his caution against the quick pace they had set, moved
+him to separate himself from them as soon as he might.
+
+Flora was to begin her flight from the Serapeum, but because the grove
+was most beautiful and the Temple most rich, the aristocrats of the
+city had repaired thither to separate themselves from _hoi polloi_, and
+had builded for themselves the City of Love.
+
+Marsyas knew that superior advantages were always for the rich man, and
+he, who had to be in the forefront of Flora's van, had to gather unto
+himself the most propitious opportunities.  So while the riot of
+plebeians into which he had been absorbed streamed contentedly on to
+its own lowly place, Marsyas worked his way out of the crowd and
+approached the City of Love.
+
+The glow of its lights, breaking through low-hanging branches and
+pillared avenues of tree-trunks, reached Marsyas with its music, its
+shouts and its tumult, but its inhabitants were shut away behind
+foliage, that their doings might be screened from the unqualified.
+
+The young man looked here and there for a way to enter, but the
+cunningly extended grove reached from street to street and blocked his
+passage.  Drawing closer he saw that a cordon of soldiers from the city
+garrison had been thrown around the grove for protection during revels.
+
+At that moment, some one whispered in his ear.
+
+"Thou art in time, white brother.  Continue and fail not!"
+
+He looked to catch a glimpse of Vasti, the bayadere, at his side.  She
+was wrapped from head to heel in a murky red silk, like a
+fire-illumined tissue of smoke.  He exclaimed to himself that this was
+no old woman, nor yet one young.  There was too much lissome grace in
+the sinuous figure, and too much unearthly wisdom in the dark
+mysterious face.
+
+An instant and she had disappeared like a spirit.
+
+A little dazed he turned to follow his approved course, but stopped,
+seeing that many humbler folk who had preceded him were halted and
+driven away.  The benefits of the grove were distinctly for those who
+came with a following and in chariots.  The cars of the rich were
+constantly passing through the line of guards; the numbers were greatly
+increasing, and presently became congested.  The shouts of the
+impatient waiting ones, the pawing of the horses and the calls of the
+slaves running hither and thither, added uproar to the lines which
+closed in around him, until finally he could go neither forward nor
+backward.
+
+While he turned this way and that for an avenue of escape, he found
+that he stood beside a shell of a chariot, with Junia and Justin
+Classicus seated within.  Classicus was not given readily to seeing
+people afoot, and Marsyas stepped hastily out of view.  But the Roman
+woman had already discovered him.  He saw her speak to Classicus, and,
+while he waited in resentment to be pointed out, Classicus leaped
+lightly out of the car, and, forcing his way through a crush of slaves,
+got up beside another, whom Marsyas saw to be Agrippa.
+
+Then Junia leaned down to him.
+
+"Come up; thou art safe," she said.  "I will not betray thee.  What was
+it, reason or repentance that freed thee?"  Her eyes sparkled and her
+breath came and went quickly between her parted lips.
+
+"An errand," he answered, "and the soldiers will not let me pass."
+
+"An errand?  Flora's errand?  Nay, but thou art an Essene.  Come up, I
+say.  The soldiers must pass thee if I bid them."
+
+With thanks on his lips he stepped in beside her and was presently
+driven without further interruption through the line of sentries, to
+the circle of abandoned chariots within.  There, alighting, the young
+man found himself deftly thrust into the crowd by Junia to avoid
+meeting the proconsul or Justin Classicus.  She lost herself with him,
+and entirely obscured from any he had ever seen before, they proceeded.
+
+"I have delivered thee an evil charge," she said, and there was a note
+of regret in her voice.  "Yesterday and the day before they would have
+been less objectionable, and seeing them hour by hour thou shouldst
+have become gradually accustomed to their aberration.  But suddenly
+exposed to this night's work, thy soul will be covered with confusion."
+
+Marsyas smiled awkwardly.  The woman could not understand that nothing
+short of the motive that had actuated him could have moved him to
+follow Flora; neither did he wish her to rest under the self-blame that
+she had urged him.
+
+"I do not go of mine own will, nor even thine," he answered.  "I was
+summoned."
+
+"What! has Flora summoned thee?" she cried, gazing at him in unfeigned
+astonishment.  "Fie on her boldness!  Only the Floras of Rome do such a
+thing!"
+
+"A new evil in Rome?" he responded, smiling.  "O lady, I can not go
+thither unless thou promise me protection!"
+
+She laughed and waved him a warning hand.
+
+"Behold how thou acceptest my counsel here in Alexandria!  What
+obedience need I expect in Rome?"
+
+Without waiting for his answer, she turned him out of the open into the
+grove.
+
+No extensive vista greeted him.  No lamps, only their lights were
+visible.  No green-and-gold walled aisle led far in a straight line.
+The woodland screening of leaf and branch prevailed everywhere.  The
+music, the shouts, the tumult seemed to be in another direction than
+the one toward which they were tending.  Marsyas went uncertainly; he
+had been bidden to be in the forefront of Flora's van, and ahead of him
+was falling silence.  The splendid creature at his side held her peace,
+and moved rapidly.  Gradually, the people thinned out, and when Junia
+turned him into another aisle they were alone.  She seemed to be
+conducting him away from the music and noise.
+
+Only for a moment, he hesitated at a loss, and then with an apologetic
+smile, he said to her:
+
+"We will go this way,"--and, turning at right angles, led back toward
+the tumult.
+
+"Marsyas," she said, with more impatience than reproach, "and thou art
+an Essene!  How I reproach myself!"
+
+But he smiled uncomfortably, and kept on.
+
+The wail of instruments, wild and discordant, the blowing of horns, the
+pulsation of drums, seemed suddenly to unite as they approached.  Above
+the clamor and squeal of cymbals and pipes, voices were lifted, loud
+and strained as if striving to be heard above the uproar.  Some of them
+merely shouted, most of them were singing, not one but many songs;
+shrieks and laughter shrilled through it all, and once in a while the
+musical tone of a rich throat triumphant above the noise bespoke the
+presence of gift with frenzy.
+
+The tumult was not now distant, and Marsyas did not wish Junia's
+further aid.  His search after Flora was not a thing to be published
+abroad.  He glanced at the lights, looked about for a less circuitous
+route, and, with a word to her, plunged through the brake toward the
+revel.
+
+Before she had thought to protest, the forefront of a procession
+penetrated from the side of the aisle and, streaming across, broke
+through the green on the other side.
+
+The first were flamens, Greek, Roman and Egyptian, robed in the pallium
+and carrying the lituus--first, if the order of procession had been
+observed, but before them, and about them bounded a harlequinade of
+baboons, centaurs, goats, swine--loose, ill-fashioned disguises that
+only robbed their wearers of human form and did not achieve the animal
+semblance.  Among them were slighter figures of lizards, snails on
+active pretty limbs, toads, beetles--glittering, sinuous things that
+surpassed the heavier figures in agility and boldness.  After them came
+a great cornucopia of gold, banded with spiral garlands of roses,
+studded with jewels and drawn on low ivory wheels by snow-white
+mule-colts.  Out of the shell-tinted mouth of the great horn, and
+luxuriously bedded on a gauze of gold cast over the flowers and fruits,
+was the rosy figure of a little boy, with pearly wings bound to his
+shoulders.
+
+Thus Eros proceeded to Flora.
+
+Only thus far was any semblance of order distinguishable in the
+procession.  The wave of uproar suddenly assumed overwhelming
+proportions; the aisle was inundated with frenzy.
+
+Marsyas moved forward, Junia moving with him, and the tumult drawing
+its bulky length across the aisle swept in now by multitudes.  He was
+caught; Junia clung to him determinedly for a moment, but was torn
+away; he permitted himself to be swallowed up and pitched along by the
+flood.
+
+He attracted no consecutive attention.  Maenads flung themselves upon
+him because his cheeks were crimson and his figure notable, but other
+youths with glowing cheeks drew the maenads away, now and again.
+Satyrs, fauns and bacchantes saluted him, tumbled him, buffeted him:
+one snatched off his scarlet fillet and crowned him with a wreath of
+grape-leaves, while a second thrust a thyrsus into his hand.  Some
+clung about his shoulders and bawled into his ear; others reached him
+flagons of wine and did not notice that others snatched the drink away.
+These things were single events that stood up out of the daze of
+astonishment and shock that confounded him.
+
+The noise roared louder at every step: the thousands about him
+augmented.  The grove opened more; the lights became more scattering
+and presently he found that he had been swept through another circle of
+chariots and outpost of soldiery into the city again.  Hurriedly
+glancing at the buildings on each side of the street into which the
+procession poured, he saw a sufficient number of familiar marks to
+inform him that he had been borne out on the Rhacotis side of the city.
+Then the blood within him chilled.  This half-maddened, half-murderous
+multitude was upon the trail of Flora, and was driving toward the
+settlement of the Nazarenes!
+
+An unshakable conviction possessed him, that Lydia stood between!
+
+Meanwhile the army of rabble joined the procession of aristocrats.
+From every avenue fresh multitudes poured in and added to the
+thousands.  Except for the bounding mimes about them the flamens kept
+the front of the horde, following with downcast eyes the trail of
+yellow roses which, Marsyas now knew, led the procession.
+
+In the midst of the gigantic hurly-burly he saw with strained eyes and
+a laboring heart that the light-footed goddess had made a long,
+deviating flight: that over and over again she doubled on her tracks,
+but that the detours led with deadly sureness toward the Nazarenes.
+Impelled now by desperation, he began to work his way toward the front.
+
+But he had not reckoned on the immense length of the procession, nor
+how far he had been absorbed into the heart of it.  Only when he was
+rushed over a slight rise in the street did he know that ahead of him
+for a great distance was a sea of tossing heads and moving shoulders,
+and on either side a compact wave wholly filled the two hundred feet of
+street and washed up against the walls of the houses.
+
+The street opened up into an immense square, the last stadium which
+marked the limit of the Roman influence in the Egyptian settlement.
+Beyond that, on the water-front, were the streets of the Nazarenes!
+
+Praying and struggling, Marsyas hardly noticed the increase of noise
+beginning at the front and extending back to him and passing until the
+wild clamor resolved itself into a stunning shout that shook Alexandria
+and rippled the face of the bay.
+
+"Flora!  _Dea maxima_!  _Solis filia_!  Give us joy; give us joy!"
+
+The trail of roses had been broken off.  Flora had been found.
+
+But another roar went up, here and there from the great body there were
+cries of protest and disappointment: the voice of looters and brawlers
+that had been deprived of sacrificial blood.  There were hisses, shouts
+of derision and cries to the populace to press on.
+
+But the flamens stopped; the great concourse halted by rank and rank
+until the slackening and final cessation of movement imprisoned the
+dissenters that were resolved to go on.  The main body continued its
+greetings to the goddess, above the cry of the dissatisfied.
+
+At the far side of the open was a tiny squat temple, hardly more than a
+shrine, to Rannu, the Egyptian goddess of the harvests.  On the top of
+the cornice with the blush lights of the City of Love upon her, stood a
+girl.  Thus lifted into the night sky, her features could not be
+distinguished, and Marsyas believed that she was mummied, face and
+figure, in wrappings.
+
+He continued to press forward.  The small figure on the summit of the
+Temple stirred, turned half about and slowly raised her arms with a
+motion that seemed half-command, half-salute to the great expectant
+crowd below.
+
+Then wing-like mists, taking into themselves the sunset flush of the
+fires of the City of Love, rose up and fluttered about her.  Long,
+flaming, melon-colored tongues licked in and out of the illusion:
+distended convolutions of tissue tinged with rose floated and drifted
+above her, beside her, before her; shivering streamers of silver
+reached up and failed and dissolved; jagged streaks and reduplications
+of fiery jets stood out and up and all about her.  When the clouds of
+pearly vapor lifted and eddied about her head, girdled her with circles
+or framed her with rosy wheels, the center of all this motion was
+distinguishable only as a snow-white spindle that whirled with dizzy
+rapidity.  And presently it was noted that the shape was losing the
+mummy form, that more and more the outlines of a beautiful body were
+blossoming out of the impearled mists: that petaline wings opened out,
+fold on fold, as a rose-bud would blow, and each successive disclosure
+gave the entranced vision a clearer image of the dancer at the heart.
+Ever the motion seemed slow and stately as do all great and graceful
+things maintaining splendid speed; ever the crimson light from the City
+of Love lent its illimitable range of shade to the motion of the mists.
+
+Below the great multitude, with its face lifted to the midnight sky,
+passed from uproar into silence and from silence into thunders of
+applause.  The immense voice was the voice of admiration, for the
+cooling hand of wonder pressed back the crowd's passion for a let to
+its reason.  They forgot their disappointment, their bloodthirst, their
+hate of the Nazarenes, and stood to marvel that the goddess burned but
+was not consumed.
+
+But Marsyas, patiently working his way forward, pressed by a tall black
+man who was saying over and over to himself in Hindu:
+
+"It is the bayadere dance, for the glory of Brahma!  A sacrilege!"
+
+The rest of Flora's program meanwhile was proceeding.  Slowly and
+mightily, magnificent young athletes, for only such could drive their
+way through so solid a pack of humanity, were working toward the
+portico of the Temple.  These were candidates for Flora's favor.  Among
+them were black-eyed Roman youths with laurel around their heads;
+golden-haired Greeks, crowned with stephanes; lithe, bronze Egyptians
+with ribboned locks at the temple which were the badge of princehood.
+And after them came one, crowned with grape-leaves, with a thyrsus in
+his hand, but he had shining black curls, the silken beard and the
+crimson cheeks of a Jew.  The eyes of this one glittered, not from
+excitement of fancy, but from desperate resolution and astounded
+recognition.  The pagans were far in advance of him.
+
+Now the crowd understood where they were bound and shouted to them; now
+the youths forced themselves past the cornucopia, the mimes, the
+flamens, and ran into the open space before the Temple.  In poses
+characteristic of their captivation and intent, they looked up at the
+dancing fires and cried aloud to the goddess.
+
+Meanwhile the morning-tinted mists whirled in a circular plane about
+the girl; suddenly they began to tremble and rise,--up, up until the
+ripple and shiver of the shaken silk took on the action and appearance
+of an illuminated cataract.  Through it, the beautiful outlines of the
+dancer were distinguished, veiled as a Nereid beneath waters, leaping,
+running.  Thousands below instinctively raised their arms to catch the
+figure which inevitably must leap through the inspirited cataract and
+over the parapet of the Temple unless the rosy element pent her within
+its bosom.
+
+The flight gradually changed from a simple step into the entanglement
+and intricacy of a dance.  No gossamer adrift on the wind was more a
+creature of the air, no tranced ephemera more the genius of motion.
+The roar of the multitude failed in a vast suspiration of surprise and
+bewildered delight.  Flora had invented, not a new wantonness, but a
+new grace.
+
+But the young men shouted: each sprang to a column which upheld the
+portico upon which Flora danced, and began to climb, helping themselves
+by the incrusted garlands of stone which ran up the pillars from base
+to capital.  It was a contest in climbing, and the best of the
+contestants was not long in proving himself.  He was one of the
+golden-haired Greeks and the multitude, for ever partizan to the
+strongest man, roared and thundered its encouragement to him.
+
+He went up with an ease and swiftness almost superhuman; now, he drew
+himself across the outstanding corner of the architrave, and stood with
+delicate foothold on its molding while he reached up past the frieze
+and caught the cornice with his hands.
+
+The dancer caught the flash of light on his golden stephane and wavered.
+
+"_Habet_!  _Habet_!" roared the multitude.  "Evoe, Ionides!"
+
+And Ionides, lazily lifting himself to the top of the portico, lingered
+a moment on one hand and knee to contemplate his prize.
+
+The cataract sank; the flying feet halted, the glory of fire and motion
+was lost in lengths of silk which the dancer began hastily to wind
+about her head and body.  Sufficiently covered to hide her face, she
+paused and looked to see his further move.
+
+The Greek, with shining eyes and smiling lips, began slowly to raise
+himself.
+
+Then the one with the black curls and silken beard tore himself from
+the foremost of the crowd and rushed toward the portico.
+
+The dancer saw him come.  She moved toward the edge of the cornice.
+The Greek leaped: the other below flung up his arms, but the roar of
+the multitude swept away the cry that came from his lips.
+
+The dancer, eluding the triumphant Greek, rushed over the brink of the
+portico and dropped like a plummet entangled in gossamer into the
+upreached arms of Marsyas below.
+
+Both fell like stones.  But Marsyas sprang up with his prize in his
+arms, and fled up the steps through the black porch and the stone
+valves into the Temple of Rannu.
+
+[Illustration: Marsyas sprang up with his prize in his arms (missing
+from book)]
+
+Outside, the multitude, having seen Flora flout her rightful possessor,
+fell for a moment silent.  Then, a part having but one desire to choose
+for itself, fell to its own choosing; but the rest, already cheated of
+blood and spoil, howled their disapproval, fought their way through
+disinterested masses in order to reach the refuge of the capricious
+Flora, met resistance and precipitated warfare, and in an incredibly
+short time, bedlam reigned in the square before the Temple of Rannu.
+
+
+The public celebration of the Feast of Flora was at an end.  Meanwhile
+there was a trail of yellow roses, beginning abruptly in the Nazarene
+community and leading around every household and out and on toward the
+west.  The roses lay untouched and wilting through the night and were
+shoveled up and carted away by the street-cleaners the next morning.
+And on the summit of the Gate of the Necropolis, a painted beauty sat
+in jewels and flowers and little raiment, and wondered why she was not
+sought and found and why her followers stayed and roared before the
+Temple of Rannu.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE FINING FIRE
+
+As Marsyas leaped into the Temple of Rannu, a figure started up beside
+him.  He sprang away from it in alarm, but a word in Hindu reassured
+him.
+
+"It is I, Vasti."
+
+With the bayadere following he raced through the cloyed musk of the
+temple toward the square of lesser darkness at the rear, which showed
+the exit into the court.  He flung himself across the pavement of the
+inner inclosure and down its aisle of sphinxes, through the gate in the
+rear wall and out into a black passage.
+
+Behind, the roar of the contending host of Flora followed him.  Though,
+for a second time this day he had run with peril on his track, the
+threatened identification of the precious burden he bore was more
+terrifying than death had been at sunset.
+
+It was a long alley, the single outlet for a jam of humble houses
+surrounding the temple, and it opened into a street deep in the
+Egyptian quarter.  Though Marsyas ran splendidly, he carried no little
+burden, and the way was black, unpaved and treacherous.  He had begun
+to fear that he could not reach the end before pursuers, so minded,
+could hem him in, when almost as if the thought had invited the
+actuality, he saw a figure appear at the mouth of the alley.  With a
+furious but repressed exclamation, the unknown plunged at the Essene.
+
+Determined to defend Lydia's identity as long as he might, Marsyas
+swung her behind him, and with a whisper to Vasti to hide Lydia, made
+ready to fight fast.
+
+With the dim illumination of the city behind him, Marsyas was better
+able to see his antagonist.  As the solid body projected itself at him,
+like a springing beast, he met it with a raised left arm and a ready
+right hand.  Instantly the two closed and for a brief, fierce moment,
+fought savagely.  But Marsyas discovered that he was far more agile,
+taller and apparently younger than his assailant, and for a space he
+had only to fight away the knife that glinted and darted hungrily at
+his throat.  Then, seizing upon his antagonist's first imperfect guard,
+he delivered a stunning blow over the heart.  The heavy body staggered,
+quivered and collapsed.
+
+Expecting to find the passage before him filling with ruffians, Marsyas
+was astonished to see the way clear and vacant.  Without waiting to
+catch breath Marsyas sprang back in the alley, and, whispering the
+bayadere's name, found Lydia and the serving-woman only a pace from the
+spot.
+
+Catching Lydia up again, in spite of her protests, he was about to
+spring over the prostrate body that all but blocked the passage, when
+his eye fell upon the upturned face.  The dim light of the city fell on
+it.
+
+It was Flaccus!
+
+For a single moment of surprise and bewilderment, Marsyas stood still.
+Then very surely it penetrated through his brain that the proconsul had
+recognized him at the moment of Flora's drop into his arms, and had
+come to capture him--or to identify the Dancing Flora!
+
+He knew that he had not struck a fatal blow and the proconsul's knife
+lay near.  He picked it up.
+
+It was bloody.
+
+Startled and aghast, he flung the weapon away, and, leaping over the
+unconscious Roman, fled out of the alley.  A torch of pitch, burnt down
+to a charred knot, with a feeble flame playing over it, was set upon a
+staff hardly ten paces from the mouth of the passage.  It was a dark
+street, and deserted.  The roar of the populace still centered about
+the square of the Temple of Rannu.  Marsyas turned toward the torch,
+and, as he ran, he saw under its sickly light the figure of a man
+stretched on the earth.  At another step, he tripped over a second
+fallen body.  It moved and groaned.
+
+Marsyas put Lydia down.  Carrying her through a street cumbered with
+prostrate men might mean bodily injury for both of them.  With a
+reassuring word, he led her between the head of the obscured man and
+the feet of the one under the torch, and stumbled at his second step on
+a contorted shape.
+
+Marsyas stopped, to ask himself if the deadly hand that had brought
+these men low might not await him and his dear charge farther on.
+Vasti leaned over the one under the torch.  Then she sprang up.
+
+"Come!  Look!" she whispered in excitement.
+
+Marsyas hurried to the man, and met at that instant the last conscious
+light in the eyes of Agrippa.
+
+The young Essene dropped to his knees without a word, thrust his hand
+into the embroidered tunic and felt for the prince's heart.  It beat
+but slowly.  Vasti, meanwhile, snatched the torch from the staff and
+beat the charred pitch knot on the ground till the still inflammable
+heart broke open and ignited afresh.
+
+By its light Marsyas examined Agrippa.  Between the prince's shoulders,
+his hand touched chilling blood.
+
+"Ambushed!" he said grimly.  "Stabbed in the back!"
+
+Marsyas looked at the prince's right hand.  It was still clenched, and
+the flesh on the knuckles was abraded, the second joints swelling fast.
+
+Vasti, with suspicion in her olive eyes, carried the torch over to the
+contorted shape.  Then she made a sign to Marsyas.  He looked.  It was
+an Egyptian wearing the livery of Flaccus.  The prince's Arabic dagger
+was neatly buried to the hilt in the servitor's breast.  Vasti examined
+the second prostrate form.  By her torch Marsyas saw that it was
+Eutychus, conscious but benumbed.  His left ear, cheek and eye were
+swollen and black.
+
+"It seems," said Marsyas, stanching Agrippa's wound, "that the prince
+disabled his own support!"
+
+But Vasti, by deft twitches of ear and hair and threats in Hindu,
+significant in tone if not in speech to the charioteer, finally got
+Eutychus upon his feet.
+
+"Take up the prince," she said to Marsyas.  "The slave may follow or
+lie as he chooses.  I shall attend my mistress."
+
+Marsyas lifted the Herod and, following Vasti, hurried on again into
+the darkness.  The bayadere made toward the sea-front, not many yards
+distant, sped across the wharf and over the edge apparently into the
+water.  Marsyas, by this time ready to follow the brown woman into any
+extreme, plunged after her.  He landed abruptly in the bottom of a
+punt.  Lydia followed, and Eutychus, with an alacrity not expected of
+one who groaned so helplessly.
+
+Vasti severed the rope that tied up the boat, and, with a strong thrust
+of her hands against the piling, pushed the boat away from the wharf.
+But she did not take up the oars.  She left them to Marsyas, trained on
+the blue waters of Galilee.
+
+In a moment he had pulled out into the black expanse of the bay, and,
+with the prince's ship in mind, rowed among the sleeping shipping.
+
+"How came the prince in this plight?" Marsyas demanded of Eutychus.
+
+The charioteer, with his head in his hands, groaned and murmured
+unintelligibly.  Lydia dipped an end of the wonderful silk that
+enveloped her into the water and pressed the wet corner to the
+charioteer's temples.
+
+Marsyas frowned blackly.
+
+"Nay, but thou canst answer, Eutychus," he said shortly.
+
+After further murmurings, the charioteer brought out between groans an
+avowal that he was completely mystified.
+
+"How came Agrippa in the street?" Marsyas insisted.
+
+"He was with Justin Classicus; I attended him.  When Flora danced and
+chose her lover, and the two fled into the Temple of Rannu, the
+Alexandrian cried to my lord that there was another passage into the
+Temple, by which they could go in, or the Flora and her lover come out.
+And he proposed for a prank that he and the prince go thither and
+discover Flora and her lover.  We were on the roof of a bath and could
+get down at once, so we ran through private passages, my lord and I,
+outstripping Classicus, whom the crowd swallowed.  And when we got into
+this dark street, two fell upon us without warning and killed us both!"
+
+"But it was Agrippa who struck that blow," Marsyas declared.
+
+The man murmured again.
+
+"Some one struck me," he said finally; "mayhap the prince, not knowing
+friend from foe in the street."
+
+"Of a surety, this stiff old Roman took chances," Marsyas averred after
+thought, "with but one apparitor to aid him against Agrippa,
+palestrae-trained and this young charioteer!  Art sure thou didst not
+play the craven, Eutychus?" he demanded.
+
+"Or should I be blamed," Eutychus groaned, "when it was three against
+me, with the prince striking at his single defender?"
+
+Marsyas fell silent.  It was not like Agrippa to be confused under any
+circumstances.
+
+He pulled up beside Agrippa's vessel, roused the watchman and had the
+prince and Eutychus taken aboard; but Vasti and Lydia he left in the
+borrowed punt, out of sight of the crew that had returned.
+
+He followed the injured men on deck and hurriedly dressed Agrippa's
+wound, restored him to consciousness and left him in the charge of the
+captain of the vessel.  He ordered one of the skilled seamen to attend
+Eutychus and hurried back to the women in the boat under the black
+shadow of the ship.
+
+He pulled straight for the sea, rounded Eunostos point and skirting the
+tiny archipelagoes in the broad light of the Pharos, brought up at a
+small indented coast between two sandy peninsulas.  Here the residence
+portion of Alexandria came down to the ocean.  The locality was dark
+and wrapped in sleep.
+
+As he lifted Lydia from the boat, Marsyas turned to Vasti.
+
+"Why didst thou not prevent her in this thing?" he asked in Hindu.
+
+"The white brother forgets that I am a handmaiden," she replied.
+
+"But what if I had not come?" he persisted, growing more troubled by
+his perplexities.
+
+"I had prepared a path for escape; I was armed, and watching!"
+
+"Did--did she expect me?" he asked after silence.
+
+"No."
+
+Then she had done this thing for him.  Oh, for the safe refuge of the
+alabarch's musky halls that he might harken to the sweet distress in
+his soul and tell her of it!
+
+Without further event, they reached the alabarch's house and the
+bayadere, producing keys, let her charges into the servant's entry
+beneath the porch.  Lydia instantly disappeared, but Vasti in obedience
+to a word from Marsyas conducted him through the well-beloved chambers
+to the corridor lined by the sleeping-rooms of the servants.
+
+Before one, she stopped.
+
+"Herein is the prince's other servant," she said, and quickly
+disappeared.
+
+Marsyas opened the door and entering aroused Silas.  With a bare
+explanation that the prince would sail the instant the courier got
+aboard, he urged the grumbling old man into activity, and went back to
+the alabarch's presiding-room.
+
+He had a moment of waiting--at last a moment to think!
+
+He realized that an extreme of some nature had been reached; all his
+purposes had been brought up to a climax.  There was no lingering in
+Alexandria possible for Agrippa, wounded or well, for Marsyas knew that
+Flaccus had the Herod's undoing in mind.  If Lydia were a Nazarene,
+Marsyas had now, of a surety, though all Heaven and earth intervened,
+to bring Saul of Tarsus to death before the Pharisee's dread hand fell
+upon Lydia for apostasy!  For that purpose, he must go to Rome--and
+leave Alexandria--to return?  For his love's sake?  He, an Essene?
+
+Silas came, bowed, and was dismissed to wait in the street for the
+moment.  And still Marsyas stood.  The house was silent and dark.  The
+slumber that overtakes those relieved from a three days' strain
+enwrapped all under the alabarch's roof.  Presently he thought of
+Cypros, in his search for an excuse for lingering.  A lamp on the
+alabarch's table was ready to be lighted, and, finding the materials
+for fire-making in the drawer, he lighted it.
+
+
+"Sweet lady," he wrote on a parchment at hand, "the winds favorable to
+thy lord's departure blow, and he will not awaken thee to the pain of a
+farewell.  Be comforted, be brave, be hopeful; for when he returneth,
+he bringeth thee a crown.  I remember my pledge to thee.
+
+"Be thou blessed.
+  "MARSYAS."
+
+
+It was the first letter he had ever written to a woman; he did not
+dream that he had written so tenderly.
+
+He rolled the parchment and addressed it to the princess.
+
+There was nothing more to be done.
+
+Was he not to see Lydia again?
+
+Filled with rebellion and fear, he hurried toward the hall; in the
+semi-dark, cast by the lamp within the larger room, he saw a small
+figure slip quickly behind a hanging.
+
+She had been waiting to have a stolen look upon him as he went!
+
+He caught her in his arms and drew her out into the light.  Under its
+revealing ray, he saw her lovely face smitten down with shame, but he
+lifted it, to kiss her eyes, her temples and her lips.
+
+"Lydia!  Lydia!  I fear to leave thee!" he whispered.
+
+She let her eyes light upon him, to catch his meaning, and when she saw
+terror for her apostasy and amazement for the thing she had done for
+the Nazarenes, a sudden misery leaped into her face.  She tried to put
+him back.
+
+"Lydia, Lydia!" he begged, feeling the repulse, "dost thou not love me,
+then?"  His tone urged, his eyes pleaded.
+
+For a moment, she was silent; then she said, with infinite pain:
+
+"Marsyas, I broke off the trail of roses through Rhacotis, and held
+back the multitude from the Nazarenes.  But thou art an Essene, and a
+Jew; wherefore, in thy sight I can not be justified.  Forget not these
+things for my sake!  Go, ere thy teaching hath cause to reproach thee."
+
+"No, no!" he agonized.  "Do not say that to me!  Say rather that thou
+wilt turn away from this heresy and be led no more by it into
+transgression!  Better thy sweet life and thy sweet fame than all the
+truth in the world!"
+
+The word he used caught her.  She waited and seemed not to breathe.  He
+swept on.
+
+"Art thou, beyond saving, a Nazarene?"
+
+Her face fell, and her soft red lips were parted with a heavy sigh.
+
+"From this night henceforward, Marsyas!  I have purchased the blessing
+dearly."
+
+She took the hands about her and undid them.
+
+"Go!" she whispered.  "Farewell, and the one God, that loves us all,
+shield thee from harm all the days of thy life!"
+
+A moment and she was gone.
+
+After a while he turned and walked with stumbling feet into the new
+dawn on Alexandria.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+"IN THE CLOAK OF TWO COLORS"
+
+Marsyas turned on the gilded couch, threw off the light covering and
+sat up.  A Syrian slave thrust aside the heavy drapery over the
+cancelli, which had been drawn in the atrium while the young man slept.
+
+In the brilliant light of the Roman mid-afternoon, Marsyas looked
+sleepily at the slave that bowed beside him, and the courier that stood
+near by.
+
+"A message for thee," the slave said.
+
+Marsyas put out his hand and the courier laid in it a package wrapped
+in silk.  Marsyas broke the seal and read the contents.
+
+
+"O MARSYAS:
+
+"Gossip hath it now that thou art no longer confused when a woman
+addresses thee: wherefore I write with less trepidation and more
+confidence.
+
+"I am in Rome these seven days, under my father's roof, for a little
+space before we are commanded to join Caesar in Capri.  In this time I
+have not seen thee nor thy lord.
+
+"If not myself, then perchance the news I bring from Alexandria may
+urge thee to accept the invitation I extend.
+
+"There exists no greater claim than thine upon my hospitality.
+
+"Come thou, and make me welcome in mine own city.
+
+"JUNIA."
+
+
+Marsyas sprang up, the last of the languor gone from his face.
+
+"Thou shalt conduct me," he said to the messenger.
+
+He disappeared in the direction of his cubiculum.
+
+In a time longer than he had consumed in his old Essenic days to
+prepare himself for the streets he came again into Agrippa's atrium.
+
+It was hard to recognize in him the picturesque Jewish ascetic that had
+bent over the scroll in the great college of Jerusalem.  He had
+permitted the blade to come at his hair and beard; the kerchief had
+been replaced by the fillet; the cloak and gown by the scarlet tunic
+and mantle, the daylight had been let in on his fine limbs, and there
+was the fugitive glitter of jewels on his fingers and arms.  He had
+assumed perfumes and polishes, had laid aside all his oriental habit
+and had become not only a Roman but an exquisite.  The change was not
+all in his dress; the indefinable something that marks the man of
+experience was upon him and the ascetic blankness was gone from his
+brow.
+
+He signed to the messenger to follow, and passing out of the house and
+down the long banks of marble steps which led up to Agrippa's
+magnificent eyrie on the brink of the Quirinal, entered a lectica that
+awaited him in the streets.
+
+Years are not time enough to weary one of Rome.
+
+Marsyas had come into the capital with a spirit benumbed by a great
+shock, so that the first day he walked the imperial streets he was less
+conscious of their wonders than he was at this hour.
+
+He was borne through narrow lanes that were like clefts between heights
+of marble, under arches, chronicling the solemn consummation of
+triumph, along crowding pillars that arose out of the ravines between
+the seven hills, and, catching the sunlight on their white capitals,
+cast it down in the gloom of the depressions.  Glories clambered up the
+bosom of the Esquiline; templed sanctity crowned the Aventine, and
+might in marble and gold sat on the Palatine.  Between were splendor
+and squalor, confused, for only beauty stood up above the miseries and
+defilement that made Rome hateful in its unsunned ways.
+
+The feebleness of unwieldy and disunited multitudes cumbered the
+Carinae, along which he passed.  Starvation and the excess of plenty,
+power and abject subjection, unspeakable depravity and innocence met
+and passed.  The slaves preceding the young man's litter made way for
+it with staff and pilum, or again it made way for slaves bearing fasces
+and maces.  He did not proceed unnoticed.  Albucilla, widow of Satrius
+Secundus, in a litter with Cneius Domitius, turned from the languid
+senator at her side to cast a bewitching smile at the young Essene;
+Ennia, wife of Macro, the praetorian prefect, leaned from her litter to
+cry him an invitation.
+
+"To Tusculum!  Come with us!"
+
+"Many thanks: yet I would the invitation came to-morrow!"
+
+"It shall," she said in answer and was borne on.  Running slaves pushed
+by him to overtake her chair, and Marsyas knew without looking that the
+lectica they bore contained Caligula, Caesar's grand-nephew.  Agrippina,
+a young matron in a chair, with a month-old babe in her arms, cast a
+sidelong glance out of her black eyes at the young man as he
+approached.  Stupid old Claudius, clad in a purple-edged toga and
+stumbling as he walked, acknowledged the precedence Marsyas gave him
+with a smile and a greeting.  As the young Jew was borne on he did not
+realize that he had made room for three coming Caesars in the Carinae.
+After them streamed a great number of patricians in chairs, all
+proceeding to the races at Tusculum, but Marsyas' bearers turned off
+the Carinae and began to mount the Esquiline.  In a few minutes he was
+set down before a small, newly-erected house as classic as a Greek
+temple, as compact as a fortification.
+
+The messenger bowed him into the hands of the atriensis, who led him
+into the vestibule and left him for a moment.  Presently, a
+soft-footed, scantily-clad boy bowed gracefully beside him and begged
+him to follow.  He was led into Junia's atrium.
+
+The Roman woman, who had been lounging in a chair at the cancelli,
+turned languidly, and sprang up in feigned surprise.  But honest
+feeling came into her face as she looked at the changed man that stood
+before her.
+
+"Welcome!" she cried, hastening to meet him.  "Would thou wast a god!
+Perchance there would be despatch about answering prayers!"
+
+"Give the gods as welcome a supplication, and the answer would come
+riding upon Jupiter's thunderbolts!" he responded.
+
+She laughed and shook her finger at him.
+
+"How hopeless a ruin thou art!  A Jew speaking of the gods!"  He led
+her to a chair, and, drawing one up beside her, sat.  With bright eyes
+and a little changing smile she inspected him for a moment.
+
+"It is true!" she cried at last.  "And I do not like to see it!  Thou
+art indeed changed; no longer the sincere Jew that I met in Alexandria."
+
+"A Jew, lady, nevertheless," he answered.  "But tell me of thyself, and
+after that of them that remain in Alexandria."
+
+"No: thou canst not avert the preachment I have ready for thee.  All
+thy misdeeds are known to me.  When I forewarned thee of the various
+attributes of Rome, I did not add that Rome talks!  I have heard how
+thou hast put chaplets on thy head, reclined at feasts and upset half a
+score of merry running courtships in the capital.  I see thee, how thou
+hast put off thy sober habit and got into raiment that makes thee
+thrice and four times more deadly to the hearts of women.  And thou an
+Essene!  Prayerfully hoping to return into the peace and inertia of the
+salty desert of En-Gadi--some time!  Overshadowing the Herod till in
+very despair he hath taken to racing and left the triclinia and the
+atria to thee!  Fie and for shame, Marsyas!"
+
+The young man smiled a little bitterly.  Cypros' charge had not been
+difficult, since his Essenism had been the obstacle which lay between
+him and that love he would have, though it cost him his soul!
+
+"But Rome enlarges," he protested.  "Agrippa chaseth the elusive bubble
+of Fortune: and I--having a purpose to be achieved in his success--I
+speed him--in mine own way.  But enough of ourselves.  Tell me of
+Alexandria!"
+
+"But wait!  I have not done.  The charm of beauty hath lost its potency
+here in Rome, where it is the business of every one to be beautiful.
+The charm of riches is debased because of its great prevalence, since
+every one hath his honor to sell, and honor commands the highest price.
+The charm of rank is dissolved, for there is no rank with a centurion's
+son bearing the aegis, and freedmen dispensing hospitality in the
+mansions of the ancient Quirites!  Wherefore there is only one rare,
+unpurchasable charm--newness--and Roman society speedily dulls the
+luster of that, if one stoops to flourishing socially.  Beware, my
+Marsyas!"
+
+He remembered that she had always been concerned for his uprightness,
+in a strangely unspiritual way.  He had heard of upright atheists;
+somehow she seemed to belong in that category with her moral, but
+irreligious chidings.  Now, she was bearing him welcome testimony that
+he had changed.
+
+"Be neither frequent nor democratic.  Saith Agricola, the pleb,
+'Brutus, the senator, is nobody; he speaks to me!'  By Castor!  I had
+rather endure the contempt of the great than the approval of the small.
+Wherefore, save thyself, as a rare wine, fit for only imperial feasts.
+And lest thou be lonely meantime, let me amuse thee."
+
+"How can I expect it, when thou wilt not tell me now what I wish?" he
+complained.
+
+"But this is trial of thy gallantry: I have as great a curiosity as
+thine.  So thou wilt wait for me.  Thou hast been in Rome four months.
+Tell me what happened in that time."
+
+Marsyas slipped down in his chair and clasped his hands back of his
+head.
+
+"None leads a droning life who associates with Agrippa," he said.  "I
+have not seen a restful hour since I met him in Judea.  Nay, then; hear
+me.  He landed at Capri, on the invitation of the emperor, and repaired
+to the palace where, with the same grace that hath made me and others
+his slaves, he won back in a single audience all the favor that he had
+forfeited in twenty years.  He came away radiant and under promise to
+return the following night, and dine with the emperor.  But the next
+morning, who should drop anchor in the bay but Herrenius Capito, livid
+with wrath because he had been outwitted at every turn by Agrippa.  One
+would think it were he whom Agrippa owed, so indecent his fervor in
+reporting him.  What followed but that the same imperial hand which had
+been stretched in welcome to the prince one day, was, the next,
+extended in banishment over him."
+
+"What misfortune!" Junia exclaimed, half in sympathy, half in irony.
+"Ate, herself, must be the patron genius of the Herod."
+
+"Hot upon Herrenius' heels came Vitellius' contubernalis, with a
+warrant for me, but we, meanwhile, had taken ship and sailed for Ostia.
+And hear me, when I say, that some rabid foe had dropped the
+information of our whereabouts, in Judea!  I repaired to Rome, borrowed
+three hundred thousand drachmae of Antonia, the _univira_, and
+despatched messengers to Caesar and Herrenius Capito telling that the
+debt so long overlooked had been paid, before my pursuer reached Rome.
+So we laid the ghost of our debts.  But feeling unhappy owing no man, I
+immediately borrowed a million drachmae of Thallus, Caesar's freedman,
+repaid Antonia, and established ourselves magnificently on the
+Quirinal.  Hence, being in debt and in favor again, we have nothing to
+trouble us but the serious pursuit of our respective ambitions.  But--!"
+
+He stopped abruptly.
+
+"O prescient contingent!" she said softly.  "Does the Herod dally with
+his opportunities?"
+
+"Worse: he affronts them!  Worse: those opportunities are not alone for
+him!  Part of them are mine!"
+
+Her lips shaped an exclamation, but he went on.
+
+"Listen; it is a proper sending on thee, for insisting on plunging me
+into narrative.  An oriental story-teller and a circle make no end.
+Even as thou saidst to me in Alexandria so many weeks ago, Rome looketh
+two ways for a new Emperor.  Here is the little Tiberius, Drusus' son,
+and there is Caligula, Caesar's grandnephew.  Now Caesar seeth in the
+little Tiberius a successor.  Fatuous dotage!  The praetorians are
+stubbornly attached to Caligula, because forsooth he wore miniature
+boots like theirs when he tumbled about in the peplus of an infant.
+The reason is good enough to be a woman's!  Be it as it may, that lean,
+sallow, gluttonous Caligula is brow-marked for the crown!"
+
+"_Hercle_! but thou art as good an image-maker with words as Phidias
+was with a stone!"
+
+"Patience!  On a certain day, Agrippa and I went without the Porta
+Esquilina to get into our chariots and drive to Tusculum.  Many were
+going, as many go every day.  We had mounted our car, with
+Eutychus--would he were at the bottom of the Tiber!--as charioteer,
+when young Tiberius came and mounted his, and Caligula came and mounted
+his.  After them directly followed a cohort of praetorians.  Their
+bright armor, their noise, their steady undeviating advance, frightened
+little Tiberius' horses, which backed into Caligula's chariot and
+frightened his pair.  The four bolted at once; the chariots upset and
+both princes were spilled on the ground directly in front of the
+advancing cohort.
+
+"The tribune hastily brought up the column and Tiberius and Caligula
+were helped to their feet.  The lad withdrew to the roadside, but
+Caligula turned upon the soldiers and flung camp-jokes at them, so
+broad, so bold, so rough, that, at first chuckling, then roaring, the
+whole cohort burst into a great shout in honor of their favorite.
+
+"Meanwhile, Eutychus had permitted his horses by bad management to
+become unruly.  Agrippa seized the lines away from him and lashed him
+across the shoulders once or twice, to the great rage of the
+charioteer.  I had in the meanwhile to alight and quiet the animals.
+Agrippa then drove toward Tiberius to offer him the hospitality of his
+chariot, while the slaves were pursuing the runaways.  The boy saw him
+coming, understood the prince's intent and handed his cloak to a slave
+preparatory to mounting Agrippa's car, when the cohort began to cheer
+Caligula.
+
+"What did Agrippa, then, but wheel his horses, drive over to the
+soldiers' favorite and take him into the car!"
+
+"What!  Did that thing openly?"
+
+"Deliberately!  The boy paled, flushed, and whirling about, stalked
+back inside of the walls, before I could invent an excuse to cover
+Agrippa's slight.  And after him rushed a crowd of senators and
+aediles--his umbrae--to feed his hate of the Herod!"
+
+"What did Agrippa, then?" Junia asked after a dismayed silence.
+
+"He was long gone up the road to Tusculum with Caligula by that time."
+
+"It is not hard to guess how he lost Fortune before," Junia declared.
+
+"He plays at legerdemain with Caesar's favor," Marsyas said, annoyed at
+his own narrative.  "Tiberius, most solemnly commended the boy Tiberius
+to Agrippa's care and companionship.  Caesar will hear of this!"
+
+"Inevitably!  Tale-bearing is a fine art in Rome and Tiberius is its
+patron.  And thus he conducts himself in the face of Cypros' peril, who
+gave herself in hostage for him that he might succeed!"
+
+"Cypros' peril!" Marsyas repeated, with startled eyes.
+
+"Of Flaccus!"
+
+Marsyas' astonishment was not pleasant.
+
+"Why of Flaccus?" he asked.
+
+"What!  Hath Agrippa kept his counsel, thus long?  Dost thou not know
+that Flaccus hath an eye to the timid Cypros and Agrippa, discovering
+it, all but killed Flaccus in a passage back of the temple, on the
+night of the Dance of Flora?"
+
+Marsyas looked at her steadily.
+
+"How much dost thou know of this thing?" he demanded.
+
+"Can I know too much of it?" she asked plaintively.
+
+"No!" he answered penitently.
+
+"Then I know all of it, cause, process and result," she declared.
+
+"Tell it me, then!"
+
+"Nay, then; Flaccus was in love with Cypros in Rome, when she was sent
+here twenty years ago to marry Agrippa.  So much he loved her, that
+twenty years after, when next he met her, his old passion was
+revived--stronger, less submissive and more dangerous than that of his
+youth.  Whether or not he spoke of it to Agrippa, or simply betrayed
+himself, the night of the Feast, is not patent; nevertheless the
+proconsul was discovered half-killed, in an alley back of the Temple of
+Rannu, and the Herod had sailed suddenly and without farewell to
+Cypros, in the night."
+
+"How didst thou learn of this?"
+
+"O simple youth!  Is it then so common in Judea for powers to be
+discovered with their hearts stunned, that no comment is made upon it?
+Or perchance thou givest Flaccus credit for suffering in silence?  That
+is better.  Know, however, that he was discovered by the constabulary,
+and straightway such an outcry was never heard in Alexandria.  But the
+proconsul aroused and cut it off in full voice.  And there he made an
+error.  He was made to be a straightforward man; he is too cumbrous to
+be a knave.  So speculation ran abroad in whispers, till the true cause
+was unearthed."
+
+"And Cypros?"
+
+"Cypros?  Now canst thou, knowing Cypros, ask of her expecting any
+change?  Beautiful statues do not change.  What they express when they
+are finished they express until they are broken.  When she came from
+under the sculptor's chisel, she was made to love her husband, and her
+babes, to believe whatever is told her, be beautiful, simple and good."
+
+"So much the more Flaccus must have distressed her!"
+
+"She does not suspect him!"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Amazement, at times, gentle sir, is reproach; wherefore since I am the
+author of this device, thou wilt be less astounded and, so, more
+complimentary.  I knew that Cypros, being sweet, simple and guileless,
+would do no more than treat the proconsul with bitter disdain
+thereafter, and precipitate a climax, which in my opinion would entail
+twenty diverse calamities.  I know Flaccus, I have sent the plummet to
+the bottom of his oceanic nature.  I also know that the Lady Herod is
+an anomaly in her family, clean, faithful and loving.  So with Agrippa
+out of reach, the proconsul may conspire all he pleases to alienate the
+princess from her Arab, in vain.  Wherefore I permitted the good
+alabarch in all innocence to go in his magisterial robes to the
+proconsul's mansion and express his indignation, concern and anxious
+hopes, and to say that Agrippa had taken advantage of favorable winds
+to depart for Rome.  I can see the smoldering eyes of the proconsul
+study the white old face of that perfect diplomat and discover no guile
+thereon.  So apparent the alabarch's sincerity, that after due lapse of
+time in which the proconsul plucked up courage and front, Flaccus
+resumed his visits to the alabarch's house.  And for all outward signs,
+it was another and not Agrippa that dinted the Roman's chest!"
+
+Marsyas leaned his elbows on his knees and a line appeared between his
+level brows, marking the growing change from the thought of youth to
+the thought of man.
+
+"Lady," he said gravely, after a pause, "it was Flaccus and not Agrippa
+that did the bloodthirsty deeds back of the Temple of Rannu; and it was
+I--and not Agrippa, that dinted the Roman's chest!"
+
+"What?" she ejaculated, springing up to lay hand on his arm.  "Thou!"
+
+"Flaccus led Agrippa into a trap and stabbed him in the back," he went
+on, "and I struck the blow that laid Flaccus low.  And Agrippa was
+taken aboard his ship that night, with a knife wound between his
+shoulders, wholly ignorant of the identity of his assailant--until I
+told him--three days out at sea!"
+
+After a long silence, she said softly:
+
+"And that was thine errand--for Flora!"
+
+Without a tremor he inclined his head in assent.
+
+"Nay, then," she began again, after another pause, "what more dost thou
+know?  How much of this tale thou heardest so deceitfully is incorrect
+history?"
+
+"Enough of Flaccus," he parried, smiling.  "Tell me of--Classicus."
+
+Junia leaned back in her chair and laughed a little at his evasion.
+
+"Classicus?  Classicus is a knave, one lacking invention, but not
+executive ability--wanting cunning, not courage.  Now he leads us to
+believe that he examines a new religion--that same heresy for which he
+plunged thee into the Rhacotis peril.  Some one put him up to it--mark
+me.  Thus, he hopes to recant his fault against thee, for which the
+little Lysimachus was most unbending to him!"
+
+"And Lydia?" he asked in a low tone.
+
+Her softened eyes, steadily contemplating the yellow light on the
+leaves of a huge plantain growing near her, narrowed.
+
+"Lydia?" she repeated thoughtfully.  "Oh, Lydia dances and studies and
+makes ready for her marriage with Classicus."
+
+One of those utter silences fell, which mark the announcement of
+critical news.  After it, Marsyas arose.
+
+"I have profited by my visit," he said, in that soft and silken voice
+which she had never heard before and did not understand.  "I thank thee
+for thy counsel--and thy news."
+
+He extended her his hand, and she looked at him, feeling that it was
+not steady.
+
+"And thou wilt come again before I go?" she went on.  "We are summoned
+to Capri where my father hath been recently made a minister to
+Tiberius.  Come again, and let me lead thee back to thine old self."
+
+"Perchance," he said evenly, "I have uselessly troubled myself to
+change."
+
+He pressed her hand and passed out.
+
+At the threshold of her portals, he met Agrippa.
+
+"Perpol!" the prince cried.  "Hast thou supplanted me here, too?"
+
+But Marsyas smiled painfully and went on.  Agrippa looked after him.
+
+"Nay, now: the boy is as pale as ivory!" he ruminated.  "That is an
+honest youth, and Junia must let him alone."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+A LETTER AND A LOSS
+
+When Agrippa returned to his house that night, he found old Silas
+sitting in the vestibule, opposite the place of the atriensis, his
+hands on his knees, his dull face uncommonly animated and expressive.
+
+It was long past the hour when the household servants had retired, and
+the porter at the door was drowsy, but the instant Agrippa set foot on
+his threshhold Silas started up and bowed in excitement.
+
+"An evil day," he said.  "Thy wardrobe hath been entered and much fine
+raiment is gone."
+
+"But thou hast made an evil night of it, Silas: thou shouldst have
+withheld thy calamitous recital until the morning.  Hast discovered the
+thief?"
+
+Silas bowed again.  "I have: yet, I have been restrained from taking
+him."
+
+"O pliable Jew!  None but Caesar can steal my wardrobe unmolested.  Who
+protects the thief?"
+
+"Marsyas."
+
+"What!  Marsyas?  Save thou art too unimaginative to be a fictionist I
+should say thou makest thy story.  Why does Marsyas protect my
+pillager?"
+
+"He says we are well rid of the knave."
+
+"Not if he carried off so much as a sandal-lace.  I am a Jew and
+therefore jealous for my own property.  Marsyas, as an Essene, is given
+to dividing without protest with thieves.  I remember the Greek who
+helped himself to Marsyas' patrimony on Olivet.  But who is the thief?"
+
+"Eutychus."
+
+"Eutychus!  By Hermes, he could not help it with that face!  But go on;
+what is the circumstance?"
+
+"He took," Silas continued, "the umber toga, embroidered with silver,
+much of thy Jewish vestments, the gazelle wallet which contained thy
+amulet, and drachmae and bracelets of gold.  He is rich!"
+
+"Of a surety: the knave hath only the more attached himself to me.
+What a pity!  Otherwise we were well rid of him.  And Marsyas bade thee
+let him go?"
+
+"The young man was disturbed.  According to instructions, he sent a
+messenger to thy stables, without the walls, to bid Eutychus have thy
+car ready to-morrow for thy visit to Tusculum.  But the messenger
+presently returned with the information that Eutychus had not been seen
+about the stables that day.  At the same moment, I discovered the
+losses among thy apparel.  And Marsyas instantly suspected Eutychus.
+He sent two slaves in search of him.  They returned in an hour saying
+that he had been discovered in Janiculum in a wine-shop, robed like an
+Augustan in thy umber toga, and making merry with wine that could only
+tickle a Samaritan's throat.  When they tried to bring him, he
+objected, saying thou shouldst not miss him, seeing that thou hadst
+learned the pleasure of walking in thy less fortunate days."
+
+Agrippa's forehead darkened.
+
+"Even for that I should hand him over to the lictors!" he exclaimed.
+
+"It is not all.  When the two slaves then tried to fetch him by force,
+they were attacked by him and the wine-shop keeper and others, and
+obliged to flee for their lives.  I besought Marsyas, then, to permit
+me to inform the authorities and have him taken, but he opined that the
+charioteer's insolence was new and sudden, wherefore full of meaning.
+Seeing that it was Eutychus' intent to enrage thee, thou wast better
+not enraged; to wash thy hands of him and bless the day that he
+departed."
+
+Agrippa yawned.
+
+"To-morrow we shall search for him and have him taken.  It is
+improvident to have so much philosophy as Marsyas.  But what had the
+knave of a charioteer against me?  It is Marsyas who hath enchanted
+Drumah, and who took him by the throat in the alabarch's house.  I
+shall speak with Marsyas to-morrow."
+
+He took himself with increasing effort up the stairs along the corridor
+toward his rest.  With the facility which characterized many of
+Agrippa's troubles, the offender had already dropped out of his mind.
+
+He had fenced with Caligula that morning, he had feasted with Macro
+that night.  At midday he had slighted Piso, the enemy of both.
+Caligula had had him draw a sketch of Judea on the wax of the gymnasium
+floor and designate the possessions of the old Herod; Macro, in his
+cups, had asked confidentially if Caligula approved him.  Altogether
+the day had been filled with tokens presaging success.  He smiled
+sleepily, remembering Silas' extravagant concern over the robbery.
+
+"Calamity is all in the mark on the scale of Fortune," he opined.  "A
+year ago to lose a handful of drachmae would have ruined me."
+
+As he passed Marsyas' door, he stepped back suddenly and stopped.  The
+long curtain dragged on the floor at one side had given him an
+interesting glimpse of the lighted interior.  Within, Marsyas, seated
+at a table, had at that moment flung away his stylus and dropped his
+head on the writing.  Almost immediately he sprang up, and, seizing the
+parchment, thrust it into the blaze of the lamp at his hand.
+
+Astonishment gathered on the Herod's face.
+
+In the blaze the writing curled, the flame eating into the slow-burning
+parchment, burned low, but surely, reaching toward the fingers that
+grasped it.  Presently Marsyas dropped it.  Then the night-wind, rising
+from the sea, swept in through the cancelli with a shriek, put out the
+lamp instantly and swept the long dragging curtain against the Herod
+standing in the dimly-illuminated corridor.  He got out of sight
+hurriedly.
+
+After the first gust, the wind dropped, sending long streams of
+impelling draft through cancelli, doorway and hall.  Before it, along
+the pavement, something came skittering out of Marsyas' cubiculum.
+Agrippa looked at it.  It was a roll of parchment, charred and crushed
+by the tense grip of fingers.
+
+Agrippa waited.  After a slight movement within, silence fell again,
+and was not thereafter broken.  The prince's eyes fell on the charred
+writing.  It was almost at his feet.  His fine head dropped to one
+side, then to the other; he put his fingers into his hair, smiled a
+little and picked up the parchment.  A moment later, in his own
+apartment, he unrolled it by his lamp.
+
+Only a word here and there, at the end held in Marsyas' fingers, was
+legible, but Agrippa gathered from these the tone, the purpose and the
+identity, as he thought, of the one addressed.
+
+
+"-- me for loving thee -- my punishment --.  Yet ---- sin against my
+teachi ---- Willingly for thy sake ------ but to pretend ---- continue
+my ---- against ---- which threatens thee.  Have I lost -- soul for a
+caprice ---- and beseech levity -- to lov -- me?  the pointing finger
+---- of sel -- scorn!  An outcast from Heaven ---- truant from hell,
+haunting earth in search of thee for ever!--SYAS."
+
+
+Agrippa's eyes sobered.
+
+"Junia is a brand of fire," he said to himself.  "I shall make an end
+of this!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE DIGGED PIT
+
+Junia raised herself hastily.
+
+"Call the slaves," she commanded the servant who had announced Marsyas,
+and, in a moment, half a score of house-slaves rushed in from various
+openings leading into the atrium.
+
+"Away with this and that and that," she exclaimed pointing to the
+statue of a bacchante, that had not been visible in the chamber on the
+occasion of Marsyas' expected calls; a tray of wine and a tablet with a
+list of charms and philters sent recently from a haruspex.  "Bring me a
+shawl--close around my neck: curse thee for a blunderer, Iste; thou
+shalt pay for that scratch!  Here, unwind the scarf about my hips and
+fold it less closely; the amulet, take it off!  By Ate!  Here:
+Caligula's note, spread open!  Into the brazier with it.  Do I smell of
+wine?  Fetch hither--that fresco!  The Pursuit of Daphne!  Draw the
+arras over it!  Quick!  The unguentarium, I said, snail!  The one with
+the attar.  Now, look about.  Is there anything in sight to disturb a
+vestal?  If I find it afterward, twenty lashes for you all!"
+
+Mistress and slave looked anxiously over the chamber, but nothing
+unseemly greeted their eyes.  Junia sank back on her couch, not now so
+recumbent, but at ease.
+
+"Go fetch the Jew," she said, the languor of her manner combatted by
+the fire in her eyes.
+
+A moment later Marsyas appeared in the archway.
+
+She arose and came to meet him.  When he took her extended hands, she
+led him to the light of the cancelli and inspected him.
+
+"Sit," she said, drawing him down on the divan under the casement.
+"And speak first.  Only a word, so I may see if the prologue is indeed
+as tragic as the mask."
+
+"Let the mask suffice," he answered, "the prologue might be
+insufferable."
+
+"_Proh pudor_!  Thy friend the Herod hath just been here with pagan
+oaths upon his lips about thy dullness.  I tell thee it is hard enough
+to make him walk as he should, but a groaning comrade is a gravel in
+his shoe.  If thou wouldst manage him, be merry.  Remember we have this
+Herod to crown, though he stood on the Tarpeian Rock and sang sonnets
+in dishonor of Caesar."
+
+"By the certainty of Death, I have," he said sententiously.
+
+She looked at him and waited for him to go on, but he seemed to forget
+her, in his preoccupation.
+
+"I am a generous woman, Marsyas," she said softly.  "I do not resent
+thy lack of confidence in me!"
+
+"Nay!" he exclaimed.  "My lack of confidence, lady?  What meanest thou?"
+
+"In thy bosom, gentle sir, thou keepest thine own counsel, and wearest
+signals of thy self-containment on thy brow.  Wherefore, I am informed
+thou hast thoughts that I may not know!"
+
+"But I spare thee my sorrows, my cynicism, my hopelessness," he
+protested earnestly, "my disbelief in humankind."
+
+"O Marsyas, wert thou not Jewish, I should call thee unmanly.  Listen!"
+She laid a warm hand, colored like a primrose, upon his.
+
+"Thou wast an anchorite; thou didst attain manhood's stature and mind
+as an anchorite; into the world thou camest with all an anchorite's
+slander of the poor world in thee.  The eye is a spaniel; the tyrant
+Prejudice controls even its images.  I warned thee in Alexandria.  I
+confess that there is evil in the world, but it is more the work of an
+elementary impulse rather than calculation.  Flaccus is bad, but
+because he is in love.  Agrippa does foolhardy things, because he is
+ambitious.  What?  Did the preachment afflict thee which I delivered
+the other day upon thy levity and riotous living?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Nay, but this moment's preachment crosses me," he said.  "Thou
+offerest pardon for all the wickedness in the world, and I, sworn to
+punish one evil deed, am thus constrained, if I harken unto thee, to
+hold off my hand."
+
+"Now, thou approachest the deep-hidden secret which I may not know.
+Whom wilt thou punish?  Flaccus or Classicus?"
+
+He hesitated.  His vital hate of Saul of Tarsus, his fear for Lydia,
+his love and its deep wound, were things too close to the soul for him
+willingly to bring forth and display to this woman who acknowledged
+only a mind, and not a spirit.  Yet it seemed unfair to withhold
+anything, however sacred, from one who had unbosomed so much to him.
+
+"I lead a selfish life and an unhappy one.  I am stricken in my loves;
+one dead, one a murderer, a third faithless; a fourth I use to speed me
+in mine intents concerning the other two.  If I avenge the death of
+one, I displease his spirit!  If I visit punishment on his murderer, I
+make it possible for the destroyer of my love-story to go on.  If I
+withhold my hand, I give another, much beloved, unto death.  And him I
+help, I help for mine own use.  My life is at cross purposes; my right
+hand worketh against the left!"
+
+"Thy love?" she repeated softly, with a question in her tone.  But he
+did not answer it.
+
+"A hopeless tangle," she said at last, "from which our ruling
+philosophers, degenerate imitators of Pyrrho, offer but one escape.
+Turn from it, cease to trouble over it, leave it, cast off all thought
+and memory of it--and begin anew!"
+
+He shook his head, his eyes on the pavement, his hands clasped before
+him.  But the primrose hand found his again.
+
+"Thou canst not, by the choicest revenge, force Thanatos to yield up
+thy dead; thou confessest the evil thou workest in revenge as equal to
+the satisfaction; thou complainest that thy love is faithless--what
+else?  So many thy pains, I can not remember them all; but in them all
+there is not the worth of one of thy sleepless nights.  If thou canst
+not be a Spartan, be a Stoic; if not an avenger, then a forgetter; if
+not a lover, then a gallant!  Above all things, harken unto a pagan
+truth: love's a lusty wight and can suffer forty mortal wounds and love
+again.  None but an ostrich loves but once!  Perchance I was right at
+first; thou shouldst have begun thine education in the first of Flora's
+celebration."
+
+He winced, but presently raised his head.
+
+"What didst thou when the procession carried me away that night?" he
+demanded, searching her face.
+
+"When thou didst go away with the procession?" she laughed.  "I went
+with them--of a necessity."
+
+"And how didst thou escape?"
+
+"When they all departed after Flora danced."
+
+Thus beyond doubt assured that she had witnessed the dance of Flora, he
+was afraid to inquire further, lest he betray Lydia.  But he wanted
+mightily to know if she had recognized the alabarch's daughter.
+
+The disturbing reflection diverted his line of thought.  Many of the
+night's events which the greater one had overshadowed came back to him.
+He saw again the miraculous dance of Brahma on the roof of the Temple
+of Rannu, fled again with Lydia in his arms into the musky shrine and
+thence into the city; strove hard to convince himself that if he,
+sharpened of sight by love, had not recognized Lydia except for the
+bayadere's note and his acquaintance with Lydia's apostasy and her
+former defense of the Nazarenes, others could not have done so.  Again
+he fought with Flaccus and discovered Agrippa in the dark and abandoned
+street in Alexandria.  And now the image of Eutychus became
+particularly distinct.
+
+His brow blackened suddenly and he sprang to his feet.
+
+"It is solved!" he cried, striking the palm of one hand with the other.
+"By the wrath of God, he is Flaccus' emissary.  He turned on Agrippa in
+Alexandria when Flaccus ambushed the prince!  He was part of the
+conspiracy!  It was no blind blow that Agrippa struck.  And the soul in
+me nourishes a lie or he meditates more work for the proconsul in this!"
+
+Throughout his intensely confident accusation, Junia had watched him
+with changing eyes.  She had had to feel her way frequently in this
+last hour.
+
+"What?" she asked finally.
+
+In a few and rapid words, Marsyas told her of Eutychus' theft and
+flight, but his ideas hasted from his narrative to more testimony in
+favor of his conclusion.  He remembered Eutychus' jealousy of Drumah,
+his ruffian mistreatment of Lydia when the praetor moved against the
+Nazarenes, his attempt to expose her to Justin Classicus because, his
+jealousy of Marsyas revived, he had no other way of retaliating; and
+finally of his humiliation at Marsyas' hands before Agrippa and Drumah.
+
+"Bitter fool that I was not to understand him in time!" he cried.  "In
+my soul, I know that we follow him to a pitfall in this matter!"
+
+Junia slipped her fingers along the gilt grooves in the arm of the
+divan.  Flaccus was a clumsy villain, of a surety!  What overt
+conspiracies he evolved!  A wild boar of the German forests would not
+make more clamor at its attacks!  A wonder he had not exposed her, ere
+this.  But for his influence, which made her a place in Caesar's house,
+she had given up his service long ago.  Her lips curled with disgust
+and perplexity.
+
+"Forewarning," she said gloomily, "is a torture when forearming avails
+naught."
+
+He caught the depression in her tone and turned to her quickly.
+
+"Agrippa hath been here, Marsyas," she continued.  "Yet he was not to
+be stopped, I thought, then, that it was only the knave's playing for
+time!"
+
+"What dost thou mean?" he demanded.  "Tell me!"
+
+"Agrippa was here.  Eutychus hath been caught, but Piso notifies the
+Herod that the prisoner hath appealed to Caesar, claiming to have
+information against Agrippa which concerns Caesar's life and welfare!"
+
+Marsyas seized her arm.
+
+"What sayest thou?" he cried.
+
+"And since thou hast uncovered Flaccus' hand supporting the villain,
+Agrippa is in greater peril than I had supposed!"
+
+For a moment the two looked at each other: Junia with uneasiness on her
+face, and Marsyas transfixed.  He saw his plans against Saul of Tarsus
+tumbling; he saw the Pharisee triumphing over Lydia!
+
+"It may still be hoped," she ventured, "that the knave lies!"
+
+"Junia, thou knowest Agrippa!  It is my terror lest the knave be armed
+with a truth!"
+
+"Out with it all," she went on desperately.  "The Herod is convinced
+that he is innocent--this time--of any ill-will against Caesar, and he
+came here and spent the greater part of an hour, beseeching me to use
+my influence to hasten Caesar's hearing of Eutychus!"
+
+"In God's name, answer!  Did you refuse him?"
+
+"I did!  I besought him to let Caesar follow his own way, since the
+emperor is notedly slow in hearing charges in these later years.  I
+assured him that Caesar might be more displeased, urged against his
+inclination to hear a stupid slave, than the slave's charge could make
+him.  But the Herod is more stubborn than the classic steed of Judea.
+He demanded haughtily of me, if I expected him to treat with a
+slanderer or beg a truce with a lie.  Then I refused him my offices.
+Wherefore he hath posted off to Antonia!"
+
+"She will not harken to him--!" he cried with sudden desperation.
+
+"O Marsyas, this day I should be exorcised as a fury, bringing evil
+happenings.  But better the sorry truth than a fair lie.  Antonia hath
+lived out of the world for the last decade, as hast thou.  But her
+seclusion hath achieved the opposite harm, that is hatched by
+solitariness.  She retired, full of years and honor; the world,
+approaching her door, comes in fair garments, bringing tokens of
+esteem, talks of ancient triumphs, the virtues of Antonia and the great
+respect Caesar hath for her.  Wherefore, kindly treated by the world,
+remembering nothing but the good of the old days and believing in her
+sweet dotage that she crushed evil when she crushed Sejanus, her
+natural strategic sense hath been lost in a great, all-enveloping
+charity.  Her natural nobility hath outgrown the wariness which aids
+youth, and her dimmed sight sees things of stature, only, or of high
+relief.  She will see in the prince's desire only a desire to clear
+himself of a charge and she will honor him for it!  She will do his
+bidding!"
+
+Marsyas snatched up his cloak and sprang toward the archway.
+
+"Let me to her!" he cried.
+
+"Wait!" Junia cried.  "Be prepared against defeat, though it never
+come!  What wilt thou do, if she be immovable, or already gone--for
+Caesar is in Tusculum to-day?"
+
+Marsyas stopped and his face grew ashen.  He saw Lydia again, among the
+stones of the rabble, and murder leaped into his heart.
+
+"Kill Eutychus!" he declared desperately.
+
+"It would be fatal for Agrippa," she protested.
+
+His hunted ideas turned then upon Caesar.  Suddenly he rushed back to
+Junia and seized her hands.
+
+"Thou art close to Caesar," he said rapidly and with great supplication
+in his voice, "and thou art in Caesar's favor!  Beseech him and right
+Agrippa's mistakes, I implore thee!  Help me, Junia!  Be my right arm!
+Promise me thine intercession!"
+
+Her face suffused, and she waited a moment before she could trust her
+voice.
+
+"For thy sake, Marsyas," she answered.  "I give thee my word!"
+
+He pressed her hands to his lips and ran out of the house.  She dropped
+back on her couch and put her fingers to her temples.
+
+"Save Agrippa, to kill Saul, to save Lydia, for this Judean vestal's
+sake?" she speculated to herself.  "And where doth Junia profit?  Ah!
+I shall get him in debt, and extort mine own price!  Jew or Gentile, he
+will not think it exorbitant, for under it all, he is a man!  But to
+Tusculum!"
+
+She clapped her hands and ordered her litter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE SPEAKING OF EUTYCHUS
+
+The imperial ruin drooped in the gilded lectica, now comatose, now
+animate.  Under the purple robe the long, old, wasted limbs vibrated
+and the gems, quivering on the gnarled fingers, scintillated
+incessantly.  Now that the rich winds from the gardens of Tusculum
+breathed on him, he cursed and groped for his mantle; again, when the
+inimitable sun of the Alban Hills smiled on him, his face purpled with
+suffusions of heat.  Now that his wrinkled blue lids drooped half-way,
+Euodus, who walked by his side, told himself that he looked on death;
+but when the sunken eyes unclosed, he had to say that the will therein
+was immortal.
+
+It was a great, withered, tall, old frame, diseased and fallen into
+decay.  Life seldom of its own accord clings with tenacity to so
+ancient and utter a ruin.  Mind stood in the way of the soul's egress
+and penned it into its dilapidated shell.  It was a habit Caesar's mind
+had of blocking people, things and himself.  A creature of
+contradicting impulses, affectionate, sensitive, soldierly,
+immeasurably capable, with harsh standards of uprightness for others,
+stoic, enduring, ruggedly simple for the time, he was on the other hand
+one of the bloodiest and most unnatural monsters that ever disgraced
+the throne of the Caesars.  Moody, taciturn, perverse, superstitious,
+unspeakably sensual and cruel, yet withal an admirer of honor, the
+inalienable friend of the inalienable servant, he was a Roman emperor
+in every phase of his many-sided nature.  It is not recorded that any
+ever loved Tiberius; neither is it recorded that any ever failed to
+respect him.
+
+He was finishing his twenty-fifth year as Emperor of the World, but of
+late, Macro's capacities as praetorian prefect had been enlarged to
+those of vice-regent, and Caesar returned from Capri, his retreat from
+the trying climate of Rome, only on occasions.
+
+Beside him walked eight praetorian guards, picked, not for appearance
+but for age and integrity.  There walked Gallus who had followed
+Augustus, thirty years before; Attius Paulus, who had one hundred and
+thirty-nine wounds on his huge hulk; Severus Vespasian, who had been a
+soldier forty years and had twice refused to be retired; Plautius Asper
+who had been surnamed Leonidas, because he and a handful had held a
+German defile in the face of a whole barbarian army--and lived to
+refuse to be knighted.  If Caesar spoke to one, the answer came in
+monosyllables and with a touch of the helmet.  Flattery never passed
+their lips, but if one lent his arm to the tall old emperor it was done
+with a rude tenderness that even the most polished courtier could not
+have improved.  And Tiberius, being blunt and impatient of pretenses,
+walled himself away from the rest of his following with this bulwark of
+dependable ruggedness.
+
+After his lectica came another, borne by four Georgian youths.  Within
+lounged the latest of Tiberius' favorite ladies, Euodus' daughter, the
+Lady Junia.
+
+They had passed the corner of Cicero's villa when a litter approached
+from an intersecting avenue and was set down.
+
+A woman stepped out.  White her hair, her dress the ancient palla and
+stola of white and purple, her jewels, amethysts.  The rheumy emperor
+saw her imperfectly.
+
+"Stop!" he ordered his bearers.
+
+The woman approached and made obeisance.
+
+"Humph!  Antonia," he muttered in some disappointment.  But he drew his
+old frame together and inclined his head respectfully.
+
+"Greeting, sister," he said.  "The gods attend thee."
+
+"Thou art good, Augustus.  Welcome to Tusculum once more," she replied.
+She took the hand he extended and raised it to her lips.  The old man
+gazed at her with a wavering eye.
+
+"Come closer.  Art so gray?" he asked.
+
+"White, Caesar."
+
+He took the hand from hers and put back the vitta that covered her
+hair.  There were the sorrows of seventy years, in its absolute
+whiteness, and the Roman duskiness of skin was brought out very
+strongly in contrast.  But her eyes were still full and bright, even
+tender, her thin lips lacking nothing of the color of her youth.  Age
+had not laid its withering touch on her stature or even on the fullness
+of her frame, but the hand, Time's infallible tally, was the worn-out
+hand of seventy years.
+
+She was the noblest woman of her age, _univira_,--the widow of one
+husband, dead in her youth, the mother of statesmen, generals and
+emperors, a scholar and at one time a diplomat,--in all things, the
+ancient spirit of the First Republic, solitary, rugged, irreproachable
+in the vicious age of the Caesars.
+
+"Eh!  White, wholly white," he assented, running his fingers through
+her locks with a movement that was almost tender.  "And I am thine
+elder.  Yet," he drew himself up and defiance hardened his face, "I am
+not a dead man, Antonia!"
+
+"Nay, who says it, Caesar?  And it is not age that hath blanched me.  I
+was gray at forty--much more gray than thou art now."
+
+"No, no!  Not age!  Truly a woman's protest.  But then, perchance not.
+Thy husband's death undid thee.  How thou didst love him!  Save for
+thine example I should say that Eros himself is dead!"
+
+After a little he muttered to himself:
+
+"Alas!  What a name to conjure death!  My son Drusus, thy spouse
+Drusus, and thy son Drusus, the Germanicus.  Dead!  All! and in their
+youth.  The very name hath a sinister look."
+
+The old man shook his unsteady head and knuckled his sunken cheek.  The
+widow's saddened face wore also some surprise.
+
+"Canst thou speak of thy son Drusus, now?" she asked.  "Not in these
+many years have I heard thee name him."
+
+"No!" he answered shortly.  "I speak of dreams; new dreams, which I
+mean to have the soothsayers interpret."
+
+"Tell me of them, Augustus," she urged.
+
+"There is one, and it comes nightly.  It is a Shade from Thanatos,
+which approacheth.  I put the aegis into its dead hands, crown its
+death-dewed brow, do obeisance before a pale ghost that melts again
+into the Shades--and after it passes all Rome, and the Empire of the
+Caesars."
+
+The widow's eyes showed unutterable sadness, which was unrelieved by
+tears.  The unanointed Caesars that had passed into the Shades had
+gathered unto their number no nobler one than the gallant young
+Germanicus, and the last remnant of the ancient glory of Rome had
+passed with him.  But she put off the encroaching lapse into
+retrospection.
+
+"One of the departed cometh to ask that his offspring be thine heir,"
+she suggested.
+
+The old emperor nodded eagerly.  "It may be, it may be," he assented.
+"I have been pondering long upon the matter."
+
+A silence fell and the two gazed absently across the shimmering vision
+of Rome, below them, three leagues to the west.  About them were spread
+the villas of the rich in retreat, the very essence of repose, the
+birdsong and the murmur of laurels in the breeze; in the distance was
+the apotheosis of power, but their thoughts overreached the things seen
+and questioned after things unknown.  In their philosophy, life was
+all.  After it was Shadow, an inevitable obliteration in which the just
+and the unjust were immersed eternally.  But no youth, looking forward
+to the long, eventful days to come, experienced the grave wonder that
+these expended on the time after things were expected to end.  The awe
+of the unexplored Hereafter--what a waste of universal, earth-old,
+intuitive awe, if there be no Hereafter!
+
+Tiberius muttered, as if to himself:
+
+"There is another--yet another dream.  I cast dice with Three; three
+grisly hags, and I lose, though the tesserae were cogged.  But let be,
+let be; the soothsayers shall read me that one!"
+
+He sat up.
+
+"Came you of a purpose to speak with me, Antonia?" he asked.
+
+"I did," she said, "but it seems that the time is not propitious."
+
+"Any hour is propitious for thee, Antonia."
+
+"Thou art a kind man, Caesar.  I came to speak of Agrippa."
+
+"Agrippa!" the emperor exclaimed, a sudden transformation showing in
+his voice and manner.
+
+The woman in the litter behind stepped out, but paused without
+advancing.  She made no attempt to conceal her attention to the talk
+between the widow and the emperor.
+
+Antonia studied the face of the old man; it was significant, when,
+after his lapse into the softened mood of retrospection, he should
+return to his old manner.  She felt her way.
+
+"Agrippa ceases not to be interesting.  Thou and I remember him as the
+faithfulest friend thy son Drusus had; to this day of all who knew
+Drusus it is only Agrippa who still hath tears for his name."
+
+The emperor's wrinkled mouth was set, his face absolutely without
+telling expression.
+
+"He hath had years of want and humiliation," she continued.  "He hath
+walked under clouds and suffered from ill report, until he is soulsick
+of it.  Now, the favor of his emperor and the peace of good repute
+restored to him, are things that he would not willingly let go from him
+again.  The inventions of an enemy have risen against him in Rome; even
+hath the ill-favored sire of the story been discovered, and Agrippa,
+conscious of his integrity toward thee, is restive.  He wants to be
+examined; his innocence proven and thy good will toward him firmly
+established."
+
+"Well, well!" Tiberius said.
+
+"I shall await your happier mood," she said, gathering her robes about
+her.
+
+"Any mood is happy enough for the Jew," was the retort.
+
+Antonia unmistakably eyed the old man.
+
+"Say on, good Antonia," he urged uncomfortably.  "I have not forsworn
+justice."
+
+"Agrippa asks nothing more.  His charioteer robbed him, and when he was
+captured and in danger of punishment, he claimed that he had
+information against Agrippa which concerns thy welfare.  It is simply a
+device to put off punishment.  He hath appealed to thee and thou hast
+not yet heard him.  The Herod is eager that the matter be settled and
+begs that the slave be heard at once."
+
+"Eh! what a fanfare of probity!" the emperor mumbled.  "Leave it to a
+Jew to flourish his righteousness.  If he is innocent, he can wait; if
+he is guilty, we shall overtake him soon enough.  I owe him a sentence
+of uncertainty for his slights to my grandson, the little Tiberius."
+
+"And thou hast but this moment said that thou hadst not forsworn
+justice!" Antonia exclaimed.
+
+"Jupiter, but thou art provoking!" he fumed.  "Hither, Euodus!"
+
+Junia made a slight movement as if she meant to step between her father
+and the emperor, but was suddenly reminded of her part.  She stopped
+again.
+
+"How my sentimental heart cries out against my obligation to Flaccus!"
+she said to herself.  "Here must I stand idly by, while this new
+Penelope to a dead Ulysses works the Herod's ruin!"
+
+Euodus bowed beside Caesar.
+
+"Bring me the Jew's slave that hath a charge for me to hear.  Bring him
+hither, and haste!"
+
+The old man turned to Antonia.
+
+"Go tell thy valiant Herod that he shall have justice.  Justice!  Say
+that.  It may not please him so much to have that message."
+
+The gilded lectica moved on.  The widow went back to her litter and was
+borne away.  Junia remounted her chair and followed the emperor.
+
+"O lady," she said, looking after Antonia's litter, "it may be very
+superior to live aloof from the world, and ignorant of its intrigues,
+but it is fatal for thy friends, I observe."
+
+At the brink of a precipitous descent into the valley west of Tusculum,
+Euodus returned with Eutychus, whom Piso, at Agrippa's defiant
+instigation, had been forced to send to Tusculum to be available in
+event of Caesar's summons.
+
+Junia looked at Eutychus, livid with fear in the presence of the
+unspeakable might of the emperor, and held debate with herself.  She
+had not agreed that Agrippa should be other than alienated from his
+wife.  She was human enough not to wish the death of any man to whom
+she was indifferent, and for a moment she seemed about to alight from
+her chair.  Even Flaccus' power over her for the time seemed to lose
+its effect, for a picture of Marsyas' suffering was a more distinct
+image.  But one of the causes of Marsyas' concern, nay, the chief
+cause--the protection of Lydia to be achieved by the Herod's
+success--occurred to her in an evil moment.  She turned her face away
+from the colloquy between Caesar and the charioteer and studied the
+summer-green Alban Hills that shouldered the sky behind her.
+
+Eutychus collapsed to his knees at sight of the emperor.
+
+"Speak, slave," Euodus ordered.
+
+"O Caesar," the charioteer panted when his voice would obey him, "once I
+drove the Herod and Caligula, the Roman prince, to the Hippodrome in
+this place and they talked of the succession.  And Herod said that he
+wished that thou wast dead and Caligula emperor in thy stead."
+
+The emperor's eyes glittered.
+
+"What else?" Euodus demanded.
+
+"Somewhat about the young Prince Tiberius which I did not hear,"
+Eutychus trembled.
+
+"And what said Caligula to that?"
+
+"That the Herod had his own making and not Caligula's to achieve!"
+
+"A Roman's answer," Junia said to herself.
+
+"Is there nothing more?" the questioner insisted.
+
+"Nothing, lord!"
+
+Euodus bowed to the emperor and waited.
+
+"Give him ten stripes and turn him loose," Tiberius said.  Two of the
+praetorians led Eutychus away.
+
+"_Eheu_!" Junia sighed.  "I could have stared the knave between the
+eyes and made him discredit himself in a breath!  Ai!  Owl-faced Lydia!
+thou art a destroyed peril, but at what a price!"
+
+The bearers stood patiently under the glow of the morning sun, waiting
+their royal burden's humor to go on.  But Tiberius shrank into the
+relaxation of thought.  He had outlived every plot to assassinate him;
+he held in his hands consummate might; he was surely approaching the
+Shades; but the example of his infallible fortune, the fear of his
+merciless hand and the fact that he would not stand long in the way of
+ambitions, had not quieted the fatal tongue which bespoke him evil!  He
+was sick of blood and torture, tale-bearing and intrigue, because he
+was surfeited with it all.  But here, now, was this precarious Herod,
+barely escaping disaster which had pursued him for twenty years,
+wishing brutally and incautiously that he might die!  Tiberius was at a
+loss to know what to do with the man.  The thought wearied him.  He
+wished now that he had ordered a hundred stripes for Eutychus instead
+of ten.  What an officious creature Antonia had become!
+
+Euodus folded his arms and waited; the patricians, approaching in
+chairs of their own, alighted, bowed, passed out of the path and went
+around, remounted their chairs and disappeared.  The birds in the trees
+about, hushed by the talk below them, twittered and flew again.
+Euodus, casting a sidelong glance at the emperor, nodded at the nearest
+bearer.
+
+"To the palace," he said.
+
+The slaves turned back up the slanting street and the motion of the
+lectica aroused Tiberius.
+
+"Whither?" he demanded irritably.
+
+"To the palace, Caesar," Euodus answered.
+
+"Did I command thee?  To the Hippodrome, slaves!"
+
+The bearers turned once more and began the ticklish descent of the
+paved roadway to the valley below, where the Circus of Tusculum was
+built.
+
+The huge elliptical structure stood out in the plain, alone and solid
+except for the low, heavy arch of the vomitoria which broke the round
+of masonry.  The trees about it were dwarfed in contrast, the columns
+shrunken, the viae, approaching it from all directions straight as
+arrows fly, curbed and paved with stone, were as mere taut ribbons.
+But in the great slope of the Campagna, under the immense and sparkling
+blue of the Italian sky, it was only a detail in rock.
+
+Rome had long since outgrown her walls and ceased to contemplate them
+except as landmarks and conventionalities, useless but as significant
+as Caesar's paludamentum.  Inns and mile-stones along the viae proved
+them once to have been things distinctly suburban, but the city crying
+for room had passed the walls and built its own
+characteristics--temples, tombs, villas, circuses, fora and arches as
+far as Tusculum along the roads.
+
+Lovelier beyond comparison than Rome's loveliest spots, it was small
+wonder that to fill their Augustan lungs with the freshness of the
+Campagna, the idle were borne out of the contained airs of the city,
+which were of such seasonal peculiarities that temples in propitiation
+of Mephitis and the goddess Febris had been erected.
+
+So daily groups of patricians collected at the Hippodrome of Tusculum,
+with laughter and badinage, the flashing of jewels and the glittering
+of cars, the flutter of lustrous silks and the tossing of feathers, to
+spend the bright hours of the day watching the races that proceeded in
+the arena below.
+
+The races had not begun, the crowds had not assembled.  The gilded
+lectica was borne through the tunnel-like entrance up the stairs, not
+to the amphitheater but to the arena.  Slaves with blanketed horses and
+clusters of betting patricians were here and there over the sanded
+ellipse within.  The bustle of preparation slackened at the approach of
+the august visitor.
+
+The eyes of the emperor opened and closed dully.  Nothing was here to
+interest a man worn out with seventy years of change and excitement.
+Nothing new could have aroused him, for his attention rebelled against
+the call.
+
+Presently, during one of the intervals that his eyes were open, he saw,
+within touch of his hand, Agrippa and Caligula side by side, talking to
+a gladiator.  The emperor scowled and looked away.  The bearers plodded
+on, rounded the upper end of the ellipse and, passing down the side,
+neared the mouth of the cunicula.
+
+Agrippa and Caligula had moved from their position and were there, with
+a notary taking down the terms of a wager.
+
+Apart from them stood a small but important man, frowning over a waxen
+tablet which a slave had cringingly handed him.
+
+Tiberius looked at him, then at Agrippa.  His brows lowered more, this
+time with irritation.  It seemed that action had been formulated by
+circumstance and that the emperor was not to avoid a tiresome
+prosecution.
+
+He put out his hand as the bearers bore him by and it touched the Roman
+on the shoulder.  The man turned on his heel, but seeing who was near
+bowed profoundly.  If he meant to speak to the emperor he was not given
+opportunity.
+
+"Bind that man, Macro," Caesar said, nodding at Agrippa.
+
+The lectica moved on.  As it passed up the opposite side Macro crossed
+to it and, puzzled and disturbed, bowed again.
+
+"Caesar's pardon, but whom am I to bind?" he questioned.
+
+"That man," Tiberius replied irritably, pointing to the Herod.
+
+"Agrippa!" the astonished prefect exclaimed.
+
+"I have said."
+
+The lectica went on, up and around the curve of the ellipse, and back
+again to the cunicula.  The few within the walls of the Hippodrome had
+gathered there in an interested and excited group.  In the center stood
+Agrippa with manacles on his wrists and ankles.  The charm and sparkle
+in his atmosphere were gone; even as Tiberius looked, he saw the cold,
+evil, vengeful countenance of the Asmonean Slave, the Terror of the
+Orient, Herod the Great, appear, like a face putting off a mask, behind
+the graceful features of his grandson.  Tiberius was grimly satisfied;
+he felt the first interest in the arrest; he was always by choice a
+preferrer of noble game.
+
+On either side of the prisoner stood a Roman soldier; aloof and passive
+was Macro, but the earth had apparently opened and swallowed Caligula.
+
+As the lectica approached, the crowd gave way and his captors permitted
+Agrippa to come nearer the emperor.
+
+"At Caesar's command, I am arrested," he said evenly.  "Will Caesar grant
+me the prisoner's privilege and tell me why?"
+
+"Thy charioteer hath spoken, Agrippa," was the response.  "The slave
+swears that on such and such a day he drove thee and Caligula to this
+place.  Instead of horses you talked of kings, instead of bets, the
+succession.  And thou madest moan that I was not dead so that Caligula
+could reign in my place!"
+
+The jaws of many round about relaxed in horror.  Agrippa's muscles made
+an involuntary start, but his face retained its calm.  But the emperor
+caught the start.
+
+"Forgot that unctuous bit of tittle-tattle when thou didst make Antonia
+bearer of thy boasts, eh?" he piped.
+
+"My words have been distorted," Agrippa spoke, though he seemed to hate
+himself for offering a defense.
+
+"Ah-r-r!  Wilt thou snivel and deny?" Tiberius snarled.
+
+The prince's manacled hands clenched and a glimmer of hate showed in
+his eyes.  Caesar nodded; that was better.
+
+[Illustration: The prince's manacled hands clenched]
+
+"Agrippa, the king-maker!" he went on, "late mendicant from Judea; heir
+presumptive to the ax!  Eh?  Take him away!  Macro, come thou to the
+palace to-night, and I'll deliver sentence!"
+
+The gilded lectica moved on.
+
+Twenty minutes later, Marsyas, white to the lips, his eyes enlarged and
+dangerous, sprang from a clump of myrtle by the roadside, after the
+litter had passed up toward Tusculum and, thrusting a hand into Junia's
+chair, seized her arm.
+
+"See that Tiberius forgets his audience with Macro to-night," he said
+to her.  "See that he yearns after Capri, and returns to-morrow--or
+thou bringest upon me the pain of killing."
+
+Terrified for the first time in her life, Junia shrank under the
+crushing grip.
+
+"Him or me!" she told herself.  "I promise!" she whispered to Marsyas.
+"But acquit me of blame.  What could I do?"
+
+"I have shown thee, now!" he said intensely, and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE ARM MADE BARE
+
+Lydia went up on the housetop into the shade of the pavilion with the
+writing her father had put into her hand, and drawing the hangings on
+the east side of the pavilion to shut out the morning sun, sat down to
+read how Marsyas had revealed the evil tidings to the alabarch.
+
+It was the first moment of rest she had had since the messenger had
+arrived at daybreak with the letter which had flung Cypros into
+paroxysms of suffering and desperation.  Now that the unhappy princess
+had yielded to the benign influence of a narcotic simple, Lydia had
+time for her own thoughts.
+
+It was not the same Lydia that had danced on the Temple of Rannu.
+Spiritual change as infallibly marks the countenance as physical
+change.  The last of the half-skeptical, half-philosophical tolerant
+equanimity was gone from her face; the self-reliance had been
+transformed into a look of faith and believing, and a certain
+tranquillity, no less sweet and unshaken because it was sorrowful, no
+less patient because its hope was faint, made her forehead placid.
+
+She read:
+
+
+ROME, Kal. Jul. X, 790.
+
+"TO THE MOST EXCELLENT ALABARCH, ALEXANDER LYSIMACHUS, GOVERNOR OF THE
+JEWS OF ALEXANDRIA, GREETING:
+
+"It is my grief to inform thee that at the command of Caesar, my lord
+and patron, Herod Agrippa, hath been confined in the Praetorian Camp
+awaiting sentence for utterances pronounced treasonous to Caesar.
+
+"Immediately after the prince's arrest, one of the ladies of Caesar's
+train was stricken by an illness, resulting from the malarious airs of
+the Campagna, and the emperor ordered the immediate return to Capri.
+
+"Inquiry among the emperor's ministers discloses the fact that he left
+no explicit instructions concerning the execution of a sentence upon
+Agrippa.  It is noted in Rome that, owing to the multiplicity of his
+duties and the weariness of his mind, the emperor forgets readily, and
+is not pleased to be reminded of that which he hath forgotten to
+perform.  Wherefore, if it please God to erase Agrippa from his mind,
+it shall be seen to, here in Rome, that no one recall the unfortunate
+prince to Caesar's attention.
+
+"Canvass among the fellows of Agrippa conducted by certain powers in
+the state reveals that the movement against the prince did not have its
+inception in Rome; however, many were not unwilling to have it come to
+pass because of the prince's aggressive political preferences.  But now
+that he is at the edge of ruin, the insignificant activity in the
+capital hath fallen inert; those who contributed to it are alarmed, for
+the accomplishment of Agrippa's death will inevitably revert upon the
+heads of them who endangered him, should Caius Caligula be crowned.
+
+"The movement against the prince, consummated by the charioteer
+Eutychus, had its inception, as I have said, not in Rome.  The man
+stole of his master's wardrobe and ran away.  When he was apprehended
+he claimed that he had information against Agrippa which concerned the
+life and welfare of Caesar.  Piso, city prefect, bound the man and sent
+him to Tusculum, where, by the solicitations of Antonia, who was
+commanded by Agrippa, the emperor heard the charioteer's charge.
+
+"Thou and I know, good my lord, that Eutychus is too clumsy a villain,
+too much of a coward, to invent and push this bold work himself,
+without support.  Wherefore, I and others are convinced that he must
+have been inspired and aided by some secret and shrewd enemy outside of
+Rome.  If the proconsul of Egypt is not yet informed of this disaster,
+do not trouble him with the information!
+
+"It may assist thee to know that Eutychus, given ten stripes as earnest
+of Caesar's respect for him, and turned loose, eluded mine and
+Caligula's vengeance and immediately took ship for Alexandria.  Expect
+him in the Brucheum.
+
+"Know this, also.  If Caesar forget and Agrippa live on, this enemy will
+grow restive and bestir himself again, wherefore it is the duty of them
+who love the prince to watch for any coiling which prepares for the
+stroke.
+
+"For thine own comfort and for the comfort of his unhappy princess, I
+add here, though in peril to the prince's benefactor and to myself,
+that Agrippa's prison discomforts are alleviated, and kind usage
+secured him by the generous distribution of gold among them who
+surround him.  It is not a difficult matter to secure him comparative
+comfort.
+
+"Silas and I daily come to him with fresh clothing, and abundant food:
+he hath his own bedding and his daily bath.  Through the influence of
+the praetorian prefect, obtained at great price by Antonia, none is
+permitted to pronounce Agrippa's name outside the camp, on pain of
+extreme punishment--a clever pretense at abhorring a traitor which aims
+only at his defense.
+
+"Thy part is to quiet, within thy powers, any work in Alexandria which
+may lead to Caesar's remembering Agrippa.
+
+"I have closed the prince's residence, dispersed his slaves among the
+families of his friends, and with Silas I am living under the roof of
+Antonia, in whose care I am permitted to receive letters.  The Lady
+Junia is at Capri at my solicitation, pledged to do a woman's part in
+the protection of Agrippa.
+
+"May the God of our fathers arm thee.
+  "Peace to thee and thine.
+      "MARSYAS."
+
+
+Lydia sighed and let the writing drop into her lap.
+
+"I can not hope, my Marsyas," she said to herself, "if thou art
+schooled in the understanding of women by Junia!"
+
+The Roman tincture was patent in the letter, but the Jewish manner,
+Jewish penetration, and the Essenic coldness were strong and unaltered.
+His well-beloved and unchanged hand had pressed all the surface of the
+parchment, but she did not lift it to her lips.  There had been no word
+beyond the general greeting to her as the family of the alabarch, and
+proud, even in her sorrow and the new-found humility, she saved her
+endearments.
+
+After a moment of further thought, she was aroused by the rattle of
+wheels which came to an end before the porch of her father's house.
+She arose and going to the parapet looked over.  Justin Classicus'
+chariot stood there.  She caught the last flutter of his garments as he
+disappeared under the roof of the porch.
+
+She went back to her place and waited for a servant to announce the
+guest.  But Classicus lingered.  The alabarch was not like to be
+telling him the account of Agrippa's latest misfortune.
+
+She put away Marsyas' letter and gazed at the Synagogue immersed in the
+golden flood of Egyptian sunshine.  She had not ceased to love it, nor
+to attend it with all maiden fidelity since she had followed Jesus of
+Nazareth, but it seemed to love her less, to throw a shadow darker, but
+less benign, over her, as she approached its giant gates.  Saul of
+Tarsus whom she had feared for Marsyas' sake was a hidden menace now in
+its great angles, a threat in its rituals, a brooding danger held up
+only so long as she hid in deceit.  She felt unutterably lonely and
+friendless.
+
+Presently Classicus came up unannounced.  She knew at a glance that he
+had learned from some source of Agrippa's misfortune, and wondered for
+a moment if her father had forgotten Marsyas' charge.
+
+"Alexandria hath heard of Agrippa's disaster," he began, as he seated
+himself beside her, "and I came to offer my consolation and my aid."
+
+Then Flaccus already had the news!
+
+"I would thou couldst aid us, Justin.  Not now is anything more
+precious than help, and nothing less possible."
+
+"And to say lastly," he continued, looking into her face, "that I
+deplore that haunted look in thine eyes, Lydia.  What does it mean?"
+
+"That I grow older, wiser, sadder--and less fortunate."
+
+"Thou shouldst study the philosophy of the Nazarenes," he declared.  "I
+find that much of their teaching, stripped of its frenzy and reduced to
+the dignity of pure language, hath much comfort in it."
+
+"Does it promise that sorrow will not come to them who espouse it?" she
+asked, looking away.
+
+"Nay, but it preaches universal love.  Could I teach thee that, sorrow
+should never approach thee or me henceforth!"
+
+"I fear thou dost not understand them," she said dubiously.
+
+"Not wholly," he admitted.  "I have not yet been able to agree with
+them, that I, Justin Classicus, scholar and Sadducee, should find it in
+my heart to love a crook-back shepherd that speaks Aramaic, rejoices on
+conchs, relishes onions and is washed only when the rains wet him."
+
+He smiled, and Justin Classicus' face was helped by a smile.  Mirth
+possessed him entirely, cast up a transitory flush in his cheeks and
+lighted torches in his eyes.  But Lydia looked across the Alexandrian
+housetops.
+
+"Why dost thou seek this new philosophy, Justin?" she asked.
+
+"To see if it be safe enough heresy to teach thee," he returned.  "If
+it be, thou shall learn it, for in its creed of universal love, I put
+mine only hope that thou shalt come to love me!"
+
+"Learn the universal love for thyself, Justin: learn to love the
+shepherd and thine enemy--learn it in all truth, and thou mayest be
+content with that, and no more!"
+
+"The Lord forbid!" he cried.  "If that should come to pass, learning
+this new philosophy, I pause, even now!"
+
+"Enemy?" he repeated, after a little in a gentler tone.  "Save another
+hath possessed thy heart, I have no enemy--the Nazarenes recommending
+that one leave them out of one's catalogue of fellows!"
+
+"Canst thou not hold off thy hand, even from an enemy?  Hath thy search
+after their philosophy taught thee so much?"
+
+He looked at her face, and saw thereon something to follow.
+
+"I can--be bought," he answered softly.
+
+She remembered his part in the ambuscade the night of the Dance of
+Flora, and her face paled a little.
+
+"It is not the Nazarene way," she replied unreadily.
+
+"Nay, but if the demand be great enough, any method must serve.  Shall
+I name my price?"  His voice was clear and illuminating.
+
+She arose and moved over to one of the columns, and leaning against it
+gazed across toward the blue sparkle of the New Port.  She felt the
+strength of his fortification, the extent of his power over her.  Not
+any of the many things she had hidden from all but Marsyas were unknown
+to him!
+
+She turned to him with appeal in her eyes, but he laughed very softly,
+and wrapped the kerchief skilfully about his head.  His composure
+terrified her.  He held out his hand.
+
+"Think," he said, "and to-morrow or the next to-morrow, but soon, thou
+wilt tell me.  Meanwhile I shall tell thy father that I have spoken
+with thee."
+
+He took her fingers and kissed them.
+
+"Farewell.  And let the Nazarenes persuade thee, if I can not!"
+
+A long time after she heard the wheels of his chariot roll away from
+before the alabarch's porch.  Then with slow, weary steps she went down
+into the house.  She would seek out her father, and discover what to
+expect from Flaccus and if disaster could be averted from the beloved
+head of Marsyas and the unhappy Herod.  Not until then would she
+entertain the suggested sacrifice which Classicus had so deftly
+demanded.
+
+But when she reached the inner chamber, with the arch opening into the
+alabarch's presiding room, she saw within the proconsul.
+
+She hesitated, surprised and alarmed, but presently her father, raising
+his eyes, saw her and signed to her to enter.
+
+The proconsul stopped in the middle of a sentence to greet her, not
+from courtesy, but because she was a consideration.  She took her place
+on an ivory footstool at the foot of the alabarch's chair and seemed to
+efface herself.
+
+Lysimachus trifled with a stick of wax and heard Flaccus to the end of
+the sentence.  The old tone of assumed cordiality was gone.  Flaccus
+had ascended again to the plane of a legate speaking with a Jew.
+
+"So I shall pay thee thy five talents and release the lady, that she
+may be sent to Rome," he concluded.
+
+"The gossip of the lady's arrival in Rome would work havoc, sir.  She
+would be there engaging Antonia's attention, which should be devoted
+without lapse, in other directions."
+
+"The Herod's lady need not arrive with the blare of trumpets," was the
+cool retort, "and since thy talents are returned to thee, Lysimachus,
+thou art not asked to carry thy concern into Rome."
+
+The thin cheeks of the alabarch grew pink and Lydia raised a pair of
+somber eyes to the proconsul's face.
+
+"It is not a matter of my loan," the alabarch answered without a tremor
+in his melodious voice, "but it is that I held her in hostage in the
+beginning."
+
+"At my suggestion.  Then thou canst release her at my suggestion--and
+if the loan sits roughly on thy conscience we shall call it a gift at
+this late day."
+
+"If it please thee, good sir, we have left the discussion of the
+talents.  It is the lady who concerns us now.  I would be plain with
+thee; I should reproach myself did I let her proceed out of my house."
+
+"Call the lady," Flaccus commanded.  "We will lay the matter before
+her."
+
+"She sleeps," Lydia said.
+
+"I bring her more relief than sleep," was the blunt reply.  "Bring her
+hither."
+
+"On one promise," Lydia said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"That I and my servants alone shall accompany her to Rome."
+
+Flaccus gazed straight at the alabarch's daughter.  Lysimachus sat
+without movement.  He knew that his daughter had seen at once that
+which he had instantly divined--that Flaccus had no intention of
+sending Cypros to Rome.
+
+"Bring the lady," Flaccus insisted, "and we shall lay our plans
+thereafter."
+
+Lydia sat still; she knew Cypros' believing nature; that she would see
+nothing but a generous offer in the proconsul's intent; that to prevent
+the simple woman from consenting to destroy herself the whole villainy
+of the proconsul would have to be uncovered to her--doubtless before
+Flaccus, with unimaginable results.  The alabarch looked down on his
+daughter's fair head, away from Flaccus' threatening gaze and waited
+for her answer.
+
+"My lord," she said composedly, "we have complicated our associations
+with thee and this unfortunate family long enough.  Perchance we erred.
+At best it may no longer be maintained.  Though the Lady Cypros is
+uninformed, I and others know why thou hast been tolerant of our people
+of late; what deed thou didst attempt in the passage back of Rannu's
+Temple on the closing night of Flora's feast; what disaster overtook
+thee there; why Agrippa, now, is undone and what thou meanest in truth
+to do with his princess."
+
+There was silence.  Then the alabarch's hand dropped down on Lydia's
+curls.
+
+"Daughter, thou art weaponed with testimony new to thy father; thou
+hast kept thy arms concealed.  Yet I will take them up, now."  He
+raised his eyes to Flaccus.
+
+"Perchance thou wouldst explain to me my daughter's meaning?"
+
+After a dangerous dilation of his gray-brown eyes, Flaccus seemed more
+than ever composed.
+
+"Is my favor worth aught to the Jews?" he asked.
+
+"Jews," the alabarch replied, "do not purchase immunity at sacrifice of
+the honor of their women."
+
+"I am not enraged, Alexander," was the reply.  "I am only diverted.
+But the Herod under sentence of death and the Alexandrians loosed upon
+the Regio Judaeorum, it seems that the Lady Herod will soon be without a
+protector or a roof-tree.  She had much better go--to Rome!"
+
+He strode out of the presiding-room and into the street before the
+alabarch could conduct him to the door.
+
+Lysimachus and his daughter looked at each other.  Their thoughts
+reached out and gathered in for contemplation all the details and the
+results of the climax.  Then the alabarch opened his arms to his
+daughter and she slipped down on his breast.
+
+"Tell me what thou knowest against Flaccus, and why I have not learned
+of this?" he urged.
+
+It was a sore trial to Lydia's conscience to leave out her own part in
+the story she told, but the alabarch was less attentive to the source
+of her information than to the information itself.
+
+"I did not tell it sooner, because, in ignorance thou wouldst not be
+constantly hiding from Flaccus a distaste, distrust and watchfulness
+that infallibly would have controlled thee hadst thou known his hands
+were red with the blood of a man of whom he spoke fair and whom he
+pretended to love, before the world!"
+
+"What shall we do?" she asked after a long silence, for the press of
+many evils had stunned her resourcefulness.
+
+"Tell the princess first," the alabarch responded.
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Fight!  He can invent twenty excuses to take Cypros from me by law and
+against her will."
+
+"Then we must hide her and speedily!"
+
+The alabarch thrust his old waxen fingers into his white locks.
+
+"Now who will imperil himself by giving her asylum?" he pondered.
+
+Lydia looked up after a little thought.
+
+"The Nazarenes," she ventured timidly.
+
+"What!  The apostates!  The community is the most perilous spot in
+Egypt!"
+
+"Here in Alexandria, of a truth," Lydia hurried on eagerly, "but thou
+knowest by report that they have spread abroad among rustics and
+shepherds as a running vine.  Many are living about over the Delta.
+One of them will shelter her, I know.  She will go when we have told
+her what threatens, nor fail to flourish on their rough fare, since she
+hath made her bed by the roadways, and had her bread from the hands of
+wayside mendicants!"
+
+The alabarch arose and set her on her feet.
+
+"Haste, then, Lydia; no time is to be lost!"
+
+But before she reached the threshold of the archway she turned back and
+came slowly to him, closer and closer, until she raised her arms and
+put them about his neck.
+
+"Father!" she whispered, "we need have fear of Classicus."
+
+The pallor on the old man's face quivered like the reflection of a
+shaken light.
+
+"He is jealous," he answered, "of Marsyas!  Hath he cause, my daughter?"
+
+Lydia dropped her head on the alabarch's breast.
+
+"Marsyas is an Essene!" she whispered, and the alabarch smoothed her
+curls and was filled with pity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE PROCONSUL'S DELIBERATIONS
+
+Before sunset that day, Flaccus had received two messages.  One was
+brought by a Jewish slave.  It read:
+
+
+"TO FLACCUS AVILLUS, PROCONSUL OF EGYPT, GREETING:
+
+"I have departed.
+
+"CYPROS."
+
+
+The other came by a Roman courier, who had landed an hour before from
+one of the swift-going triremes which had left Ravenna three days later
+than the passenger boat that had brought Marsyas' tidings.
+
+The message also was written in a woman's hand and was no less enraging
+than the other:
+
+
+"ROME, Kal. Jul. X, 790.
+
+"This bulletin to tell thee, O my raging corybant, that thy cause hath
+ceased to prosper for the past three days.  Mine own part was well
+performed as was thine other minion's, the bewitching Eutychus, but
+desperate work hath been done which bids fair to upset thee and me and
+preserve thine enemies.
+
+"First and above all things, thou wilt remember that it was not in the
+pact that I should do more than lead the Herod out of the path of
+domestic uprightness and hold off my hands.  This hath been already
+done, but the Parcae have grown weary of yielding thee favor, so read,
+here, following, disaster!
+
+"Herod and his friend, the Essene Marsyas, who had become a dangerous
+Roman, filled with a Jew's cunning and the boldness of a wolf-suckled
+Romulus, till misfortune cut him down--this same fallen Herod and his
+friend have dropped out of sight, except as Death may bare its arm and
+reach down to cut off the head of the one and the income of the other.
+This much in three days; but Rome hath taught herself to forget in a
+twinkling.
+
+"But Caesar hath been for many days troubled of a dream.  He telleth it
+thus, in no more words, no fewer: 'I cast dice with Three; three grisly
+hags, and I lose, though the tesserae were cogged!'  His collection of
+soothsayers, the completest in the world, offered as many readings as
+there are numbers of them in the court.  But Tiberius drew his lip and
+bared his teeth at them and called them pea-hens and cockchafers.  Even
+Thrasullus, he lampooned--Thrasullus, whom once he feared.
+
+"Whereupon, the store of haruspices and augurs that feed upon
+superstitious Rome were brought in--only to furnish mirth for the court
+and victims for Tiberius.
+
+"Then Macro, rummaging about in musty and alien-peopled corners of the
+Imperial City, brought forth a wonder!
+
+"It--and would I could call the sex of the creature--came hither from
+the Orient.  On that naked fact, Rome is left to build its biography,
+describe its looks and fathom its purpose.  For it came before Caesar,
+and stood, a column in white--hooded, mummied, shawled, veiled in
+white!  The court hath had spasms, since, fearing that it might have
+been a leper, but I say that there was no sick frame within those
+cerements!  It had the stature and brawn of a man, but it managed its
+garments with the skill of a woman.  It came, heard Caesar's dream,
+plucked off a husk of its wrappings, produced pigment and stylus and
+wrote thereon.
+
+"Then it vanished quite away.
+
+"A hundred courtiers rushed upon the wrapping that it left, and Caesar,
+pallid even under his wrinkles, screamed to them to pursue the Thing
+and fetch it back.  But it was gone; vanished into thin air.
+
+"Then Macro plucked up courage and, taking up the cloth, fetched it to
+Caesar to read.
+
+"And Caesar, ashamed to show fear in the face of his court, snatched the
+linen away and read--to himself!
+
+"Now, whether the writing assured Tiberius that he was the comeliest
+monarch on the earth, or unfolded this scheme which is to follow, no
+man knows.  But that which was written contained persuasion which
+worked on Caesar's mirth, for he smiled, as he hath not smiled since
+Sejanus tasted death.
+
+"'Go forth and search out that soothsayer,' he commanded Macro, 'that I
+may give him whatsoever thing he would have!'  But Macro hath not
+discovered the soothsayer unto this day.
+
+"Meantime Caesar cleared his audience-chamber, but despatched a slave to
+bring me back to him.
+
+"And when I came I was bidden in whispers to take Caligula to the
+deepest hidden villa on Capri, and entertain him until I was bidden to
+return.
+
+"An hour later, I met my father, the simple Euodus, who told me after
+many charges to keep it secret, that he had been bidden to fetch at
+daybreak the coming morning, whichever prince, Caligula or Tiberius,
+who stood without the emperor's door to give him greeting.
+
+"And yet another hour later, the little Tiberius' tutor was summoned to
+the imperial bed-chamber and came forth some minutes later with a face
+as blank as a Tuscan sherd.
+
+"Now, though I saw not the cloth of revelation, nor heard the emperor's
+plans, I knew then, as I know now, that the mysterious soothsayer wrote
+that the dream meant that Caesar and the Destinies should choose the
+coming emperor, and bade him proceed by these means.
+
+"And I, dutiful lady to an engaging prince, took Caligula, nothing
+loath, and went privately into the interior of the island to that small
+wasp-nest palace clinging to the side of the cruelest precipice in
+these bad hills of Capri.
+
+"But in the night, while yet Caligula lingered at the board, because
+forsooth the slaves had carried me away first, there came the thunder
+of hoofs without, sentries and servants, asleep or drunken or afraid,
+fell right and left, flying feet rang upon the pavement, and before any
+could resist, Caligula was snatched up, rushed out and away into the
+night--and not any one saw the face of his abductor.
+
+"But when my father duly emerged from the emperor's bed-chamber there
+stood without, not little Tiberius, but Caligula, drenched as if he had
+been soused in a horse-trough to sober him, with immense dazed eyes and
+trembling like an aspen.
+
+"When he was led within, Caesar started up and glared at him with
+baleful eyes.
+
+"'I was sent by a Dream,' Caligula whispered.  'What wilt thou have of
+me?'
+
+"And Tiberius, struggling with an apoplexy, fell back and made no
+instant answer.  But presently he said,
+
+"'Perpol!  I cogged the dice for myself, but it was the Destinies who
+threw them!  Oh, well, it was written, and had to come to pass!'
+
+"Where was the little Tiberius?  Being assured that naught should
+prevent his election, he lingered for his breakfast.  O fatal appetite
+of lusty youth!  He lost an empire by it.  For Caesar, still afraid of
+the mysterious Thing from the Orient, ratified the choke of the
+Destinies.
+
+"But Caligula hath discovered the identity of the Dream that fetched
+him; which being very substantial and human stands in high favor with
+the prince imperial.  And so, through him as well as through the
+Herod's own claim on Caligula, Agrippa's hopes are brighter.
+
+"Wherefore thy campaign against the obstacle between thee and the maker
+of that twenty-year old wound in thy heart must be cautious, no longer
+overt, and above all things not of such nature as may recoil upon thee.
+Hear for once a woman's reason.  If thou accomplish the Herod's end,
+remember that Caligula succeeds Tiberius and will not fail to visit
+vengeance on those who ruined his friend!
+
+"Be wise, be covert, be wary!  If thou hast made mistakes, correct
+them!  Make no new enemies, and turn old ones into friends.  I will
+help thee, here, in Rome, except to the point of exposing myself.
+
+"If thou wilt work, be rapid, for Caesar declines.  We go hence as soon
+as he may be removed, to Misenum.  But it is only animal flight from
+death; he seems to turn like a wounded jackal and snap at his heels.
+Matters of state, beyond the satisfying of a multitude of grudges, are
+entirely given up to Macro.  But daily the dullness on his brain shifts
+a little, so that the light of recollection penetrates to it, and he
+remembers forgotten animosities.  Herein lies thy hope.  I will not
+suggest Agrippa to him; Caligula would cut my throat before daybreak,
+for the eaves-dropping Macro would know what I did.
+
+"Calculate for thyself; get others to do thy work and to shoulder the
+peril.
+
+"Meanwhile Venus prosper thee, and may the Parcae repent.
+
+"JUNIA."
+
+
+"Oh, well I know that mummied mystery, that Dream, that unseen
+abductor!" Flaccus raged, gnawing his nails.  "It is that villain
+Essene to whom I owe torture and death!  He, to direct the imperial
+succession!"
+
+Then he fell to considering his obstacles.  Caligula as prince imperial
+and friend to the Herod would permit no persecution of the Jews.  That
+method of coercing the alabarch had to be abandoned.  Next, he re-read
+the single line from Cypros.  She had not gone to Rome; she had hidden
+herself.  That was what the line meant.  They had told her, so she
+hated him.  But he did not wince so much under her hate, as he raged
+over his bafflement.
+
+Then he thought of Classicus, and with the thought his hope revived.
+Finally he sprang up, and, summoning slaves, scattered them broadcast
+over Alexandria in search of the philosopher.
+
+He would go to Rome!  He would bear to Caesar an appeal from Flaccus to
+command the alabarch to produce Cypros, Herod Agrippa's wife, who had
+been abducted.
+
+The plan unfolded itself so readily and so helpfully, that the
+proconsul's face grew radiant with anticipated triumph.
+
+In an hour, a slave returned with Justin Classicus.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE STRANGE WOMAN
+
+Caesar left Capri and roved along the Italian coast in his splendid
+barges, or approached by land close to Rome, even to spend the night
+just without her walls, or in Tusculum, Ostia, Antium or Baiae.  He
+dragged his court with him, by this time deserted of all upright men,
+and circling, slinking, making sorties and retiring, he brought up at
+last in the villa of Lucullus on Misenum with all his unclean party.
+
+Macro in attendance upon Caesar had left a tribune in Rome as a post of
+despatch from which necessary information could be communicated to the
+prefect in Misenum.  The tribune, a sour old praetorian, with more
+integrity than graciousness, charged to protect Agrippa's interests for
+Macro's sake, now that Caligula was prince imperial, was empowered with
+not a little of the prefect's authority, which he administered with a
+kind of slavish awe of it.
+
+So, when a young Alexandrian Jew, giving the name of Justin Classicus,
+bearing a letter of introduction from the Proconsul of Egypt, applied
+for a tessera which would give him admission to Misenum, the tribune
+refused, declaring that the visitor must be indorsed by a Roman of rank
+and in good odor with the emperor.  Classicus took his departure,
+assuring the tribune that he would go to Baiae where young Tiberius
+lived in his father's villa, and get the indorsement of the lad, to
+whom Flaccus was notedly a partizan.
+
+As soon as Classicus had departed, the tribune rushed a messenger to
+Marsyas, with Macro's signet which would command horses at posts
+between Rome and Misenum, and informed the young man what menaced the
+Herod.
+
+Marsyas did not tarry for preparation.  He knew that Classicus would go
+by the common route, by sea from Ostia, and that the overland route was
+only, by the luckiest of circumstances, the speedier.
+
+Before the messenger had returned to the tribune, Marsyas was on the
+road to Misenum.
+
+A day later, he passed the picket thrown out a hundred paces from the
+actual precincts of the villa of Lucullus, but when he offered his
+tessera to the praetorian posted at its inner walls, the soldier did not
+lower his short sword.  Marsyas, who had come to know many of the
+praetorians, looked in surprise at the man.
+
+"Turn back, good sir," the man said.  "None enters the lines to-day."
+
+While he knew that it was useless to ask the sentinel why the arbitrary
+order was in force, the question leaped to his lips before he could
+stop it.  His voice was eager.
+
+"What passeth within?"
+
+The soldier shook his head.  Marsyas drew away a space and thought.  He
+knew that the little Tiberius was an exception to every law laid down
+by Caesar; Classicus could not have armed himself with a more potent
+name.  Caligula's friends, even Macro's friends, might be barred, not
+the friends of the little beloved Tiberius.
+
+The obstruction was dangerous.
+
+He knew that he had to deal with Classicus.
+
+The bitterness in his heart rose up and smothered his distress: for the
+moment he lost sight of Agrippa's peril, his hope against Saul of
+Tarsus and his fear for Lydia, in the all-overwhelming rancor against
+the man who was setting foot upon all the purposes in the young
+Essene's life.
+
+While he stood wrestling with a mighty impulse to kill Classicus, a
+courier in a well-known livery bowed beside him.
+
+"The Lady Junia sends thee greeting and would see thee in her father's
+house."
+
+Marsyas turned readily and followed the servant.
+
+He had come to look upon the Roman woman as a counselor, of whom he had
+some serviceable ideas out of the many he had not adopted.  He knew
+that if he crossed her threshold to find distressing tidings within, he
+was sure of finding an attempt at alleviation at the same time.  He
+might come forth vexed with all his friends, hating more hotly his
+enemies, but less amazed at sin in general.  He had not learned to
+apologize for the world, nor even to believe in it; he had simply come
+to accept it as a necessary and irremediable evil.  The general
+condemnation of his skepticism had not left her untouched, but he felt,
+nevertheless, that no one was so bad that another much worse could not
+be found.  Junia, therefore, occupied a position of lesser blame.  She
+was charitable and amiable, and whatever she had done that failed to
+measure up to his Jewish standard of virtue had been overshadowed by
+her usefulness.
+
+He was led toward a little inclosure of lattice-work and vines on the
+summit of a knoll, from which the imperial demesnes were visible.
+
+Between the screen and the brink of the eminence was earth enough for
+the foothold of an olive, and its dark crown reached over and shaded
+the space within.  There was a single marble exedra with feet and arms
+of carven claws, and through the interstices of the vinery and the
+farther shade and foliage of the new spring, the insula of Euodus arose
+white and graceful.  The sunshine lay in brilliant mosaics over the
+thick sod, and above, lozenges of blue showed where the light had
+entrance.  The breeze from the warm bay went soft-footed through the
+trees, and for the moment Marsyas felt that all the friendliness which
+the world held for him had been caught and pent in the little garden.
+
+Junia was there, luxuriously bestowed in the cushions of the stone
+seat.  She made room for him beside her, but he took one of the pillows
+and, dropping it on the grass, sat at her feet.
+
+He looked at her with expectancy in his eyes.
+
+"O my Junia," he said, "why dost thou wear that eager, uninformed look,
+as if thou wouldst say, 'Tell me quickly what news thou hast!' when
+thou knowest invariably I bring no cheer!"
+
+"Hear him!" she cried.  "Shall I look thus: 'Here comes Marsyas,
+bearing evil tidings and craving comfort, for he does not care for me
+except when I may do something for him?'"
+
+"Of a truth, dost thou not say that in thy heart?" he insisted.
+
+"No!  I say this: 'Yonder young man is much in debt to me, but my
+requital when I ask it will be equal to his debt.'  Wherefore, I shall
+serve on till the sum is equal."
+
+"Thou speakest truly when thou sayest I am in debt to thee, but if thou
+hast in thy heart something which thou wouldst have me do, command me
+now!"
+
+"Perchance when I see what brought thee to Misenum, to-day," she smiled.
+
+"If thou canst help me, Junia, I shall owe thee a life!"
+
+"Thy life, Marsyas?"
+
+"No; Agrippa's--or the life of Justin Classicus!"
+
+"How now!" she cried, and there was more genuine interest in her soft
+voice than she had previously shown.  "What hath stirred thee against
+Classicus?"
+
+At that moment an indistinct shout of great volume, as of many men
+cheering behind walls, interrupted him.  He turned his head quickly in
+the direction of the palace.
+
+"What passeth within?" he asked; "why will they not admit me?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing," she said hurriedly, "or at least only an important
+ceremony which none but Caesar can perform; Macro does not wish him to
+be interrupted.  Go on with thy story!"
+
+"Flaccus hath sent a messenger to the emperor--a messenger that
+commands the favor of the little Prince Tiberius."
+
+"Who told thee?" she asked.
+
+"Well?" she inquired.
+
+He studied the look on her face and felt that it was strangely composed
+for the assumed eagerness in her voice.
+
+"The tribune refused him the tessera which he must have to approach the
+emperor's abode, and required that he produce the indorsement of some
+notable Roman before he return again.  The messenger went away boasting
+that he would get it of the little Tiberius."
+
+"He will!" she assented, "for little Tiberius is not on the promontory
+to-day, and the sentries without dare not refuse the lad's signet!"
+
+Marsyas frowned and looked down: he was perplexed that she did not help.
+
+"Is there no way to shut him out of Misenum?" he asked.
+
+"Caesar's passport is as much a command as Caesar's denial--when the
+little Tiberius delivers it," she repeated.
+
+"But can I not reach Macro?"
+
+"No," she said decisively.  "Macro's powers pale before the lad's."
+
+Was she at the end of her ingenuity, or her willingness, he asked
+himself.
+
+"He will get to the emperor, then, if he start?"  His desperation grew
+under the lady's easy irony.
+
+"Unless thou or some other of Agrippa's friends disable him permanently
+with a bodkin, or a storm deliver him up to the Nereids."
+
+Marsyas' hands clenched: he moved as if to rise, but she slipped her
+hands through the bend of his elbow and let them retard him, more by
+their presence than by actual strength.
+
+"Is there something thou canst do?" he asked.
+
+She hesitated; something seemed to fill her eyes; her lids quivered and
+dropped; speech trembled on her lips, but the momentary impulse passed.
+After a little silence, she lifted her eyes, composed once more.
+
+"I told thee, once upon a time," she said, "of the world.  I have
+counseled with thee for thine own good, and sometimes thou didst heed
+me, but on the greater number of occasions thou hast chosen for
+thyself.  What hast thou won from thy long battle for the stern
+purposes which have engaged thee?  What hast thou achieved in
+controlling this Herod, or in working against Saul of Tarsus?  What?"
+
+He frowned and looked away.
+
+"Nothing," she answered, "save thou hast gathered perils around thee,
+forced thyself into sterner deeds, and there--"
+
+She laid a pink finger-tip between his eyes.
+
+"--there is a blight on thy comeliness."
+
+"Dost thou urge me to give over mine efforts?  If so, speak, that I may
+tell thee I can not obey!" he declared.
+
+"No?  Not even if thy work maketh another unhappy--whom thou wouldst
+not have to be unhappy?"
+
+He looked at her: did she mean Lydia?  Or was she concerned for
+Classicus?
+
+"Art thou defending Classicus?" he asked.
+
+"Nay," she smiled, "but I defend myself!"
+
+This was puzzling, and at best irrelevant.  He had come, burdened with
+trouble and concern for Agrippa's life, and she was leading away into
+less serious things.  It was not like her to be capricious.  Perhaps
+there was more in her meaning than he had grasped.
+
+"I pray thee," she continued, "mingle a little sweet with thy toil!"
+
+He arose and moved away from her.
+
+"O Junia, how can I?" he demanded impatiently.
+
+"Nay, but I am asking payment of the debt thou confessest to me!"
+
+"Help me yet in this danger of Classicus, and I shall be thy slave!"
+
+She arose and approached very close to him.  Her face was flushing, her
+hands were outstretched.  He took them because they were offered.
+"Marsyas," she whispered, her brilliant eyes searching his face, "I
+shall not cease to be thy confederate, but I would be more!"
+
+With a little wrench she freed her hands from his and drew a packet
+from the folds of silk over her breast.
+
+"See!  I have here thy letter, which Herod brought and bitterly
+reproached me for mine enchantment of thee.  And I kept it, till this
+hour!"
+
+She put into his hands the scorched and broken letter that he had
+written to Lydia and had believed that he had destroyed so long before.
+While he looked at it, stupefied with astonishment, she slipped her
+arms about his neck.
+
+"I do not ask thee to marry me," she whispered, a little laugh rippling
+her breath.  "Eros does not summon the law to make his sway effective.
+For thou art an Essene, by repute, and no man need surrender his
+reputation for his character.  Wherefore, though ten thousand dread
+penalties bound thee to celibacy, they do not dull thine eyes nor make
+thy cheeks less crimson!  Be an Essene, or a Jew, Caesar or a
+slave--that can not alter thy charm!  And I shall not quibble, so thou
+lovest me!"
+
+Marsyas stood still while he searched her changing face.  It was not a
+new experience for him who had brought picturesque beauty into Rome,
+but the source was different, the result more grave.  On this occasion
+the seductive enumeration of his good looks awakened in him something
+which was affronted; whatever thing it was, it possessed an
+intelligence which comprehended before his brain grew furious, and,
+flinging itself upon his soul, buffeted it into sensitiveness.
+
+With a rush of rage, he understood all that her act had accomplished
+for him.
+
+The world of helplessly-impelled children that she had pictured to him,
+the world of innocence and forgivable inclinations, little warfares and
+artless badness, play or the feeding of primitive hungers, or of
+building of roof-trees--all that with which she had partly enchanted
+him was suddenly stripped of its atmosphere, and the glare of
+realities, fierce passions, deadly hates, shamelessness and blood stood
+before him.  In short, he had been instantly precipitated into his old
+Essenic misanthropy now directly imposed upon the heads of individuals,
+which before in his solitary days had been heaped without understanding
+upon the heads of strangers.
+
+He did care because that the creature had simply betrayed her true
+self; more dreadful than that, she had wrested from him the charity his
+experience in the world had yielded him--for Lydia!
+
+Blind fury maddened him; her offense called for a fiercer response than
+a blush; she had robbed his heart wholly and was burning its empty
+house.
+
+He put forth his strength, undid her arms and flung her from him.  For
+a moment he felt a bloodthirsty desire to follow her up and break her
+over the stone exedra, but remnants of reason prevailed.
+
+Springing through the exit, he was gone without uttering a word in
+answer to her.
+
+Junia heard the last of his footsteps on the flagging leading out of
+her father's grounds, and for a moment wavered between screaming for
+her own slaves to pursue him, or delivering him up to the praetorian
+guards.
+
+"For what?" Discretion asked.  "To have him tell, under torture, thy
+part in sheltering Agrippa?  At thy peril!"
+
+But he had flung her away; he had rejected her; he had escaped after
+all her pains, her pretensions, her plans!  For him, she had left
+Alexandria and endured Caesar.  For him, she had forgone seasons of
+conquest in Rome!  For him, she had neglected Caligula, and now
+Caligula would be emperor.  For him she had sacrificed everything and
+had lost, at last.  He, a Jew, a manumitted slave, a barbarian!  She, a
+favorite of emperors and consuls, a manipulator of affairs, fortunes
+and families!  And he had rejected her!
+
+There were muffled flying footsteps on the sod without, and Caligula,
+pallid and moist with terrified perspiration, dashed into the inclosure
+as if seeking a place to hide.
+
+When he saw her, he sprang back, but halted, on recognizing her.
+
+"Ate and the Furies!" he said in a strained whisper.  "What hath
+happened but that Caesar revived while the guards were hailing me as
+Imperator!"
+
+A hater of pork, a wearer of gowns, a mutterer of prayers, a bearded
+clown of a rustic!  And she, it was, whom he had rejected!
+
+"Stand like a frozen pigeon!" Caligula hissed, "while I tell thee of my
+death!  He knew what the shouts meant!  He showed his teeth like a
+panther, transfixed me with his dead eyes and signed for wine!  When he
+hath strength enough to order it, and breath enough to form the words--"
+
+And she had not urged the Herod's death for his sake, and thereby
+imperiled her own living with Flaccus; she had sent him a passport to
+Capri and one to Misenum, and rescued him from the admiring eyes of
+other women, to make sure of him--and he had flung her away, at last!
+
+"He will starve me to death: drown me in the Mamertine!" Caligula raged
+under his breath.  "Starve me, I say!  Speak, corpse!  What shall I do!"
+
+Her rage by this time had so filled her that it meant to have
+expression or have her life.
+
+"Kill him!" she hissed through her teeth.
+
+It was Marsyas' sentence, but it fell upon Tiberius.
+
+Caligula ceased to tremble and stared at her with a strange look in his
+bird-like eyes.
+
+"How?" he asked.
+
+She seized one of the pillows and brought it down over the seat of the
+divan, and held it firmly as if to prevent it from being thrown off.
+
+"Thus!" she said venomously.
+
+"But the nurses and Charicles, the physician," Caligula protested,
+fearing nevertheless that his protest might hold good.
+
+"Put them out!  Will they dare resist the coming emperor?  Have Macro
+aid thee, so he dare not tell upon thee."
+
+She was becoming cool.  It would be good to vent her murderous impulses
+on something.  Caligula gazed at her with fascination in his face.
+
+"Come, then, thou, and see it done!  Neither shalt thou talk," he said
+suddenly.
+
+She stepped to his side, but before she reached the exit of the
+inclosure, she stopped and looked squarely into his eyes.
+
+"Herod hath a slave who hath wronged me," she said.
+
+"Which one?" he demanded.
+
+"The Essene!"
+
+"Nay, take vengeance on some other, then, for He is my friend!  I have
+vowed him favor!"
+
+"Why?" she demanded.
+
+"Nay; do not stop--thou art to see this thing done!  Why do I promise
+the Essene favor?  Because, forsooth, he made an emperor of me!  Come!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+IN EXTREMIS
+
+Marsyas left the promontory at once.  He had hired one of the public
+passenger boats to cross from Baiae to Misenum and the boatman had
+waited for the return of his fare.
+
+Many went as he was going, but they were patricians singly and in
+groups that passed him, with sober faces and without a word to each
+other.  He recognized senators, aediles, consuls, duumvirs, praetors,
+legates all hurrying toward the landing.  All noble Misenum seemed
+suddenly to have determined on an exodus.  An anxious and distressed
+company they were, and had Marsyas' own brain been less hot with anger,
+he might have meditated on the meaning of it all.
+
+By the time he reached the bay, the sunset-reddened water was covered
+with light-running coasters, by the signs on aplustre or vexillum, a
+fleet of patrician craft making across the bay to Neapolis, or scudding
+for the open sea and Ostia.  He saw one or two vessels approaching
+Misenum, hailed by departing ones, and, after a colloquy, turned back.
+
+Vaguely wondering whether Caesar's latest whim was to drive his court
+from him, Marsyas got into his own highly-painted shell and told his
+oarsman to take him across to Baiae.
+
+As he sat at the tiller and moodily watched the Italian night come up
+over the sea, the capes, the hill-slopes and finally cover the somber
+head of the unsuspected Vesuvius, he was afraid that his long ignored
+Essenic rigor would assert itself.  He was ashamed of himself, and for
+the moment looked upon the life he had led in Rome with revulsion.  But
+he put off his self-examination with a kind of terror.  There was yet
+much that was harsh and unlawful to be done, and he dared not hold off
+his hand.  Lydia's life and good name, the avenging of Stephen,
+Agrippa's life and Cypros' happiness were weighed against Classicus and
+his own soul in the other balance.  He could not hesitate now.
+
+When he set foot in opulent Baiae the night had fallen and with his
+return to the city, which he knew sheltered Agrippa's most active enemy
+at that hour, all his energies turned toward the purpose that had
+originally brought him to Misenum.  He believed that if Classicus had
+insinuated himself into young Tiberius' favor, doubtless the prince's
+hospitality had been extended to him.  He turned his steps toward the
+range of villas built between Baiae and Puteoli, overlooking the bay.
+
+He had in mind the method of his last resort, and he went as one goes
+when desperation carries him forward--swiftly and relentlessly.
+
+But, crossing the town by the water-front, he met a handful of slaves
+bearing baggage toward the wharves.  With his old Essenic thoroughness
+he halted to examine them to make sure that Classicus had not
+outstripped him finally.  By their particularly fine physique and
+diverse nationality Marsyas knew them to be costly slaves of the
+familia of no small patrician.
+
+He heard the ramble of chariot-wheels on the lava-paved streets; the
+master was following.  As the vehicle passed under a lamp a few paces
+away, Marsyas distinguished the occupants as Classicus and the young
+Tiberius.
+
+He felt a chill creep over his heart; the hour had come.
+
+He moved after the slaves toward the wharf.
+
+Baiae's beauties extended out and waded into the waves.  The landings of
+marble had to be fit masonry for the feet of the Caesars and their train
+when they asked the hospitality of the sea.  Luxury, not commerce, came
+down to the water's edge and gazed Narcissus-like at its lovely image
+in the quiet bay.  Here were no Algerian hulks with their lateen sails,
+no evil-smelling fishing fleets, or docks or warehouses, or city
+cloacas.  Baiae was a city of dreams and warm baths, of idleness and
+temples and villas, of gardens and fragrance and beauty and repose.
+Now, the velvet winds of the starry Italian night rippled the face of
+the bay; the last faint luster of a set moon showed a bar of white
+light, low down in the southwest, and against that, blackly outlined, a
+splendid galley was driving like the wind into port.
+
+A dozen yards from the end of the pier lay a passage-boat, with a light
+on its mast and a soft glow in its curtained cabin, Marsyas wondered if
+Tiberius meant to accompany his guest to Misenum.
+
+But while he thought, Tiberius set Classicus down, took leave with an
+apology and a reminder that guests awaited him at home, and drove
+rapidly back into Baiae.
+
+A small rowboat lay under shadow at the side of the landing and the two
+couriers loading the baggage awaited now their passenger.
+
+But Marsyas emerged from the dark and stepped before Classicus.  A
+glance at the tidy countenance of the philosopher sent a rush of heat
+through Marsyas' veins.  Classicus was not feeling the spiritual combat
+within him, for the work he meditated, that racked the young Essene.
+That fact acknowledged helped Marsyas in his intent.
+
+"A word," Marsyas said.
+
+Classicus stopped, a little startled.
+
+"Who art thou?"
+
+"Marsyas, the Essene."
+
+The young man had not helped his cause by the introduction.
+
+"Out of my path," Classicus said coldly.  "I have nothing to say to
+thee!"
+
+"I have somewhat to say to thee, Classicus.  If thou must be hard of
+heart, be not foolish and injurious to thyself."
+
+"Suffer no pangs of concern for my welfare," the philosopher said.
+"Preserve them, lest thine own cause find thee bankrupt in tears!"
+
+"My cause will not need them: thou mayest.  I know why thou art here
+and whither thou art going and for what purpose.  I know who sent thee,
+why and what thou wilt accomplish.  I know how feebly thou art aided
+and how much imperiled.  Above all things I know what will happen to
+thee unless thou hearest me!"
+
+"What a number of door-cracks hath yielded thee information!  Stand
+aside before I call my servants to thee!"
+
+Marsyas folded his arms.  The green blackness of the bay threw his
+solid outlines into relief.  The threat he had made suddenly appealed
+to Classicus as ill-advised.
+
+"Jewish brethren," Marsyas answered, his voice dropping into the
+softness which was premonitory, "do not speak thus with each other.
+This was taught thee in the Synagogue.  If thy lapse into evil hath let
+thee forget it, I care enough for thy manner to recall it to thee.
+
+"First and above all things, know thou that I am not here to satisfy
+the hate of thee because thou hast wrested from me my beloved!  Next,
+that I am here to stop thee in order to save her life, more than any
+other's.  Now, for thyself.  Thou goest to accomplish a deed that would
+recoil upon thine own head.  If thou be tired of living, Classicus,
+choose another way than to perish for the entertainment of him who
+duped thee."
+
+"For thy peace of mind, O sage fool," Classicus observed, "know that I
+come bearing a petition to the emperor to seek for Agrippa's wife, who
+hath been abducted!"
+
+"If thou present a petition which in any way favors Agrippa or his
+wife, Tiberius will test the cord on thee to be sure it is strong
+enough to strangle Agrippa.  And I tell thee, Classicus, the Charon of
+the heathen Shades will not push off with the Herod; he will save
+himself a journey and await thy arrival!"
+
+"Still threatening, still trembling for me!  If I call these slaves to
+remove thee thou mayest tremble for thyself!"
+
+"I am large, Classicus, strong and determined.  I could kill thee
+before thy stupid slaves ran three paces!"
+
+Classicus turned his eyes to the level line to the southwest.  The
+luster on the horizon was gone.  The great galley, broadside now as she
+hunted her channel, loomed large on the outskirts of the sheltered
+water.  Once, the deck-lights flashed on a bank of her oars, rising wet
+and slippery from the sea.
+
+"Listen, brother," Marsyas continued.  "Thou shall proceed with me to
+the maritime harbor at Puteoli, and get aboard the vessel there which
+sails for Alexandria.  Thou shall leave Italy: thou shalt discontinue
+thy work against Agrippa--or have the knife, now!  Decide!"
+
+The hiss and protest of plowing waters came now on the breeze; the
+regular beat of many oars, working as one, broke the hiss into
+rhythmical bars: an invisible pennant, high up in the helpless shrouds
+where night covered canvas and mast, was caught suddenly by a vagrant
+current of wind and fluttered with rapid pulsations of sound.  Long
+lances of light reached out on the water and began to stretch
+broadening fingers toward the pier.  Humming noises like blended voices
+came with the rattle of chains.
+
+Marsyas knew that Classicus was awaiting the arrival of the galley for
+the advantages of the interruption and to secure Marsyas' arrest.
+
+The young Essene stepped close to Classicus.
+
+"I shall wait no longer for thy answer," he said softly.
+
+The philosopher's voice rang out, clear and unafraid.
+
+"Hither, slaves!"
+
+Marsyas was not unprepared.  He seized Classicus and forced him back
+into the black shadows of the clustered columns with which the inner
+edge of the landing was ornamented.
+
+The two couriers came running, but Marsyas spoke authoritatively.
+
+"Good slaves, if ye come at me ye will force me to kill this young
+man!" he said.
+
+"Take him!" Classicus cried.
+
+The two servants sprang forward, but Marsyas, seizing Classicus by the
+hair, thrust his head back and put the point of the knife at his throat.
+
+The two halted, tautly drawn up as if the point of the blade touched
+their own flesh.  Instinctively they knew that the silky quiet in the
+voice was deadly; Marsyas had them.
+
+Meanwhile the galley was delivering up her passengers to the land.  The
+first ship's boat that touched the landing carried four patricians.
+The soft sound of heelless sandals on the pavement drifted down from
+Babe.  Some one of the citizens was coming to meet the arrivals.
+
+The four stepped out, and the ship's boat shot back into the darkness.
+
+"Ho!  Regulus," one of the four cried.
+
+"Coming!" the citizen answered from the street.  "What news?"
+
+"Caesar is dead!"
+
+Classicus relaxed in Marsyas' grip; the slaves stood transfixed; the
+young Essene, holding fast, stilled his loud heart and listened.
+
+"Old age?" the citizen ventured.
+
+"Perchance; yes, doubtless," one of the four answered in a lower tone,
+for the citizen had come close and was taking their hands.  "Smothered
+in his silken cushions--died of too much comfort!  Dost understand?
+Well enough!"
+
+Marsyas' hands dropped from Classicus.
+
+By the time the Alexandrian aroused to his opportunity, Marsyas had
+disappeared like a spirit into the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE EREMITE IN SCARLET, AND THE BANKRUPT IN PURPLE
+
+Lydia came upon Vasti, the bayadere, returning to the culina with a
+flaring taper in her hand.  The brown woman's eyes were fixed on the
+flame and she whispered under her breath, till the licking red tongue
+of the taper flickered and wavered back at her as if speaking in signs.
+
+"What saith the Red Brother?" Lydia asked, in halting Hindu, for she
+had begun to learn her waiting-woman's tongue.
+
+"He keeps his own counsel, who is fellow to the Fire," was the answer.
+"Thy neighbor, the philosopher, awaits thee within."
+
+Lydia went slowly on.
+
+When she entered the alabarch's presiding-room, Classicus arose from a
+seat beside a cluster of lamps and came toward her.
+
+"Thy servant at the door tells me that thy father is not in," he said.
+"I came to speak with him of thee: but perchance it is better that I
+tell thee that which I have to tell, before any other."
+
+Lydia sat down on the divan, and Classicus sat beside her.
+
+"I come to submit to thy scorn or thy pity," he said, "either of which
+I deserve!"
+
+"What hast thou done?" she asked, feeling a vague sense of fear.
+
+"I have been Flaccus' fool!" he vowed.
+
+Lydia's eyes grew troubled.
+
+"What didst thou for him?" she asked in a lowered tone.
+
+"I permitted him to catch me up in the city and rush me to Rome with a
+memorial to Caesar, beseeching the emperor's aid in seeking the Lady
+Cypros, who had been abducted."
+
+Lydia's level brows dropped.
+
+"Charging us with abduction?" she remarked.
+
+"Charging no man with abduction, but declaring that she was missing
+from thy father's roof!"
+
+Classicus' face filled with contrite humiliation under her gaze.
+
+"Why so late with the story?" she asked.  "Why didst thou not come to
+us before thou wast persuaded to go!"
+
+"Charge me not with more folly than I did commit!" he besought.  "I was
+caught by his servants in the Brucheum and haled before him, where, in
+all excitement, he told that the Lady Cypros was missing, and that I,
+as the safe friend of the alabarch and the proconsul, had been
+commissioned to enlist Caesar's interest in her cause!  The vessel ready
+for Puteoli waited only on the night-winds to sail!  I was not given
+time to change my raiment, or to fill my purse from mine own treasure,
+much less to take counsel with thy father and learn the truth!"
+
+"And besides Flaccus, we must now take Caesar into consideration in
+protecting this unhappy woman!" she exclaimed.
+
+"No!" he cried.  "A friend of Agrippa's, whom I met in Rome, stopped me
+in time!"
+
+She looked away from him and he took her hand.
+
+"Am I pardoned?" he asked plaintively.
+
+"Thou didst no harm; but it should serve to awaken thee to the evil in
+this dangerous Roman!  If only Agrippa would return, how readily the
+skies would brighten for us all!"
+
+"What wilt thou do if the Herod returns not?" he asked after a little
+silence.
+
+"Do not speak of it, Classicus," she said hurriedly.  "Flaccus is
+desperate."
+
+"If Agrippa abandon Cypros," he offered, "she can divorce him, and
+simplify the tangle."
+
+"Oh, no, Justin!  Cypros is bound heart and soul to Agrippa.  Even if
+he died, she would not turn to Flaccus!  The dear Lord be thanked that
+we have a virtuous woman to defend!"
+
+"Nay, then, thou strict little rabbin, what shall we do?"
+
+"How slow these ships!  The last letter we sent to him can hardly have
+reached Sicily!"
+
+"He hath had a sufficiency of letters by this time!  What was it he
+wrote thy father, last: 'I come with all speed; but reflect that Caesar
+is master over me: his consent is needful!'  Ha! ha!  Caligula would
+give Agrippa half his Empire did he ask for it!"
+
+She leaned her cheek in her hand, turning her face away from Classicus.
+
+"Alas!  I know why he lingers," she said to herself.  "Marsyas hath
+departed unto Judea, and Agrippa lacks his controlling hand!"
+
+"I appreciate the peril threatening thy father's house," the
+philosopher added after her continued silence, "and thou knowest thou
+shall have my help--blundering as it may be!"
+
+There were footsteps in the vestibule, and the alabarch stood in the
+archway.  Lydia sprang up.
+
+"What," she cried, unable to wait for his report, "what said the
+proconsul?"
+
+The alabarch came into his presiding-room with a slow step; he let his
+cloak fall on his chair, and stood in the lamplight worn and troubled.
+Seeing Classicus, he greeted the visitor before he answered Lydia.
+
+"Evil, evil; naught but evil," he sighed, "and threats.  And the
+proconsul's threats are never empty!"
+
+"What does he threaten?" Classicus asked.
+
+"Me--and mine."
+
+"Alas! our people!" Lydia sighed.
+
+"No, daughter!  Thee!"
+
+"Lydia!" Classicus exclaimed.
+
+"Why does he threaten me?" Lydia cried.
+
+The alabarch shook his head.  "Flaccus betrayed only enough to show
+that he will concentrate his vengeance against me and thee, or me
+through thee, but thee of a surety, my Lydia!  Yet, he was as dark and
+ominous as the wrath of God!"
+
+Lydia came close to her father and he laid his arm about her shoulders.
+
+"Lydia, that bat escaped from Sheol, Eutychus, is openly attached to
+Flaccus' train; once, he abode under my roof, where he could learn many
+things.  Has he any information against thee which Flaccus could use?"
+
+Lydia's answer was not ready.  It meant too much to tell that which the
+alabarch groped after.  Already she had surrendered until she was
+stripped of all but her father's confidence, and her people's respect.
+She could not cast off these ties to all that was desirable on earth.
+And Classicus, silent and smug behind her, seemed to be a prepared
+witness awaiting a confession.  Conscience and human nature had the
+usual struggle, and when she replied she did not raise her head.
+
+"My father, Eutychus will never be at a loss for information.  What
+actualities he can not furnish, he may have from his imagination."
+
+"Alexandria does not wait for charges against the Jews," the alabarch
+said.
+
+"But what says Flaccus?" Classicus urged after a silence.
+
+"That I have abducted Agrippa's wife; that I have been guilty of
+insubordination to him, my superior; that thou, my Lydia, art amenable
+to him and all the people of Alexandria, and that he will proceed as
+his information warrants, unless I produce Cypros--between sunrise and
+sunset, to-morrow!"
+
+There was silence.
+
+"What wilt thou do?" Lydia asked in a suppressed voice.
+
+"I can produce Cypros," he answered, torn by the inevitable.
+
+"No!" Lydia cried.
+
+"If Agrippa cares so little for her--" the alabarch began, but Lydia
+put off his arm and stood away from him.
+
+"This matter is neither thine nor Agrippa's to decide!  Cypros is a
+good woman and she shall be kept secure--even against herself, if need
+be!  Thou shalt not bring her before Flaccus!"
+
+"Lydia, I am brought to decide between her and thee!"
+
+"Thou canst suffer dishonor and peril, even as Cypros," Classicus put
+in, to Lydia.  "We are no less unwilling to surrender thee to the
+unknown charges Flaccus brings against thee, than thou art to give up
+Cypros!"
+
+"Flaccus is no arbiter of the virtue of women!  He is not Caesar, beyond
+whom there is no human appeal!  Let him remember that it is no longer
+the old man Tiberius who is emperor of the world, but the young man
+Caligula, whose warmest friend is a Jew!  Let him touch Cypros at his
+peril!"
+
+"Daughter, why should Caesar defend a woman for whom not even her
+husband cares?"
+
+There was no ready reply to this, and Lydia's face grew white.
+
+"Is it like thee, my father, to abandon the wholly undefended?" she
+asked.
+
+The alabarch bit his lip and turned his head away.
+
+"Granted, then," put in Classicus in his even voice, "that we shall
+keep the lady in hiding and treat her to no ungentle usage!  Now, what
+will become of Lydia?"
+
+The alabarch raised his eyes, filled with fire and desperation.  Lydia
+drooped more and more, and presently she put her hand to her forehead.
+
+"Is there nothing to be done?" Classicus persisted calmly.
+
+The silence became strained and lengthened to the space of many
+heart-beats before he spoke again.
+
+"Lydia can be hidden, with the princess," he offered finally.
+
+Lydia raised her head, and looked at Classicus.  Not for her the refuge
+that was Cypros', for if Flaccus held in truth the secret of her
+conversion to the Nazarene faith, she would only lead his officers
+straight upon the Nazarenes all over Egypt.  Whatever people sheltered
+her, she would bring disaster and death on their heads.  As Marsyas had
+been under the oppression of Saul of Tarsus, she had become as a
+pestilence!  She wondered if Classicus realized how thoroughly she
+understood him.  His face did not wear an air of respect for his plan.
+
+"It can not be," she said quietly, and the alabarch looked startled at
+her words.  Classicus submitted to her objection at once.
+
+"Then," he said, "there is but one other way that I can invent--and
+this I offer last, because it is dearest to me.  I have lands in Greece
+and favor with the legate there.  Flaccus' power can not extend beyond
+his own dominions.  Wilt thou not come to Greece--with me, my Lydia?"
+
+Lydia's gaze did not falter throughout this speech; she had expected,
+long ago, that when Classicus had hedged her about, he would offer his
+hand as her one escape.  Drop by drop the color left her face; her lips
+grew pale, and took on a curve of mute appeal; her eyes were the eyes
+of suffering, but not the eyes of a vanquished woman.
+
+The alabarch had turned hurriedly away.  But Classicus gazed, as if
+awaiting her reply, at his smooth, thin hands, now stripped of their
+jewels, incident to the shrinkage in his purse.
+
+The drip of the waterfall in the garden within came very distinctly
+upon the silence in the room.
+
+A cry from the porter, speaking in the vestibule, brought the alabarch
+up quickly.
+
+"Master! master!  The prince!  The prince!"
+
+"The king, thou untaught rustic!"  Agrippa's tones, subdued but
+mirthful, followed upon the porter's cry.
+
+Lysimachus sprang toward the vestibule, but Lydia, transfixed by
+reactionary emotions, did not move.
+
+But before the alabarch reached the arch, two men appeared in the
+opening.  Except for the fillet of gold set so low on his head that it
+passed around his forehead just above the brows, Agrippa might have
+been the same nonchalant bankrupt gambling with loaded tesserae or
+hunting loans on bad security.
+
+The other was Marsyas.
+
+Classicus lifted his brows and arose to the proper spirit in which to
+greet a king.
+
+"Count it not flattery, lord," the alabarch cried, extending his hands
+toward the new-comers, "that I say that Abraham's radiant visitors were
+not more welcome than thou!"
+
+"Better the unprepared alabarch," said Marsyas, "than any host who hath
+expected his guests!"
+
+The prince laughed, and discovering Lydia, bowed low to her.
+
+"No change in thee, sweet Lydia," he exclaimed as she bent in obeisance
+to the fillet of gold about his forehead.
+
+Marsyas stood a moment aside, his glance roving quickly from her to
+Classicus.  With an effort he put back the rush of feeling that crowded
+upon his composure and came to her.
+
+"Hast thou not changed, Lydia?" he asked.  The hand closing over his
+did not belie the tremor in her voice.
+
+"A blessing on you both," she said.  "You are the redemption of this
+house of trouble!"
+
+"We have been everything but heroes in our days," Marsyas said.
+"Welcome the opportunity!"
+
+"Ho!  Classicus!" Agrippa cried jovially, "hast thou failed to
+overthrow the tribute-demanding Sphinx or the Dragon?"
+
+Marsyas gazed at the philosopher standing with inclined head, while he
+made felicitous answers to the prince, and said to himself:
+
+"Happy phrase, my lord King!  There standeth the tribute-demanding
+Sphinx, even now!"
+
+Agrippa addressed himself to the alabarch, and between Marsyas and
+Classicus there stood no saving obstruction.  Marsyas' nostrils
+quivered; he had fleeting but perfect summaries of the wrongs the man
+had worked against him.  To find him now a guest entertained under the
+roof he had striven to injure, brought the Essene's temper up to a
+climacteric point.  But he felt Lydia's presence, pacific, temperate
+and persuasive, restraining him.  Of all the many deceits he had used
+throughout his precarious life of late, none seemed so impossible of
+practice as to offer a dispassionate word to Classicus.
+
+He was saved for the moment by an exclamation from the alabarch.
+
+"In all truth, that manifestation of Caesar's favor?" he cried eagerly.
+
+"A truth!" Agrippa declared.  "Rome made a dandy out of Marsyas.
+Twelve legionaries, before he would stir a step to Egypt!  Twelve!  All
+armed; brasses so polished that one looks into the sun who looks at
+one.  None short of three cubits in stature and visaged like Mars!"
+
+Marsyas cut off the prince's raillery with a direct and serious query.
+
+"How is it with our lady?"
+
+"Still in hiding from Flaccus," the alabarch replied.
+
+Agrippa looked in astonishment from one to another.
+
+"Surely," he said earnestly, "you have not carried this delusion to
+such an extreme!"
+
+"Delusion, lord," Marsyas repeated, facing him.  "Let those first speak
+who are not deluded.  Then thou shall apply the word to him it fits."
+
+"Good friends," the Herod protested, "all wise men cherish a folly.
+Marsyas, being the wisest of my knowing, hath his own.  He hath held
+fast against flawless argument and solid truth to the delusion that my
+honest, timid wife hath awakened passion in the heart of this
+proconsul, who hath all the beauty and wit of Egypt and Rome from which
+to choose."
+
+"Wilt thou continue further, lord," Marsyas said, "and tell them how
+thou hast explained this mystery to thyself?"
+
+"What, Marsyas!  Make confession here, openly, of a thing which I blush
+to confess to myself?" the Herod laughed.
+
+"Never fear; thy audience hath already acquitted thee of blame!"
+
+"Nay, then; so assured of clemency, I tell this behind my palms and
+with the prayer that the walls do not repeat it to my lady's ears!
+Learn, then, for the first time, that Junia is the cause of my
+disaster, because, forsooth, she is as fickle and capricious a woman as
+she is bad.  Until the unhappy Herod was blown of ill winds to
+Alexandria, his single haven, she was Flaccus' mistress.  When I
+appeared, for no other cause than the Mightiness of her fancy, she
+dropped Flaccus and precipitated all manner of disaster upon my head.
+There is the true story!  Cypros, forsooth!  Cypros is an upright Arab,
+twenty years married and mother of three!"
+
+"Junia!" the alabarch repeated irritably.  "Junia constructed more of
+Flaccus' villainies than Flaccus himself!"
+
+"And will nothing dislodge this wild thing from your brain?" Agrippa
+cried.
+
+"Name it what you will, lord," the alabarch answered, "but I have a
+further story to tell than all my fruitless letters told, when I stood
+in fear of their interception!  Thou hast not forgotten the attack on
+thee on the night of Flora's feast; that, thou canst ascribe to
+Flaccus' jealousy, but how wilt thou explain that when the news of thy
+disaster reached Alexandria, Flaccus put off his amiable front and
+commanded me to deliver Cypros to him--"
+
+"Commanded you to deliver Cypros to him!" Agrippa cried, the fires of
+anger igniting in his eyes.  "What had she to do with this?"
+
+The alabarch drew himself up, ready in his dignity and authority to
+justify his deeds.
+
+"If it proceedeth to an accounting, I and mine will bear witness to her
+innocence and loving fidelity to thee!  Yet, remember, lord, she hath
+the first right to ask why she hath been left without thy care thus
+long!"
+
+Agrippa flushed darkly, but Marsyas stopped the retort on his lips.
+
+"Let us not try each other!  Go on, good sir," he pleaded.
+
+"I refused, and he threatened to hurl the Alexandrians on the Regio
+Judaeorum.  But in the meantime, fate or fortune, God knows which,
+ordered that Tiberius should choose Caligula to succeed him.  The news
+reached Alexandria and stayed Flaccus' hand, for then he stood in
+wholesome fear of thy friend, the prince imperial.  But thou didst
+tarry and tarry, and the more thou didst tarry, the more his hopes and
+his desires grew.  No longer the Regio Judaeorum dared he threaten, but
+me and mine--Lydia, above all!"
+
+"Lydia!" Marsyas exclaimed.
+
+"And I tell thee, my Lord Agrippa," the alabarch continued, by this
+time a picture of refined indignation, "at this very hour I was brought
+face to face with a hard decision between my daughter and thy wife!"
+
+Marsyas turned toward Classicus, but the storm of denunciation that
+leaped to his lips was checked.  What should he win for his exposure of
+Classicus, but scorn from Lydia, and a misconstruction of his motive?
+
+Atavistic ferocity glittered in Agrippa's eyes.
+
+"It is my turn!" he brought out between clenched teeth, "and I have a
+long score, a long score with Flaccus!  Where is my lady?  Let her be
+brought!"
+
+Lydia broke in before the alabarch could answer.
+
+"In hiding!" she answered quickly, and Marsyas fancied that she feared
+a too explicit answer from her father.  Before whom was she afraid to
+disclose the princess' refuge, if not Classicus?
+
+"Take four of my praetorians, then," Agrippa commanded, "and lead me to
+her hiding-place!"
+
+The alabarch bowed and summoned servants.
+
+"Have we, then, delivered this house of peril?" Marsyas asked of
+Agrippa.
+
+"Flaccus," said Classicus, speaking for the first time, "may feed his
+thirst for revenge!"
+
+"Get but my lady, first!" Agrippa insisted.  "Flaccus hath played and
+lost!  He shall pay his forfeit!"
+
+The servants were ready with the alabarch's cloak; the porter announced
+chariots waiting, and in an incredibly short time, Marsyas was alone
+with Lydia and Classicus, in the presiding-room.
+
+"I shall return to the ship and prepare it for voyage," Marsyas said,
+in the silence that instantly fell.  "Since I return to Judea with the
+King, perchance I should say farewell!"
+
+Lydia's lips parted, and her miserable eyes turned away from him.
+
+"Await my father's return," she said in a low voice,
+
+"Hath he far to go?" he asked.
+
+"Yes--far!"
+
+Classicus waited serenely for Marsyas' answer.  In that composure
+Marsyas read unconcern, which the Essene interpreted as hopelessness
+for his own cause.
+
+"So long as we abide in Egypt, we are a peril," he replied.  "Even now
+we have delayed too long!"
+
+He extended his hand to Lydia, and slowly, she put her own into it.
+The touch of the small fingers played too strongly upon his
+self-control.  He released them hurriedly and strode toward the
+vestibule.
+
+But at the threshold, indecision and astonishment and acute realization
+of the meaning of the thing he was doing seized him.  He whirled about.
+Classicus stood beneath the cluster of lamps, his face alight with
+triumphant superciliousness.  Even under Marsyas' eye the expression
+did not alter.  Lydia seemed to have shrunk; her hands clasped before
+her were wrung about each other in an agony of restraint, but the
+pitiful appeal in her eyes was all that Marsyas saw.
+
+In an instant he was again at her side, his heart speaking in his face.
+
+"Thou wearest yet the free locks of maidenhood," he said, in a voice so
+smooth and low that it chilled her, "perchance thou wilt tell me ere I
+depart if thou art to marry--this man?"
+
+For a moment there was silence; Marsyas heard his mad heart beating,
+but if Classicus felt apprehension, there was no display of it on his
+face.  Then Lydia raised her head.
+
+"No," she said, in a voice barely audible.
+
+Marsyas turned upon Classicus, and between the two there passed the
+silent communication of men who wholly understand each other.  Then
+Classicus took up his kerchief, and, with a smile and a wave of his
+hand, walked out of the presiding-room.
+
+But Lydia was out of reach of Marsyas' arms when he turned to her.
+Crying and afraid, she motioned him back as he pressed toward her.
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Am I still unacceptable to thee, Lydia?" he asked.
+
+"O Marsyas, thou returnest in the same spirit as thou didst depart from
+me--unchanged, unchanged!  But striving to change--for my sake!  Do not
+so, for me!  Not for me!"
+
+The grief and pleading in the black eyes that rested upon her changed
+slowly.  Rebuffed and stung he threw up his head.
+
+"Better the old Essenic shape in which I was bound against thee and
+thou against me?" he said bitterly.  "So!  The Essenes seem not to be
+wrong in their teaching of distrust in women!"
+
+If he expected her to retort, the compassion and gentleness in her
+answer surprised him.
+
+"Not that, my Marsyas," she said, coming nearer to him in her
+earnestness.  "But change does not consist in the raiment thou wearest,
+nor in the claim to be altered.  Thou canst not in truth believe that I
+have done right!  Thou forgivest me for thy love's sake, but thy
+intelligence is no less critical!  I can not, will not put away the
+faith of the Master; I can not regret the spirit of the deed I did for
+their sake.  And between us it is as it was the night I sent thee from
+me, so long ago!"
+
+"But I have changed," he protested hastily.  "The world hath taught me
+much: I can understand; I can extenuate greater errors--I have done so;
+believe me, it is only for thy sake--"
+
+"But canst thou wholly acquit me--wholly justify me, Marsyas?"
+
+He looked at her with pleading in his eyes, and made no answer.
+
+"No man should wed or worship with a single doubt," she said.
+
+Fearing more than he dared confess to himself, he caught her hands and
+would not let her leave him.
+
+"Lydia, I have not had the portion which God and women allot to most
+men," he said almost piteously.  "There are delights that should be
+mine by right, but they are denied me!  Other men have their dreams,
+their moments of tender preoccupation.  They can live again through
+hours between only themselves and one other.  They can feel again the
+touches of a woman's hand upon them, the warmth of her cheek and the
+love in her kiss.  No matter the evil, the sorrows that follow, these
+things are theirs, to hold in memory!  No matter the time or the place,
+they can summon it all from a song, drink it from a goblet of wine, or
+breathe it in from a flower!  It is twice living it; once, in the
+actuality; again, in the dream!  But I--I have nothing!  My teaching
+did not permit me to look forward to such a thing--and thou,
+Lydia--Lydia, thou dost not permit me to look back upon it!"
+
+Her eyes filled with tears, and a rush of tender words trembled on her
+lips.  His gaze, quickened by longing for the thing these signs
+typified, caught the softening in her young face.  He seized upon the
+hope that it gave him.
+
+"Dost thou love me, Lydia?" he asked.
+
+"I love thee, Marsyas."
+
+He drew her to him, put his arms about her and pressed her to his
+breast.  She did not resist him, for she was tired of contention with
+herself, tired of distress, afraid of the menace the future showed her,
+and withal fainting in hope.  She dropped her head on his shoulder,
+with her face turned up to him.  Marsyas' soul filled to the full with
+subdued, bewildering emotions.  It was not the first time he had held
+this sweet child-woman in his arms, but fear, tumult, impetuousness and
+protest had claimed preeminence in his thoughts before.  Now in the
+quiet and shelter of the alabarch's deserted presiding-room, he found
+new experience, new feelings.  Under the low light of the clustered
+lamp, he looked down on the face turned to him, smoothed with soft
+touches the long, delicate black brows; passed light fingers over the
+bloom of her cheek and saw the faint rose color come again in the white
+lines the little pressure made; put back the loose curl fallen before
+her perfect ear and marveled at its silkiness; watched the quiet
+palpitation in the milk-white throat--sensed, somehow, the repose in
+herself, the command, even in this momentary surrender, the divinity in
+her womanliness.  He was ashamed of his distrust, startled at his new
+sensations.
+
+Perhaps she saw the passing of feeling over his face, for she stirred
+and would have raised herself, but the movement brought him back to
+reality, and a fiercer rebellion against it.
+
+"Nay, nay, Lydia; I love thee!  It is my one virtue; my sinful soul
+hath been married to thee these many strange months.  Thou art become a
+necessity to my life, as needful as bread and drink, as blood and
+breath!  Thou art the essential salt in my veins--the world to me!
+Nay, more!  Thou art love, for world is a word with boundaries!  I have
+striven for thy sake and I have not failed.  I am able now to obtain
+the quieting of thy chief enemy, the refreshment of the starved heart
+in me, thirsting for revenge, and of our own security henceforward in
+the world.  Yet, I am not going to Judea with Agrippa.  I abide here
+with thee in Alexandria, until I have won the immediate safety of thy
+body and thy soul!"
+
+She strove to stop him in his resolution, but he kissed her, and,
+leading her to the foot of the well-remembered stairs, whispered his
+good night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE DREGS OF THE CUP OF TREMBLING
+
+By noon the following day, all Alexandria roared with the news that
+Agrippa had returned a king!
+
+The Regio Judaeorum lost its repose.  Certain irrational of the
+inhabitants displayed carpeting and garlands in honor of the Jewish
+potentate, within their boundaries.  But others, instructed by
+instinct, closed the fronts of the houses and laid their treasure
+within grasp.
+
+By the advice of Marsyas, Agrippa had caused his ship to bring to,
+outside the harbor, and await the dropping of darkness before he came
+ashore.  The few hours he spent in Alexandria had been passed under
+cover, and none without the alabarch's household was aware of his
+presence in the city.  The newly-crowned Judean king found it difficult
+to repress his desire for ostentation, and when Marsyas' plan for
+secrecy miscarried at last, Agrippa was irritated because he had been
+deprived of a longed-for opportunity to astonish the Alexandrians.
+
+"But who could have told it?" he asked, with ill-concealed satisfaction.
+
+Marsyas' lips curled.
+
+"Classicus," he said.
+
+Before the porch of the alabarch's house groups of people came to stand
+and discuss the fortunes of the Herod.  The sounds, never
+congratulatory, began to change in temper.  As the day grew, numbers
+began to accumulate and hang like sullen bees buzzing insurrection.
+Though they themselves were mongrels cast out of twenty subjugated
+kingdoms and bullied into unspeakable servitude by the tyrant Rome,
+Prejudice, unarmed with argument and speaking in dialect, arose and
+rebelled at Alexandria entertaining a Jewish king.
+
+Toward sunset a group of empty curricles and chariots came and stood
+before a certain house, the last in the Jewish district, facing the
+Gentile environs of the water-front.  Had any cared to remark, it might
+have been observed that this house could be reached from the alabarch's
+by abandoned passages and private walks, a series of Jewish courts and
+stable-yards, without exposing any who went that way to the Gentile
+eye.  After a while, a body of Roman guards emerged from nowhere and
+arrayed themselves alongside the vehicles.  Presently, groups of slaves
+bearing burdens, followed by a party of high-class Egyptians, mounted
+the chariots and without hesitation the procession took up movement
+toward the harbor.
+
+But an angle in the streets brought them upon the Gymnasium.  It was
+built in a square of sufficient size to receive the crowds that usually
+attended the contests of the athletae, and there thousands were
+assembled to do Alexandrian honor to a Jew.
+
+The daylight was still on the streets, and Marsyas, in the guise of a
+charioteer, driving the horses of the foremost car, observed that each
+of the mass was busy with his own noise, and apparently unsuspecting
+the coming of Agrippa.  So he signed to the centurion in charge of the
+praetorian squad to make way with as little ostentation as possible.
+
+At the porch before the Gymnasium, the crowd was most packed, loudest
+and most entertained.  A naked, deformed, apish figure stood on a
+pedestal from which a statue had fallen and had not been replaced.  A
+wreath of rushes had been twisted about the degenerate forehead, a
+strip of matting had been bound with a tow-cord about his middle; in
+his hand was a stalk of papyrus with the head broken and hanging down.
+
+On their knees about the base of the plinth were half a score of youths
+from the Gymnasium, groaning in tragic chorus, the single Syriac word:
+
+"_Maris_!  _Maris_!  Lord!  Lord!"
+
+Loudly the crowd roared its part, with voices raucous and hoarse from
+much abuse:
+
+"Hail, Agrippa!  King of the Jews!"
+
+Agrippa's chariot, following the way the centurion had quietly opened
+through the crowd, attracted little attention and the half-light of the
+twilight did not reveal his features, which he had been led further to
+conceal by an Egyptian cowl.  A long white kamis covered his dress.
+But his eyes fell upon the idiot; he caught the mockery and its meaning
+from the crowd.
+
+A quiver of rage ran through his frame.  Laying hold of the Egyptian
+smock, he tore it off and threw it fairly into the faces of those
+nearest him; the white cowl followed, and he stood forth like a
+new-risen sun in a tissue of silver, mantled with purple, his fillet
+replaced by a tarboosh sewn with immense gems.
+
+Defiance and insult and daring could not have been embodied in a more
+effective act.  The continuous tumult burst into a yell of fury.  In a
+twinkling his chariot was hemmed in and blocked and the raving rabble
+reached out to lay hands on him.
+
+Marsyas, seeing destruction in Agrippa's recklessness, shouted to the
+centurion, who responded by hurling his praetorians, with broadsword and
+spear into the mob.
+
+The protection of Caesar, thus evidenced, beat back the astonished herd
+as a charge of cavalry might have done, but it fringed the lane opened
+before the royal Jew and raged.
+
+Thereafter every inch of the way was contested.
+
+Not even a show of interference was made by municipal authorities.
+Instead, here and there, soldiers of the city garrison could be seen,
+singly or in groups, as spectators and applauding.  The riot began to
+take on the appearance of a holiday, for groups of upper classes began
+to appear on housetops, stairs and porches of houses, where they made
+themselves comfortable and listened to the demonstration as they were
+accustomed to watch contests in the stadia.  Below in the long way
+toward the harbor-front, the lawless of any class indulged their love
+of disorder and amused the aristocrats.
+
+The fugitives were almost in sight of the forest of masts which marked
+the wharves, when Marsyas detected a change in the tone of the tumult.
+
+Derision and revilement began to lose impetus, flagging in the face of
+a freshened uproar of another temper, beginning far behind and sweeping
+down the street after the fugitives.  It was savage, bloodthirsty and
+menacing.  Out of the inarticulate volume he caught finally shouts
+about the Jews and Flora; next, about the dance of Flora; after that
+the whole declaration, sent thundering, like a sea over winter capes,
+that the dancing Flora was a Nazarene and the daughter of the alabarch!
+
+Marsyas' face, turned toward Agrippa, was ghastly.  The Herod felt the
+first quiver of terror he had experienced in years.  He reached toward
+the lines, meaning to give Marsyas opportunity to return to the Regio
+Judaeorum.  But Marsyas was shouting mightily to the centurion to charge
+the crowds before them.  The praetorian heard and his men presented a
+double row of spears and rushed.  The lesser mob ahead broke, and
+Marsyas cried back to Cypros' charioteer.
+
+The next minute with desperate mercilessness he had loosed a long
+plaited whip like a crackling flame upon the necks of his horses.
+
+The terrified beasts leaped; the car lurched and headlong they plunged
+into the mass before them.  Right and left the rawhide played, over
+faces, shoulders and lifted arms, searing and scarring wherever it
+touched.  With grim satisfaction, the two within the chariot felt at
+times that the car mounted and toppled over prostrate rioters, like
+sticks in the roadway.  The jam became panic and flight, and the horses
+took the free passage, mad with desire to get away from the stinging
+torment that harassed them.
+
+The driver of Cypros' car closed in quickly with its following of
+curricles, and kept close behind the flying chariot, but the
+praetorians, out-distanced, contented themselves by following through
+short ways, and the riot was left behind.
+
+At the wharf the maddened animals could not be stopped until they had
+been circled again and again.  But hardly had the wheels ceased to
+move, when Marsyas leaped to the ground, and, flinging the lines to a
+slave, put up his hands to Agrippa.
+
+"As the first debt to thy manhood and to the alabarch forget not this
+opportunity to help him!  Hear them!  They want Jewish blood; Lydia's
+blood!  There is none in Alexandria to stay them!  Help, my lord!
+Beseech Caesar in thy people's behalf, as I beseech thee now!  Answer,
+answer!"
+
+"I hear, Marsyas," Agrippa responded, "and by all that I hold sacred, I
+promise thee Flaccus' end!  God help thee!  Farewell!"
+
+Pausing only for the word, Marsyas turned and ran with frantic speed
+back into the city.  He saw, at every step, that which made his heart
+chill in his bosom.  The tide of the riot had turned, and that which
+was not already pouring in upon the Nazarenes, was rushing into the
+Regio Judaeorum.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+SANCTUARY
+
+The cluster of vagabonds hanging before the alabarch's mansion stayed
+no longer after the breezes brought the first sound of tumult which
+announced a rarer sport elsewhere.  In a twinkling the Regio Judaeorum
+was silent and deserted.
+
+Except for the gusts of far-off turmoil, the cooing of pigeons in
+towers, the clashing of palm-leaves, the creak of crazy gates in the
+wind, the casual calling of Numidian cranes or the crowing of poultry
+were the only sounds in the quarter--lonesome, nature sounds, signals
+of a householder's absence.
+
+But it seemed as if the Regio Judaeorum listened and waited.
+
+After Agrippa's departure, the alabarch came into his presiding-room,
+without purpose and visibly uneasy.  Lydia followed him, and, at a look
+from her father, came close to his chair and mingled her yellow-brown
+curls with his white locks.
+
+The silence over the quarter had become oppressive and the slightest
+break would have been no less grateful than distinct, when it seemed
+that cautious footsteps pattered by without.
+
+The two stirred and listened.
+
+After a moment, they heard others, very swift and soft, as if many were
+running by a-tiptoe.  There were whispers and rustlings, excited words
+cried under the breath.
+
+The two in the presiding-room looked at each other.  Had the vagabonds
+returned to their place for mischief, outside the alabarch's mansion?
+
+Lysimachus stepped to the windows and listened.  But Lydia stood still,
+dreading without understanding that which he might hear.
+
+East and west, far and near, sounds were drifting in and passing toward
+the New Port, sounds as if a multitude hastened in one direction.
+Above these stealthy, fugitive, whispered noises, there came freshened
+uproar from pagan Alexandria, swift, high, relentless and carrying like
+fire on a wind.
+
+As they stood thus, perplexed and alarmed, Vasti appeared like a shadow
+out of the dusk and caught the alabarch's arm.
+
+"It is come!" she hissed with compelling vehemence.  "To the Synagogue!
+Fly!  For the hosts of Siva are upon you even now!"
+
+Lysimachus grasped the grill of the window, and turned slowly toward
+his daughter.
+
+"Lydia?" he asked helplessly.
+
+The girl came to him, and Vasti began to motion her toward the street.
+
+"What is it?  What passeth?" the alabarch insisted, unable to act
+without perfect conception of the conditions he had to fight.
+
+Lydia's eyes, fixed on her father's face, deepened with misery and
+widened with suffering.  The hour had fallen!  She was to be the
+outcast and the abomination at last.
+
+"They accuse me," she said, "of being a Nazarene; that I committed
+sacrilege, to hold off the mob from Rhacotis--that I was the Dancing
+Flora!"
+
+The alabarch put his thin hands to his forehead, as if to ward off the
+conviction, which all the fragmentary intimation against Lydia, and her
+own words conjoined, threatened to establish in him.
+
+"Is it so, my daughter?" he asked in a benumbed voice.
+
+Cause was submerged in effect; she felt less fear of the confession
+than of her father's suffering.  In the appreciable interval his figure
+shriveled; age and the encroachment of death showed upon him.  The
+atmosphere of the magistrate, the courtier and the aristocrat dissolved
+under the anguish of a father and the horror of a Jew.  He had
+surrendered his two sons, Tiberius and Marcus, to paganism; in Lydia,
+he had reposed the unwatchful faith, that had permitted his other
+children to apostasize under his roof.  He had believed the more in
+her, and the shock was the greater, therefore.
+
+"Let it be the measure of my conviction, my father," she said sadly,
+"that I did this thing in the knowledge that I might forfeit thy love!"
+
+He made no movement; his face did not relax from its stunned agony.
+Lydia awaited its change with flagging heart-beat.
+
+But the thunder of menace from the Gymnasium square rolled in again
+through the streets of the Regio Judaeorum.  The alabarch heard it.  Up
+through the mask there struggled not rebuke and condemnation, but the
+terror of love fearing for its own.  He caught Lydia in his arms and
+turned his straining eyes toward the windows.  But the bayadere waited
+no longer for the arousing of his faculties.  She seized his arm and
+thrust him toward the vestibule.
+
+"Awake!  Get you up and be gone!  Will you wait to see her perish?"
+
+She did not stop until she had pushed them through the porch into the
+streets.
+
+"To the Synagogue!" she commanded last, and disappeared as she had come.
+
+All the Regio Judaeorum, as far as the Brucheum on the south and the
+tumble and wash of the Mediterranean on the north, was pouring through
+the streets toward the New Port.
+
+The alabarch's own servants went hither and thither, knocking at doors,
+from which other servants presently issued to speed with the alarm over
+the yet unwarned sections nearer the Synagogue.
+
+After a moment's waiting until the light airs cleared the daze that
+enmeshed his brain, the alabarch took Lydia under his cloak and fled
+with his people toward their refuge.
+
+As he went, doorways about them were giving up households, bazaars and
+booths were emptying of their patrons and proprietors; workshops, their
+artisans and apprentices; schools, their readers and pupils; the
+counting-room, the rich men and the borrowers; the squalid angles, the
+outcast and the beggar.  The oppression of terror and the instinct for
+silence weighted the darkening air; the twilight covered them, and
+hostile attention was yet far behind them.
+
+So they came: the slaves with marks of perpetual servitude in their
+ears, and ladies of the Sadducees that had rarely set foot upon the
+harsh earth; figures in Indian silks and figures in sackcloth;
+fugitives to whom fear lent wings and fugitives to whom flight was
+bitterer than death; families and guilds by the hundreds, hurrying
+together; companies of diverse people separated from their own; sons
+carrying parents and neighbors bearing the sick; friends forgetting
+attachments and foes forgetting feuds--until the streets became
+veritable rivers of running people.  And so they went, crowding,
+pressing, contending, but passing as silently as forty thousand may
+pass, toward the Synagogue, which was sanctuary and stronghold for them
+all.
+
+The keepers of the great gates were there, and the huge valves stood
+wide.  The alabarch's old composure reasserted itself, as, amid the
+panic of his people, he realized their want of leadership.  He stepped
+to one side of the nearest gate, and stood while he watched each and
+every Jew rush into the darkness and disappear under the great pylons
+of the Synagogue.  Lydia, whom he would have sent in at once, clung to
+him, and together they stood without.
+
+Meanwhile, out of the distant Brucheum, there came a snarl of monstrous
+and terrifying proportions.  The mob was gaining strength.
+
+The last of the Jews fled praying through the giant gates and pressed
+themselves into the shelter of the Synagogue.  The keeper looked at the
+alabarch.  He lifted his arm, and Lydia and the keeper and he, shutting
+away, as best they might, the noise of the threatening city, listened,
+if any belated fugitive came through the dark.
+
+The sound of footsteps approached; a body of people, strangers to the
+alabarch, appeared; Lydia made a little sound, and moved toward them.
+
+"We also are beset," the foremost said, "can we enter into the
+protection of the Synagogue?"
+
+"Haste ye, and enter!" the alabarch answered.
+
+And after the hindmost, he and Lydia passed into the sanctuary.
+
+The keepers swung the great valves shut, and the last sound they
+admitted was a ravening howl, as Alexandria hurled itself into the
+empty streets of the Regio Judaeorum.
+
+Until this time, Lydia had been a part of the unit of terror and
+self-preservation, but the hurry of the flight had ceased and the wait
+for events had begun.  Then ensued moments for individual ideas.  Thus
+far she had heard no murmur against her.  Fear of the Alexandrians had
+outmeasured the Jews' indignation, or else they had believed the
+informer to be the father of lies.
+
+There was the never-failing lamp on the lectern, but its light
+penetrated no farther than the immediate precincts of darkness.  The
+interior was so vast that its great angles melted into shadow.  The
+immense area of marble pavement was cumbered with an army of huddled
+shapes, and when portentous red light began to sift down through the
+open roof it fell upon uplifted faces, ghastly with fear, upon bare
+arms, white and soft or lean and brown, upstretched in supplication.
+But neither moan nor murmur arose among them who waited upon siege.
+
+Meanwhile the roar of violence encompassed and penetrated all portions
+of the quarter.  Great lights began to mount and redden the sky as
+torches were applied to houses looted of their riches.  The invasion
+had met no obstacle and the whole region was a-swarm.
+
+Presently, close at hand, the full bellow of freshly-discovered
+incentive arose, mounting above all other noises until even the Jews,
+imprisoned within walls of granite, heard it.
+
+"The Jews! the Jews!  The Synagogue!"
+
+Involuntarily there arose from the lips of the forty thousand a great
+moan, muffled, unechoing and filled with terror.
+
+The alabarch stood by Lydia, with his thoughts upon the strength of the
+Synagogue and the hardihood of the prisoners.  But the weight of
+culpability was heavy upon Lydia; in her great need and longing for the
+comfort of his confidence, she crept closer to her father and clung to
+his arm.
+
+"Naught but a ram or ballista can force these gates!" he said.  "And we
+are forty thousand.  Alas, that the spirit of Joshua the warrior was
+not mixed with the spirit of Moses, who gave us the Law!"
+
+The mob came on, now in distinct hearing of the imprisoned Jews.
+Tremendous trampling without on the stone flagging and dull, fruitless
+hammering on the valves announced the assault.
+
+The Jews nearer the gates pressed away.
+
+Without, indecision and tumult wrangled among innumerable voices.
+Great bodies began to shout as one, with mighty lungs:
+
+"Bring out the woman!  Give up the Dancing Flora!"
+
+Lydia felt the alabarch tremble and presently the arm to which she
+clung withdrew from her clasp and passed around her, drawing her close.
+
+"_Impius_!  _Insidiis_!  _Succuba_!  _O dea certe_!" roared the mob.
+
+But work was doing at the gates.  There arose blunt pounding, slowly
+and heavily delivered as if a multitude wielded a ram.  But the reports
+were too solid to indicate any weakness in the gates, and the keeper of
+the one attacked watched the sacred stone with a glitter of pride in
+his eyes.
+
+Presently the hammering ceased.
+
+"Yield us the woman!" the mob roared in the interval.  "Give us the
+woman and save yourselves!"
+
+Those about the alabarch, hearing the demand of the mob, turned great
+terror-strained eyes upon Lydia, and she hid her face in her father's
+shoulder.
+
+The smell of burning pitch penetrated the interior; pungent smoke
+assailed the nostrils of the keeper, who smiled grimly, assuming that
+the mob hoped to burn the Synagogue.
+
+But there followed an explosion of steam, split by a sharp report, and
+followed by a howl of exultation.  The keeper with wild eyes sprang at
+the valve.  Immediately the hammering of the ram reverberated through
+the gloom.
+
+The alabarch understood.  They were cracking the stone with fire and
+water and beating in the fractures with a ram.
+
+Then the forty thousand within realized their extremity.  The murmur
+increased to an even groan of terror, and here and there, as some more
+acutely realized the desperate straits, frantic screams would rive
+through the drone of misery.
+
+Above it all the ram beat its sentence of doom upon the gate.
+
+Splintering rock began to fall on the inner side of the assaulted
+portal.  The keeper put his hands over his ears and turned away from
+the sight.  Let but a breach be made wide enough to admit a hand to
+undo the bolts and hideous death would pour in upon the shuddering
+captives within.
+
+Without, above the noise of the ram, the roar of the multitude
+continued:
+
+"Give up the woman ere it is too late!"
+
+Under the light of fires falling from above, hundreds of white faces in
+the mad mass turned toward Lydia.
+
+A lozenge of stone large enough to admit a man's body shaped itself in
+the gate under the ram, and the next instant shot out and fell near the
+keeper.  With it came a hoarse roar of triumph, drowning a scream of
+despair.
+
+A dozen arms came through the opening and fumbled for the bolts.
+
+The keeper seized the fragment of stone and hurled it at the intruding
+arms.  It struck fair and with vicious force.  Howls of pain went up.
+
+The limp arms were dragged out and as others came in the keeper bounded
+to the gate and catching up his missile beat madly upon flesh and bone
+until the besiegers abandoned their search for the bolts.
+
+The thunder of assault began again, for the gate could not hold long.
+The trapped victims shrieked and out of the mass fingers pointed at
+Lydia.
+
+Suddenly, she stood away from her father's arm.  Walking to one of the
+keepers of the unassaulted gates, she said to him:
+
+"I am she whom they want without!  Let me forth!"
+
+A tall spare old man, one of the strangers who had entered last,
+approached her.  But the girl motioned him aside and he made the sign
+of the cross over her.
+
+Her father, watching her, did not realize until the keeper undid the
+bolts which held the wicket, or subsidiary gate in the large one, that
+Lydia meant to pass out into the night.
+
+With a cry, he sprang after her.
+
+A hush fell in the Synagogue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE DREGS OF THE CUP OF FURY
+
+The great stars were further withdrawn into the immeasurable arch of
+blue night; the winds had fled away into the ocean; the bay was angry
+with fire for leagues.  The space before Lydia was open as far as the
+reader's stone of the proseucha, for the attacking party had demanded
+room for their proceedings.  Beyond that was the front of the
+besiegers, a sea of bodies lighted by torches, tunics bloody with
+murder which had been done, mouths open, teeth shining, and eyes filled
+with the fury of bloodthirst.
+
+As yet she was unnoticed, because the attention of the multitude was
+engaged with the assault upon the easternmost gate.
+
+Lydia's mind did not direct her.  It had sunk long ago under the stress
+of womanly terror.  Only an involuntary obedience to an impulse
+conceived during the last conscious suggestions of her Nazarene faith,
+moved her toward the reader's stone, straight in the face of the
+multitude.  She went as all young and tender martyrs have gone, with
+the spirit already lifted out of the body.
+
+She mounted the rock; the alabarch, unable to reach her in time, unable
+to make her hear him, gave up with a groan of despair, and followed her.
+
+Then the multitude saw and understood.
+
+A yell of fury went up; a mass of innumerable heads and shoulders
+lurched toward her.  Even the assailants at the gate dropped their ram
+to come.
+
+Then up and out of it Marsyas leaped!
+
+Lydia saw him, and a great light swept over her face.  He had come to
+die with her, to sweeten the bitter martyrdom with the faithfulness of
+his love.
+
+After Marsyas, the bayadere bounded, as if pitched from the front of
+the wave.  Between the murdering front and the three on the stone she
+interposed herself, a creature of primal fury, terrible and ferocious.
+A torch was in her hand, the badge of eligibility, which had let her to
+the forefront of this mob, that received none but destroyers.  But the
+sibilant utterance of the crimson flame, raking the air, and taller by
+half than the screaming fury that whipped it before her, was turned
+upon them that had kindled it.
+
+She carried by its bail a great copper kettle filled with bitumen, but,
+as she planted feet upon the stone, she dropped her torch and, whirling
+upon the wave of fury, swept the full contents of the giant pot over
+every face and garment for yards about her.  She caught up her torch;
+the looping flame uncoiled itself like a springing snake and shot down
+into the pack.  Instantly there was a running flash, the rip of
+explosive ignition, and the breast of the riot turned, each a great
+towering flame, and drove itself into the heart of the oncoming
+thousands behind!
+
+The rabble in cotton tunics had absolutely no defense against one
+another.  The riot of bloodthirst turned instantly into panic and a
+revel of terrible death.  The sound, the scene were indescribably awful.
+
+In the hideous uproar that ensued, events followed swiftly.  Vasti and
+her tall torch, in fearful fellowship, shrilled and spun on the rock in
+a frenzy of heathen triumph.  Marsyas, for the instant stunned and
+scorched, flung his arm over his face, to shut out the horror.  But the
+Jews, the instant the ram was dropped, realizing that their citadel was
+hopeless with breaches in its gate, and seeing a respite in the riot's
+attention upon Lydia, broke from the sanctuary and poured like a sea in
+flight into the open.  The miraculous intervention of the bayadere gave
+them the opportunity to save themselves.  But when Marsyas came to
+himself and sprang to take up Lydia, the inundation of fleeing Jews had
+swept over the reader's stone behind him, and Lydia was gone!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+CAPTIVES OF THE MIGHTY
+
+The second night after the riot about the Synagogue, one of Flaccus'
+sentries, posted about the small cramped portion of the Regio Judaeorum,
+into which the forty thousand Jews had been driven, brought his spear
+at guard and called "Halt!"
+
+But the object approaching spun on toward him noiselessly, passed the
+lines, and disappeared up the dark, sandy roadway, into the night on
+the beleaguered quarter.
+
+"Ha, ha!  Ho, ho!" roared the next post, who had heard his challenge,
+"challenging sand-columns, Sergius?  Flaccus should know of thy
+thoroughness!"
+
+The discomfited sentry muttered and shouldered his weapon.
+
+But the column of sand disintegrated before a hovel, and became a snaky
+woman-shape that disappeared into the dark door of the house.
+
+Within, she stumbled over prostrate bodies, sleeping on the earthen
+floor, and, muttering in Hindu against the darkness, stopped finally.
+
+"Master!" she called softly, in her native tongue.
+
+There was instant reply.
+
+"Thou, Vasti!  The Lord God be praised!  What news?"
+
+The woman felt her way to the voice, and, encountering the alabarch's
+outstretched hands, began at once, in a whisper:
+
+"I have come, but not to abide," she said.  "The Nazarenes took Lydia,
+and fled with her unto Judea!"
+
+"Unto Judea!  Away from me?" the alabarch said piteously.
+
+"Nay, but Egypt hath risen against her.  The Roman hath put forth all
+his soldiery to look for her.  If she remained in Alexandria she would
+surely die!"
+
+The alabarch moaned.  The last of his fortitude had gone with Lydia,
+and helpless, disgraced and old, he was beginning to surrender.  The
+bayadere put her hands on him.
+
+"Be of hope," she insisted, "for the white brother departed at sunset
+to seek for her, and to get protection from the Herod!"
+
+"Judea!" the alabarch repeated miserably.  "There she entereth into
+equal danger, for there it is death to be a Nazarene!"
+
+"But the white brother is sworn to kill the leader of the persecution,"
+she said grimly.  "Speed him with thy prayers, for he is weighted with
+no little mission.  I come unto thee with cheer.  Listen, and be of
+hope!  The city of the Jews, here, is all but destroyed, but I buried
+thy moneys, thy drafts, thy money-papers and thy jewels.  Though they
+burn thy house, thou art still rich!"
+
+"Buried them?" he repeated.
+
+"In the earth of thy court-yard, ere the Herod departed, for the flame
+on the altar of Mahadeva burned crimson and murky!  And I took certain
+of thy moneys and gave them to certain of the Nazarenes and bade them
+be prepared to care for her, who had cared for them!  They went unto
+the Synagogue!  They rescued her from the stone, after the sending of
+Vishnu upon the rabble!  They went unto Judea with her--and I, Vasti, I
+did it, as Khosru, the Mahatma, bade!"
+
+"Be thou blessed, Vasti; blessed be the day that I held up the hand
+that would have fallen on thee, in the markets of Sind!
+But--but--Marsyas--what manner of vessel carryeth him?  How long!
+Alas, how wide the sea!"
+
+"But the vengeance of the Divine hand is loosed!  Sawest thou the
+destruction of the host, before thy people's Temple?  The bay was black
+with them this morning and the vultures come even from Libya.  Knowest
+thou the evil mouth that spread sayings against Lydia?  I was in the
+city and beheld it!  It was the charioteer, Eutychus!  Him I kept in my
+sight, while I ran at the forefront of the riot with the white brother,
+and when we stood upon the rock, I saw him!  This morning, I sought for
+him before the Synagogue, and I found him!"
+
+She brought her teeth together with a click.
+
+"I burned incense for the purification of the fire, straightway," she
+said sententiously.
+
+"Canst thou endure?" she asked after a silence.
+
+"All--so that Lydia be saved!"
+
+"Thy spirit may be tried," she said.  "The Roman hath commanded that ye
+be pent here until Lydia is found, believing that imprisonment and
+hunger and torture may persuade the Jews to give her up if she be hid
+among them.  But I shall come to thee with comforts and such tidings as
+I may learn."
+
+She touched his hands to her forehead and moved away, calling back:
+
+"The time is not long; the Jewish king will not lag in his own
+requital!  Be assured!  I abide without these lines, since I can not
+help thee within!  Farewell!"
+
+At the door she stopped, but, reconsidering her impulse, went out
+without speaking.
+
+"It would not be seemly to tell, now, that I saw Classicus' green and
+gold garment exposed in a usurer's shop."
+
+A sand-column passed before the wind, by the sentry at the upper end of
+the street; but he did not attempt to halt it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE APPROACH OF THE DAY OF VISITATION
+
+Marsyas sought through the Nazarene settlements in Joppa, Anthedon and
+Caesarea, but the people could not tell him of fugitive Alexandrians,
+who had with them a maid with yellow-brown hair.  He went then to
+Ptolemais, and there, after days of patient search, discovered that
+three strange women, two men and a maiden of gentle blood, who were
+children in Christ, has passed through the city, from Alexandria to
+Jerusalem.
+
+He did not pause to inquire after his former master, Peter the usurer,
+nor Eleazar, his steward.  Instead he took the road, over which he and
+Agrippa had come long before, and hastened toward the City of David.
+
+Within sight of the Tower of Hippicus, and the glittering Glory on the
+summit of Moriah, he came upon a group, in abas and talliths, sitting
+on the soil while they ate.  He would have passed around them, without
+speaking, had he not seen the elder among them lift his hands and
+beseech the blessing of Christ upon the bread and water set before them.
+
+Marsyas stopped, and waited with as much grace as possible until the
+meal was finished and the Nazarene thanks returned, before he
+approached.
+
+"I behold that ye offer supplication to the Nazarene Prophet," he said
+to the elder, "and though I come unto you a faithful follower of the
+God of Abraham, I pray you, remember the charity ye assume, and give me
+aid!"
+
+"We are children of Christ," the elder responded, "and brethren to all;
+wherefore speak, and if we can help thee, we dare not deny thee."
+
+"I perceive that a bond of common acquaintance unites all of your
+belief; perchance certain Alexandrian Nazarenes with a maiden, who fled
+hither from the wrath of the Proconsul of Egypt, have come unto you for
+hospitality in Jerusalem."
+
+"Save for the few apostles of the Church in Christ, who have hidden
+themselves, there are no Nazarenes in Jerusalem," the elder answered.
+
+"No Nazarenes in Jerusalem!" Marsyas exclaimed, remembering Eleazar's
+estimation of the host of schism in the Holy City.  "Yet, two years
+ago, they possessed the city from Ophlas to Bezetha."
+
+"They have been scattered into far cities by the oppressor, or have
+passed through the dust of the stoning-place into the Kingdom of God!"
+he answered in awed tones.
+
+The young man made a gesture as if he drew his hands quickly away from
+blood-stains, and a look of intense horror passed over his face.
+
+"And Saul continueth to rage, unchecked?" he exclaimed, his old
+impatience with the passivity of the Nazarenes making itself felt once
+more.
+
+"In the Lord's time, in the Lord's time, my son," the elder said mildly.
+
+"I can not wait upon the Lord!" Marsyas cried.  "The Lord gave me
+heart, feeling, intelligence and invention, for me to use to mine own
+aid!  I have labored for two years to this end, and Herod, the king,
+will help me!"
+
+"Not so, my son!" the Nazarene said gravely.  "Build no hope for us,
+upon Herod the king, for he hath joined himself with the Pharisees, and
+he will not hinder the oppressor!"
+
+"What?" Marsyas cried, growing black.
+
+"A truth, my son!"
+
+"But I crowned him!" Marsyas cried, clenching his hands.  "I held off
+the hand of death from him, and despoiled my soul for his sake!  I sold
+myself for him!  By the Lord, if he help me not, I shall have back the
+life that I preserved to him!"
+
+The Nazarene crossed himself quickly, and shook his head.
+
+"Peace!  Peace! young brother.  Even the Law, for which thou art
+zealous, forbids thee to kill!  Behold the vanity of laying up
+confidence in man!  If thou hadst so built for the Master's favor, thou
+hadst not been forsaken, to-day!"
+
+"Neither the God of Abraham, nor thy Prophet has shielded thee from the
+oppressor," he declared passionately.  "Remember thy own words.  But I
+will bring him down!"
+
+"Build no hope upon Herod," the Nazarene continued, as if eager to stay
+Marsyas.  "Whatever he promised thee, he knows that Saul standeth high
+among the Pharisees, whom the king would propitiate!  He hath
+difficulty and prejudice to overcome, this grandson of an execrated
+grandsire--so build nothing upon the Herod!"
+
+Was it possible that, after all his months of patient work and
+long-suffering, he had brought up at the point at which he had left off
+two years before?  Was his punishment of Saul to be done, at his own
+risk, at last?  He would see this altered Agrippa and learn for himself!
+
+"I shall see this king and discover!" he declared.
+
+"The king is not in Jerusalem," the Nazarene said.  "He hath continued
+unto Antioch to despatch a petition to Caesar!"
+
+The young man's rage changed into dismay, but he made a last appeal.
+
+"I seek my beloved," he said finally, in a helpless way.  "She is a
+Nazarene and pursued by the powers of Rome!  Even besides her peril of
+Saul, she is sought after by the mighty who would destroy her.  If thou
+knowest of her--even where she might be in hiding, I pray thee, tell
+me, in the name of thy Prophet!"
+
+"Who is she?" the Nazarene asked at once.
+
+"She is Lydia Lysimachus, daughter to the alabarch in Alexandria."
+
+"I turned such a maiden, and her protectors, away from the gates of
+Jerusalem, seven days ago.  They were bidden to go to Damascus."
+
+Marsyas pressed the Nazarene's hand to his lips, because his gratitude
+would not be expressed otherwise.  Safe, then, for the moment, and out
+of reach of Saul of Tarsus!
+
+"Do ye fare thither? even now?" Marsyas asked, eager to attach himself
+to the body of apostates, if they led him on to Lydia.
+
+"Nay, we are certain of the faith on watch, lest any ignorant of the
+peril besetting the brethren should approach the city."
+
+"Ye are close unto the oppressor," Marsyas said seriously.
+
+"We abide in the will of the Lord."
+
+Marsyas sighed.  He had seen another, believing in the promise of the
+Lamb, go down unto death.  The recurring thought of Stephen, never
+wholly forgotten, awakened in him another impulse.  He would not go
+straightway to Damascus, and continue to retreat from Saul.  The hand
+of the Lord had led him unto the Pharisee, and he would do that which
+lay nearest him.
+
+"And when I come unto Damascus, how shall I find her?" he asked of the
+Nazarene.
+
+"Go unto Ananias, a brother in the Lord, and tell him thy story.  Lo,
+he is keeper of the Lord's flock, and filled with the Spirit.  Thou
+wilt not ask in vain!"
+
+"Thou hast my thanks, and my blessing!" Marsyas said.  "And the
+forgiveness of the Lord cover you all!"
+
+"Peace, young brother, and the love of Christ be with thee ever more!"
+
+Marsyas went through the amber light of the late afternoon, toward the
+might of Hippicus and the majesty of the City of David.
+
+He found, by inquiry among the Jews, that Agrippa had not lingered in
+Judea, having passed through Jerusalem to give commands concerning the
+preparation of his palace, to receive the homage of the people and to
+propitiate the Pharisees, before he went on to Antioch.  It was readily
+told that the king was despatching messages to Caligula craving the
+punishment of Flaccus.
+
+"But could not the king have despatched these messages from Jerusalem?"
+Marsyas asked.
+
+The Jews smiled and laid fingers alongside their noses.
+
+"He is a Herod, and not ashamed of display.  He was ill-treated in
+Antioch, by the proconsul, there, in the days of adversity.  Wherefore,
+in his purple and gold, with the favor of Caesar behind him, he taketh
+advantage of an excuse to abash his old insulters!"
+
+It was like Agrippa!  But Marsyas was glad, even in the tumult of his
+sensations, that the Herod was pushing his work against Flaccus!  At
+least, Alexandria should be safe for the alabarch.  But to his mission!
+
+It was still night in the City of David and the watcher on the pinnacle
+of the Temple had long to wait before the morning shone and the sky was
+lighted even unto Hebron.  The greater stars sparkled like jewels in
+the cold heavens, and there were already many people in the blue-misted
+streets below.  They were of all classes, but of one nation, one
+direction.
+
+Straggling numbers joined the main body from each narrow passage which
+intersected the marble-paved roadway leading toward the splendid
+Tyropean bridge.  It was a host, an army numbering thousands.  But,
+foot planted on the solid masonry that accomplished the ravine by
+flying arches two hundred feet above the dark abyss, conversation left
+off.  The company passed silent, except for the multitudinous and soft
+rustlings of garments and the chafing of feet upon rock.  Far ahead the
+foremost were rising, an undulating sea of heads and shoulders, as the
+cyclopean stairs, a cold bank of white marble, broad and gentle of
+slope, climbed toward the Royal Porch.
+
+As soon as the Tyropean bridge was passed, the Temple was shut off from
+view by the intervening cornices of the porch; and when the gate was
+reached, the stream of worshipers entered into the demesnes of the Holy
+House.
+
+Tunnel-like and drafty, the open gate revealed an immense length of
+gloom, raftered and roofed with beams and vaults of darkness, upheld by
+double rows of dim columns of enormous girth.  This, the Royal
+Colonnade, cloistered the Court of the Gentiles, through which the
+worshipers fared next.
+
+It was a great quadrangle, paved with sun-colored marbles, open to the
+sky and having about it the characteristic exhilarating airs which
+inhabit the heights.  Herod the Great spent princely sums upon this
+portion allotted to the Gentiles, for the simple purpose of flattering
+the pagan.  Perhaps for no other reason than an expression of their
+displeasure did the Jews commit the sacrilege of commercialism in this
+spot.  Here the money-changer, vender of sacrificial beasts, birds and
+wines made a busy market daily, for the indignation of the Nazarene
+Rabbi had driven them away for only so long as He watched.  They
+returned when He had vanished, like flies to a honey-pot.
+
+Here also awaited the Temple servitors to receive the unblemished
+offerings, the Shoterim to preserve order, the Levites of the gates and
+perchance the priests of the killing-pens and of the wood-chambers.
+Through the throng of attendants or venders, the worshipers continued,
+an uninterrupted stream of pilgrims, souls in distress, Pharisees and
+souls under vows, and all the class and kind that would be diligent for
+the Lord in the restful hours before daybreak.  And the number was not
+large, in comparison to the host of Israel, for the Temple was builded
+to contain the voice of two hundred and ten thousand.
+
+North of the center of the Court of Gentiles, the Temple stood.  A rail
+set it off austerely from contact with the uncircumcised.  Its
+relentless command of exclusion and its threat were set forth on stone,
+forbidding the admission of a Gentile on pain of death.  But beyond, in
+mockery, rose the black bulk of Roman Antonia, the majesty of masonry
+upreared and prostituted to eavesdropping and espionage.  Yet none who
+visited the Temple was instantly to be led away from its glory to
+meditate on its humiliation.
+
+The worshipers passed around the angle of the structure to the east
+where the Gate Beautiful was hung.
+
+There was a momentary slackening in the movement, for the gate was yet
+to be opened.  But, preceding the foremost, twenty Levites passed up
+the flight of steps, and under the direction of a captain, laid
+shoulder to the valves and threw all their strength against them.
+There was a flash as the light of the coming dawn, concentrated and
+intensified, shifted across the Corinthian brass, and the Gate
+Beautiful swung inward.
+
+At the head of the column a young man, in ample robes, with his
+kerchief skirts hanging close about his face, stepped aside from the
+line of advance.  The crowd took up motion and went on.
+
+Marsyas had washed himself in obedience to the Law; he had brought in
+his hand his trespass offering, and in his soul he was a Jew.  But he
+stood now, and watched the fours of people climb the steps abreast,
+with no mood in his heart that a man should carry into a sanctuary.
+
+Series after series passed under his sharp scrutiny--extremes of rank,
+of reputation, of calling and of kind.  Minute after minute the long,
+silent procession tramped by him and was swallowed up in the gigantic
+gloom within.  Ever the alert gaze, bright even under the obscuring
+shadow of the kerchief, slipped from rank to rank, and never once
+lingered in doubt.  No one looked at him; every eye was down, for
+though, since the eighth day after his birth, no man in the long stream
+of worshipers had been ignorant of the Temple, it never failed to be a
+place of awe, half-love, half-terror.
+
+The hindmost appeared at the angle of the Temple, moved in turn after
+their fellows, climbed the steps and disappeared.
+
+Stragglers followed, in groups and singly, and finally Marsyas turned
+up the steps and followed the last within.
+
+Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee, would have been among the earliest to
+arrive.  Perhaps by special dispensation he had entered before the
+multitude and by another gate.
+
+The keeper at the Gate Beautiful glanced at the young man's snow-white
+Essenic garments and at the stamp of Jewish blood on his face, and
+passed him without a word.
+
+The Temple from the city had been a great glittering unit.  But on
+approaching its details, they became bewildering.
+
+Within was a tremendous inclosure, floored with agate, galleried with
+immense chambers which were screened with grills of beaten brass.  The
+army of worshipers was reduced, in comparison to the space they
+entered, to a mere handful of pygmy, indistinct shapes, prostrate,
+kneeling, upright, silent, infinitesimal, moveless.  At the extreme
+inner end of the men's court was a flight of fifteen semicircular steps
+which led up to the Gate Nicanor, now wide.  It was hung in the middle
+of an open arcade--an altar screen no less a grace to the Temple
+because it might have embattled a fortress.  Beyond it as the eye
+pierced the holy gloom, was a second tier of courts, less spacious than
+the first, but no less magnificent; after it, yet a third, and then a
+massive pile of ancient brass, stained and smoked, arose above all else
+before it.  A tongue of clean blue unilluminating flame wavered in the
+center of its summit.
+
+Beyond that, Marsyas' gaze did not travel.
+
+Spiritual subjection surrounded him; from behind the lattice which
+screened the women's court in the lofty galleries, there came no sound.
+The twilight of early morning and the hush of a sanctity were supreme.
+
+He crossed his hands upon his breast and let his head fall as the
+elders had taught him.
+
+Others came to stand beside him, the order of worship proceeded, and
+the singing Levites ranged themselves on the steps before Nicanor, but
+he was plunged in his spiritual difficulty and oppressed by the care
+for himself and his own.
+
+Finally there came a long, rich trumpet note above middle register; the
+voice of a brazen tongue singing through a horn of silver.  It was not
+sudden.  Beginning as the sound of wind on a fine wire, it ripened in
+tone as it grew in volume till it achieved the color, the shape of
+harmony, the very fragrance of music.  As it diminished, those who
+listened caught the sound of a second note--the voice of a twin
+trumpet, save that the tones issued in the molds of enunciation.  It
+was one singing among the Levites, as impossible to discover as to pick
+out the inspirited pipe in an organ.
+
+"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they
+that dwell therein--"
+
+It was the voice of a young enthusiast, with the faith and spiritual
+uplift of patriarchal years, housed in a frame of youth--the voice of a
+creature of trance and frenzy, a martyr-elect from birth.
+
+But as he clung to his final syllable in a vibrato of fervor, a second
+singer, duplicating the note in barytone, took up the second verse, and
+carried it with the ease and repose of one filled with content, health
+and the ripeness of years, of one who is the founder of a house, the
+possessor of goods and a power among his fellow men.  And his voice was
+rich, level as the note of a 'cello, tender because it was strong,
+persuasive because it was believing:
+
+"For he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the
+floods--"
+
+Wresting the word from him, the tenor again on his altitudes of ecstasy
+flung out the inquisition:
+
+"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his
+holy place?--"
+
+He made answer to himself with the barytone, but there was a third now
+singing, and his voice arose out of their attendance as a great, white,
+solemn, night-blooming flower might rise out of leafage.
+
+"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his
+soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully."
+
+The young fanatic might sing with the fervor of his bigotry, the
+contented man from the comfort in his heart, but this one, making
+answer, now, sang as one who was experienced and understood as the
+others could not.  It was deep bass, too deliberate to be flexible, too
+profound to be hurried, and withal a great bell booming in a dome.  And
+like a bell in travail under each stroke of its hammer, each word, in
+the full poignancy of its meaning, fell from the lips of him who had
+been tried by fire.
+
+The voice of the one hundred and fifty on the steps of Nicanor, picked
+for beauty from a singing nation, burst about the trio, an eruption of
+great harmony, overwhelming the echoes of the Temple, flooding the
+purlieus of the Holy Hill, mounting the morning winds to float across
+the hollow, reverberating ravines, to resound on the bosom of Zion, to
+penetrate the dark vale of Kedron, and to fail and be one with the
+reedy rushing of airs through the cedars of Olivet.
+
+"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his
+soul unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully;
+
+"He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from
+the God of his salvation!"
+
+Marsyas found himself coming under the influence of the psalm.  It
+seemed that the modifiers, describing the elect, had become lofty,
+solemn attributes not to be assumed by a simple claim to them, not to
+be had after the commission of deeds not specifically interdicted, not
+to be obtained by the harkening to one's own will; nor yet to be had
+did one fix himself in a chrysalis of form, wrap his soul in clean
+linen, and bury it in a remote spot, and keep hourly watch over it to
+keep it white--white but wizened.  He seemed to understand that he had
+not understood these things in the days of his Essenism, nor in the
+days of his worldliness.  And, remembering the meaning of his presence
+in the Temple, he felt peculiarly accused in his soul.  What right had
+he, who had brought with him the spirit of murder, in the Holy Hill?
+
+He could not shake off the self-accusation, but his resolution was
+unweakened.  He would depart!
+
+The hand of one who stood beside him dropped upon his shoulder and
+lingered.  He looked and saw beside him a great man, in the garments of
+an artisan, that covered him, figure, head and face against
+identification.  But Marsyas had known Eleazar under more effective
+disguise; the rabbi was not concealed from him now.
+
+Perhaps he could learn from Eleazar the whereabouts of Saul of Tarsus,
+so he dropped his head again, and stayed.
+
+The sun blazed on the spear-points, finishing the pinnacle of the
+Temple with glowing embers; the variegated marble of the Court of
+Gentiles was yellow as the gold of Ophir, and the morning radiance
+trembled over the City of David, lying in the valley two hundred feet
+below or rising up the slopes beyond the ravine.  The long winding
+stream of worshipers flowed from the Gate Beautiful, left, through the
+well of the stairs to the level where entered the Gate of Akra, down
+the long flight of steps into the vale of Gihon, and, dispersing, lost
+itself in the crowded passages of the Lower City.
+
+Before they were out of the morning shadow of the giant retaining-wall,
+Marsyas spoke.
+
+"Where is our enemy?"
+
+"He is for a time gone hence, and my soul is escaped as a bird out of a
+snare of the fowlers.  I can come now without much fear unto the Holy
+House."
+
+"Hence?" Marsyas asked uneasily.  "Whither?"
+
+"I shall tell thee.  Know thou, first, that I am here, since several
+weeks, abiding among the weavers of Bezetha, and laboring with them;
+for Peter, the usurer of Ptolemais, is dead and his servants scattered
+abroad.  Since Jerusalem hath been purified of the heresy, there is
+little search after the Nazarenes, so, as the robbed house is more
+secure than the one as yet unentered by thieves, I am unmolested in
+Bezetha.  Yet, until this morning, I have not dared venture into the
+Temple."
+
+"But Saul?" Marsyas urged impatiently.
+
+"I am coming unto Saul.  Jonathan, the High Priest, exhausted the
+patience of Vitellius in ten months.  The Roman's endurance wore
+through and snapped on a sudden like an overstrained cord.  On a
+certain day, in the Feast of Tabernacles, Jonathan was High Priest; ere
+nightfall some respected Jew complained to the legate; the next day,
+Theophilus, brother to Jonathan, was clothed in the robes of Aaron.
+
+"Saul was brought up for the instant, but thou knowest that he is no
+cautious weigher of conditions.  He did that which hath proven him not
+the unforeseeing time-server of a bloodthirsty man, but a follower of
+his own conscience and the servant of his own zeal.  He went to the new
+High Priest while yet the robes retained the shape of Jonathan, and
+spake unto him: 'O ruler of my people, is the purification of the faith
+to be given over, seeing that it was the way of thy brother and
+abhorred of the Roman?  Servest thou Vitellius or Jehovah?'  It is not
+told abroad among the people what answer was given, what further asked,
+except that the chastening of the heretics was continued unabated,
+until all Judea was cleansed.  And yesterday, Saul was given letters to
+Jews in Syria, permitting him to carry his examinations into Damascus
+and--"
+
+"Damascus!" Marsyas cried, seizing the rabbi's arm.
+
+"Yes; and to bring the offenders to Jerusalem for trial."
+
+"Is he gone?" Marsyas demanded in a terrible voice.
+
+"He passed out of the Damascus Gate at sunset last night."
+
+"Come!  Go with me!  Let us overtake him!  He shall not go on!"
+
+"For revenge, Marsyas?" Eleazar asked mildly, but with reproof in his
+eyes.
+
+"To cut him off from desolating me wholly!" Marsyas declared.
+
+Eleazar looked away over the hollows and gentler hills covered with
+houses, toward the summit of Olivet, golden in the sun.
+
+"Then I shall not dissuade thee, Marsyas; but I can not go with thee,"
+he said.
+
+"Why?" Marsyas demanded, with a flush of feeling.
+
+"I have suffered from oppression in the name of the Lord; it is the
+Lord's will.  I have changed in the days of my misfortunes."
+
+Marsyas came close to him.
+
+"Art thou a Nazarene, Eleazar?" he asked in a low tone.
+
+"Nay, I am a good Jew, a better Jew, for I have become a Jew, again,
+through understanding."
+
+But Marsyas was not willing to wait for the rabbi's philosophy; he
+moved restlessly as he stood, and finally put forth his hand to say
+farewell, but Eleazar held it.
+
+"Wait, but a moment," he said, "and let me speak.  Thou sayest thou
+wouldst secure thyself from devastation at the Pharisee's hands; since
+nothing can stop Saul, and nothing stop thee, there is death at the end
+of thy doing.  I do not know what moves thee now; perchance it is more
+than the vow sworn to avenge Stephen.  But thou goest to help thyself;
+and--to assist in convincing the heathen that Israel is an oppressor in
+the name of God!"
+
+"It is!" Marsyas cried passionately.
+
+But the rabbi went on patiently.
+
+"I did not go out after Stephen," he continued.  "I was not seen at the
+crucifixion of his Prophet.  I do not urge bloodshed or urge on the
+work of Saul of Tarsus.  So, who is Israel, O son of a shut house and
+of a hermit brotherhood?  Saul, who knoweth no moderation?  Certain
+feeble and forward speakers in the synagogues, whom even an apostate
+could overthrow in argument?  Or the witnesses whom they suborned in
+revenge?  Say, be these Israel, or Gamaliel who discountenanced the
+persecution?  Or the people among whom the minions of the High Priest
+Jonathan went cautiously to arrest the fathers of the Nazarene faith,
+lest the people stone the Shoterim?  Forget not, brother, that our
+lofty are the friends of Rome; our lowly, tributaries of Rome; our
+chief priests, dependent upon Rome--and the greater Israel is the
+unheard, the unrecorded, the unpampered, the innocent!"
+
+"But is it not just, then, that Saul be overtaken, who hath cast
+obloquy on Israel, having shed innocent blood and made Judea to be fled
+by the righteous?"
+
+"Defendest thou the innocent of Israel, Marsyas?"
+
+"By the Lord, the innocent!"
+
+"Wouldst trouble thyself, had the doom fallen on others, instead of
+thine own, Marsyas?"
+
+The young man frowned and made no answer.
+
+"I shall not answer for thee," Eleazar went on, "but thou and the world
+accuse the innocent of Israel, when contempt is cast upon the race, as
+an entirety.  But the slander of Israel hath been accomplished, even
+before Saul, and ye may not run down a lie.  So thou and I and our kind
+have the hard task of upholding the glory of the people, a labor from
+which there can be no let nor easement!  The multitude which crowns
+to-day and crucifies to-morrow establishes no standard.  But they are
+witnesses to the evil-speaking of the enemy; they are a slander which
+may not be denied.  If thou join thyself with them, Marsyas, for thine
+own ends, in that much thou ungirdest Israel!"
+
+"Brother, Saul of Tarsus consented unto the death of Stephen, and
+despoiled me of my one love, as an Essene; he proceedeth, now, against
+my beloved, as a man of the world!  I can not wait on conscience and
+the welfare of Judea.  She will not defend mine own; wherefore I must
+defend them, at whatever cost!"
+
+Eleazar's face had grown inexpressibly sad during Marsyas' words.  His
+heavily-shaded eyes turned absently away from the speaker.  He seemed
+to see beyond the invincible walls and towers of the Holy City, even
+beyond the olive-orchards and the meeting of the earth and sky, into
+the time which would come out of the east.
+
+Perhaps he saw waste and desolate places, lands of destruction and
+captives of the mighty, dregs of the cup of trembling and dregs of the
+cup of fury and the hostility of all nations.  The sadness in his eyes
+became fixed.
+
+"Verily," he said, as if speaking of his own visions, "thou art a God
+that hidest thyself, O God of Israel!"
+
+Marsyas heard him with a stir of emotion in his soul.  He put out his
+hand to the rabbi.
+
+"If I and my like be wrong, thou shall prevail, when the day of the
+just man comes, in the Lord's time!"
+
+"He called us His chosen people," Eleazar continued, suffering Marsyas
+to take his hand unnoticed, "even the appointed people, the marked
+people!  Marked for His own purposes, how hidden!  But what knows the
+clay of the potter's intent that passes it through fire?  Chastening or
+vengeance, woe, woe unto them, by whom it cometh!"
+
+He turned away, and Marsyas looked after him until the narrow winding
+streets had obscured him.
+
+Quickly then Marsyas continued toward the Gennath Gate; reared to the
+Essenic habit of traveling without preparation, he was ready to journey
+from city to city in the dress he wore on the streets.
+
+He went by the cenotaph of Mariamne, past Phasaelus, past the Praetorium,
+out of the gate, past the might of Hippicus, and on to the parting of
+the road, where he took the way to Damascus.
+
+Presently he met a horseman and, stopping the traveler, bought without
+parley the beast, and mounted it.  He knew that Saul would proceed by
+the slow mule, and the forbidden, nobler animal, the horse, would soon
+make up the distance the Pharisee had gained.
+
+So, without relaxing from his fever of determination, Marsyas sped on
+toward Damascus.
+
+He knew that the hour had come!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+ON THE DAMASCUS ROAD
+
+With the solid soil of the ancient Roman road beneath his horse's feet,
+Marsyas rode north, between the hills of Judea, with the head of Mt.
+Ephraim before him.  The early morning of the second day broke over
+him, fresh on the long straight road, leading over the border into
+Samaria, past the Well of Jacob, and through the city of Samaria.  At
+noon the third day he turned at the parting of the ways, and rode east,
+along the southern edge of the Plains of Esdraelon, until, through a
+crevice in the hills, he saw the Jordan sparkling in its valley below.
+It was an old familiar way, thence, north once more, fording a hundred
+mountain brooks that fed the river of the Holy Land.  The narrow
+fertile strip that lay between the hills and waters of the Sea of
+Galilee, unto Tiberias, he accomplished after night.  At dawn he
+entered Magdala, at mid-morning Capernaum, and, leaving the margin of
+the beautiful lake, he passed north into the rocks, ridges and forests
+once more.  Through marshes and sedge, with the waters of the Jordan in
+the heart of it, he forded the south arm of Lake Huleh and entered
+Itrurea.
+
+The country changed but the road did not.  It was still the same
+compact ribbon of stone and soil in the marsh as it was in the hills,
+as it was in the fertile lowlands.  Ahead of him, through the hills it
+stretched, through the oaks of Bashan, under cliffs surmounted by
+castles, or hillsides marked by temples.  And when the oaks left off,
+and the hills fell back and the streams dried into dead, sapless beds
+watered only by infrequent rains, the road continued on.
+
+The fifth dawn, he rode down a pass, through a rocky defile, and the
+Syrian desert was before him.
+
+He had bought provisions for two days' journey at the last village in
+the fertile lands; his horse was freshened after a night's feeding on
+the herbage in the hills, and Marsyas' heart was resolute.
+
+Even the road no longer led him on, but he touched his horse with his
+hand and passed into the wilderness.
+
+At a huddle of huts for goat-tenders, he found that Saul and his party
+had passed at noon the day previous.  The Arabs there besought him to
+remain until the evening, for none traveled under a Syrian noonday and
+escaped evil consequences.  But Marsyas wrapped his head in his mantle,
+watered his horse and pressed on.  He had no time to lose.
+
+The Antilibanus, a glaring ridge of chalk, heightened at intervals into
+peaks that held up their blistering cold winds from the heat-blasted
+day, and swept them down by night to confound the stunned earth with
+ice.  The shale from their easternmost slopes sprawled out on the
+desert and scarred it with rock and gravel until the blowing sands
+buried it.  Far to the east, the lap of the desert dropped down into
+emptiness, marked by a level of intervening atmosphere.  Beyond that
+were bald hills outlined against the horizon.
+
+Between was a cruel waste, tufted here and there by gray-green, scrubby
+growth, half-buried in sand and rooted in gravel.  There was color, but
+it was the dye of chemicals, not refractions; chalks, not rainbows.
+The drop of water has only the true range of the spectrum and its
+merging grades, but sands may be erratic, chaotic.  Thus, the wadies,
+sallow meanderings in the trembling distance, were bordered with dull
+fawn and dull lavender--ashes of scarlet and purple; wherever hummocks
+arose there were ground-swells of lifeless gray and saffron--burned-out
+blue and gold.  Over it all were sown burnished fleckings of myriads of
+mica particles, like white-hot motes from the face of the sun itself.
+The air was flame; the sky a livid arch that no man dared look upon.
+
+At high noon, Marsyas hid from the deadly sun in a crevice in a narrow
+canyon; but pressed on while yet the scorching air burned his nostrils.
+At night, he rode through bitter winds, or broke his fast with the inky
+outlines of jackals squatting about the rim of the immediate landscape.
+He met no man, and had no desire for companionship with the burden of
+his stern thoughts to attend him.
+
+He did not have the murderer's heart in him; he did not go forward in a
+whirl of passion and fury; it did not once occur to him to ambush the
+Tarsian; he did not ponder on a plan of action when the moment should
+arrive; not once did he strike the fatal blow, in his imagination, nor
+speak with Saul, nor follow himself after the deed was done.  His ideas
+were largely in retrospect, or centered upon the necessity of his work.
+His love of Lydia, his love of life, his natural impulses toward
+generous things were put away from him with firmness, as things which
+had no place at such a time.  His composure was almost resignation.  He
+knew then, that which he had never been able to understand,--how men of
+great souls and previous noble lives could in all calmness kill another
+by design.
+
+A glittering white ridge had shaped itself out of the pale blue sky of
+an early morning, while yet he rode in the hills.  It was Hermon, with
+the unmelted snows of the winter covering its crown.  Opposite it, he
+came upon another miserable cluster of hovels, the abode of pestilence,
+want and superstition, and there found that Saul had passed through the
+village at high noon that day.  Marsyas purchased water for his horse
+and rode on.  Saul was now only a half-day's journey ahead of him.
+
+He had come far, without rest.  Even now, with the crisis of his long
+journey at hand, he labored under prostrating weariness and a torturing
+desire to sleep.  He had periods of mental blankness from which he
+aroused with a start.  But as the night's cold deepened, after the day
+of withering heat, the sharp change added to the weakening influences.
+He meditated on the Feast of Junia and the succession of Classicus,
+until his body became a column finishing the front of Agrippa's palace,
+at which a mob at Baiae threw stones.  He flinched, and the night on the
+desert of Syria passed across his vision once more.  But it was good to
+lie down on the couch at the triclinum of Caligula, restful, indeed, if
+it were sinful.  But not for long, because Lydia was beside him, and he
+spent hours imploring her to give up Jove and pour libations to Jehovah
+instead, for since Saul of Tarsus was Caesar, she would be chained to a
+soldier under sentence in the Praetorium.  Even now there approached a
+decurion with manacles thrown over his shoulder!
+
+Again, he saw the drooping head of his horse before him in the dark,
+the pallid stretch of sand, and felt the sweep of harsh winds on his
+face.
+
+But Lollia Paulina had laid her sesterces on this worn-out animal, when
+she knew that Cneius Domitius' horses were the best in the Circus!  Why
+did the woman insist on sitting with him, when she wanted so much to be
+with the Roman?  But nobody was good.  Even Stephen had died in heresy,
+and Lydia, for whom he had lost his soul, was an apostate!  The
+multitude had her!  Classicus turned his back upon her!  Flaccus stood
+within twenty paces of her and leveled a pilum at her breast!  And Saul
+bound his arms!  Help!  Mercy--
+
+But a brambly desert shrub had caught at his garments, and its sharp
+dead thorns had pierced him.
+
+The next mid-morning he rode up a chalky ridge and saw the picture that
+had brought praise to the lips of the prophets of despair, when Israel
+was a captive with no hope.
+
+It was a vale so enchanting, so perfect, so golden that he doubted his
+eyes and feared that it was an unreality the desert had fashioned to
+lure him on to destruction--or another but kindlier dream.
+
+Yellow roadways, slender and winding, wandered hither and thither
+through emerald oceans of young grain, past ancient vineyards and
+orchards of olives, and citrons, and groves of walnuts.  Yonder was a
+cluster of palms, pilasters of silver with feathery capitals, and under
+it was builded a little town--a hive of soft-colored houses, half
+smothered in delicate green.
+
+Beyond, the roads spread out again, from their convergence in the
+little settlement, and ran abroad once more between hedges of roses and
+oleanders, across the River Pharbar, curving midway across the vale
+like a simitar dropped in the green, through crowding gardens, among
+low-lying roofs, past spreading villas of the rich, on to a glittering
+vision of towers, walls, cupolas, white as frost on the head of Mount
+Tabor in the morning.
+
+At his feet was Caucabe the Star; in the distance was Damascus.
+
+Marsyas drew up his jaded horse and looked, not at the beauty of the
+scene, for he did not wish to see it now, but down the roads.  Over
+every yellow ribbon his gaze passed until, beyond the limits of the
+white-towered town, he saw a cluster of small moving figures.
+
+"O rememberer of no wrongs," he said to his horse, "only a little way
+and thou shall rest and I shall rest!"
+
+He pressed on, past Caucabe the Star, down the hedges of roses between
+the emerald oceans of young grain and the odorous shade of orchards.
+
+The sun climbed higher, more heated, more merciless; the oleanders gave
+up their fast fragrance until the night fell again; the vineyards
+curled, leaf by leaf, the young grain drooped and wilted, the orchards
+pent in the heat under their boughs, the yellow roads became streaks of
+brass and the tyrant of the desert stood at its meridian.
+
+Another stadium, and Marsyas drew up his horse sharply.
+
+Sixty paces ahead was a wayside pool, overshadowed by tall trees--an
+irresistible invitation to the traveler seeking refuge from the sun.  A
+lean, bowed figure in rabbinical robes stood beside a mule that drank
+of the spring.  Half a dozen men in the garments of Levites stood by
+their own beasts with rein in hand while they drank.
+
+Marsyas felt in his belt for his knife, and curbing his thirsty horse
+lowered down on Saul of Tarsus.  In his association with hardy pagans,
+athletae and the exquisite Herod, he had in a measure forgotten the
+feebleness of Saul.
+
+"He is weak!" he said to himself.  "But what mercy hath he shown the
+weak?"
+
+He recalled the terrible desert, remembered that Saul had sworn to
+bring back the Nazarenes to Jerusalem for trial--back across that
+empire of death!  And Lydia, gentle and without hardihood, against whom
+he could not bear to think of the wind blowing strongly, was to go that
+way!
+
+The Levites watched the Pharisee narrowly; one of them, whom Marsyas
+recognized as Joel, made tentative movements toward unpacking the
+supplies from one of the burden-bearing beasts.  But the Pharisee drew
+up the bridle of his mule and led it to the roadside toward a stone by
+which he could mount.  The eyes of the Levites followed him in a
+troubled manner, and Joel sat down as if to show that he believed the
+rabbi would not proceed in the noon.
+
+"Up!" said Saul calmly, "we shall continue to Damascus."
+
+The troubled Levites stared at him, and Joel presently objected:
+
+"But--but it is the noon!  And the heat is cruel!"
+
+"We can proceed, nevertheless," was the reply.
+
+The stupefied Levite stumbled to his feet, and the party led their
+beasts out into the sun.  Marsyas with a fierce word dismounted and
+strode toward them.
+
+At his second step he faltered.  Silence dropped upon the blazing plain
+of Damascus--silence so sudden, so absolute that his footfall startled
+him.  He saw that the movement of Saul's party had been arrested.  Arm
+lifted, or foot put forward, stayed in the attitude.  The utter
+stillness seized them as a commanding hand.  Then all the noon grew
+dim, not from the abatement of the sun's light, but by the coming of a
+radiance infinitely brighter.  Descending from above, instantly
+intensifying as if the source that shed it approached as fast as stars
+move, a single ray, purer than the glitter on Mount Hermon, and more
+inscrutable than the face of the Syrian sun, stood among them.
+
+Its presence was not violent but all-compelling.  The group at the pool
+fell down in the dust and lay still.
+
+Silence such as never before and never again lay on the plain of
+Damascus, brooded about them.
+
+Out of it a single voice issued, low, trembling, filled with fear and
+reverence.  It was Saul of Tarsus, speaking:
+
+"Who art Thou, Lord?"
+
+Presently he spoke again, eagerly, humbly, and still afraid:
+
+"Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"
+
+[Illustration: "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" (missing from
+book)]
+
+After a long time, the hot breeze made a whispering sound in the sand
+of the roadway; the leaves in the hedge at hand stirred and fluttered.
+Joel, the boldest of the Levites, cautiously raised his head, and
+presently got upon his feet.  His fellows, taking heart, rose, one by
+one.
+
+A young stranger in the robes of an Essene was kneeling among them with
+large dark eyes fixed in pity upon Saul.
+
+The rabbi had made an attempt to raise himself, but had paused
+transfixed.  Humility made an actual light on his forehead; his pinched
+features were stunned with helplessness.
+
+The terrified Levites crept closer to one another, but Joel finally wet
+his dry lips and spoke in a half-whisper:
+
+"Rabbi?"
+
+There was no answer in words, but slow tears rose, brimmed over the
+lids and crept down the sun-burned hollow cheeks.
+
+The young stranger came quickly and knelt beside the rabbi and laid a
+kindly hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Brother Saul?" he whispered.
+
+The face of the rabbi came round, but the gaze missed its mark and
+wandered over the men about him.  There was no vision in the eyes.
+
+"He is blind!" a Levite whispered.
+
+The young stranger slipped the hand from the shoulder around the bowed
+figure, and, supporting Saul in his arm, looked down with infinite
+sorrow and concern at the darkened eyes.
+
+"We will abide here," he said at last, to the Levites, "until the noon
+passeth."
+
+The Levites looked in a little fear at the spot where they had been so
+mysteriously overwhelmed, but Marsyas lifted Saul and bore him back
+into the shade he had left to continue unto Damascus.
+
+All of his own passion and purpose had been swept away, leaving his
+mind to the tenantry of the sweetest content he had ever known.  Though
+he had seen no man nor heard a voice, he knew that the Lord had visited
+Saul, and that the eye of the Lord beheld Saul's work.
+
+After that reverent translation of the supernatural event, he troubled
+himself no more concerning the vision.
+
+Absolute relief possessed his soul; rest of spirit so all-comprehensive
+that it strengthened his body, peace so whole that it bordered on
+gladness, and confidence, new, delicious and simple, embraced all his
+being.  The old restless ambition was so stilled and soothed that it
+seemed to have been fulfilled; the old Essenic cynicism that had
+slandered all the world, tinctured his friendships with distrust and
+his love with fear, was dissipated like a distorting illusion; his
+hates, his thirst for revenge, his impatience with the deliberation of
+God, and his self-dependence were things unremembered.  He did not
+understand his change and did not seek after its meaning; his feelings
+did not even hark back to the old love for Saul.  Pity and filial
+solicitude, sensations that on a time he could not have believed
+possible as shown to Saul, made the strength of his arm gentle and his
+service reverential.  He thought now of Lydia, with worshipful,
+marvelous homage, as if his soul knelt to her.  He had ceased to be
+afraid for her or to fear that he would not find her.  Everything good
+became possible; the prospering of virtue, the fidelity of Agrippa, the
+prevention of Flaccus and the favor of Caesar, even the restoration of
+his beloved, seemed to be things absolutely assured.
+
+He did not say these things to himself; they were simple convictions
+that made themselves felt in a tender blending which amounted to
+perfect waiting on the Lord.
+
+He did not know that his face had become beautiful, or that Joel looked
+askance at him or that the other Levites wondered if he had come to
+them in the great light.  So when the sun stood three hours above the
+horizon, he raised Saul from the shade of the walnut grove and passed
+on to Damascus.
+
+The golden haze reddened over the glorious Damascene plain, the
+distance became obscured; the purple triumphed; then the royal color
+over the world began to run out into plum shades, and the sudden night
+came up from the east.
+
+But before this hour at one of the north gates of Damascus, the halting
+group of Levites, the stricken man among them, and the silent, kindly
+young stranger appeared before Aretas' wiry black Arab sentry that held
+that post.
+
+They did not know the ways of the Pearl of the Orient, and they wished
+to find Via Recta--Straight Street.  There Judas, a Pharisee of wealth
+and power, expected to entertain Saul.
+
+Though the Caesars possessed the city's fealty, exacted tribute,
+installed Jupiter in the temples and the eagle on its standard, it was
+still the dominion of Rimmon, vassal of Nimrud, high place of the sons
+of Uz.  It had submitted to Alexander of Macedon as placidly as it
+suffered the wolfish Roman, who would pass, likewise.  It notched its
+calendar by the rise and fall of nations, and marked its days by the
+sway of kings.  It had propitiated Time, hence there was no death for
+Damascus; it steeped itself in the oils of the Orient and so was spiced
+against decay.  There were Romanized colonnades along the streets, but
+the winged bulls of the dromoes, the stucco-work and the tiles, the
+swaying of carpets from balconies obscured their influence.  Architects
+of Caesar's extravagances scowled at the giant structures that were old
+in Baalbec's time and looked their defeat; Chaldean philosophers
+contemplated the trenches worn in the rock pavements by the feet of men
+and held their peace; olives, as old as Troy, cast their leaves down on
+the heads of Greeks who shook them off impatiently, but the sons of
+Abraham could point to a mound of clay and say: "This was a temple
+which our father builded unto God, before you all!"
+
+The Jewish tincture had never been abated even, much less worked out.
+
+Therefore, as the agitated travelers from Jerusalem passed through the
+gate they went with their own kind by legions.  The slow mule was
+there, outnumbering the Arab's troops of horses, which were mettled,
+nervous creatures, caparisoned like kings; there were Israel's camels,
+bearing howdahs, rich as thrones; tall stalking dromedaries in tasseled
+housings and tinkling harnesses, passing as ships pass over
+ground-swells, with undulations dizzying in their ease; and these,
+mounted by the sons of Abraham, were more in number than the Hindu
+palanquins, Roman lecticae, Greek litters, and Gentiles afoot.
+
+Marsyas glanced about for the eye of a citizen whom he might approach
+and ask his way, but the turmoil for the moment confused him.  Into the
+gate or out of it passed wealthy travelers, faring in state; itinerant
+merchants; squads of Aretas' soldiery, and through and among these,
+eddying and swarming, shouting, hurrying and trading were venders,
+beggars, carriers, slaves, citizens, Jews in gowns, Arabs in burnooses,
+Greeks in chitons, Romans in tunics, idlers, actors, scribes, notaries,
+priests and magistrates--of twenty nationalities, of every rank and age.
+
+Marsyas met face to face a Pharisee of erect and imposing figure, with
+flowing beard and aggressive features, who drew his spotless linen
+draperies away from contact with the ceremonially unclean horde at the
+gate.  The man had stopped and was gazing from his commanding height
+over the rush of pilgrims flowing into the walls of Damascus.
+
+Marsyas approached him.
+
+"I seek Judas, a Pharisee, which dwelleth in Straight Street!"
+
+"I am he," the Pharisee interrupted, examining the young man for some
+familiar feature which might justify the Essene's initiatory.
+
+"Thou art well-met, sir; we bring unto thee, thy guest, Saul of Tarsus,
+stricken by a vision on the roads and blind!"
+
+"Even am I here, awaiting him," the Pharisee exclaimed.  "Thou bringest
+me evil tidings!  Lead me to him, I pray thee."
+
+The Levites stood with Saul outside the path of the exit to the
+gateway, and Marsyas led Judas to the stricken rabbi.  Hebrew servants
+followed respectfully after their master.
+
+"Brother Saul," Marsyas said, "I bring thee thy host; he will care for
+thee."
+
+The sightless eyes of the rabbi turned toward the speaker, and Marsyas
+thought that a shadow crossed the forehead.
+
+"Woe is me!" Judas exclaimed, "that thou shouldst come thus afflicted,
+brother!  But perchance the vision was a blessing on thee!"
+
+"He does not speak," Marsyas explained.  "I do not belong to his party.
+I joined them to offer aid."
+
+"Then the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob reward thee," Judas
+said.  He signed to his servants, who brought forward a litter in which
+Judas had meant his guest should proceed to Straight Street.  Saul was
+lifted into it; Judas climbed in beside him; the servants shouldered
+the litter, and, with the Levites following, bore it away into the city.
+
+Marsyas looked after it until the narrow ways between the high
+unsightly mud walls hid it.
+
+Then he put his hands together and smiled.
+
+"The Nazarene bade me ask for Ananias!" he whispered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+IN THE HOUSE OF ANANIAS
+
+But Ananias was a favorite name among the Jews of Damascus.  Weariness
+and the desire for slumber after inquiries which brought him twenty
+diverse directions, sent Marsyas to a khan when the night was old, and
+Lydia still unfound.
+
+The next morning after refreshing and untroubled sleep, he began to
+search for Ananias, carefully withholding the explanation that the
+Ananias he sought was a Nazarene, out of an impulse to protect the
+protector of his beloved.
+
+He found Ananias, the wine-merchant, and Ananias, the tanner, banished
+to the outskirts of the city, because of his unclean trade; and
+Ananias, the priest; and Ananias who was a native of Antioch and of
+mixed blood, but unalterably a Jew; and Ananias, who was a soldier,
+drafted into garrison service by Aretas, who had taken the city from
+Antipas; and Ananias, the steward of Sidon who had robbed his master
+and was now too rich and powerful to be punished; and Ananias, who was
+a reader in the Synagogue.  And for two other days, he sought Ananiases
+patiently and with pathetic hope.
+
+At sunset on the fourth day, he saw a woman meet another woman in the
+street, and between the two there passed a communication with the
+fingers.  To others, not associated with Nazarenes, the sign meant
+nothing, but Marsyas caught the motion and his heart leaped.
+
+It was the sign of the cross!
+
+He overtook the woman who had passed him.
+
+"I pray thee, friend," he said in a low voice, "canst thou tell me
+where Ananias, the Nazarene, dwelleth?"
+
+The woman raised, a pair of calm gray eyes to his face.  She was a
+Greek and fair, and her forehead was as placid as a lake in a calm.
+
+"Art thou his friend?" she asked, with a touch of the caution acquired
+by the unhappy.
+
+"I am a friend to many who have departed into the Nazarene way," he
+said.  "I shall not betray him."
+
+"Seest the house built upon the wall," she said simply, "that hath the
+white gate, at the end of the street?"
+
+Marsyas assented.
+
+"Knock," she said.
+
+He blessed her with a look and hurried down the darkening passage.
+
+With trembling hands, he rapped on the whitewashed gate, set deep in
+the thick clay wall, and presently the door swung open.
+
+A woman in the house-dress of a servant stood there; behind her was a
+walk lined with white stones; cooing pigeons were disappearing into a
+cupola on the house within; an ipomoea, pallid with bloom, shaded the
+step; irises were pushing through the rich mold just inside the gate.
+There was the rainy rustling of leaves from the olive trees at the
+property wall on each side.  And there was a seat of tamarind with
+fallen leaves upon it.
+
+"Does Ananias, the Nazarene, dwell here?" Marsyas asked with a tremor
+in his voice.  Whither had his courage departed?
+
+"Enter," the woman said.
+
+Marsyas stepped over the threshold of the white gate, that was latched
+behind him against opening from the outside, and followed the woman
+toward the bower of ipomoea.
+
+Within a hall, lighted by a single taper, she gave him a seat, and
+disappeared through a door at the end of the room.  A moment later, the
+tall spare figure of the pastor of Ptolemais and of Rhacotis emerged
+from the interior.
+
+Marsyas sprang up, but no sound came to his lips.  He clasped his hands
+and gazed with pitiful eyes upon the Nazarene.
+
+Without pausing for the formality of a greeting, after the first
+movement of surprise, Ananias reopened the door that he had closed
+behind him and signed to the young man to pass in.
+
+Marsyas stood in a large chamber, with a spot of light in its center
+under a hanging lamp.  There, with her head bright under the rays, sat
+Lydia.
+
+Her face was toward him when he entered.  She flung down the skein of
+wool she was winding and sprang up.  But the look on Marsyas' face
+arrested her cry.  One glance of supreme examination and her large eyes
+kindled with sudden triumph.  She came to him as if more than distance
+between them and danger had been overcome.  Marsyas swept her into his
+arms and folded her to his heart.
+
+"No more, no more!" he was saying, "from this time for ever more mine
+own!"
+
+Trembling and smiling, while tears perfect as pearls glittered on her
+lashes, she put her arms about his neck and drew his head down to her.
+
+"O my Marsyas," she cried, "better to die in the light of thy trust
+than to live in thy love without it!  Blessed, thrice blessed the hour
+which gave me both!"
+
+"O my Lydia, thou anointest me with thy forgiveness, and clothest me in
+the holy garment of thy love!  Blessed am I and consecrated!"
+
+"I believed in thy wisdom, love!"
+
+"I had no wisdom but love!"
+
+"The Lord heard me, my Marsyas, for I was near mine extremity, and I
+could not have endured much longer!"
+
+"I had reached my extremity, Lydia, and then the Lord gave me His hand."
+
+She turned him toward the light, and gazed up at his eyes with such
+earnestness, such penetration on her almost infantile face, that he
+pressed her closer to him and laughed a low laugh.  Her eyes flashed on
+him a light of new interest.
+
+"I never heard thee laugh till now!" she exclaimed.
+
+"I never was happy till now!"
+
+"Why now, and not before?" she asked.
+
+There was silence; he could not tell her why he had changed, but he
+could tell what had marked it.
+
+He led her to the chair she had left, and when she had sat, dropped at
+her feet and crossed his arms upon her lap.
+
+"Listen, and when I have done, know that the Lord loved us, and hath
+joined us with His own hands."
+
+Beginning at the time when he turned to find her gone from the reader's
+stone before the Synagogue in Alexandria, he told with simple
+directness of his wanderings, of his disappointments, of his growing
+fear that he would not save her from Saul.  He had her follow him to
+the Temple, where he met Eleazar and received the dire news that Saul
+had departed for Damascus; and thence along the old Roman road through
+the length of the Holy Land, up past his native hills and the waters of
+the Sea of Galilee, and the marshes of Lake Huleh, into the desert, and
+on to the beginning of the beneficence of the Pharbar and the Abana,
+until he brought up within sixty paces of Saul at the wayside pool.
+All these things she heard with the sympathetic interest which had won
+him to her from the talk in the dawn on the housetop in Alexandria.
+But when he came to the supernatural visit of the great light, and the
+prostration of Saul and his own arising a man of subdued and sweetened
+nature, her eyes shone with a repressed excitement that was not usual
+in her.
+
+"Naught but a miracle could have stopped me then; naught but the same
+interference could turn me again into the old way!"
+
+She lifted his face and spoke to him with deep seriousness.
+
+"Didst thou hear what the Spirit said?" she asked.
+
+"We heard nothing, except Saul's words, which I told thee."
+
+"And did Saul make thee a promise that he would persecute no more, or
+beg thy compassion or thy forgiveness for his work against thy Stephen?"
+
+"He did not speak; he did not know me, for he was blind, and as one in
+a trance!"
+
+"And thou hast withdrawn thy hand from him, and forsworn thine oath
+against him?"
+
+"I have done that thing, Lydia."
+
+She held fast to her composure, but her face was transfigured.
+
+"Wherein art thou different, then, from the Nazarenes of Ptolemais who
+showed thee their doctrine of peace, and refused thee when thou wouldst
+have hurled them against Saul?" she asked.
+
+For a moment there was silence.  Then he arose on his knees and raising
+his hands clasped them on his breast, while the splendor of a divine
+enlightenment shone in his eyes.
+
+"I know who came unto us there," he whispered.  "It was the Christ!"
+
+She laid her fluttering palms over his clasped hands and held them
+there, while each in his heart kept the silence, which, in such a
+moment, is prayer.
+
+Then Marsyas withdrew a hand and took from the folds of his garment the
+little red cedar crucifix, and, kissing it, put it into her hands.  The
+red cord was still attached to it, and, with solemnity on her face, she
+laid it about his neck and blessed him.
+
+When the ecstasy of exaltation had passed away, for they were young and
+the spirit of human love was strong between them, Lydia bade him
+listen, while she told him one other surprising thing.
+
+"At the command of a heavenly vision, Ananias went this day unto the
+house of Judas the Pharisee, and into the darkened chamber, where Saul
+lay, blind and dumb.  And by the gift of the Lord Jesus, Ananias laid
+his hands on Saul's head, and the blind man straightway had his sight.
+So he arose and followed Ananias unto this house--"
+
+"Here?" Marsyas cried.
+
+"Unto this house, where, when he had broken fast and taken strength, he
+stood up and glorified Jesus of Nazareth, and received baptism unto the
+Church of the Nazarenes whom he persecuted hitherto unto death!"
+
+Marsyas was silent.  More than wonder filled his heart.  Presently he
+said, as if speaking to himself:
+
+"Is this thine hour, O my martyred Stephen?  Art thou content?
+Sleepest thou the better, knowing that I have followed thy testament
+for Saul, rather than mine own oath against him?"
+
+Lydia left his communings unanswered, but when he put his hands over
+his face and laid his head in her lap, her own tears fell with his.
+Feeling presently her touch on his hair, he raised his head to take the
+hand.
+
+"Give it to me, my love," he said, "for it hath shaped my life anew,
+pointed me to the way that even the sacred dead would have me walk, and
+the joy and the comfort of all time to come lieth in the hollow of it!
+Let me serve it, now!"
+
+"And thou wilt not regret the peace of En-Gadi, in the world that can
+not fail to be troublous, some time?" she asked, but with the smile of
+one who does not fear the answer.
+
+"I owe En-Gadi a debt," he said, "for the brethren were as father and
+mother to me when I had neither.  Its teaching and its practices are
+pure, and its peace is good for them who fear the world.  But with the
+help of Him who made thee strong and Stephen fearless, I shall not want
+pent-in walls to be happy and upright."
+
+"Let Ananias teach thee, my love; let Saul show thee his heart; and
+then--"
+
+"Send us back unto Alexandria, with the faith of Christ on our lips and
+the peace of His love in our hearts.  Tell me that I may go with thee,
+Lydia!"
+
+"I have been waiting for thee since the day we met in the Judean hills."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+THE REQUITAL
+
+On the third day after his arrival in Jerusalem, Herod the king was in
+his privy cabinet arranging, with his own hands, the graven gems and
+articles of virtu, prizes brought from his trip to Antioch.  The door
+was dubiously opened, and Agrippa, without turning his head, knew who
+stood there, for only one in the palace had been commanded to enter the
+king's presence without announcement.
+
+"Well, Silas?" Agrippa said, contemplating the elusive tints of a jade
+goblet.
+
+The old man pulled at the gorgeous uniform of master of horse, that
+hung from the peasant shoulders and answered:
+
+"A friend of thy unfortunate days is without."
+
+Agrippa's brows lifted and drew toward each other in a manner
+half-amused, half-vexed.
+
+"The friends of my unfortunate days are the friends of my fortunate
+days; wherefore, they would liefer be known as friends of Agrippa the
+king, than of Agrippa the bankrupt.  Give them their due and call them
+the king's companions.  And Silas?"
+
+"Yes, lord."
+
+"The king would as lief forget that he ever had a misfortune."
+
+Silas looked perplexed and rubbed his forehead.
+
+"But who is it that stands without?" Agrippa continued.
+
+"The Essene."
+
+"What!  Marsyas?  By the Nymphae--beshrew me!  By the beard of Balaam,
+I shall be glad to see him!  Fetch him hither!"
+
+Silas nodded in lieu of a bow.
+
+"Lord, there is one with him; shall she enter also?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The alabarch's daughter."
+
+"Nay!  The little Athene!  Terpsichore's best!  Not so; though, by
+Bacch--Balaam! she would be a fit jewel for this place.  It shall be an
+audience hour.  Go, summon the queen, and have the Essene and his
+priestess come to us in our hall!"
+
+The master of horse backed away, but, catching Agrippa's smiling eye,
+turned his back, remembering his privilege, and hurried out, as if he
+expected an arrow between his shoulders.
+
+The king shut down the lid of the shittim-wood chest upon the priceless
+trifles still unpacked, locked it, and said the while to himself:
+
+"The Essene hath heard of the Pharisee Saul's apostasy and hath come to
+demand his punishment of me.  Behold me grant it, with kingly gravity.
+It will attach the extremists to me all the more, for I hear the
+Sicarii are wanting the heretic's blood!  And he fetches the little
+Lysimachus with him!  Aha!  En-Gadi hath lost--that which it never had,
+in truth."
+
+He looked at his hands and at his garments.
+
+"Nay, it will be just as well if the lady sees me looking my best!"
+
+He slammed the door of his cabinet behind him, locked it and hurried
+away in the direction of the royal wardrobe.
+
+In an hour he ascended the dais in robes of purple velvet with the
+Pharisee fringes in gold.  Cypros, filled with pleasurable
+anticipations, was beside him in the garments that Mariamne had worn.
+The king cast an eye over the carpeting, the canopy and the gorgeous
+dressing of his throne and said to Cypros:
+
+"Perpol! the place reeks with the smell of newness!  But be not
+conscious of it!  Perchance none will guess that the hands of the
+upholsterers are still warm on the fabric."
+
+The genuflexions of the series of attendants at the archway and beyond
+marked the coming of Marsyas and Lydia.  A Jewish chamberlain within
+the hall bent to the pavement and announced to the king that his
+visitors approached.  Agrippa relaxed even more comfortably in his
+throne and let his scepter fall into his lap.  But Cypros, more
+conscious of her debt to those who visited her now than of her state,
+smiled and moved forward and looked down the long chamber for the first
+glimpse of them.
+
+But it was not the Marsyas and the Lydia she had expected to see.  Even
+to one of her unready perceptions, the change upon the two was
+strangely marked.
+
+They came side by side, both in the simple white garments of the
+ceremonially clean, but Marsyas' head was uncovered and Lydia's locks
+were wholly unbound, after the custom of Jewish brides.  Within a few
+paces of the throne-dais they stopped.  With all her former grace,
+Lydia sank to her knees, but Marsyas, after the oriental salaam, stood
+beside her.
+
+Cypros, with her eyes shining, and after an eager glance at her lord,
+arose and stepped to the edge of the dais.  Then Agrippa got up, with
+his purple trailing effectively, and came down from his high seat, and
+approached his guests.
+
+"It is the one pain of mine exaltation," he said as he extended his
+arms to Marsyas, "that mine old loves believe that they must approach
+me now with humility."
+
+"Yet they no less expect that thou wilt raise them," Marsyas said,
+returning the king's embrace.
+
+Agrippa lifted Lydia to her feet and kissed her.
+
+"There, by my kingdom!" he exclaimed.  "I rejoice at thy wedding for
+the privilege it gives me!  May joy be thy portion, and peace and
+abundance and years be multiplied unto you both!  Evoe! as the heathen
+say!  But for your sanctified atmosphere, I would have the trumpeters
+blow you a fan-fare!"
+
+He handed Lydia to Cypros, who waited almost tearfully.
+
+"Go, let the queen congratulate thee that thou hast wedded an upright
+man in the beginning and saved thyself of the pain of making him
+one--as she had to do!  Come up," he continued to Marsyas, "and sit at
+our feet.  And tell us of yourselves."
+
+With his arm over Marsyas' shoulder, he went back to his dais, and
+sitting, had Marsyas take the guest's chair at his side, while Cypros
+bestowed Lydia on a velvet cushion at her feet.
+
+"So much, so long my story, that I falter at its beginning, as one
+beginning a day's journey at sunset," said Marsyas.
+
+"Thou needest but to essay a beginning; let me lead thee," Agrippa
+observed.  "Let me satisfy the questions in thee, ere I be entertained.
+First, of Flaccus.  I sent messengers to Caesar from Antioch detailing
+the high offenses of the proconsul, hinting treason against the
+government of the emperor and other charges which excite Caligula most,
+and ere I departed I had from Caesar's own hand the tidings that a
+centurion had been despatched to Alexandria to arrest Flaccus and bring
+him to Rome for trial.  And the further news, which will raise thee,
+sweet Lydia, to calm content.  The Jews are to be restored their
+rights, the prisoners freed, and better times assured to thy people."
+
+Lydia clasped her hands, and her eyes filled with relief.
+
+"And my father?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+"Especially commended to Caesar's favor!  The black days for the
+Alexandrian Jews are over, unless Caligula force upon them his pet
+madness that he is a god and amenable to worship."
+
+"Mad, at last!" Marsyas exclaimed.
+
+"Never otherwise," Agrippa answered.  "I hear that he has proclaimed
+Junia to be Athor, and hath set up a white cow in a temple to be
+propitiated in the wanton's name!"
+
+Marsyas looked at the downcast lashes of Lydia and loved her for the
+silence she kept.
+
+"Will she--be--empress?" Cypros faltered, in womanly fear of some
+unknown evil.
+
+Agrippa laughed and dropped his hand meaningly on Marsyas' arm.
+
+"If she should be, here is Marsyas yet to protect me!" he said.  But
+Marsyas did not smile.
+
+"What!" Agrippa cried; "still an Essene?"
+
+"No," said Marsyas, "but the Lord forfend that the woman should ever
+become Augusta!"
+
+"Never fear!  She is too poor.  Caligula, like any other mortal god,
+would prefer a dowry with his consort!  And that, by
+Janus--ah--er--Jacob! brings me up to somewhat relative to our old
+fortune-seeking friend, Classicus."
+
+"But," Marsyas protested with a show of his old-time spirit, "I shall
+not agree that Classicus sought Lydia for her riches alone!"
+
+"The unhappiest remark, the crudest accusation thou didst ever force me
+to defend!" Agrippa exclaimed, glowering at Marsyas.  "Now, how shall I
+convince thy sweet bride that I had not meant that any man could love
+her less than her dowry!"
+
+But Lydia smiled, first at Marsyas and then at the king, and said: "Let
+us hear of Classicus."
+
+The king clapped his hands, and an attendant bowed to the floor in the
+archway.
+
+"Bring hither the letter from Alexandria, which my scribe answereth,"
+Agrippa said.  In a moment a package was put into the king's hands.
+
+He unfolded it carefully.  "It is fragile," he said, "reed
+paper--papyrus, of his own curing, and written with a quill.  Evil days
+for Classicus; but observe, he hath not forgotten the latest fashion in
+folding it.  Listen:
+
+
+"To the Most High and Gracious Prince, Herod Agrippa, King of Judea,
+from his servant and subject, Justin Classicus, the Alexandrian,
+greeting:
+
+"That thou hast come unto thine own, that thou hast triumphed and the
+day of fulfillment hath dawned, that the Jews of the hallowed soil of
+Canaan have again a king from among them, I give thee congratulations
+and God-speed, and offer thanks to the God of our fathers.
+
+"Would to that same God who hath magnified thee, that the sway of thy
+scepter extended unto us, here, in Alexandria.
+
+"Our misfortunes are beyond words.  Particularly am I most unfortunate.
+Because of my friendliness to the alabarch, and subsequent turning upon
+Flaccus in thine own extremity, I am reduced to the utmost poverty,
+having neither food nor raiment beyond that which a faithful freedman
+supplies me out of his own little store.
+
+"Since mine own people are imprisoned within a fourth of their
+territory, nor one permitted to come forth upon pain of dreadful death,
+I can not hope for help from them, much less from the Gentiles, who
+take particular delight in my humiliation.
+
+"In thee I have hope.  I pray thee number me among thy helpless ones
+and give me of thy bounty something to do to clothe and feed me, and
+sufficiently gentle that I may not be proscribed among my kind--"
+
+
+Agrippa broke off and laughed aloud.
+
+"Why read more?  Is it not enough?"
+
+"Enough," Marsyas said slowly.  "But by thy leave, lord, we would know
+what thou wilt say to him."
+
+"A just demand; for thou and not I didst suffer at his hands.  I shall
+tell him that I laid the matter before thee and that thou---"
+
+"Nay, then, lord," Marsyas broke in earnestly, "if thou carest in all
+earnestness for my suggestion, pray let me make it!"
+
+"But I believe that I anticipated it and commanded the answer so to be
+written."
+
+There was a little regretful silence, and Agrippa leaned toward Marsyas.
+
+"What abideth there, Marsyas?" he asked, touching the young man's
+forehead.
+
+After a pause, Marsyas raised his head.
+
+"The full length of mine own story leadeth up to the answer," he said.
+
+"Nay, then, speak!"
+
+Asking permission of Cypros with her eyes, Lydia arose from her place
+on her cushion, and came to Marsyas' side.  He put his arm about her
+and held her hand, and so she stood while he told his story.
+
+Agrippa and Cypros listened with ordinary interest until he began to
+tell of his ride across the desert in pursuit of Saul.  Then Agrippa's
+excitement-loving instincts stirred, and he sat up and contemplated
+Marsyas with arrested attention.
+
+At the sighting of the Pharisee far down the road beyond Caucabe, the
+king's eyes sparkled; when Marsyas rode upon the party at the pool,
+Agrippa's hand on the arm of his throne had clenched.  At Marsyas'
+dismounting and approach, the king muttered under his breath.
+
+"But at that instant," the narrator went on, showing the effects of his
+own story, "a light, such as never before descended upon the earth and
+will not come again until the Prince of Light cometh, stood among us;
+at which we all fell to the ground as though stricken by a thunderbolt!"
+
+Agrippa's brows knitted.
+
+"While we lay, thus unable to move or cry out, Saul spoke and said unto
+the Presence: 'Who art Thou, Lord!' but we heard no answer.  And again
+Saul spoke, as if he had been answered, saying: 'Lord, what is it that
+Thou wouldst have me to do?'  And yet there was silence.  But when we
+took courage and arose, Saul lay on the ground, helpless, blind and
+bereft of speech!"
+
+Agrippa's face showed impatience and astonishment.  This, from the lips
+of so sane a Jew as Marsyas!
+
+"We took him up," Marsyas continued, after a moment's reflection, "and
+led him unto Damascus, and to Judas, the Pharisee, who dwelleth in
+Straight Street.  And there Saul lay for three days.  Throughout that
+time, I sought for Lydia, and at the end of the third day, I found her."
+
+He touched his lips to Lydia's hand.
+
+"Under the same roof with her I found Saul of Tarsus, broken and
+supplicating, changed, heart and soul, as was I.  But he was not in
+ignorance of the fount of our transfiguration as I was.  From Lydia's
+lips, I learned that he had been visited by the Lord; but from Saul, I
+learned its meaning.  If there is change upon my face, lord, I have
+told thee whence came it!"
+
+Agrippa's eyes were no longer on Marsyas; he had turned his head and
+was looking at Cypros, as if curious to see if so impossible a tale
+would find credence in the mind of the simple queen.  She looked
+disturbed and awe-struck, and Agrippa's nostrils fluttered with a
+soundless laugh.
+
+"_Quantum mutatus ab illo!_" he said, turning to Marsyas.  "That I can
+swear under a dread oath.  And perchance, were I an Essene and more
+than an adopted Pharisee, I could have been visited and borne witness
+to miracles, also.  But thou'lt remember, Marsyas, that this Saul
+consented unto the death of thy Stephen?"
+
+"I remember, lord; neither hath he forgotten!" answered Marsyas.
+
+"And that through him, great numbers of innocent people fled Judea,
+among them one Marsyas, that this same Saul might not have their lives;
+that he pursued thee even unto thy refuge, put thy sweet bride in
+jeopardy, stained the whole world with persecution, and made an end by
+bringing up in heresy, after he had begun a journey to Damascus with
+the avowed purpose of extending his persecutions--even unto the death
+of thy Lydia!  Thou hast not forgotten these things?"
+
+"They are not to be forgotten!"
+
+"And on a certain night, while yet Stephen was unburied, thou camest
+upon this Saul of Tarsus in Bezetha, and swore to accomplish vengeance
+upon him; and that same night in the cubiculum in the Praetorium thou
+didst make me swear to help thee to that revenge, if he should stumble
+in the Law!"
+
+Marsyas took his arm from about Lydia and arose.
+
+"I am here, O King," he said, "to crave the fulfilment of that oath."
+
+Agrippa smiled, in spite of the serene gravity on Marsyas' face.
+
+"Ask thy boon, Marsyas," he answered.
+
+Marsyas knelt at the king's footstool, and put up his hands as
+supplicants do before a throne.
+
+"Thou hast remembered thine oath unto me, my King; thou hast published
+thyself as ready to fulfil thy promise, and hast yielded unto me the
+choice of the manner of my requital!  Thus assured and believing I make
+my prayer.  Lift not thy hand against Saul of Tarsus!"
+
+Agrippa's brows dropped suddenly; his face was no less displeased than
+startled.  He had meant to have a jest at Marsyas' expense, to try the
+young man's claim to a change in heart, to bring to the surface human
+nature through its envelope of religion; but he had not looked for this
+thing!  To behold so strange a perversion of the ancient spirit in a
+man like Marsyas, and to submit to its demands against his own
+inclinations weighed heavily on Agrippa's patience.  Saul's lapse into
+apostasy gave him an opportunity to attach to him the loyalty of that
+fierce party in Judea, which were better propitiated than fought--the
+Sicarii, anarchists, who would demand the putting away of the heretic.
+Marsyas had asked him to sacrifice a potent piece of state-craft.
+
+He glanced at Cypros, and saw resentfully that she was urging him with
+her eyes to submit.  Marsyas' face began to show an expression that
+compelled him, while it irritated the more.  The young man wore the
+face of one who does not expect defeat, denies it so confidently that
+it hesitates to exist.  Agrippa shifted in his throne, frowned more,
+wavered, and finally said shortly:
+
+"As Caesar forgot me to mine own safety, I will forget Saul!"
+
+Marsyas' hands dropped softly on the king's, a token of brotherhood.
+
+"Death intervened," he whispered, "to save thee from Caesar!"
+
+Agrippa started and drew his hands away with a prescient terror in the
+movement.
+
+"I will not pursue the man," he said; "I will not search for him!"
+
+"Thou hast kept thy word, lord," Marsyas said, "and I go hence carrying
+trust in one more fellow man in my heart.  May my God supply all thy
+need according to His riches in glory, by Jesus Christ!"
+
+Agrippa's eyes which had all this time rested in fascination on
+Marsyas' face, flashed now with understanding.  Marsyas was a Nazarene!
+The admission reassured him; set aside the astonishment at the young
+man's unusual behavior; and lessened the fear he had felt in the
+suggestion that drew a parallel between Caesar's end and his own, to
+come.  But Lydia was now kneeling before him, with glistening eyes, to
+kiss his hand, and Cypros was speaking.
+
+"But thou gatherest peril yet about thee, Marsyas," she insisted.  "Is
+the hazardous life, then, so inviting that thou hadst liefer be wrong
+than be safe?"
+
+"No, lady; peace is no sweeter to my brethren, the Essenes, than it is
+to me.  So I have put out my hand and possessed it.  Think of us,
+henceforth, as the children of peace, not peril."
+
+Agrippa shook his head.
+
+"It hath consumed two years to establish it," he said conclusively,
+"and not until the last moment is it revealed that thou art a dreamer,
+Marsyas.  Thou hast been an Essene, which is too strait an ambition to
+be practicable; thou didst cherish a love for a man, so deep that its
+bereavement engendered a hate that no man should feel, unless a woman
+were won from him or a fortune destroyed; thou wast urged by it into
+extreme acts--into selling thyself, into following me to the end of the
+world, into putting thyself between me and death--that I might help
+thee satisfy that hate!  And now, the hour fallen, a new fancy hath
+engulfed thee, heart, head and soul--which bids thee forget thy rancor,
+defend thine enemy, and live in perpetual peril of destruction!  Thou
+art a dreamer--though thy front be Jovian and thy steps like Mars!"
+
+Marsyas laid his hand on Lydia's head, as she still knelt beside him.
+
+"In substance, I so accused her once, and Stephen.  Perhaps, if thou
+followest me insomuch, my King, thou wilt walk even as I have
+walked--into the light at last!"
+
+Agrippa made a motion of dissent.
+
+"I doubt, now, that thou couldst safely govern that pretty little city
+I had meant to make thee prefect over, here in Judea," he declared.
+
+"Thou hast said!  For me there is a new earth, and a new Law, and I go
+hence to Alexandria to begin a new life, which will make me a lover of
+all mankind."
+
+"Nay, sweet Lydia!" Herod exclaimed, once more restored to himself.
+"Thou shouldst demand that he be less indiscriminate with his loves!
+But put off thy travel a space, and let us celebrate thy marriage with
+festivity!"
+
+"Thou art most kind to us, King Agrippa," Lydia answered.  "But my
+father is alone and uncomforted in Alexandria; even thou canst not tell
+me of a surety that evil hath not befallen him ere thy punishment of
+Flaccus could intervene.  My heart is consumed with impatience and
+suspense.  We can not tarry, though thy hospitality be most
+grateful--to us--who have found the world of late an untender place!"
+
+So, since they would not be stayed, Agrippa summoned two stalwart
+palace servants to go with them, and calling his treasurer, ordered him
+to give into the hands of the servants six talents, five of which he
+owed to Lysimachus for Cypros, and one as a marriage largess.  And when
+Marsyas and Lydia had kissed the hands of the royal pair, they went out
+and found, at the palace wall, a camel which should bear them in a
+white howdah to Ptolemais.
+
+Marsyas lifted Lydia and set her under the canopy, but, before he went
+up himself, he saw borne past him, in a chair, a rabbi.  He was a great
+man, grave, calm and preoccupied.  Three students of the College
+attended him reverently.  Marsyas caught his eye, and between the two
+passed a flash that was both understanding and congratulatory.  But
+they saluted each other gravely, and Eleazer passed on to his own place.
+
+Before they departed Herod sent out a chamberlain, who bowed low and
+handed a wax tablet to Marsyas, on which was written:
+
+
+"Since Classicus would be in Alexandria to harass thee, and thy wits
+are meshed in love and religion, I have bidden my scribe write him to
+come hither, where I can kill him conveniently, if he need it.  If thou
+have any enemies here in Jerusalem thou hast forgotten to bless, thou
+canst perhaps repair the misfortune by naming thy sons after them.
+
+"My love goes with thee--mine and the queen's,
+
+"HEROD."
+
+
+So, with their faces alight with content and love and hopefulness,
+Marsyas and Lydia took up the long journey unto Alexandria.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Saul of Tarsus, by Elizabeth Miller
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